Also on Sunday, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) began a large-scale aid distribution at 16 sites across Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince, aiming to feed two million people.They can't be serious. Only giving food to the men? Granted, you don't want families to double-dip, but this is an international government organization: it shouldn't be allowed to perform this kind of flagrant social engineering, discriminating against female-headed households.
Only men will be allowed to collect the 25kg (55lb) rice ration, enough to feed a family for two weeks.
OK, I lied. That's not what the article says. It says only women will be allowed to collect the rice. That's fine, right? There's no such thing as a family without a mother, right? Earthquakes never kill women, after all.
What's more, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted in 1965, welfare for families channelled through women marginalizes fathers, sending an unsubtle message that they are unneeded, unwanted and not to be trusted in the care of their families. Are we still surprised that female-targeted government assistance increases fatherlessness?
Haitian men are scary to aid agencies. After all, they sometimes are gang members. Worse still, they're black men. We don't want any of those scary Haitian men interfering with our harmonious, postmodern effort to restore Haiti!
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