Haiti is an object lesson in the costs of global apathy

A man sleeps on a car at a shelter for families displaced by gang violence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on May 12. (Odelyn Joseph/AP)

Haiti’s four-year spiral into chaos is not only the chronicle of a disaster foretold. It was also one of the modern world’s most preventable tragedies.

Describing Haiti as a “failed state” is an almost comically antiseptic description of the horrific meltdown underway there. In Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital, murderous gangs now control all but a single besieged redoubt, where an impotent, querulous governing council is holed up, its members fearing for their lives.