Jim Kim returns to Haiti

This week, new World Bank president Jim Kim made his first visit to Haiti since being selected to lead the institution. Kim worked extensively on Haiti earlier in his career. The Associated Press offered this account of the trip: It was a whirlwind tour for World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, who helicoptered from the ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

This week, new World Bank president Jim Kim made his first visit to Haiti since being selected to lead the institution. Kim worked extensively on Haiti earlier in his career. The Associated Press offered this account of the trip:

This week, new World Bank president Jim Kim made his first visit to Haiti since being selected to lead the institution. Kim worked extensively on Haiti earlier in his career. The Associated Press offered this account of the trip:

It was a whirlwind tour for World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, who helicoptered from the grounds of the demolished National Palace to his old stomping grounds in central Haiti where he once treated the rural poor as a doctor.

Then he flew off to visit a power plant north of Port-au-Prince and then spoke at a conference on poverty at a hotel that like the presidential palace down the hill is being rebuilt following its implosion in the 2010 earthquake.

Kim’s two-day trip to Haiti was no routine drop-in for the head of an international organization. This one carried special significance for Kim, a physician and anthropologist who is regarded for his pioneering work in development because of his ties to the Boston-based Partners in Health.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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