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Washington and International Donors Have Failed Haiti

2010-08-15T02:40:00Z

By Mark Weisbrot (originally for Sacramento Bee)

The "international community" is in charge of rebuilding Haiti, and one thing has become clear: they are not interested in any kind of democracy there, not even the low level of "democracy" that they have committed to in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Haiti's provisional electoral commission (CEP) has now decided once again that the country's largest political party, Fanmi Lavalas, will not be allowed to participate in parliamentary elections scheduled for November.

This is the equivalent of excluding the Democratic Party (actually something quite a bit larger) from U.S. Congressional elections in November.

So far there are no indications that the Obama administration, which has - to put it mildly - enormous influence over the government of Haiti, has any objections. They had supported the last elections in April 2009 which also excluded Fanmi Lavalas, even though the exclusion led to a boycott of some 90 percent of voters.

To follow the historical thread, Fanmi Lavalas is headed by Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who became Haiti's first democratically elected president in 1990. He was overthrown by the military seven months later, in a violent coup that had a lot of Washington's fingerprints on it. President Clinton restored Aristide three years later, but Aristide offended Washington by, among other things, getting rid of Haiti's brutal army - which was not so much a military force as an instrument of political violence on behalf of Haiti's ruling elite.

Paul Farmer of Harvard Medical School is Bill Clinton's Deputy Special Envoy at the UN. His "Partners in Health" has nearly 5,000 people in Haiti. Testifying recently at a Congressional briefing, he described what happened after Aristide and his party were elected for a second time, in 2000:

"Beginning in 2000, the U.S. administration sought . . . to block bilateral and multilateral aid to Haiti, having an objection to the policies and views of the administration of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, elected by over 90% of the vote . . . Choking off assistance for development and for the provision of basic services also choked off oxygen to the government, which was the intention all along: to dislodge the Aristide administration."

It was the second Bush administration that finally overthrew Aristide for the second time - in the coup of March 2004. But as Farmer notes, the process was initiated under the Clinton administration in 2000. And the Obama administration is currently silent on Aristide's forced exile from Haiti, a violation of Haiti's constitution.

If only Washington were a tenth as good at rebuilding Haiti as it was at destroying the country before the earthquake. But six months after the catastrophe, less than 2 percent of the 1.6 million homeless have homes. Hundreds of thousands have nothing at all; and 80 percent of the homeless that do have shelter are living under tarps where the ground under them turns to mud when it rains. And less than 2.9 percent of all aid money has gone to the Haitian government, which makes reconstruction nearly impossible. With a hundred thousand children wounded from the earthquake, public hospitals are closing.

The land that is needed for shelter is owned by rich Haitians, who have other plans. The Haitian government has the authority to take this land, with compensation. The international community can make this happen.

It's time for members of the U.S. Congress to step up to the plate and change our foreign policy toward Haiti, as they did after the 1991 military coup. Congress can make sure that the aid flows to where it is needed, that land and shelter are available, and that Haitians are allowed to elect their own government. After all that Washington has done to punish Haiti, this is the least they can do.

Open Letter to Ron Daniels

2010-08-15T01:55:00Z

Mr. Daniels:

You stated in an article about Wyclef Jean running for president in Haiti that

"In some recent interviews, I have had to come to Wyclef's defense on this point because, as mentioned above, there are those in the progressive movement who consider his criticism of Aristide's failings and call for him to step aside as tantamount to treason. To paint Wyclef in that way is grossly unfair. "

Wyclef Jean did far worse than criticize Aristide and appeal for him to stop down. Wyclef Jean praised the thugs who helped bring about the second US backed coup to oust Aristide.[see article excerpt below]. The men Wyclef Jean praised were led by Jodel Chamblain, who also led the FRAPH death squads in the early 1990's that murdered, raped and tortured thousands of people.

The coup Wyclef Jean supported led to 4000 political killings over the next two years according to a study published in the Lancet medical journal. Wyclef Jean was one of the producers of the film "The Ghosts of Cite Soliel" that was a transparent attempt to legitimize the bloody repression. The film outrageously portrayed Jodel Chamblain and his colleague Guy Philippe as heroes welcomed by the Haitian people. (Philippe received 2 % of the vote in 2006 elections) It also cited right wing extremist and sweat shop owner Andy Apaid as an authoritative and credible source on Aristide.

You ask readers to "hope" that Wyclef Jean is progressive. You are in a position to do a lot better than idly hope for something that unlikely. You could speak out against the bloody coup that Wyclef Jean supported.

Joe Emersberger

Article excerpt mentioned above:

Feb 25 2004 5:50 PM EST 1,605

Wyclef Jean Voices Support For Haitian Rebels He also calls for Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to step down.

By Gideon Yago [mtv.com]

Wyclef Jean voiced his support for Haitian rebels on Wednesday, calling on embattled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to step down and telling his fans in Haiti to "keep their head up" as the country braces itself for possible civil war.

"The country's in an uproar, it's not safe. But for the safety of the country and to stop the violence, it has to be a situation where he steps down,"

Jean, who was born in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti, told MTV News. "If the president steps down, there will be some form of negotiation with the opposition force."

"I don't consider those people rebels," Wyclef said. "It's people standing up for their rights. It's not like these people just appeared out of nowhere and said, 'Let's cause some trouble.' I think it's just built up frustration, anger, hunger, depression."

34 CANDIDATES BID FOR HAITI'S PRESIDENCY

2010-08-13T19:15:00Z

by Kim Ives (Haiti Liberte)

(The first of three parts) Haiti's embattled nine-member Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), headed by Gaillot Dorsinvil, continued its forced march toward Nov. 28 presidential and parliamentary elections this week, closing presidential candidate registrations on Aug. 7.

The CEP has excluded Haiti's largest party, the Lavalas Family of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, prompting weekly and sometimes large demonstrations calling for its removal and that of President René Préval, who hand-picked it.

While Lavalas base organizations and even some politicians say they will boycott any elections carried out under Préval and his CEP, the announcement of certain presidential candidacies have inflamed passions and may alter the political chessboard dramatically.

Candidacies can be contested up until Aug. 12, and the CEP says it will issue a list of those accepted on Aug. 17. Some of the 34 candidates who registered will likely be disqualified for violation of certain requirements like that for five consecutive years of residency in Haiti prior to the election.

Here we present a brief description of some of the candidates, including who and what they represent.

WYCLEF JEAN

Claiming he was "drafted by Haiti's youth," Haitian-American hip-hop musician Wyclef Jean, 40, was certainly the most spotlighted Haitian presidential candidate to register this week, but, ironically, he is also one of the most disdained by Haitians both in Haiti and its diaspora.

"He has no education, no preparation, and no competence to be Haiti's president, especially with the complicated crisis we face now," said Joseph Ulysse, 38, a Brooklyn-based cab driver. "His candidacy is a mockery."

Indeed, Jean's live announcements of his bid on Miami-based Bonjour Haiti and CNN on Aug. 5 have unleashed a torrent of critical articles and editorials calling on him to quit the race.

"Jean, an incredibly savvy entertainer, clearly lacks the political wherewithal to deal with the complex situations he is likely to face abroad," wrote Garry Pierre-Pierre, editor of the moderate Haitian-American English-language weekly Haitian Times, in the Guardian. "His internal challenges are more troublesome because he needs to surround himself with a strong cadre of competent people well-steeped into the ins and outs of governance."

Pierre-Pierre represents exactly the demographic to which Wyclef Jean is hoping to appeal. But Pierre-Pierre calls Jean's platform - education, healthcare and job creation - "unremarkable" and urges him to "stick to what you know best," namely "continue as a roving ambassador, bringing a certain Hollywood glamour to the hemisphere's poorest nation."

Meanwhile, the Haiti Action Committee's Charlie Hinton in the San Francisco Bay View focused on Wyclef's seamy political past. "Wyclef Jean supported the 2004 coup," Hinton wrote. "When gun-running former army and death squad members trained by the CIA were overrunning Haiti's north on Feb. 25, 2004, MTV's Gideon Yago wrote, 'Wyclef Jean voiced his support for Haitian rebels on Wednesday, calling on embattled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to step down...'"

Just as actor Sean Penn suggested on CNN that U.S. "corporate interests were enamored" with Wyclef Jean and behind his campaign, Hinton contends that the "floating of his candidacy is just one more effort by the international forces, desperate to put a smiley face on a murderous military occupation, to undermine the will of the Haitian majority by making Wyclef Jean the Ronald Reagan of Haiti. Let us be clear. Jean and his uncle, [Raymond Joseph, also a presidential candidate and] the Haitian ambassador to the U.S., are both cozy with the self-appointed czar of Haiti, Bill Clinton, whose plans for the Caribbean nation are to make it a neo-colony for a reconstructed tourist industry and a pool of cheap labor for U.S. factories. Wyclef Jean is the perfect front man. The Haitian elite and its U.S./U.N. sponsors are counting on his appeal to the youth to derail the people's movement for democracy and their call for the return of President Aristide. Most Haitians will not be hoodwinked by the likes of Wyclef Jean."

Ansel Herz, a Haiti-based independent journalist, also published a critical piece on his blog at Mediahacker.org. He wrote: "So what about breaking the stranglehold that a few of Haiti's most obscenely wealthy families have on the government and economy? 'We have to build an open system that doesn't stop them from making money, that will work for them, if only because what they're making could double, triple,' Jean told Esquire Magazine in a recent interview. Those families have been making a killing on the backs of the Haitian poor for decades, paying them dirt-cheap wages to work in sweatshops while stifling the country's emergent middle class. Make no mistake, Jean's politics are those of the Haiti's miserable status quo."

The Smoking Gun website has put out several documents detailing how Wyclef Jean has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars from his charity, Yele Foundation, to himself and to companies he owns or controls. It also revealed that the IRS believes Jean owes it $2.1 million in back taxes. Most Haitians are therefore leery of letting Wyclef Jean and his acolytes anywhere near the already paltry and pilfered Haitian treasury.

Finally, there is the little matter of whether Wyclef's candidacy is even legal. "Article 135e of Haiti's Constitution is clear," explained Brian Concannon of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) on Aug. 4 on Pacifica Radio's KPFA program Flashpoints. "In order to be President, you need to have a residence in Haiti for the five consecutive years before the election. Mr. Jean has not lived in Haiti for, I believe, 28 years, and his residence is in New Jersey, not it Haiti. So it's a pretty clear disqualification." Wyclef claims that his 2007 appointment by Préval as Haiti's goodwill ambassador - an essentially honorary post - exempts him from the residency requirement.

During Jean's announcement, CNN played and replayed clips of young women grinding and young men bouncing on motorcycles, all wearing T-shirts with the name of his party: Face to Face.

JACQUES EDOUARD ALEXIS

He served as Préval's Prime Minister from Jan. 1999 to Feb. 2001 and again from May 2006 to Apr. 2008, when he was dismissed from his post by the Haitian Senate following nationwide food riots.

Alexis, 62, has been an unannounced presidential candidate for the last two years, courting the Lavalas base with the promise of bringing back Aristide from exile in South Africa. He had expected to be the candidate of Préval's Unity party, and indeed was for two days last week after clearing several daunting hurdles.

Two weeks ago, it appeared that Alexis' candidacy was kaput when it came to public attention that he had never received from the Parliament a "décharge," essentially an audit and stamp of approval saying his administration was not corrupt.

Alexis' problem was that Haiti's Parliament expired in May, so there was no way for him to now get the clean bill of health, even though there may have been problems there too.

The whole dilemma went away last week when Préval's CEP announced that it would simply disregard the electoral law article mandating a "décharge" from former government officials.

Haiti's entire "political class," from the Lavalas Family to right-wing political fronts, cried foul, but Préval was unmoved. He announced that Alexis would represent Unity.

However, Unity the next day became far from it. The party rebelled against Préval's nomination of Alexis. In a night-time meeting at the National Palace on Aug. 5, Moise Jean-Charles, the party's Northern Senator and an Alexis supporter, got in a fist-fight with Senate President Kelly Bastien, who backed the Southeast's Senator, Joseph Lambert.

Finally Alexis was unceremoniously ousted and replaced by Jude Célestin, a low-profile technocrat who heads Préval's pet agency, the National Equipment Company (CNE), which has more machinery than the Department of Public Works. The CNE's dump-trucks and backhoes have been the principle excavators so far of rubble after the Jan. 12 earthquake.

A veteran of such political wrangling, Alexis quickly switched his candidacy to the obscure Mobilization for Haiti's Progress (MPH), his back-up banner, but not before he and Préval had a bitter fight over his ouster from Unity on the night of Aug. 6 at the Palace.

Born in Gonaives, Alexis has spent much of his life in academia. Trained as an agronomist and a chemist, he taught at the college level in Haiti and Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. He then helped found the private University of Quisqueya, where he was the first rector from 1990 to 1995.

Under Préval's first administration, Alexis was also Minister of National Education, Youth, and Sport, Culture Minister, and Interior Minister.

Alexis, who has the backing of sectors like the Open the Gates Party (PLB) of Francois Pierre-Louis, would pursue policies similar to Préval, who represents Haiti's "enlightened" bourgeoisie. This current seeks accommodation with the U.S. and France, which politically and economically dominate the country, while making eyes at and paying lip-service to entreaties from vanguard neighbors like Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia for Haiti to break away and join anti-imperialist initiatives like the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA).

(To be continued)

Six Months Later: Land Ownership At the Crux of Haiti’s Stalled Reconstruction

2010-08-09T03:01:00Z

by Kim Ives

At a UN Conference on Mar. 31, about 60 countries and multilateral banks promised $5.3 billion for Haiti’s reconstruction over the next 18 months. Only about 10% of those promises have been delivered on (some of it just forgiven debt), and of that money delivered into a World Bank managed fund, only a fraction has been spent to help Haiti .

Meanwhile, private citizens around the world gave hundreds of millions of dollars to NGOs and impromptu efforts like the Clinton-Bush Foundation, but (where statistics are available) less than 25% of those contributions, sometimes much less, have been spent while desperation in Haiti grows.

Much of the blame for Haiti’s faltering recovery has focused on this trickling release of money and the disorganization of inefficient, administratively costly NGOs which have received most of the funds to date.

But big NGOs reply that they are ready to build new storm resistant houses – the most urgent priority, everybody agrees, as the hurricane season bears down on the 1.7 million displaced people still living under tents and tarps. The problem, Bekele Gelata, the secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross Societies said last week, is that the Haitian government has not provided open land on which to build large numbers of houses. “We have high hopes that the Red Cross will get a little land soon,” he said.

In this way, the Jan. 12 earthquake reveals that the principal fault-line in Haiti is not geological but one of class. A small handful of rich families own large tracts of land in suburban Port-au-Prince which would be ideal for resettling the displaced thousands. The lands are located near the city, often with water and some trees, and are largely undeveloped.

However, these same families control the Haitian government and, more importantly, have great influence in the newly formed 26-member Interim Commission to Reconstruct Haiti (CIRH), co-chaired by former President Bill Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. Thirteen of the CIRH directors represent multilateral banks like the IMF, World Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank and donor nations like the U.S., France and Canada. The other thirteen members represent Haiti’s elite.

The most prominent elite representative on the CIRH is Reginald Boulos, who heads one of the Haitian bourgeoisie’s most powerful families and backed both the 1991-94 and 2004-06 coups d’état against former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. (Despite regular and massive demonstrations asking for the Haitian government to facilitate his return, Aristide remains in exile in South Africa, without a passport or laisser-passer to return home.)

The CIRH is empowered for the next 18 months under a “State of Emergency Law” to seize land for rebuilding as it sees fit. (It is no coincidence that the time period for the “state of emergency” and the $5 billion injection coincide). But the elite families on this body in charge of expropriations are not volunteering their own well-situated land to benefit Haiti’s homeless.

As a result, only one major displaced person camp, Corail-Cesselesse, has been built about 10 miles north of the capital, on a forbidding strip of sun-baked desert situated between Titayen and Morne Cabrit, two desolate zones where death-squads dumped their victims during the anti-Aristide coups. The 6,000 person camp is several kilometers from Route National One, where transport toward the capital runs. One resident said he had to leave the camp at 4 a.m. for a three hour commute to his job in the city. Another resident said bus fares cost $1, a lot of money in Haiti.

Long-time democracy activist Patrick Elie told Democracy Now! on the quake’s six month anniversary that “the Haitian elites over centuries [have] appropriated land which [...], especially after independence and the end of slavery, would have been common property, and they appropriated vast tract of land, pushing the peasants — the newly freed slaved who did not want to work on the plantation system anymore — to the mountains.”

This appropriation process – some call it theft – is not ancient history. Some of Haiti’s best suited land for post-quake resettlements is located just north of the capital between the Frères Road and Tabarre. Over the past 25 years, Haiti’s bourgeoisie bought up large swaths of this fertile valley, where the Haitian American Sugar Company used to grow sugarcane. Now it is home to a Miami-style luxury home development known as Belle-Ville, an amusement park for rich kids , the Vorbe family car dealership, Brazil’s military base (Brabatt), and a giant new U.S. Embassy, among other things. “The elite paid the peasants pennies for the land not long ago, pushing them off,” Elie told Haïti Liberté. “Now they will look to sell it for a huge profit.”

The bourgeoisie has placed itself in charge of resettlement and is looking to make a killing. “The government had appointed Gerard-Emile ‘Aby’ Brun, president of Nabatec Development, a consortium owned by some of Haiti's most powerful families, to be in charge of relocating the squatter camps in Port-au-Prince,” explained the AP’s Jonathon Katz in a Jul. 11 story. Brun then put Corail-Cesselesse on land owned by Nabatec, thereby making his company “first in line to gain part of $7 million the government will spend compensating landowners.”

And, Katz continues, “that's just a small part of the potential payoff. Nabatec is also a lead negotiator with South Korean garment firms to build factories that Haitian officials say will likely go into Corail-Cesselesse.” Forty years ago, Cité Soleil, Haiti’s biggest and worst slum, was also built as a model development (then Cité Simone) to provide workers for the first industrial park near the airport, built and owned by the same wealthy families with U.S. support.

So the bourgeoisie keeps its best land and sells its worst for a huge, guaranteed profit. This is the Haitian equivalent of the U.S. bank bailout.

In this way, the Préval government and CIRH appear ready to squander the millions contributed to Haiti by buying land at inflated prices from the bourgeoisie, land which was often stolen or obtained by ruse in the first place.

Land is also needed to grow food for Haiti’s increasingly hungry masses, especially as post-quake humanitarian aid begins to drop off. Haiti’s bourgeoisie and big landowners are more interested in building assembly industries, office buildings and luxury homes, not on developing fields of rice, millet or corn. In the past six months, four new industrial parks, according to one report, have been built to take advantage of Haiti’s $3 a day minimum wage.

This struggle for Haiti’s principal means of production – the land – has now been thrown into sharp relief as sharks and vultures use this moment of a weakened state to expand their real estate holdings, not contribute them to their devastated compatriots.

A good example of this is in Ganthier, a town of about 72,000 located 18 miles east of the capital near the Dominican border. Half the town’s residents are peasant farmers who survive by farming on state lands used as a commons to grow food for over 80 years. But in recent weeks, two businessmen have laid claim to this state land.

Two weeks ago, the businessmen sent out a bulldozer that began to clear the peasants’ plots. The peasants banded together, burned the bulldozer, and blocked the road from the border. The local mayor, Ralph Lapointe sided with the peasants and was arrested for a few hours. He credits his partial freedom to immediate local protests and barricades. His office’s general director was imprisoned for more than 24 hours.

“We are both now under virtual house arrest,” he told journalists from Haiti Liberté and Democracy Now! “My life is in danger if I leave my home. As a government representative, I am supposed to defend the interests of the local population. Instead the judicial authorities are allying themselves with the marauding businessmen and are attacking the peasants and those that defend them, like myself.”

Meanwhile the interlopers, armed with false deeds to the land (the elite’s age-old weapon of choice), have enlisted the police in a manhunt for the leaders of the peasant rebellion against the land grab. Mayor Lapointe identified the two businessmen trying to take the land as Frank Galette and Gérald Brutus. “Because I don’t agree with their actions, they have promised to assassinate me,” the mayor said.

This stand-off in Ganthier does not bode well for Haiti’s reconstruction under the leadership of Préval and the CIRH. To build Haiti back better, Haitian authorities will need to expropriate at least some of the land the elite has stolen and accumulated over the past 200 years. Instead, landowners’ thugs, often in concert with police and UN troops, are brutally uprooting people, often at gunpoint and at night, from spontaneous settlements without giving them any alternative homes. The internally displaced just have to move farther up the mountainsides or further into the Arizona-like desert north of the capital.

Of course, seizing the ruling class’ land would exacerbate the already simmering class war, of which Ganthier is just an opening skirmish. “The landowners say if they're not compensated, the ‘new Haiti’ in Corail-Cesselesse will end up making the violent slums of pre-quake Port-au-Prince look tame,” Katz wrote. “Every squatter seems to have had an encounter with gangsters they believe are sent by landowners.”

The need was there before, but the earthquake made it even more crying. Haiti needs a social revolution where the land of the rich is transferred to the ownership of the poor – that is, nationalized, as it was under Dessalines – so that it can serve not just as a means of production but also to build shelters from the coming storms.

Canada's Failed Aid to Haiti

2010-08-09T01:05:00Z

by Roger Annis (originally for The Bullet )

The six month mark after Haiti's January 12 earthquake saw a flurry of news reports in Canada and around the world. The depictions of the harsh conditions still prevailing for most earthquake victims took many people by surprise. The relative silence of the media over the last few months led many to assume that the international aid effort had accomplished much more than it has.

On the eve of July 12, contradictory or exaggerated claims were made about Canadian government aid to Haiti. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and Canwest news agency reported that Canada has committed “more than $1-billion” for Haiti. Yet only days earlier, on July 9, the Quebec French-language daily Le Devoir, and the English-language Canadian Press news agency, reported that Canada has not given a dime to the Haiti Reconstruction Fund established by the March 31 United Nations Donor Conference in New York. So what is the true record of Canada's assistance to Haiti since the earthquake, and what more needs to be done to assist the hundreds of thousands of victims who have received little or no aid?

Why doesn't Canada help to clear rubble?

The Numbers

In a July 9 press release, written as a rebuttal to the aforementioned Le Devoir and Canadian Press reports, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon and Minister of International Cooperation and Development Bev Oda stated that Canada contributed $150-million to Haiti in the weeks following the quake. The ministers also said an additional $400-million has been pledged to Haiti for the next two years.

At a subsequent July 12 press conference, the ministers upped the figure, saying that Canada has spent, or is committing, a total of $1.1-billion in aid to Haiti. But their time frame of commitment predates the earthquake considerably, covering the years 2006 to 2012.

Other figures are also misleading. The $150-million figure noted on July 9 reflected spending announcements in January and April. The $400-million figure was announced by Canada at the March 31 UN Donors Conference. Media reports gave the impression that this $400-million is Canada's contribution to the Haiti Reconstruction Fund (HRF) established at the conference. In fact, Canada's contribution to the Fund is listed on the Fund's website as “$30-$45-million” [funds listed are in U.S. dollars].

It so happens that $30-million is the minimum payment required to secure a seat on the Fund's board of directors. The HRF's spending decisions are controlled by international financial institutions, the Fund's board of directors, and the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission. The latter consists of 26 members, half of whom are non-Haitian. It is chaired by former U.S. president Bill Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Max Bellerive.

Few of the countries pledging to the Fund are in a rush to pay up. According to the undated pledge page on the Fund's website, only three countries have met their pledges – Brazil, Australia and Estonia, for a total of $64-million (U.S.). Canada says it will pay up “soon.” But Cannon and Oda voiced a reason for their delay at the July 12 press conference. They said they are concerned by Bill Clinton's remarks the preceding week in which he criticized laggard donor countries for their failure to pay.

Cannon said: “I want to be able to, with Minister Oda, discuss with [Clinton] so that we scope all that out and get a better sense of what he means by those comments.” Canada's government has been telling its people that its response to the earthquake was swift and generous. Clinton's remarks were an embarrassment to it.

The Fund's total pledges amount to a paltry $509-million (U.S). The $5.3-billion-plus figure which the international media reports as pledged to Haiti consists of promises by the world's governments and aid agencies at the March 31 conference, in all forms and covering the next 18 months.

For Haiti, there is a major concern with the promises. The record following previous natural disasters is that the majority of funds promised are never paid. There is every reason to believe that this will again be the case unless significant political pressure demands aggressive and meaningful reconstruction aid from the world's big powers.

There is another flaw in the international financial promises: very little aid is going to Haitian organizations. Dr. Paul Farmer of the prestigious Partners In Health testified before the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, DC on July 27 that of the $1.8-billion in earthquake relief sent to Haiti to date, only three percent was delivered to the Haitian government. Even Canada's outgoing Governor General, the Haitian-born Michaëlle Jean, was moved to say in France recently: “The time has come to break with the logic of aid that has transformed Haiti into a laboratory [for NGOs],” Agence France Presse, July 20.

Canada's $1.1-Billion

Below is a rough breakdown of the $1.1-billion (Cnd) that Canada says it has spent, or is promising, in Haiti:

$555-million for 2006-11. Status: Most of this money predates the earthquake. It largely has funded police and prison institutions as well as massively boycotted 2009 elections.

$400-million announced on March 31, 2010 and again on July 12. Status: Promised over the next two years.

$150-million for short-term earthquake relief. Status: Given to UN agencies and NGO's; difficult to confirm how much was spent, and where.

$30-45-million to the Haiti Reconstruction Fund. Status: Yet to be paid.

$40-million for debt cancellation. Status: Much of this dates from the years of the Duvalier dictatorship. It is owed to international financial institutions and is not “earthquake relief.”

Sums spent on Canadian military and police agencies in Haiti. Status: Amounts unknown and unreported. Additionally, the federal government has said it will match $220-million of the donations that individual Canadians gave to charities between January 12 and February 16. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) said in New York on March 31 that half of the $220-million, that is, $110-million, is included in the $400-million announcement. The other half, Minister Oda said on July 12, would go to "the continuing work of humanitarian development [non-governmental organizations] and institutions in their efforts." In other words, it is not new money at all.

Several expenditures recently announced by Canada for police training and equipment as well as prison construction were not mentioned by the ministers on July 12 and do not appear in earthquake relief announcements by the government or CIDA. These include $34.6-million announced by Minister Oda on April 8, and $4.4-million by Minister Cannon during a three-day visit to Haiti in early May.

Presumably, the optics of police and prison spending precluded these expenditures from being counted as "earthquake aid and relief." But such expenditures fit entirely into Canada's ongoing policies in Haiti. Its "aid" spending since 2004 has principally gone to prisons and policing.

Furthermore, Cannon announced in Haiti on May 8 that unnamed international agencies had decided that Canada's principal contribution to the UN mission in Haiti would continue to be in the realm of “security.”

Militarization of Aid

Such spending on police and prisons is not the first for Canada since January 12. The principal Canadian government response to the earthquake was to dispatch two Canadian warships loaded with nearly 2,000 soldiers and sailors. They arrived offshore from Léogâne and Jacmel on January 19 and 20.

At the time, this was touted by the government as a major earthquake relief operation. But as the March 12 Halifax Chronicle Herald later reported, the ships carried relatively few earthquake relief supplies and equipment. They were instead loaded with military personnel and supplies. The military operations performed only peripheral aid and supply tasks. The medical teams the ships brought did not perform a single surgery, according to a study by John Kirk and Emily Kirk in April. When the ships departed six weeks after arriving, they took with them their vital air traffic control and heavy lift equipment.

The Canadian military operation was identical in motivation to the much better known U.S. military intervention. Both were intended to stifle any aspirations for political sovereignty and social justice that were dashed by the U.S./Canada/France-backed overthrow of Haiti's elected government in February 2004 and that might arise anew in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Furthermore, Haiti was "used as a launchpad for redeploying [Canadian] combat troops to the Middle East war theater," reported Global Research's Michel Chossudovsky on March 28. “Canadian troops initially dispatched to Haiti under a humanitarian mandate are being sent to Afghanistan,” as was done with U.S. troops. Though the military convoy was announced as Canada's principal emergency response to the earthquake, the expenditure for it is nowhere listed in CIDA or government summaries of earthquake aid.

Aid Still Desperately Needed

Canadians who have recently visited or are still working in Haiti continue to express anger and dismay with the slow pace of reconstruction. La Presse reporter Patrick Lagacé wrote upon arrival in Port-au-Prince on July 9: "This is what strikes the visitor returning to Port-au-Prince six months after the earthquake. Nothing has changed. Or very little. Too little."

Member of Parliament Jim Karygiannis (Scarborough-Agincourt) wrote to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on July 20: "I have recently returned from a trip to Haiti. I was appalled by the living conditions of the victims of the January 12th earthquake. Six months is too long for victims to wait for the rebuilding process to begin," he wrote. "We must act now."

The Quebec-based Architectes de l'urgence ("Emergency Architects") says it has been waiting three months for funds from the UN and European Union so they can begin to construct shelters. "We still haven't seen a dime," says its president, Patrick Coulombel. “Six months after the earthquake, reconstruction has hardly begun,” he told Agnes Gruda of La Presse, as reported on July 9. “This is completely abnormal.”

On July 12, CBC News cited Hans van Dillen, head of mission for Doctors Without Borders, as follows: “What we see when we drive around Port-au-Prince is that the situation is pretty much as it was after the earthquake.”

“Removing the rubble left behind by this disaster, reaching remote areas with building materials, and obtaining permissions to build from landowners remain our main challenges to providing sturdy shelter for families,” Conrad Sauvé, secretary general of the Canadian Red Cross, told the same CBC news report.

Two of the most pressing needs in Haiti today are the clearing of rubble from the streets and neighbourhoods, and the construction of temporary or permanent shelter. According to UN agencies, 125,000 durable shelters are needed, but only 5,000 have been constructed.

With all of the equipment and resources available in wealthy countries like Canada, such immediate needs should be well on the road to being met. Yet, they persist. It is a testimony to the failure of will and good intentions of the world's wealthy governments.

According to CBC News, observers say it could take 20 years to clear the rubble from the cities in the earthquake zone. The Haitian people, of course, will not wait that long. They are speaking out, protesting and taking reconstruction into their own hands wherever possible. All signs point to a deepening effort by the Haitian people to take their destiny back into their hands and launch the reconstruction effort that their foreign overseers are so demonstrably unable to lead. •

Roger Annis is a coordinator of the Canada Haiti Action Network in Vancouver BC. He can be reached at rogerannis(at)hotmail.com.

Gonaives Girds for Heavy Storm Season

2010-08-08T16:30:00Z

Wadner Pierre (originally for IPS)

GONAIVES, Aug 2, 2010 - Gonaives, the third largest city in Haiti, is rushing to prepare for an expected highly active hurricane season. The city was flooded by three hurricanes in the past six years - Hannah and Ike in 2008, and Jeanne, which killed at least 2,500 people in 2004.

While progress has been made in the recovery from those disasters, Gonaives - which was largely spared by the Jan. 12 earthquake - remains extremely vulnerable to new hurricanes.

Reconstruction of parts of the highway crossing the city was only recently completed. When this reporter visited Gonaives last year, the population was upset with the state of the dusty road, although Estrella, a Dominican construction company, has since fixed large portions of it.

Some locations that were routinely inundated with filthy water have been rebuilt. Last year, it might have taken a pedestrian almost 10 minutes to traverse the intersection in front of the Gonaives National Police headquarters after one hour of rain.

Belmour Myriam, a middle-aged woman, is working on drainage of the Biennac canal, which channels water from east of Gonaives to the ocean. Cleaning the canal has been a five- month project of USAID.

"I live in Baby Street," she told IPS. "Six years after the hurricane, my street is still not cleaned up. We have received no aid or attention from either local authorities or NGOs. We are alone in Baby Street."

"There is little change. We have power almost twenty-four- seven, and Avenue des Dattes is almost done. That's all," she added.

Traffic on the highway is bustling. But smaller neighbourhood streets were destroyed by the flooding. Many remain damaged, unpaved and dirty.

Ferd Florial, a motorcycle taxi driver, depends on the roads to make a living. "Everything is okay, the road construction, the power, except the road Biennac, which is a rocky and flooded road. Now we taxi drivers can breathe easier because we don't need to change tires and tubes almost every day," he said.

Access to education is limited for children in Haiti, but in Gonaives the situation was aggravated by hurricanes.

"There is a crisis in education here in Gonaives," said Morancy Milius, a graduate law student working as a teacher. "The teachers who have been working for many years have not yet paid. Other teachers are still waiting for their nominated letters. Everything is politics here," he said.

A Venezuelan flag flies over the local power station, a sign of the Venezuelan government's investment in the city. "Thanks to Venezuela, we in Gonaives have no problem for power," Milius said.

The scars of the hurricanes are still visible. Mosquitoes and other health risks from standing floodwater remain challenges. Block after block dirt and debris are piled next to damaged houses.

"I came after Hannah and Ike, there was a lot of filthy water here, now it's getting better. The future of my business is more promising because of the reconstruction of the road," said Sergo Jean Phillipe, a cloth-maker whose business is on Avenue des Dattes.

Residents of Gonaives are psychologically scarred as well. More than 3,000 people were killed in as the storms struck the city one after another.

"People in Gonaives are still traumatised," Dorcely Dieumery, a community leader who lives in Detour Laborde, told IPS. "Anytime it's going to rain, we have to figure out where we are going to stay. We need things go a little bit faster."

When Hurricane Jeanne hit Gonaives in 2004, humanitarian groups and U.N. peacekeeping troops directed the relief effort. The eastern part of the city's monument to Haitian independence is still occupied by U.N. soldiers. Now camouflaged U.S. military Humvees roam the city. The Department of Defence has stationed the USS Iwo Jima off the coast, poised to respond to hurricanes.

U.N. agencies like the World Food Programme, as well as the International Organisation for Migration, the Red Cross and Red Crescent are also working hard to prepare for the worst, with food distribution plans that include using a barge service if the roads are washed out.

Gonaivians are hopeful that if disaster strikes again, their situation will not be as terrible as it was for the past three hurricanes.

Haiti Gears Up for Polls - Again, Sans Lavalas

2010-08-08T16:11:00Z

by Wadner Pierre (originally for IPS)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jul 30, 2010 - After weeks of delays, Haitian President René Préval confirmed this month that presidential and legislative elections will take place on Nov. 28. The U.N. and Western donor nations are pledging millions of dollars in support of the polls, but with at least 1.5 million people still homeless from the January earthquake, questions loom over how to ensure voter participation.

In the last round of senatorial elections before the earthquake, less than three percent of the electorate participated. Fanmi Lavalas, widely seen as the most popular political party in the country, was excluded from the election on technical grounds, along with some other parties. Now, the party has again been banned from participating in the November polls.

International donors have expressed disappointment at Haiti's failure to hold inclusive elections, but have continued to fund them.

In recent weeks U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican member on the foreign relations committee, issued two reports recommending candidates from Fanmi Lavalas be allowed to participate. But his calls have been dismissed by Préval and the Provisional Electoral Council, the entity charged with organising elections.

On Wednesday, nearly one hundred Fanmi Lavalas supporters held a sit-in outside the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince.

"We come in front of the Embassy to ask President [Barack] Obama to take action because we didn't support him for this," said a woman identifying herself as Madeleine. "President Préval excludes us from the elections. We voted for him, but this isn't what we wanted."

Fanmi Lavalas is the party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was removed from office in a U.S.-backed coup d'etat in 2004. The de facto regime that took power after Aristide killed, disappeared, and imprisoned hundreds of Fanmi Lavalas supporters.

"We think they need to clean their hands by returning President Aristide to his home. And we are very clear, we ask simply for his return," said Dr. Marice Narcisse, a Fanmi Lavalas leader. "We have launched a non-stop peaceful mobilisation against the plan that aims to exclude the people."

Dozens of Haitian police prevented demonstrators from standing in front of the Embassy's front gate. But the protesters split into two groups, eventually moving from across the street to block the entrance.

Narcisse says media portrayals of her party as rife with internal divisions are false. From exile, Aristide designated Narcisse to represent his party with a signed and legal mandate before the Provisional Election Council (CEP). Shortly before the earthquake, Aristide spoke on Port-au- Prince's Radio Solidarité to confirm the mandate, reaffirming the willingness of his party to participate in the electoral process.

"The ambassador here is the representative of the U.S. government in Haiti," said Lionel Etienne, a former Fanmi Lavalas congressman. "We come here today to question the behaviour of the U.S. government. We're asking if they will continue to finance the exclusion of Lavalas by the CEP with Préval."

"Fanmi Lavalas, we believe in the democracy. We never have taken power in any way besides elections," he added.

The sit-in ended without incident shortly before noon. Protesters moved to downtown Port-au-Prince to hold a march.

Préval's administration has been roundly criticised from within and outside Haiti for excluding parties from elections. The CEP, whose members were appointed by Préval, is seen as corrupt and biased in many quarters.

Jean Enel Desir, the representative of the Catholic Church in the body, has ignored calls to resign after being accused of corruption.

Over 40 million dollars has been pledged by the U.N., the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the United States, and other foreign bodies towards this year's elections.

On Thursday, the Organisation of American States and CARICOM said they would send 193 observers to monitor the polls, in which Haitians will choose a new president, 10 senators and 99 members of parliament. The European Union says it will also send its own observers.

However, many Haitians remain deeply pessimistic about the fairness and transparency of the process.

"President Préval does not care for how much people turn out to vote," Mario Joseph, a prominent human rights lawyer, told IPS. "He's organising elections for people but doing everything possible to deny Fanmi Lavalas, the largest political party, and other political parties from running in these coming elections."

"The strangest thing is that it seems that the international community supports President Préval in his initiative. This international community usually plays a double game," he said. "But people have to revolt against this system and change it."

In Gonaives, one of Haiti's major cities in the north, Jean Nord, a motorcycle taxi driver, told IPS, "We are waiting for the elections. But all parties fulfilling the condition to participate in the elections must be allowed to participate."

Ansel Herz: How to write about Haiti

2010-07-24T00:54:00Z

Source (Huffington Post)

Actor Sean Penn, who is helping manage a camp of displaced earthquake victims in Haiti, is making pointed criticisms of journalists for dropping the ball on coverage of Haiti. He's wrong. I've been on the ground in Port-au-Prince working as an independent journalist for the past ten months. I'm an earthquake survivor who's seen the big-time reporters come and go. They're doing such a stellar job and I want to help out, so I've written this handy guide for when they come back on the one-year anniversary of the January quake!

For starters, always use the phrase 'the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.' Your audience must be reminded again of Haiti's exceptional poverty. It's doubtful that other articles have mentioned this fact.

You are struck by the 'resilience' of the Haitian people. They will survive no matter how poor they are. They are stoic, they rarely complain, and so they are admirable. The best poor person is one who suffers quietly. A two-sentence quote about their misery fitting neatly into your story is all that's needed.

On your last visit you became enchanted with Haiti. You are in love with its colorful culture and feel compelled to return. You care so much about these hard-working people. You are here to help them. You are their voice. They cannot speak for themselves.

Don't listen if the Haitians speak loudly or become unruly. You might be in danger, get out of there. Protests are not to be taken seriously. The participants were probably all paid to be there. All Haitian politicians are corrupt or incompetent. Find a foreign authority on Haiti to talk in stern terms about how they must shape up or cede power to incorruptible outsiders.

The US Embassy and United Nations always issue warnings that demonstrations are security threats. It is all social unrest. If protesters are beaten, gassed, or shot at by UN peacekeepers, they probably deserved it for getting out of control. Do not investigate their constant claims of being abused.

It was so violent right after the January 2010 earthquake. 'Looters' fought over goods 'stolen' from collapsed stores. Escaped prisoners were causing mayhem. It wasn't necessary to be clear about how many people were actually hurt or died in fighting. The point is that it was scary.

Now many of those looters are 'squatters' in 'squalid' camps. Their tent cities are 'teeming' with people, like anthills. You saw your colleagues use these words over and over in their reports, so you should too. You do not have time to check a thesaurus before deadline.

Point out that Port-au-Prince is overcrowded. Do not mention large empty plots of green land around the city. Of course, it is not possible to explain that occupying US Marines forcibly initiated Haiti's shift from distributed, rural growth to centralized governance in the capital city. It will not fit within your word count. Besides, it is ancient history.

If you must mention Haiti's history, refer vaguely to Haiti's long line of power-hungry, corrupt rulers. The 'iron-fisted' Duvaliers, for example. Don't mention 35 years of US support for that dictatorship. The slave revolt on which Haiti was founded was 'bloody' and 'brutal.' These words do not apply to modern American offensives in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Today, Cite Soleil is the most dangerous slum in the world. There is no need to back up this claim with evidence. It is 'sprawling.' Again, there's no time for the thesaurus. Talk about ruthless gangs, bullet holes, pigs and trash. Filth everywhere. Desperate people are eating cookies made of dirt and mud! That always grabs the reader's attention.

Stick close to your hired security or embed yourself with UN troops. You can't walk out on your own to profile generous, regular folk living in tight-knit neighborhoods. They are helpless victims, grabbing whatever aid they can. You haven't seen them calmly dividing food amongst themselves, even though it's common practice.

Better to report on groups that periodically enter from outside to deliver food to starving kids (take photos!). Don't talk to the youth of Cite Soleil about how proud they are of where they come from. Probably gang members. Almost everyone here supports ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But their views aren't relevant. There is no need to bring politics into your story.

You can't forget to do another story about restaveks. Child slaves. It's so shocking. There is little new information about restaveks, so just recycle old statistics. Present it as a uniquely Haitian phenomenon. Enslaved Haitian farmworkers in southern Florida, for example, aren't nearly as interesting.

When you come back here in six months, there will still be a lot of desperate poor people who have received little to no help. There are many big, inefficient foreign NGOs in Haiti. Clearly something is wrong. Breathless outrage is the appropriate tone.

But do not try to get to the bottom of the issue. Be sure to mention that aid workers are doing the best they can. Their positive intentions matter more than the results. Don't name names of individuals or groups who are performing poorly. Reports about food stocks sitting idly in individual warehouses are good. Investigations into why NGOs are failing to effect progress in Haiti are boring and too difficult. Do not explore Haitian-led alternatives to foreign development schemes. There are none. Basically, don't do any reporting that could change the system.

On the other hand, everyone here loves Bill Clinton and Wyclef Jean. There are no dissenting views on this point. Never mind that neither lives here. Never mind that Clinton admitted to destroying Haiti's domestic rice economy in the '90s. Never mind that Jean's organization has repeatedly mismanaged relief funds. That's all in the past. They represent Haiti's best hope for the future. Their voices matter, which means the media must pay close attention to them, which means their voices matter, which means the media must ...

Finally, when you visit Haiti again: Stay in the same expensive hotels. Don't live close to the people. Produce lots of stories and make money. Pull up in your rented SUV to a camp of people who lost their homes, still living under the wind and rain. Step out into the mud with your waterproof boots. Fresh notepad in hand. That ragged-looking woman is yelling at you that she needs help, not another foreigner taking her photo. Her 3-year-old boy is standing there, clinging to her leg. Her arms are raised, mouth agape, and you can't understand her because you don't speak Haitian Creole.

Remove the lens cap and snap away. And when you've captured enough of Haiti's drama, fly away back home.

French Reparations to Haiti: A Hoax?

2010-07-15T22:30:00Z

HaitiAnalysis.com

Yesterday, a french "official" announced that France will finally pay Haiti back for the 90 million gold francs it forced Haitians to pay in compensation for French slave trade losses. With interest and inflation, the total comes to 17 billion euros, or 21 billion USD.

Today <href>AFP and <href>Alter Presse have quoted french officials in Paris and Port-au-Prince claiming that the story was hoax. French officials have reiterated their refusal to pay the money stolen from Haiti in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.

Although, confusingly, another <href></embed></object>

Chomsky on Haiti: "US and France Should be Paying Massive Reparations At This Point"

2010-07-10T17:57:00Z

IFCO-Pastors For Peace and The Riverside Church Social Justice Ministries

Noam Chomsky shares his insights regarding the ongoing problems confronting the beleaguered nation of Haiti, particularly the US role minimizing and undermining their economic development, resulting in horrendous destruction and loss of at least 300,000 lives from the recent earthquake. A lively Q and A session follows the talk. Benefit for Haiti at The Riverside Church of New York, June 8, 2010 sponsored by IFCO-Pastors For Peace and The Riverside Church Social Justice Ministries. Camera: Joe Friendly

"We want our Voices to be Heard": Democracy in Haiti's Earthquake Zone

2010-05-09T18:42:00Z

By Laura Flynn - Aristide Foundation for Democracy

"We are living in the mud. We are wet and we are hungry. Those in charge have left us without hope. If they have a plan we do not know it. We are asking about the future. And we want our voices to be heard, " Suzette Janvier a resident of St. Martin (a neighborhood of central Port-au-Prince) - April 24, 2010

Each Saturday for the past two months a thousand or more Haitian earthquake survivors have met in the auditorium of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy to talk about the future of their country. Since its founding in 1996, the Aristide Foundation, whose auditorium seats up to 3000 people, has provided a place for grassroots activists and ordinary Haitians to come together to debate and discuss national issues. In response to the earthquake, the Foundation is sponsoring weekly public forums in which participants tell their stories, talk about the conditions of their lives, and describe their needs; they receive training or information on the current situation and on their rights under the Haitian constitution, and the United Nations principles on Internally Displaced People; and together presenters and participants brainstorm and discuss actions that can be taken to make their voices heard. Each forum has drawn between 900-1500 participants; the majority of those attending are living in spontaneous settlements across the earthquake zone - as are the majority of the citizens of Port-au-Prince. Delegations come from other parts of the country as well, particularly the South and Southeast - Jacmel and Les Cayes --which were also hit hard by the quake.

Participants at AFD forums have offered vivid testimony about conditions of life in Port-au-Prince since the earthquake. Now that the rains have begun, people describe spending the nights "domi pandeye," (sleeping while balancing upright), standing under their plastic sheeting because there is no room for everyone to be sheltered and lie down, and because water floods the tents. During the rainy season, which has already begun, but will intensify in May, it rains nearly every night. In the morning the sun blazes, the heat under the plastic sheeting - which is all most people have to protect themselves - is stifling. They are now living in "labou" (the mud) 24 hours a day, in camps almost uniformly lacking in latrines, or other sanitation.

They describe the struggle to feed their families. The price of basic foodstuffs (rice, beans, cornmeal, cooking oil, and charcoal for cooking) have risen 15-30% since the earthquake, while incomes have all but disappeared. Only those receiving funds from family overseas are able to purchase food. For those dependent on international aid, finding food for their families is an unending labor. Coupons for food might be distributed in the camps once a week, though not to everyone and not with predictability. Women who were able to get the coupons must then go to a different site, often miles away, and line up long before the sun rises. If they are lucky, by noon they might receive a 50lb bag of rice, which must then be carried or transported back to where they are living. The next day the same struggle might begin again this time to find cooking oil - one day spent in line waiting for the coupons, another day to travel to where the oil is being distributed, in a completely different location than the rice. Often these ventures yield nothing: there aren't enough coupons to go around, the rice runs out, the distribution center has been relocated, or it does not open due to security concerns. And with the rains, bags of rice get wet and spoil.

Participants describe with horror a dramatic rise in prostitution - young women and girls selling their bodies to feed themselves and their families.

They describe the dire health conditions in the camps where infectious diseases are poised to run rampant. Each Wednesday since March 10, 2010, the Aristide Foundation has held a large free clinic in the auditorium of the Foundation, providing primary care services to 1,200 people every week. What AFD doctors see and hear from patients in the clinics confirms the testimony in the forums - that is, high rates of illness that result from the conditions in which people are living: malnutrition, diarrhea among children, urinary tract and other infections.

The first demand of those who have gathered at the AFD in the forums is for temporary housing in safe and sanitary locations. The second is for food. Beyond this jobs, education, healthcare, and - despite the fact that most of the participants are urban - they are demanding real investment in agricultural for food production that can one day offer food security to the country.

Underlying all of this, participants in the forums are asking to participate in the planning of the nation's future - the necessary precondition for real recovery. Those gathering at the AFD, feel more intensely than ever before, a profound sense of exclusion.

Certainly there was no attempt at consultation or participation with Haiti's vibrant and engaged grassroots organizations in the preparation of the PDNA (the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment) put forward by the Haitian government to the international donors conference on March 31st. On the eve of the donor meeting, on March 27, over 1,200 people met at the AFD for a debate focused on the constitution - specifically the constitutionality of the creation of the 20-person Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti, dominated by foreigners, which will oversee all international funding. The next, even larger, forum focused on the GOH plan to extend its emergency powers for 18-months in order to allow the Interim Commission to be created and to exercise extra-constitutional powers. Fourteen hundred people gathered, and most expressed deep concern over the repercussions for Haiti's sovereignty. This was followed by three days of sit-ins of 500-600 people, at the Haitian parliament, to protest the passage of the law.

In addition to preparing the plan and creating this Interim Commission without participation, there has also been almost no communication about what might be in that plan. People coming to the forums at the Foundation have all heard there's a plan. They have no idea what is in it. They hear billions of dollars were pledged in New York. They have little faith this money will be given, and no faith that what is given will be spent in their interests.

The issue at the top of everyone's mind is the question of temporary resettlement, of moving people out of the way of the clear and present danger that the coming more intense rains represent. But three months after the quake, no clear message or plan has been articulated by the Haitian government or international NGOs.

In early April there were several reports of forced removals of people encamped on the grounds of private schools, private property, and from the soccer stadium. At some sites bulldozers arrived without notice to tear down shelters and families were left with no a place to go. To date it appears the only voluntary relocation which has had any success is at Corail, where over the last week or two the Haitian government in collaboration with international NGOs has begun to move people from the Pétionville golf course (where more than 45,000 people are encamped) to a relocation center at Corail, but this camp is only intended to hold 7,500 people. Over one million people are estimated to be homeless in the metropolitan area. If there are plans for temporary shelter for anyone other than those on the Golf Course they are not being communicated to the general public. Those gathering at the AFD express fear that they will be forcibly evicted from the camps where they are living. They are also skeptical about plans to relocate people to remote areas, which would leave them cut off from the economic life of the city, meaning cut off from the mutual aid provided by families, communities, neighborhood associations etc, and the informal economy. Mutual aid and the informal economy are the only things that keep Haitians alive. That was true before the quake and it is still true.

Efforts to assist must empower Haiti's powerful networks of mutual aid and the informal economy - not dismantle, not ignore them. What would it mean to empower them? Community kitchens in the camps, loans to women to restart "ti komes" (informal sector commerce), relocation for those in imminent danger with their participation, finding way of keeping people close to the city if that is what they desire. And if, as we hear, decentralization is a goal for Haiti's future, then who is talking to the residents of Port-au-Prince about lives they might imagine outside the city? And why out of $12.2 billion dollars requested in the Post Disaster Needs Assessment (the plan) was only $41 million or .3% allocated for agriculture and fisheries, i.e. for local food production?

Forums at the Aristide Foundation, held on March 13, March 20, March 27, April 3, April 17, and April 24, along with the International Women's Day event on March 8, 2010 (attended by 3000 women) represent the largest indoor gatherings of Haitians to discuss and debate the country's future since the earthquake. We are not aware of any occasion since January 12 where the Haitian government, the UN or any international NGO planning Haiti's future and the distribution of aid funds, have brought large groups of Haitians together to ask for their opinions, their input, or their stories.

Finally, those attending the forums at the AFD are unanimous in their call for the return of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Haiti. It is best summed up by Jean Vaudre, a community organizer from Bel Air, who said at the forum on April 17: "If Aristide were here even if he had no money to help us, he would be with us, in the rain, under the tents. If he were here we might believe, we might have hope that we will be able to participate in the future of the country." Hope is a commodity in short supply right now in Haiti. Is there some way of rebuilding the country without it? - - - - Laura Flynn is a member of the board of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy-US, which supports the work of the Aristide Foundation in Haiti. For more on the current work and history of the Aristide Foundation, visit www.AristideFoundationforDemocracy.org. A version of this article was first published at Haitiaction.net.

Teleco, Haiti's State Phone Company, Finally Privatized

2010-05-08T18:40:00Z

By: Hervé Jean Michel - Haiti Liberte

This week, the Haitian government sold a 60% share of Haiti's national telephone company, Teleco, to the Military Telecom Company, known as Viettel, a subsidiary of the Vietnamese Army, based in Hanoi. Teleco now no longer belongs to the Haitian people. The new private company which owns all of Haiti's land-lines will be called Natcom.

Teleco was the crown jewel of Haiti's state enterprises, but was sold for the fire-sale price of $59 million.

On Thursday, April 29, 2010, Viettel directors were in Port-au-Prince where the deal, reached days before the Jan. 12 earthquake, was consummated. Representing the Haitian government at the signing ceremony were Haitian officials like Yves Bastien of the Council for the Modernization of Public Enterprises (CMEP), Charles Castel, the Governor of Haiti's Central Bank (BRH), and Michel Présumé, Teleco's director.

"Teleco sustained permanent attacks, its network was sabotaged on several occasions, and the situation was not sustainable," Castel said in a statement after signing away the company. (In past years, Teleco union leaders have charged that President René Préval's government has deliberately undermined efforts to modernize equipment and improve service in the company to force its privatization.)

Castel also said that the Haitian government had spent $16.875 million (675 million gourdes) to make improvements to Teleco in order to sell it. If this investment is calculated into the deal, it means the Préval government sold Teleco for a mere $42.125 million, a company that used to bring in many dozens of millions of dollars in revenues annually.

"Teleco had over 5,000 employees who weren't doing anything," said Michel Présumé, Teleco's chief. "Many of them spent more time at radio stations than at their workplace." He was referring to the regular interviews Teleco workers and unionists gave about the company's mismanagement and the pending privatization.

Mr. Nguyen Khac Chung, a leading Viettel official, said during the signing ceremony that he wanted to make Natcom "the best telephone company in the region." He said that all current Teleco employees will be kept in their jobs if they prove able to assume their new responsibilities. He said that Viettel has provided leadership in other countries such as Cambodia and Laos, Vietnam's neighbors.

"We are eager to participate in the rebuilding of [Haiti] with reconstruction of a new infrastructure and distribution of telecommunications services," said Nguyen Manh Hung, Viettel's Deputy Director.

Teleco's privatization is the culmination of a long process that began in 1996, when President Préval, in his first administration, legalized the privatization of public enterprises. Two other key state enterprises, the Minoterie, Haiti's flour mill, and Ciment d'Haiti, the state cement company, were privatized in 1997 and soon after closed their doors.

Teleco was always a strategically key state enterprise. During the 1991-94 coup d'état against former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, it was millions of dollars in Teleco revenues which, in large part, financed his government in exile.

Interview with Haiti Union Leader Dukens Raphael: "We're looking for solidarity. Charity we're not interested in'

2010-05-07T17:31:00Z

Haiti Liberte

During the 47th annual convention of the British Columbia division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) from April 21-24, CUPE Communications sat down with guest speaker Dukens Raphael, secretary-general of the Confederation of Public and Private Sectors Workers of Haiti (CTSP). This interview, which was posted on CUPE's website, was conducted with the translation assistance of CoDevelopment Canada's Carol Wood.

CUPE: What is the current state of the rebuilding effort in Haiti? RAPHAEL: As you know, there were about 300,000 deaths, and the electricity and telecommunications infrastructure - in 75 to 80% of Port au Prince - has been destroyed. There's been some effort around reestablishing the electrical system. Phone service has been reestablished to a certain extent for cell phones, but land lines are not working, and potable water, drinkable water, has not been established in the areas affected by the earthquake. About two million people are living in tents, with no shelter. There are a lot of delinquents and insecurity. People are not safe. Obviously, if you're living in a huge tent area, people are stealing things, there's promiscuity, etc. But everything I've been talking about is not the hardest part. The hardest part for people right now is the psychosis of fear, because the rainy season has started already. When the rains come, the tents won't hold. So the rain starts, then right after that, it's hurricane season starting in June. So we are anticipating that the situation will get worse. The reaction of the people in government, instead of coming forward with more sturdy tents that would be more stable for people in this season, was to just spend millions of dollars on regular tents. And they're not going to be useful.

CUPE: How have you been affected, personally? RAPHAEL: Everybody has been affected, from labor leaders to workers. Our union offices were completely destroyed. Over 80% of schools have been destroyed. For example, in the state university where most students go, there were 13 colleges and nine were completely destroyed. The four that are left are too dangerous to go into. It's the same with the health sector. Hospitals have been destroyed. In all sectors, the damage has hit everyone.

So the most urgent need right away is proper shelter for the rainy and hurricane season. The second priority would be to better coordinate the support that's coming into Haiti. People who need it most are complaining every day on television or radio that they are not receiving the help. Much of the material aid that has arrived can be found on the streets for sale. So there's been a lot of aid that has arrived in the country, but that's not the problem - it's that it's not getting to the people who need it.

CUPE: Whose fault is that? RAPHAEL: It's a problem with the state. Everyone (aid agencies) just arrives and they do what they want. There's no regulation. The state needs to take responsibility and say who is doing what, and where.

CUPE: Is the government even capable of helping, given that it is in such disarray itself? RAPHAEL: It's true that many government buildings have fallen down. And the government lost a few lives, yes. But the government has the responsibility to direct these things, to take responsibility, to govern. There are lots of things that come out in international media about such "disarray," and the government uses the situation as an excuse to not fully take on the responsibility. Despite this situation, there is a president, a prime minister and ministers, and they are still getting their salaries. So they should do their jobs. If they can't do them, they should leave. What I'm most afraid of is that we may end up with a popular revolt. People can't sleep at night. There is nobody to accompany them. The risk is that we'll see people in the street to solve their problems.

CUPE: How are civil society groups, unions, and other community organizations working together? RAPHAEL: If there's something positive January 12 has brought to us, it's that - putting aside all the differences and divergences between civil society organizations that we've had before - we're sitting down together to try and find a way out of this situation. A number of the labor councils and the larger labor organizations (such as Public Services International and Education International) have sat down together. There were a number of commitments made for action. Among those was that we would try to work in unity as labor. The same thing is happening for agriculture workers groups, women's groups, youth groups, etc. What we're getting a glimpse of here is that if the government could work with civil society groups, we could get out of this situation.

The problem is that, even though civil society organizations are doing this work, the government just ignores it and doesn't do any work. For example, the Haitian government presented a plan for reconstruction in New York on March 31. But there was no debate beforehand - no input from civil society organizations. Instead, they're imposing a plan on us. Unfortunately, I can pretty much guarantee that it won't work.

CUPE: So, following this meeting of labor organizations, what message have you been trying to send to international organizations, in terms of how they can support the relief and reconstruction efforts? RAPHAEL: In terms of reconstruction, we state very clearly that the reconstruction effort must come first and foremost from Haitians. We need to decide what we need from you, then we will ask for help. We may need expertise, know-how, but we need to decide what that is first. It's not up to the Americans and the international community to decide what we need. I sit here with you, and yet I cannot tell you what's in the reconstruction plan. Somebody will say we got this plan from the Haitian government, but we don't even know what it is, and we're Haitian. Even Colin Powell, in a recent article, was willing to admit that many of Haiti's problems were caused by the Americans and the French.

I'll give you two examples. After Haiti's declaration of independence, the United States was opposed to Haiti's participation in the Congress of Nations. The U.S. didn't want to recognize Haiti as a nation. France, a colonizing country, made Haiti pay to be recognized: 150,000 pieces of gold, which is the equivalent of $20 billion today. But that's a whole other discussion. People say that Haiti is the poorest country. It's not. It is the most exploited. All our resources have been stolen. I like American and French people, but you need to recognize the historic wrongdoings that have been committed by the colonizing countries.

CUPE: And if they don't recognize this, then they won't recognize how they're repeating the same patterns now? RAPHAEL: Exactly. The last two coups d'etat - the 1991 coup that lasted three years, and Aristide came back in 1994, and the next one - demonstrate this. Aristide made a lot of mistakes, but that didn't justify taking out the president who was duly elected. And we don't want a coup d'etat now either. We're opposed to the policies of René Préval, but we want him to finish his mandate so that when he goes, the democratic process continues.

CUPE: Has there been any support from international labor organizations? RAPHAEL: I can only speak for my own organization. We've had a lot of moral support. Concrete support we've had very little.

CUPE: What can we do to help get that aid through, for shelter? RAPHAEL: Communication and support between unions, within the union movement, is fairly easy. Our union has defined a certain number of needs. You need to know also that within the union movement there's a bureaucracy that slows things down. The expressions of solidarity within the union movement have been very strong. We hope very soon that we will pass from expressions of moral solidarity to expressions of concrete solidarity.

So first of all, the question of shelter, and a lot of our unions have lost our offices, so we have to reconstruct a place to work. The third thing we have defined that we're looking for is support of the children of union members who were going to university who can no longer attend. We're looking for support so that they can continue their studies elsewhere. So far, the Brazilian government has provided 500 university scholarships, and the Dominican Republic has also offered various types of support to Haitians, including waiving the fees for a year, at the university. I would just ask that other governments and organizations that are able to follow those examples do so.

CUPE: What will you tell people in your speech (on April 24), and at the forum? RAPHAEL: I think it's important to thank the people who have made this visit possible. It's an opportunity for us to get our message out to people who might not have heard it otherwise. We're looking for solidarity; charity we're not interested in.

New Petition Demands Transparency and Improved Aid Distribution in Haiti

2010-05-06T17:34:00Z

By: Kim Ives - Haiti Liberte

The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) has initiated an online petition to demand that U.S., international and NGO officials provide more transparency and efficiency in the distribution of millions of dollars of international aid to Haiti. The petition is addressed to ten aid officials including UN Special Envoy to Haiti Bill Clinton, U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah, the Director General of the French Development Agency Jean-Michel Severino, and president of the International Committee of the Red Cross Jakob Kellenberger among others.

The petition is also sponsored by Partners in Health and the New Media Advocacy Project, which has produced two short videos (http://tinyurl.com/yfkxtbs) about the dramatic conditions facing the hundreds of thousands of Haitians who are still without waterproof shelter, eat once a day or less, and do not receive adequate medical care. This is ironic, the petition sponsors point out on the www.change.org website, because "the world responded generously to Haiti's earthquake, immediately donating over $2.5 billion, with another $1.2 billion pledged, even before the March 31 UN Donor's Conference. This works out to over $1,000 per earthquake victim."

The petition states in part that "although I appreciate the heroic efforts that many individuals and organizations have made to respond to the earthquake, it is simply unacceptable that over 330,000 - over a quarter of the displaced in Port-au-Prince - have not received shelter materials, and over half report not receiving food aid. Earthquake victims report that they are not consulted by relief agencies, or involved in the distribution of aid."

"As a donor and a taxpayer," the petition continues, "I am insisting that the governments and NGOs entrusted with the world's generosity respond more efficiently and effectively to Haiti's earthquake. This means: 1) better coordination among aid donors and providers; 2) allowing more participation of earthquake victims in the planning and implementation of earthquake response projects; and 3) more transparency about where and how Haiti earthquake funds are spent."

The petition and videos can be found at the URL: www.change.org/haitijustice/petitions/view/we_can_do_better_for_haiti_demand_transparency_and_improved_aid_distribution

Haitians Angry Over Aid Levels

2010-04-29T00:21:00Z

Al Jazeera

More than three months after the Haitian earthquake, the United Nations says it has now reached nearly all of the one-and-a-half million displaced people living in emergency shelters. But some say those figures are misleading and do not reflect the realities on the ground. Many Haitians remain angry over their squalid living conditions. Al Jazeera's Sebastian Walker has more from Port-au-Prince.