By Bev­erly Bell, Huff­in­g­ton Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beverly-bell/post-disaster-reconstruct_b_499110.html

Hait­ian civil soci­ety has been com­pletely bypassed in decision-making regard­ing the post-earthquake recon­struc­tion process. They have thus cre­ated their own process.

The Haiti government’s Post-Disaster Needs Assess­ment, launched Feb­ru­ary 18, granted one week, March 14–20, for “con­sul­ta­tion with civil soci­ety and the pri­vate sec­tor,” accord­ing to the terms of ref­er­ence. How­ever, the gov­ern­ment is to approve the draft plan on March 15. Fur­ther­more, the gov­ern­ment has failed to invoke even the token dis­cus­sions, not con­sult­ing civil soci­ety in any way except infor­mally with some busi­ness­peo­ple and sev­eral non-governmental orga­ni­za­tions who do not speak for citizens.

The Hait­ian busi­ness sec­tor has pub­lished its own “Strate­gic Plan for National Sal­va­tion.” The edi­to­r­ial com­mit­tee for the 173-page doc­u­ment was led by Rudolph Bou­los, a mem­ber of one of Haiti’s wealth­i­est fam­i­lies who was ejected from the Hait­ian Sen­ate two years ago after he was revealed to be a U.S. citizen.

Member-based, rep­re­sen­ta­tive Hait­ian orga­ni­za­tions have taken it upon them­selves to develop their own process for shap­ing an alter­na­tive plan for the country’s future. On March 13 in Port-au-Prince, a diverse group­ing of non-governmental and grass­roots Hait­ian orga­ni­za­tions — rep­re­sent­ing peas­ants, women, work­ers, youth, com­mu­nity media, and the alter­na­tive devel­op­ment and pro­gres­sive human rights sec­tors — met to present and debate their pri­or­i­ties in the rebuild­ing process. That evening and again on March 14, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the five largest grass­roots net­works in the Domini­can Repub­lic met with their Hait­ian coun­ter­parts to develop joint plans for advanc­ing the alter­na­tive agenda.

Because of cit­i­zens’ exclu­sion from deci­sions regard­ing their future, the non-governmental Hait­ian coali­tion, together with their Domini­can allies, will protest the inter­na­tional donors’ meet­ings in Santo Domingo on March 17 and in New York on March 30. The Haitian-Dominican net­work will hold a press con­fer­ence in both Port-au-Prince and Santo Domingo on March 17 to coin­cide with the first con­fer­ence, where up to two dozen donor coun­tries and mul­ti­lat­eral agen­cies will meet. They will also orga­nize sit-ins in Port-au-Prince and New York dur­ing the March 30 U.N.-hosted donors’ meet­ing. In the interim, they intend to hold local actions and do radio spots through­out Haiti.

One of the groups at the fore­front of the grass­roots process is the Plat­form to Advo­cate Alter­na­tive Devel­op­ment in Haiti (PAPDA). Ricot Jean-Pierre is direc­tor of PAPDA’s pro­gram on alter­na­tive eco­nomic inte­gra­tion. In the yard where PAPDA and sev­eral other non-profit orga­ni­za­tions whose offices were destroyed in the earth­quake now share space, Jean-Pierre shared these thoughts on what a just and par­tic­i­pa­tory recon­struc­tion should look like.

“We have another vision of a devel­op­ment model that mir­rors our soci­ety. We want to build a model of coop­er­a­tion between and among peo­ples and countries.

“Today we have mil­i­ta­riza­tion under the cover of human­i­tar­ian aid. In 1915, the U.S. came to occupy Haiti [for twenty years] and cre­ate one form of a state. Is what is hap­pen­ing now what hap­pened in 1915? It’s crit­i­cal to refuse the U.S.‘s model of global man­age­ment and global economy.

“We have to fight for a model of state that is closer to the peo­ple, instead of one that has bet­ter rela­tion­ships with the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity than the Hait­ian peo­ple. When the peo­ple take to the streets to say that they are hun­gry, for instance, the state is deaf. When the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity speaks, the state lis­tens. The inter­na­tional com­mu­nity is giv­ing orders. The peo­ple need to get the atten­tion of the state, which must respond to their demands and needs.

“The inter­na­tional com­mu­nity inte­grates South­ern coun­tries into the global econ­omy on the basis of the mar­ket, of trade lib­er­al­iza­tion. We think it’s impor­tant to adopt another model of inte­gra­tion which respects the sov­er­eignty and the will of the peo­ple for another type of devel­op­ment based on their cul­ture, his­tory, and fun­da­men­tal needs.

“The inter­na­tional finan­cial insti­tu­tions are struc­tured to con­trol and polar­ize. They have noth­ing to do with the will of coun­tries, espe­cially in the South. They impov­er­ish the poor coun­tries and pre­vent us from being able to develop, espe­cially via the mech­a­nism of debt. Debt pay­ment is a tool they use to keep poor coun­tries in slav­ery. For Haiti to use 22% of its national bud­get to pay back the debt… that’s unimaginable.

“The [inter­na­tional finan­cial] insti­tu­tions are sup­posed to serve coun­tries, not the other way around. There must be coop­er­a­tive man­age­ment of the World Bank, IMF, and other insti­tu­tions instead of the cur­rent sys­tem of just switch­ing man­age­ment back and forth between Euro­pean coun­tries and the U.S. There must be trans­par­ent man­age­ment which allows par­tic­i­pa­tion for all the coun­tries who are in them, so that everyone’s voice is heard and all deci­sions are made with everyone’s input.

“The peo­ple need to form another vision of devel­op­ment, bilat­eral and mul­ti­lat­eral forms of coop­er­a­tion — what they look like and how sol­i­dar­ity could be inte­grated into them. We need a type of inte­gra­tion that doesn’t depend on how much voice and money you have, but that takes into account each coun­try and its real­ity, which respect the sov­er­eignty of the country.

“How can we as peo­ples develop ways to sup­port each other when we have com­mon prob­lems, such as the poli­cies of the Inter­Amer­i­can Devel­op­ment Bank, the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund, and the World Bank? How can we get together to show that the bat­tle is against a com­mon enemy, which it the source of poverty and marginalization?

“We want to cre­ate another world which is based on sol­i­dar­ity and equal­ity between women and men, rich and poor, North and South — not just one above and another below being exploited. We need to learn how we each can com­ple­ment and learn from the other.

“We need a state that ensures that every Hait­ian has equal access to social ser­vices. Every­one has to have access to health, food, edu­ca­tion, and hous­ing. We need the Hait­ian state to bring peo­ple ser­vices where they are, instead of their hav­ing to leave their homes to go [to Port-au-Prince to] get ser­vices. But for that, the state must be decentralized.

“We have to rein­force the capac­ity of grass­roots orga­ni­za­tions so they can do advo­cacy. The peo­ple need to par­tic­i­pate in defin­ing what we want.”

Bev­erly Bell has worked with Hait­ian social move­ments for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walk­ing on Fire: Hait­ian Women’s Sto­ries of Sur­vival and Resis­tance. She coor­di­nates Other Worlds, www.otherworldsarepossible.org, which pro­motes social and eco­nomic alter­na­tives. She is also asso­ciate fel­low of the Insti­tute for Pol­icy Studies.