We walked past temporary toilets. A resident said they’d been “full” for several months. In fact, excrement had piled up high above the rim of the pits. As we moved between shelters, we found a woman squatting between two tents to relieve herself. We saw another woman who had an open wound the size of a baseball on her left foot; she was trying in vain to keep flies from landing on its crimson surface. Insects swarmed over the mix of gray water and raw sewage running through shallow ditches in the narrow passageways between tents.

The residents of this camp are not the only Haitians still suffering the effects of the earthquake. Throughout Port-au-Prince, chalky white chunks of concrete remain piled up where buildings once stood. Nearly every inch of available space in the city is covered with improvised havens of plastic tarp and scraps of wood, serving as uncertain shelter for more than half a million people whose homes were destroyed in the quake. In shelters built on rock and dirt hillsides, residents try to sleep standing up while rainwater and mud pour over the ground beneath them.

Even so, many of these people consider themselves lucky compared to the tens of thousands who were crushed under buildings that collapsed in the quake, including schools, hospitals, and government offices. At many sites throughout the city, it took weeks to finish pulling bodies out from under the tons of broken concrete. Once the bodies were retrieved, workers would pile them next to the street, douse them with gasoline, and set them on fire.

Mario Joseph, a Haitian human-rights lawyer and the director of Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), insists that the real tragedy in Haiti was not caused by an act of God: “We had an earthquake, yes, but far too many people died in this earthquake. And that is because we in Haiti have no respect for the rule of law.” Most of those who died in the quake were crushed to death by the collapse of poorly constructed houses perched on steep, over-crowded hillsides. Haitian building and zoning codes prohibited such houses, but the laws were never enforced. Now, rebuilding is stalled because investors are reluctant to finance construction in a country where it can be very difficult to prove legal title to land. Haiti’s constitution guarantees the right to decent housing, food, and health care, but these are promises the government has long been unable to keep. One predictable result of the government’s failure to restore basic social services has been the rapid spread of cholera, which has claimed seven thousand lives since an outbreak began in October 2010. The death toll would have been much lower if the government had been functioning properly but, as Joseph says, “we have this problem of impunity.”

Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier began his rule over Haiti in 1971, after the death of his father, François “Papa Doc” Duvalier. In 1986, Duvalier fled the country, bringing to an end a two-generation reign of repression and plunder. In January 2011, Jean-Claude Duvalier suddenly returned to Haiti, reportedly in an effort to access millions of dollars in a frozen Swiss bank account. He hoped for the backing of new president Michel Martelly, who has close ties to Duvalier supporters. So far, Duvalier’s calculations appear to be on the mark. A Haitian judge has ruled that Duvalier cannot be prosecuted for human-rights crimes. Although that decision is being appealed, the onetime “president for life” has remained free to move around Port-au-Prince, where he is often seen in high-end restaurants and nightclubs. Martelly has said he thinks Duvalier should be granted amnesty.

“Can you imagine any other country where a former dictator accused of political murders and leaving people to rot and die in prison is allowed to just walk back into his country and remain free?” asks Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch. “But I think people are just shrugging their shoulders, and saying, ‘Well, that is Haiti.’ In so many ways, Haiti is the floor, the bottom, of what we expect internationally, both economically and in the performance of its government and justice system.”

Haiti’s long history of dictatorships and, more recently, a series of coups d’etat have produced a revolving door of judges and prosecutors with reputations for corruption. A Creole proverb says,Konstitisyon se papye, bayonet se fe—“the constitution is paper, the bayonet is steel.”

Joseph and the BAI are filing civil suits on behalf of some of the victims of the Duvalier-era human-rights abuses, and they have compiled extensive evidence of the financial crimes committed by Duvalier, his family, and his aides. Joseph’s organization and its U.S.-based sister group, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), are leading the appeal of a decision blocking a Duvalier trial on charges of political violence, and they have helped persuade the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations to issue strong calls for a Duvalier prosecution. This is not the first time Joseph and his colleagues have helped prosecute political crimes in Haiti. They obtained convictions and multi-billion-dollar judgments against Haitian generals and paramilitary personnel after a 1994 massacre of civilians in the coastal community of Raboteau. That success is now cited as a template for bringing Duvalier to justice.

“A Duvalier process and trial would mean so much for Haiti,” says Joseph, who grew up in the extremely poor Artibonite Valley area of rural Haiti. “It will help people believe in the system of justice if they see a defendant held accountable who stole our country’s money and killed and imprisoned people. Not only will it let the people know we are a democracy that will seek justice. It will send a signal to current and future leaders that, if they commit crimes, they too will be prosecuted.”

The reconstruction efforts in Haiti are usually represented by images of engineers digging wells, construction workers building houses, and doctors treating the sick. But the physician most associated with relief efforts in Haiti, the Harvard Medical School professor Paul Farmer, places much of his hope for Haiti in the hands of lawyers. “The current justice system’s shortcomings—especially its unavailability to the poor—underlie almost all of Haiti’s problems, including political instability, poverty, violence and corruption,” says Farmer, who helped found IJDH and serves on its board of directors. “BAI and IJDH raise people’s expectations of their leaders and create a viable peaceful avenue for combating the great injustices in Haitian society.”

But Haiti is still a place where a lawyer cannot simply file a lawsuit and expect an impartial judge to rule promptly and dispassionately on the merits of the case. Even judges able to resist the temptation of bolstering their meager salaries through bribes are usually reluctant to rule against the powerful in a country with a long history of political violence.

So Joseph and his colleagues have turned to grassroots advocacy, helping organize demonstrations by the Raboteau victims, as well as a network of families of political prisoners who protested mass arrests after the 2004 coup d’etat. They now encourage and advise camp dwellers, grassroots women’s groups, and even a progressive newspaper, which is housed in BAI’s headquarters. BAI lawyers provide feedback when camp dwellers draft public statements. They also provide legal assistance when camp dwellers get in trouble with the authorities for conducting public demonstrations—such as a recent sit-in that stopped traffic in downtown Port-au-Prince. The lawyers confront judges and prosecutors only when they have community members at their side. “The poor too often have little or no education, so they have problems getting their voices heard,” Joseph says. “Our job is to help their message reach the ears of those who have wealth and power.”

That message must also resonate outside Haiti, given continued international involvement in Haiti’s economy and politics. That’s why attorney Brian Concannon, Joseph’s former colleague at BAI, helped found the Boston-based IJDH after he moved back to the United States in 2004. Together, the Haitian and U.S. attorneys have filed international reports and complaints on behalf of Haitian political prisoners, winning the only such case ever decided by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Concannon and IJDH help international journalists and lawmakers understand the election abuses that are a routine feature of Haitian politics. (Last year, Martelly won the presidency only after the majority party was barred from the elections.) And the Haitian-U.S. human-rights team has shown a willingness to take on the most powerful global players. In November, after several studies showed that the cholera outbreak was triggered by shoddy sanitation practices at a UN peacekeeper base, BAI and IJDH filed a multi-billion-dollar claim against the United Nations on behalf of five thousand Haitian cholera victims.

Later on the day of our visit to the Port-au-Prince camp, we returned to the BAI headquarters. It was growing dark under the unlit rear shelter where a press conference had been held earlier in the day. Now, volunteer law students sponsored by various human-rights organizations gathered in a circle of folding chairs along with Joseph, the U.S. visitors, and finissants—recent Haitian law-school graduates serving an apprenticeship at BAI.

Joseph invited the young Haitian lawyers to introduce themselves to the visitors. In soft-spoken Creole, they shared stories of personal struggle that mirrored the recent history of their country. A young man named Michel was illegally arrested and held in prison for nine days without charges. A woman named Natasha witnessed both her father and brother being shot in the aftermath of the 2004 coup. Her family could not find a lawyer to pursue justice against the killers. Now, Natasha lives in a displaced-persons camp, where she met a BAI attorney who helped her begin a career advocating for housing rights.

Joseph listens to the finissants’ stories, and reminds the group that these young Haitian lawyers represent more than his country’s reputation for poverty and lawlessness. They also represent the possibility that Haiti will finally reclaim its proud, two-hundred-year-old legacy of liberation. “Haiti is the mother of liberty,” Joseph says. “I hope we are now building a new generation of Haitians committed to human rights.” That commitment will obviously require political activism, but it will also require basic legal reforms. “Since the rule of law in Haiti has been almost nonexistent,” Joseph says, “you have to build it.”

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However, Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), said issues that caused more than 200,000 deaths in the earthquake plagued Haiti long before the disaster struck.

Poverty, poor building practices and ineffective building code enforcement in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince fueled the earthquake’s devastation, Concannon said during a Friday, March 3 lecture at the College at Brockport.

Concannon was in the area to receive the White Dove award from the Rochester Committee on Latin America (RCLA) for defending human rights in Haiti, associate history professor Anne MacPhersonsaid.

MacPherson said she thought Concannon was the perfect person to address issues facing Haiti, which have largely fell out of the public’s attention.

“He’s someone who’s worked in solidarity with the Haitian people for about 10 years,” MacPherson said.

Early in the lecture, Concannon noted that two people died in the structurally-secure National Palace, while slums in the hills around Port-au-Prince were largely wiped out.

“Anyone walking through those [slums] before the earthquake knew that they were death-traps,” Concannon said. “Everybody knew that (the slums had) very precarious housing, and why would people move their families into what they knew was precarious housing? Because they had no other choice.”

Haiti’s building code was good enough to point out homes shouldn’t be built on these hills, but the government wasn’t effective enough to enforce the code, Concannon said.

“It’s very important to always keep in mind that Haiti’s earthquake was to some extent a natural disaster, but the fact that 200,000 or more died was really an economic disaster,” Concannon said.

The aftermath of the earthquake still plagues many Haitians.

According to a January 2012 report by Oxfam, an international confederation of non-profit organizations, more than 500,000 Haitians are still homeless, living in tents or under tarpaulins.

Haiti has received much international aid, but Concannon said that in some instances this aid is actually hurting the recovery.

For example, America sent Haiti a lot of food aid, but this actually increased hunger because it put many poor Haitian farmers out of business. Concannon said reports show a direct correlation between food aid and hunger in Haiti.

Furthermore, UN aid workers stationed in Haiti caused an outbreak of cholera in October 2010, which has killed tens of thousands of Haitians, Concannon said.

“The UN’s liability is absolutely clear — it’s clear that they introduced the cholera (and) it’s clear that this was an extremely negligent action,” Concannon said.

The UN has an agreement with the Haitian government that protects the organization from lawsuits. However,Concannon said it’s also the UN’s responsibility to provide an “alternative mechanism” for compensation, which he said it has not done.

“The UN has not done so — they have refused to address any of the problems they caused,” Concannon said. “They’ve set up some things, but it’s nothing comprehensive. (There is) no compensation for the people who lost the only wage-earner in their family or lost everything they have.”

Therefore, Concannon said he helped file an $800 million to $1 billion lawsuit against the UN on behalf of 5,000 victims of the cholera outbreak. If properly allocated, this money could save some 10,000 lives, Concannon said.

In order to be effective, Concannon said the recovery effort must go beyond the immediate problems of hunger, disease and homelessness caused by the earthquake.

“It’s a situation where you have a lot of deep-lying problems and then it was given a stress that, because of those fundamental problems, caused a lot of acute problems,” Concannon said. “Just getting rid of the acute problems is not going to make Haiti stable. You have to address some of the longer-term problems.”

Therefore, IDJH has been working to empower poor and neglected Haitians.

After the earthquake, IDJH noticed a surge in rape and violence against women, which it addressed by distributing whistles and teaching women how to fend off potential rapists, Concannon said.

The group also organized night patrols, which eliminated all reported rape cases at one camp, Concannon said.

IDJH has also been working to fight the poverty and inequality which allowed for the creation of the hillside slums that collapsed during the earthquake.

“By establishing the rule of law, [we are trying to] level the playing field so that poor people are able to enforce their basic human rights,” Concannon said.

Concannon also urged the dozens of Brockport students in attendance to help support the reconstruction of Haiti. He said there are three things Americans can do:

One, people can stay informed, while also being weary of what they read about or hear from the mainstream media. Concannon said there are reliable sources of information on the Internet.

Two, people can “stay engaged as a citizen and as a consumer of media,” Concannon said.

Three, one can volunteer and/or donate to the recovery effort.

“There are a lot of local organizing in Rochester that you can do to try to [promote] justice in Haiti,” Concannon said.

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U.N. peacekeepers patrol as Haitians search through the rubble after a fire swept through a tent city in Port-au-Prince, killing at least three people. Thony Belizaire /

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — International aid worker Emmett Fitz­gerald has to get 20,000 very poor people squatting in front of the National Palace to pack up their tarps and tin, their plastic buckets and soiled mats — to empty the most notorious camp in Haiti and go home.

The hard part: What home?

There is not enough money, there is not enough time to build the cities of tomorrow in Haiti today. So the 4,641 families that have been living for the past two years in the Champ de Mars park in downtown Port-au-Prince will be given $500 to return to the kind of desperate housing they lived in before the earthquake.

In Haiti, that is considered good news.

“We’re not talking about a house. We’re talking about renting a room, space on the floor, with a roof, access to water, a communal kitchen, maybe a toilet,” Fitzgerald said. As program coordinator for the International Organization for Migration, he is working alongside the Haitian government to clear the Champ de Mars camp, with a $20 million grant from the Canadian government.

If that sounds grim, the residents of Champ de Mars are the lucky ones. Given the magnitude of the housing crisis, combined with donor fatigue and lack of investment, the promise of constructing new public housing to absorb the homeless in Haiti has collided with reality. Most of the approximately 135,000 families still in camps will not be offered a shelter arrangement. Some camps will become “formalized” as permanent slums.

The displaced will mostly have to fend for themselves.

Why not allow the residents to remain in Champ de Mars? Because the tarp shanties are overcrowded fire hazards that will blow down in the first hurricane, the Haitian government says. There is no running water or electricity. There is another reason, too: The Champ de Mars camp is an embarrassment.

Two years after the world’s worst urban disaster in a generation, about 515,000 Haitians linger in 707 camps scattered across the capital. Although it is not unusual for refugees fleeing conflict to be stuck in camps for years, as Somali refugees in Kenya or Palestinians in Lebanon have been, rarely are people displaced by natural disasters for so long, and almost never in a camp in the central plaza of a capital city.

‘There is not a word for it’

Since the population in the earthquake camps in Haiti peaked at 1.5 million in July 2010, more than a million displaced persons have abandoned the tent cities. The vast majority left on their own, with little or no help. Some were shoved.

A report by Nicole Phillips of the University of San Francisco School of Law found it likely that many of the displaced persons who had left tent cities are now living in conditions worse than those found in the camps.

The International Organization for Migration counts 63,109 individuals forcibly evicted from 134 camps in the past two years and says 100,000 others are vulnerable to the same fate.

But where to go?

In Port-au-Prince, 84,866 buildings have been marked with red paint, indicating they should be demolished. Nonetheless, more than half of the red-marked houses are inhabited, with little or no repair, as people desperate for shelter live in the ruins.

Inspectors with the Ministry of Public Works have also tagged 120,000 homes with yellow paint, meaning the structures are damaged but repairable. International donors, including the U.S. government, have helped renovate just 6,000 homes in two years.

At the current pace, it will take another decade to bring the yellow houses up to minimal safety codes.

“I cannot believe that we have lived here on the ground for two years,” said Williamson Aristide, who once worked at the airport handling cargo freight but has not had a real job since the earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010.

Asked about the prospects of finding a place to live, Aristide said: “There is not a word for it. It is very, very, very hard. There is nothing to rent.”

The ambitious plans of last year — with seaside promenades built of earthquake rubble and boulevards lined with three-story mixed-use commercial and residential developments — gather dust on government shelves, relics of a more naive era.

The “exemplar communities” of foam homes, geodesic domes and innovative Caribbean-style cabanas designed by world-class architects, promoted by the “Build Back Better” mantra of former president Bill Clinton and his Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, are on hold.

All the while, the camps are quickly deteriorating.

As of last month, there was no committed funding for emptying camp latrines, a risky gambit in a country facing a cholera epidemic. Almost all health services have been removed. U.N. peacekeepers are pulling back. The plastic tarps given to residents two years ago have a recommended life span of six months, and the temporary cities are in tatters.

“This is a dangerous place for a woman,” said Jasmine Charles, with a toddler on her hip. A man standing nearby said that the perimeter of the camp was relatively safe. “But go in deep? They will cut you and rob you, brother.”

More Keynes than Kumbaya

All camps in Haiti are heartbreaking, but the Champ de Mars is the most visible, a monument to endurance and despair, in a public space as prominent in Port-au-Prince as the Mall in Washington.

In the predawn hours of Dec. 6, hundreds of aid workers stole into the sprawling camp and dashed from shanty to shack, waking those inside and asking for the head of the household, to award them a plastic ID bracelet.

Aid officials knew from experience that the population of the camp would double overnight if word got out that the international community was coming bearing gifts.

Now the 5,000 households must decide what they will do. There are three options. The vast majority — probably 90 percent of the camp — are renters. They can accept a $500 rental subsidy and find a place to live. Based on surveys of local real estate, that is enough money to rent a small space for a year.

If the family can get a better deal than $500, they keep the change. The international aid workers do not want to involve themselves as real estate brokers, as that would only send rents spiraling upward.

The families will also get $25 to move their household goods, and they will receive an additional $125 if they remain for two months in the space they rent.

The new model for emptying a camp is more carrot, less stick, but more Keynes than Kumbaya.

The most vulnerable 10 percent — single mothers, the elderly and infirm, those suffering psychological trauma — will get additional services.

To the few families in Champ de Mars who own their homes, the program will give $1,500 to repair a yellow house and $3,500 to demolish a red one and erect a “T-shelter,” of tarp and plywood, a kind of shack 2.0.

For Champ de Mars, something is better than nothing, but expectations are high.

“The $500 is not enough,” said Jose Wildrick, a two-year resident of Champ de Mars. “It is not a good deal.”

Wildrick heard rumors that someone will build cement-block houses for the poor out in the dry cactus wastelands north of the capital. “We want one of those,” he said.

A darker reality

The second component is to revitalize the neighborhoods the camp residents might return to. The Canadian government is paying to reestablish 500 ­informal camp businesses, train 50 entrepreneurs, create 2,000 construction jobs for debris removal, and rebuild and repair damaged houses.

“If all we do is clear the Champ de Mars, we will have failed,” said Beverley J. Oda, minister of international cooperation for the government of Canada.

The successful emptying of Champ de Mars over the coming months would be a milestone for post-quake Haiti, a part of the promise that “Haiti is open for business,” and that the international community and nongovernmental organizations have not failed.

But the darker reality is this: The Haitian government is spending $30 million to empty six camps. There are 701 more. The Champ de Mars project will cost $20 million for 20,000 people. There would still be close to half a million displaced persons in camps. No country, no group of donor nations, no NGO is considering donating $500 million to Haiti to empty the camps.

The math does not work.

See The Original Post :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/clearing-earthquake–camps-in-haiti-is-not-pretty/2012/01/27/gIQAnxzNOR_story.html
To see more about IJDH’s Housing Rights Advocacy Project:  http://ijdh.org/projects/housing

US taxpayers are underwriting sweatshop expansion in Haiti. Here, textile workers protest for better rights and working conditions. Photo: Ansel Herz.

As Americans were gearing up for last week’s Super Bowl championship, Haiti’s president Michel Martelly was on a plane to the World Economic Forum to recruit players interested in what one businessman dubbed “the Super Bowl of Disasters” – Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake.[1] The Irish-owned cell phone company Digicel footed his trip there, and hosted a regional business tour complete with a gala ball before his return to a country still reeling from crisis conditions in housing, jobs, and basic rights.[2]

Haiti’s status as prime-time jostling space for prospective investors is not new. Many a corporation, lobbyist, and consultant has seen Haiti’s losses as their gain, leveraging humanitarianism for profit. Plenty of the $1.1 billion in disaster aid has gone not to desperate Haitians but to inside-the-Beltway contractors. Often the very same corporations havewrested financial and political gain from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the countries hit by the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans after the ensuing flood of 2005, and lots of other places. The same deals have been cut over Haiti in the past, too, particularly during periods of political instability.

The earthquake has provided a fresh wave of opportunity. In the first year after the earthquake, the US government awarded more than 1,500 contracts worth $267 million. All went to US firms except 20, worth $4.3 million, which went to Haitian businesses.[3] Among the American corporations that received contracts, we’ve seen everything: many millions going to companies that had had previous contracts cancelled for bad practices, that had paid out as much as eight-figure settlements for violence happening under their watch, that had been investigated by Congress for gaming the system, or that had been the subject of federal reports accusing wastage of funds.[4] We’ve seen corporate executives and members of Congress going through a revolving door and leveraging both sides for contracts. We’ve seen public funds given without any competition or transparency, quite a few to friends of the Clintons and other well-placed insiders.

Local labor and production, which are critical elements in economic recovery, have been trumped for American business profits. According to federal procurement data, among contracts which provide products (as opposed to services), 77% were for products manufactured in the US. They don’t list which, if any, of the remaining 23% involve any Haitian materials or labor.[5]

Two months after the earthquake, companies gathered in a luxury hotel in Miami for a “Haiti Summit” to discuss post-earthquake contracting possibilities. The meeting was sponsored by the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), but these were no peaceniks. Their members are predominantly private mercenary companies that enforce ‘security’ in war and disaster zones for the US government because, unlike elected entities, they can completely avoid public scrutiny and accountability. They included such companies as Triple Canopy, which took over Blackwater’s contract in Iraq.[6] One of the corporate representatives at the Summit described the outlook: “Their infrastructure is pretty much destroyed, communications are destroyed, there’s a lot of opportunities there for companies, particularly US countries [sic] because of the close proximity.”[7] The Summit was apparently worthwhile, as US government paid out more than $10 million to the industry for “guard services,” and almost $20,000 for riot shields and suits.[8]

Below are a few examples of post-earthquake contracts and grants, selected to show just some of the problems at play. They offer a small glimpse into a much larger, secretive world of disaster deals. We’re grateful to our investigative journalist colleagues who,

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“American corporations and their stakeholders must understand how helping Haiti over the long term also helps them,” said the non-profit CHF International in its March 2010 board report. “By contributing to Haiti’s reconstruction in a lasting, meaningful way, companies will be helping to build a new, more vibrant Caribbean market for their own goods and services.”[9]

CHF’s involvement demonstrates how even non-profits can drive development that props up American business interests on the backs of poor Haitians. What CHF refers to as “helping Haiti” has meant using US tax dollars to underwrite textile sweatshops, making it easier and more profitable to score the cheapest source of labor in the hemisphere. In 2006, USAID gave CHF a $104 million, 4-year contract to help “existing industries to increase their capacity, efficiency and reach new markets,” primarily through the export textile industry. The money subsidized CHF’s creation of infrastructure such as roads around industrial areas and training of factory workers on skills such as “how to work in a formal work environment.”[10] Bolstered by additional USAID funding, this project continued after the earthquake.

CHF’s post-earthquake USAID contract, for $20.9 million, went to clean-up projects, including cash-for-work.[11] Cash-for-work meant camp residents engaging in hired-hand projects such as digging drainage ditches and clearing debris, for a period of a few weeks. The scheme has come under fire by camp residents and human rights groups, with even a USAID evaluation raising some serious critiques.[12] The jobs are unpredictable, workers have said, and while the short duration can palliate personal crisis for the moment, the program quickly returns the worker’s family to its desperate state. Those hired are paid officially at the unlivable minimum daily wage of 200 gourdes, or US$5, though unofficially they often earn less. A Haiti Grassroots Watch exposé found, furthermore, that cash-for-work hiring is often based on corruption, with many workers having to pay a ‘kickback,’ negotiate sex (in the case of women) for a job, or affiliate with political parties or candidates.[13] USAID also noted that cash-for-work programs it funded increased risks of “serious and avoidable” accidents on the job “by failing to develop and enforce consistent workplace safety rules and accident procedures.”[14]

CHF’s projects, based on factory jobs and cash-for-work, have given neither livable incomes to employees nor offered development opportunities to the nation. Meanwhile, CHF has gained humanitarian clout and an influx of funding, and its garment industry partners sit happily with the perks.

Using tried-and-true strategies of political manipulation, some corporations have been able to edge their way into post-earthquake contracts despite histories of fraud and corruption.

                                                                                    ^^^^^^^
AshBritt Environmental, for instance, has a record of disaster response elsewhere that spells trouble for Haiti. The company had received $900 million in contracts for Hurricane Katrina clean-up, after hiring lobbyists formerly involved in state government.[15] An MSNBC investigation later brought to light complaints by local contractors, a mayor, and local legislators that the company’s work was too slow, that it overcharged, and that it was not hiring local contractors.[16] The extent of “layer cake” contracting was so extreme that in one case, AshBritt was paid $23 per cubic yard of debris removed but subcontracted through three middleman companies so that the company that actually removed the rubble received $3 per cubic yard.[17]) Even a 2006 federal report accused the company of wasting money in this subcontractor layering after Katrina.[18]

Given its experience, AshBritt wasted no time unleashing its skills in lobbying and political pressure to get in on the Haiti game. Early in 2010, the company paid $90,000 to a lobbying firm to pressure the government for Haiti contracts, according to disclosure records described in the press.[19] In a prime instance of revolving door between public and private sectors, one of the lobbyists working on the case was the former chief of staff for Senator John Kerry.[20] Kerry, in turn, was the senator who co-sponsored the legislation for Haiti relief funding.

With influential people circulating between the givers and receivers of funds, AshBritt was confident enough about future contracts that it spent an initial $25 million setting up for anticipated operations in Haiti with a soccer field-sized base camp and services to house future project managers.[21] In July 2010, AshBritt won a $500,000 US government contract for debris removal, the first of what the company anticipated would be many contracts to come their way.[22] Continuing the revolving door trend, another lobbyist for the firm was the former USAID Mission Director in Iraq, Lewis Lucke, who was paid $30,000 per month to help win contracts via a partnership venture AshBritt set up.[23] Lucke claimed he “played an integral role” in obtaining three contracts for the company, including $10 million from the World Bank and about $10 million more from the Haitian government (one of the first major government contracts for debris removal).[24] As of this writing, not even the company’s website contains an update on what work it has or has not completed in Haiti.

                                                                                       ^^^^^^^
Like AshBritt, CH2M Hill, a large engineering and construction firm, should have raised warning signals as a company to be hired on the taxpayer dollar. A government database that monitors federal contracts reveals a track record of corruption, listing nine instances of misconduct for the company since 1995.[25] In one case, the company was paid $4.1 million for a contract in Iraq though no work was actually completed. [26] On the Gulf Coast, a US government investigation of $45 million paid to CH2M and the three other companies in no-bid contracts for Katrina response was declared wasteful spending. [27] CH2M was also accused in a congressional investigation in 1992 of misusing money during its cleanup of toxic waste sites in the U.S. More than two million dollars of this contract were allegedly used for “unallowable and questionable costs,” such as $11,379 for a Christmas party and $2750 for specialty chocolates.[28] The company is listed in the top 50 of U.S.-based contractors and has been a major player in wartime contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.[29]

The track record was nothing that some strategic lobbying efforts couldn’t mitigate, however. The lobbyist who headed up CH2M Hill’s efforts to win contracts in Haiti was Larry LaRocco, a former congressman from Idaho who now runs his own lobbying firm.[30] And unsurprisingly, the company spent half a million dollars in political contributions in 2010. [31] Thus equipped with politicians in its pocket, CH2M was well-positioned to compete in the latest contract game. It received its first post-earthquake contract just days after the disaster, and was given a joint contract with KBR Global Service (itself notorious due to its Iraq and Afghanistan activities) for facilities operations support at the end of 2010.[32]

                                                                                        ^^^^^^^
In the case of a few other contracts that we know to be operating in Haiti, we’ve spent hour after hour on the scent. We’ve scoured internet resources, news articles, and company websites to track companies we know received post-earthquake contracts in Haiti. Nothing. Not even a mention, sometimes, in the 100-plus-page 2010 annual reports.

What we have been unable to uncover is at least as alarming as what we have learned about some of the firms receiving millions from the US government, and what they have done with those millions. We wonder whether the US government has had any more knowledge or oversight of the corporate actions than have the corporation’s investors. As for the American people, they have no way to know how their money has been spent or what has been done in their names. The lack of transparency has also given a green light to profiteers to neglect standards, quality, and honesty.

There is one group for whom the secrecy, foul play, taking of power that should never be taken, giving away of what should never be given away, matters most of all: Haitians, the ones whose country is being treated like a Monopoly game. They alone will have to live with the long-term outcome of what foreign companies build, demolish, restructure, or steal in their country.

 Copyleft Other Worlds. You may reprint this article in whole or in part.  Please credit any text or original research you use to Deepa Panchang, Beverly Bell, and Tory Field, Other Worlds.

[1] Mike Clary, “Broward Rivals Battle for Work in Post-Quake Haiti,” Sun-Sentinel.com, July 14, 2010.
[2] Paul Cullen, “Attracting trade now focus for Haiti’s president,” The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/0130/1224310943929.html
[3] Alex Dupuy, “One Year after the Earthquake, Foreign Help is Actually Hurting Haiti,” Washington Post, January 7, 2011.
[4] Emma Perez-Trevino, “Beating Death Lawsuit Ends in Settlement,” The Brownsville Herald online, January 7, 2010, http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/rosa-107144-settlement-beating…. Martha Brannigan and Jacqueline Charles, “U.S. Firms Want Part in Haiti Cleanup,” Miami Herald, February 9, 2010.
[5] “Haiti Earthquake Report,” Federal Procurement Data System, data updated as of 9/15/2011,https://www.fpds.gov/downloads/top_requests/Haiti_Earthquake_Report.xls.
[6] See, for example, Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (New York: Nation Books, 2007); Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Picador, 2007); Jeremy Scahill, “US Mercenaries Set Sights on Haiti,”TheNation.com, February 1, 2010; and Anthony Fenton, “Private Contractors ‘Like Vultures Coming to Grab the Loot,” IPSNews.net, February 19, 2010.
[7] “Al Jazeera Reports on the Haiti ‘Summit’ for Private Contractors,” YouTube video, 3:32, Al Jazeerareporting, posted by “WebofDem,” May 6, 2010, http://youtu.be/kkNCdy0GXyc.
[8] “Haiti Earthquake Report,” Federal Procurement Data System, data updated as of 9/15/2011,https://www.fpds.gov/downloads/top_requests/Haiti_Earthquake_Report.xls.
[9] Jane Madden, “Corporations Must Consider Haiti’s Long Term Needs,” Philanthropy News Digestonline, March 10, 2010, http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/commentary/co_item.jhtml?id=287300002.
[10] “New USAID-Funded Haiti Apparel Center to Provide Training to Thousands of Haitians in the Garment Industry,” press release by USAID, August 11, 2010, http://www.usaid.gov/press/releases/2010/pr100811_1.html.
[11] USAID, Haiti Earthquake: Fact Sheet #48, April 2, 2010,
http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/humanitarian_assistance/disaster_assistance/countries/haiti/template/fs_sr/fy2010/haiti_eq_fs48_04-02–2010.pdf.
[12]Center for Economic and Policy Research, “USAID/OTI’s Politicized, Problematic, Cash-for-Work Programs,” December 21, 2010, http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/usaidotis-politicized-problematic-cash-for-work-programs; Antèn Ouvriye, Submission to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review: Labor Rights (Transnational Legal Clinic, University of Pennsylvania Law School, 2011), http://ijdh.org/archives/17948; and Office of Inspector General, Audit of USAID’s Cash-for-Work Activities in Haiti (San Salvador: September 24, 2010), www.usaid.gov/oig/public/fy10rpts/1–521-10–009-p.pdf.
[13] Haiti Grassroots Watch, “Is Cash-for-work Working?”, http://www.ayitikaleje.org/Dossier2Story2. Haiti Grassroots Watch, “Cash for Work – At What Cost,” http://www.ayitikaleje.org/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2011/7/18/cash-for-work-at-what-cost.html.
[14] Office of Inspector General, Audit of USAID’s Cash-for-Work Activities in Haiti, September 24, 2010, www.usaid.gov/oig/public/fy10rpts/1–521-10–009-p.pdf.
[15] Jordon Flaherty, “One year after Haiti earthquake, corporations profit while people suffer,” Monthly Review Magazine, January 12, 2010. “It’s who you know,” CorpWatch, August 16th, 2006, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14008
[16] Mike Brunker, “Dust flies over Katrina’s debris,” MSNBC, January 29, 20006, http://risingfromruin.msnbc.com/2006/01/fighting_over_t.html
[17] Rita King, “Layers and Layers,” CorpWatch, August 16, 2006,http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14011.
[18] Martha Brannigan and Jacqueline Charles, “U.S. Firms Want Part in Haiti Cleanup,” Miami Herald, February 9, 2010.
[19] Kevin Bogardus, “Haiti’s recovery aided by U.S. lobbyists,” The Hill, October 11, 2010.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ben Fox, “Masters of disaster: Foreign firms set up shop in Haiti and wait for construction boom,”Associated Press, June 7, 2010.
[22] Mike Clary, “Broward rivals battle for work in post-quake Haiti,” Sun Sentinel, July 14, 2010, http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2010–07-14/news/fl-haiti-recovery-rivals-20100714_1_ashbritt-post-earthquake-haiti-debris.
[23] Ben Fox, “Ex-US official sues contractor in Haiti for fees,” Associated Press, December 31, 2010.
[24] Mark Weisbrot, “Haiti and the international aid scam,” The Guardian, April 22, 2011,http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/22/haiti-aid.
[25] Project on Government Oversight, http://www.contractormisconduct.org/
[26] Matt Kelley, “Canceled Iraq contracts cost U.S. $600 million,” USA Today, November, 17, 2008.
[27] Center for Economic and Policy Research, “Impatient to Profit from Disaster,” October 14, 2010, http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/impatient-to-profit-from-disaster
[28] Keith Schneider, “Company Accused of Bilking U.S. on Waste Sites,” New York Times, March 20,1992.
[29] Top 400 Contractors Sourcebook cited on http://newsroom.ch2mhill.com/pr/ch2m/industry-rankings.aspx. Statement of Mr. Fred M. Brune, President, Government Facilities and Infrastructure Business Group, CH2M Hill Constructors, Inc. before the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, July 26, 2010, www.wartimecontracting.gov/…/hearing2010-07-26_testimony_Brune_(CH2M%20Hill).pdf.
[30] Kevin Bogardus, “Haiti’s recovery aided by U.S. lobbyists,” The Hill, October 11, 2010. http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/123565-haitis-recovery-aided-by-lobbyists
[31] CH2M Hill Expenditures, Center for Responsive Politics, http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/expenditures.php?cycle=2010&cmte=C00143305
[32] “Haiti Earthquake Report,” Federal Procurement Data System, data updated as of 9/15/2011,https://www.fpds.gov/downloads/top_requests/Haiti_Earthquake_Report.xls.

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