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At the request of the Platform to Advocate Alternative Development in Haiti (PAPDA), Other Worlds has produced a new report, “From Disaster Aid to Solidarity: Best Practices in Meeting the Needs of Haiti’s Earthquake Survivors.” Written by Other Worlds Coordinator Beverly Bell, “From Disaster Aid to Solidarity” documents the problems with the international aid and reconstruction efforts in Haiti, and presents innovative alternative models of humanitarian relief.

From the executive summary:

The international response to Haiti’s earthquake, involving billions of dollars and led by the U.S. and U.N., comes with many problems. Notable ones are control of aid dollars, imposition of economic reconstruction plans, and militarism. Moreover, the Haitian state and grassroots have largely been denied formal opportunities to shape, or even engage in, the process. Nevertheless, ordinary Haitian citizens are engaged in their own humanitarian aid. With no more than their own hands, their slim resources, and their commitment to community, citizens have comprised the bulk of search-and-rescue teams, first responders, and ongoing aid providers. Behind the gestures are philosophies of solidarity, mutual aid, collective resilience, and resourcefulness.

Some grassroots groups have taken the same impulses and turned them into organized programs. They are offering shelter, medical care, community mental health care, food, water, children’s activities, leisure activities, and security. Some of the programs also offer education and a supportive social structure, while others provide a launching pad for community organizing to shape their country’s future. This report explores ten of these aid and support initiatives, which are only a small subset of those now underway throughout Haiti. Together, the efforts offer a different vision and practice of what ‘humanitarian’ means. And they serve as a guide to what a society which privileges mutual aid over profit, and democratic participation over domination, could look like.

http://www.otherworldsarepossible.org/another-haiti-possible/disaster-aid-report

It was fitting that the Mar. 31 “International Donors Conference Towards a New Future for Haiti” was held in the Trusteeship Council at the United Nations headquarters in New York. At the event, Haitian President René Préval in effect turned over the keys to Haiti to a consortium of foreign banks and governments, which will decide how (to use the conference’s principal slogan) to “build back better” the country devastated by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

This “better” Haiti envisions some 25,000 farmers providing Coca-Cola with mangos for a new Odwalla brand drink, 100,000 workers assembling clothing and electronics for the U.S. market in sweatshops under HOPE II legislation, and thousands more finding jobs as guides, waiters, cleaners and drivers when Haiti becomes a new tourist destination.

“Haiti could be the first all-wireless nation in the Caribbean,” gushed UN Special Envoy to Haiti Bill Clinton, who along with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, led the day-long meeting of over 150 nations and international institutions. Clinton got the idea for a “wireless nation,” not surprisingly, from Brad Horwitz, the CEO of Trilogy, the parent company of Voilà, Haiti’s second largest cell-phone network.

Although a U.S. businessman, Horwitz was, fittingly, one of the two representatives who spoke for Haiti’s private sector at the Donors Conference. “Urgent measures to rebuild Haiti are only sustainable if they become the foundation for an expanded and vibrant private sector,” Horwitz told the conference.“We need you to view the private sector as your partner.to understand how public funds can be leveraged by private dollars.”

“Of course, what’s good for business is good for the country,” quipped one journalist listening to the speech.

The other private sector spokesman was Reginald Boulos, the president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Haiti (CHIC), who fiercely opposed last year’s union and student-led campaign to raise Haiti’s minimum wage to $5 a day, convincing Préval to keep it at $3 a day. He also was a key supporter of both the 1991 and 2004 coups d’état against former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, now exiled in South Africa.

In counterpoint, the only voice Aristide’s popular base had at the conference was in the street outside the UN, where about 50 Haitians picketed from noon to 6 p.m. in Ralph Bunche park to call for an end to the UN and US military occupation of Haiti, now over six years old, and to protest the Haitian people’s exclusion from reconstruction deliberations. (New York’s December 12th Movement also had a picket at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on 47th Street).

“No to neocolonialism,” read a sign held up by Jocelyn Gay, a member of the Committee to Support the Haitian People’s Struggle (KAKOLA), which organized the picket with the Lavalas Family’s New York Chapter and the International Support Haiti Network(ISHN). “No to Economic Exploitation Disguised as Reform. MINUSTAH [UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti], Out of Haiti! ”

The exclusion of Haiti’s popular sector was masked by the inclusion of other “sectors” in the Donors Conference, although their presentations were purely for show, with no bearing on the plans which had already been drawn up. Joseph Baptiste, chairman and founder of the National Organization for the Advancement of Haitians (NOAH), and Marie Fleur, a Massachusetts state representative, spoke on behalf of the “Haitian Diaspora Forum.” Moise Charles Pierre, Chairman of the Haitian National Federation of Mayors and Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay spoke on behalf of the “Local Government Conference.” Non-governmental organizations had three spokespeople: Sam Worthington for the North American ones, Benedict Hermelin for the European ones, and Colette Lespinasse of GARR, for the Haitian ones. Even the “MINUSTAH Conference” had two speakers.

Michele Montas, the widow of slain radio journalist Jean Dominique and former spokeswoman for Ban Ki-Moon, spoke in English and French on behalf of the “Voices of the Voiceless Forum” which held focus group discussions with peasants, workers and small merchants in Haiti during March. “A clear majority of focus group participants,” she said, “from both rural and urban areas, strongly believe that there is a critical need to invest in people. Focus groups highlighted five key immediate priorities: housing, new earthquake resistant shelters for displaced people; education, in all of the school systems throughout the country; health, the building of primary healthcare facilities and hospitals; local public services, potable water, sanitation, electricity; communications infrastructure, primarily roads to allow food production to reach the cities… There seemed to be unanimity on the need to invest in human capital through education, including higher education.”

“Support for agricultural production,” Montas continued, “was stressed as a top priority… Agriculture, perhaps more than other sectors, is seen as essential to the country’s health, and the prevailing sentiment is that the peasantry has been neglected.”

Even Préval has recognized this neglect, but he got in trouble last month when he called on Washington to “stop sending food aid” because of its deleterious effects on the Haitian peasant economy (see Haïti Liberté, Vol. 3, No. 36, 3/24/2010). The U.S. responded that there was “severe corruption” in his government.

Préval fell back into line. His government prepared a Post-Disaster Needs Assessment report (PDNA), the conference’s reference document, with “members of the International Community.” Of the $12.2 billion total it requested for the next three years, only $41 million, or 0.3 percent, would be earmarked for “Agriculture and fishing.”

The centerpieces of the Clinton plan are assembly factories and tourism (see Haïti Liberté, Vol. 3, No. 36, 3/24/2010). But the former president still pays lip-service to agriculture.

In the hallway outside the Trusteeship Council, Haïti Liberté asked Bill Clinton what had led him last month before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to renounce his policies as US president of dumping cheap rice on Haiti.

“Oh, I just think that, you know, there’s a movement all around the world now,” Clinton responded. “I first saw Bob Zoellick, the head of the World Bank, say the same thing, where he said…, starting in 1981, the wealthy agricultural producing countries genuinely believed that they and the emerging agricultural powers in Brazil and Argentina… that they really believed for twenty years that if you moved agricultural production there and then facilitated its introduction into poorer places, you would free those places to get aid to skip agricultural development and go straight into an industrial era. And it’s failed everywhere it’s been tried. And you just can’t take the food chain out of production. And it also undermines a lot of the culture, the fabric of life, the sense of self-determination… And we made this devil’s bargain on rice. And it wasn’t the right thing to do. We should have continued to work to help them be self-sufficient in agriculture. And that’s a lot of what we’re doing now. We’re thinking about how can we get the coffee production up, how can we get … the mango production up, … the avocados, and lots of other things.”

In other words, the U.S. and other “agricultural powers” would provide Haiti food, “freeing up“Haitian farmers to go work in U.S.-owned sweatshops, thereby ushering in “an industrial era,” as if the cinder-block shells of assembly plants represent organic industrialization.

Now Clinton, sensitive to the demands of Montas’s “focus groups,” promotes agriculture, but as a way to integrate Haiti into the global capitalist economy. Many peasant and anti-neoliberal groups see agricultural self-sufficiency as a way to disconnect and insulate Haiti from predatory capitalist powers.

At a 5:30 p.m. closing press conference, Ban Ki-moon announced pledges of $5.3 billion in reconstruction aid for the next 18 months, exceeding the Haitian government’s request of $3.9 billion. The total pledges amount to $9.9 billion for the next 3 years “plus” — a significant detail given how notoriously neglected UN aid promises are. Bill Clinton announced that only 30% of his previous fund-raising pledge drive for Haiti had been honored.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive and President Préval played only supporting roles at the Conference, requesting support at the start and thanking nations at the end.

The essence of this conference was summed up by Hillary Clinton. “The leaders of Haiti must take responsibility for their country’s reconstruction,” she said as Washington pledged $1.15 billion for Haiti’s long-term reconstruction. “And we in the global community must also do things differently. It will be tempting to fall back on old habits — to work around the government rather than to work with them as partners, or to fund a scattered array of well-meaning projects rather than making the deeper, long-term investments that Haiti needs now.”

So now, supposedly, NGOs will take a back seat to the Haitian government, but a Haitian government which is working with the NGOs and under the complete supervision of foreign “donors.” Under the Plan, the World Bank distributes the reconstruction funds to projects it deems worthy. An Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti, composed of 13 foreigners and 7 Haitians, approves the disbursements. Then another group of foreigners supervises the Haitian government’s implementation of the project.

The only direct support the Haitian government got at the Donors Conference was $350 million to pay state salaries, only 6.6% of the initial $5.3 billion pledged. This came after the International Monetary Fund warned that the budgetary support was necessary to keep the Haitian government from printing money, thereby risking inflation.

“We trust that the numerous promises heard will be converted into action, that Haiti’s independence and sovereignty will be respected and ennobled, that the government of President René Préval and Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive will be facilitated to exercise all its faculties, and that it will be able to benefit, not the white and foreign companies, but the Haitian people, especially the poorest,” said Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parilla at the conference. “Generosity and political will is needed. Also needed is the unity of that country instead of its division into market shares and dubious charitable projects.”

Indeed, there are some interesting ideas in the Haitian government’s Action Plan, also presented at the conference. It calls for 400,000 people to be employed, half by the government and half by “international and national stakeholders,” to restore irrigation systems and farm tracks, to develop watersheds (reforestation, setting up pastureland, correcting ravines in peri-urban areas, fruit trees), to maintain roads, and to work on “minor community-based infrastructure (tracks, paths, footbridges, shops and community centers, small reservoirs and feed pipes, etc.) and urban infrastructure (roadway paving, squares, drainage network cleaning) … and do projects related to the cleaning and recycling of materials created by the collapse of buildings in the areas most affected by the earth-quake.”

All that sounds nice, but unfortunately, now the decision is up to the strategists at the World Bank.

http://haitianalysis.com/2010/4/20/international-donors-conference-at-the-un-for-10-billion-of-promises-haiti-surrenders-its-sovereignty

Dear Congressional leaders:

As you consider the FY 2010 Haiti Supplemental for the Department of State and USAID, we urge you to allow for greater flexibility in how we deliver food aid, by permitting local or regional purchase of emergency food aid for Haiti, and the use of emergency non-food assistance, including vouchers, cash transfers, or safety-net programs.

The primary purpose of US food assistance to Haiti should be to address Haiti’s shocking nutrition and food security problems.  Nearly half the population is undernourished.  One-third of newborn babies are born underweight.  The World Food Program estimates that 2.4 million Haitians are food insecure.

Although Haiti has large urban areas, Haiti is predominately a rural and agricultural society.  More than two-thirds of Haitians rely on agriculture for their livelihood.  In past years, Haitian farmers produced most of the country’s food, and consumers ate a wider variety of staples and starches.  In the last 20 years, cheaply imported rice has overtaken other starches and cereals and undermined Haitian farmers.

There’s no reason that Haitian farmers shouldn’t feed Haiti again in the future.  And US food assistance can play a positive role, rather than contributing to the growing import dependence and declining rural sector.  But to play a more constructive role, US food assistance must be flexible.

The earthquake could exacerbate Haiti’s dependence on U.S. imports and foreign aid.  Or the assistance and reconstruction can assist with rural development, building a stronger agriculture sector and reducing food insecurity.  Imported rice from the United States has been a key part of the humanitarian aid response so far, and this food aid has been urgently needed in the short term to avert hunger.  But as Haiti rebuilds, Haitian farmers in the countryside could be the ones feeding the people in Port-au-Prince.  But they’re hampered by the absence of credit, antiquated tools, damaged irrigation systems, prohibitively high fertilizer prices, subsidized rice, and food aid that undercuts their sales.

Haitian President Rene Preval recently urged President Obama and other donors to stop providing food aid by the end of March in order to make room for purchase from national producers and help to let the Haitian people help themselves in the long-term.

As the world’s biggest food aid donor, our nation plays a vital role in responding to emergency food needs in Haiti and around the world. Developing a  more flexible approach to food aid for Haiti, including local and regional procurement of food, could help make our foreign assistance efforts even  more effective, more accountable, more efficient, and more likely to ensure that people who need assistance get it quickly, all while supporting Haitian farmers and citizens.

Signed,

ActionAid USA
American Jewish World Service
Bread for the World
CARE
Center for Economic and Policy Research
Church World Service
Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach
Conference of Major Superiors of Men
Environmental Justice Initiative for Haiti
Food and Water Watch
Foreign Policy In Focus

Gender Action

Global Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ.
Groundswell International

Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti
Jesuit Refugee Service/USA
Lambi Fund of Haiti

Lutheran World Relief
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
Mennonite Central Committee US Washington Office
Mercy Corps
Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Justice Peace/Integrity of Creation Office
ONE

Outreach International
Oxfam America
Partners in Health
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Washington Office
Quixote Center/Haiti Reborn
Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights
TransAfrica Forum

United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries
United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society
Washington Office on Latin America

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Summary

• Haiti’s January 12 earthquake left up to 300,000 people dead, an equal number injured, and more than a million displaced; overall damage and loss are valued at $7.9 billion, or about 120 percent of Haiti’s 2009 gross domestic product.
• The immediate international response focused on rescue, the provision of humanitarian relief and security, and cleanup.
• The March 31 Donors’ Conference in New York yielded both a Haitian-led recovery and br development plan supported by international donors and a mechanism for coordinating donor allocated resources.
• Donors pledged more than $5 billion over the next 18 months.
• Activities initiated over the next 18 months must support longer-term strategies to revitalize all of Haiti, including long neglected rural areas.
• Haiti’s decentralized recovery and development must address its debilitating inequality and poverty while strengthening the capacity of the government.

About This Brief

This report is based on a February 25 panel presentation sponsored by USIP’s Haiti Working Group to discuss “Haiti: Six Weeks Later.” The panel consisted of Reverend Tom Streit, director of the Haiti Program and research assistant professor of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame; Mary Beth Sheridan, diplomatic correspondent, The Washington Post; Tim Sullivan, manager of the Center for Defense Studies, American Enterprise Institute; and Dr. Robert Maguire, chairman of USIP’s Haiti Working Group and former Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow and associate professor, Trinity Washington University. Robert Perito, director of USIP’s Haiti Program, served as moderator.

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http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/141602.pdf

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MEDIA ADVISORY

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Joint Report Issued on Conditions in Haiti’s Displaced Persons Camps

Authors Describe Urgency of Unmet Needs, Press for Better Aid Distribution

(Washington DC, March 30, 2010)–A coalition of lawyers, researchers, and statisticians has issued a joint report detailing the dire living conditions in six internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in and around Port-au-Prince. Representatives from prominent organizations committed to a rights-based approach to earthquake recovery in Haiti–the LAMP for Haiti Foundation (LAMP), the Haiti Justice Project at the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University (EMSoL), the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), and the Lawyers’ Earthquake Response Network (LERN)–conducted two different surveys to assess relief efforts from the perspective of survivors. More than 4,600 displaced persons were interviewed to determine whether their basic needs were being met two months after the earthquake. Both surveys found an enormous disconnect between the aid promised and the aid received. The results are summarized in the joint report, “Neglect in the Encampments: Haiti’s Second-Wave Humanitarian Disaster”.

Despite the massive international mobilization of aid, an alarming number of Haitians continue to lack shelter, water, food, and medical care. At least one in 10 families surveyed have no tents or tarps; at the Bouzi camp in Croix-des-Bouquets, nearly half of all families live fully exposed to the elements. When a resident of the Acra camp in Delmas was asked what she would do when it rained, she stated that she would “stand up all night.” Access to clean water remains a critical issue. Nearly four in 10 families purchase drinking water because the water provided by relief agencies is unfit for consumption. Similarly, while latrines are available in some camps, they are frequently so dirty that many prefer to relieve themselves in the street. For example, at Place St. Pierre in Pétionville, seventy percent of those surveyed report no access to sanitary facilities. Additionally, half of all families have never received any food aid and a third have access to medical care. In sum, the overwhelming majority of the respondents have not received the basic support necessary to sustain human life and dignity in the camps.

The joint report–presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in a hearing on economic and social rights post-earthquake on March 23^rd–precedes the much-anticipated March 31^st Donors’ Conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York, where decisions about future aid to Haiti will be made. The report indicates that unless aid is distributed more rationally, there will be a second humanitarian crisis as the impending rainy season combines with poor sanitation, overcrowding and disease to further devastate displaced Haitians. The authors therefore urge governments, donors, and international organizations to adopt a rights-based approach to earthquake recovery and to promote Haitian participation in aid distribution. The report is the first step in a longitudinal study which will continue to follow affected families and to issue recommendations based on in living conditions and aid provision in the camps.

To contact authors of the joint report, please see the information listed here:

Tom Griffin, LAMP for Haiti

267–925-4435

Mario Joseph, BAI

786–972-2089

Brian Concannon, IJDH

541–263-0029

Sarah Mi Ra Dougherty, IJDH

617–640-5997

For more information about these organizations, please visit their websites: www.lampforhaiti.org and http://ijdh.org.

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The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street
Washington, D.C. 20520

VIA FACSIMILE

cc: His Excellency Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s Ambassador to the United States
U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs William J. Burns
U.S. Assistant Secretary Arturo Valenzuela
USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah
USAID Haiti Task Team Coordinator Paul Weisenfeld

Dear Secretary Clinton:

We write you in advance of the March 31^st United Nations donors conference for Haiti to urge that funds pledged by the United States and other members of the international community, be directed towards rebuilding Haiti, not to international private security contractors.  We believe you were right to support a ban on private security contractors as a member of the U.S. Senate in 2008, stating in a speech at George Washington University, “Their behavior and lack of supervision and accountability have often eroded our credibility.” The same concerns apply in the Haitian context.

We were therefore alarmed by the conference regarding Haiti on March 9–10, 2010 that was organized by the trade association representing many private security companies, the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA).[1] A number of IPOA member companies have troubling track records. Some examples:

• In July 2006, two former employees of Triple Canopy filed a lawsuit for their wrongful termination after blowing the whistle against a shift leader, alleging that he deliberately fired at unarmed civilians after stating that it was his last day in Iraq and he was “going to kill someone today.”[2]

• In 2007, the Department of State’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs reported that most of $1.2 billion the US government paid to DynCorp to train Iraqi police was unaccounted for and that the lack of contract oversight had “created an environment vulnerable to waste and fraud.”[3]

• Whistleblower Ben Johnston testified that DynCorp personnel participated in the trafficking of child sex slaves and human trafficking in forced prostitution and labor.[4]

• In September 2009, the Project on Government Oversight sent a letter of complaint to your office regarding ArmorGroup that alleged misconduct, engagement in deviant hazing rituals and other kinds of “humiliation.”[5]

• Personnel from Unity Resources Group killed two unarmed women in a vehicle in Iraq.[6]

Contractors’ arguments that they should be granted immunity or that lawsuits brought against them are somehow improper have thwarted various efforts to hold contractors accountable. IPOA often points to its “code of conduct” to diminish serious concerns over contractor oversight and accountability.  However, in all of its years and despite the track record of the companies mentioned above, no company has ever been forced out of the IPOA for human rights abuse or fraud. In fact, all member companies receive an IPOA “seal of approval.”[7]

IPOA members have routinely been implicated in accusations of financial mismanagement. The problem of poor oversight has directly led to what Congress’s own Commission on Wartime Contracting has called “fiscal hemorrhaging”

Haiti does not need this poorly-regulated system of security contracting.   Over-militarization of aid has already traumatized an already suffering people and prevented life saving aid from reaching earthquake victims in time.

We respectfully request that you continue to support “smart” aid that creates jobs for Haitians, provides direct investment in the public sector, builds local infrastructure and ensures that reconstruction efforts operate with transparency and follow a rights-based approach. We urge that U.S. or international community funds pledged at the UN donor conference be directed at rebuilding Haiti, not private security contractors.  Finally, we request that you reiterate your support for the Stop Outsourcing Security Act that was reintroduced in February 2010 by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL) in the House and Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT) in the Senate.  The U.S. has only begun to rebuild its image in the world; we should not turn our backs on this progress now.

Sincerely,

American Jewish World Service

American Friends Service Committee

Bagay Dwol Haiti Relief Fund

Beyond Borders

Center for Constitutional Rights

Environmental Justice Initiative for Haiti

Foreign Policy In Focus

Gender Action

GlobalHood

Grassroots International

Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti

Lambi Fund

Nouvelle Vie Haiti

Other Worlds

Quixote Center

TransAfrica Forum

Bill Fletcher, Black Commentator

Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research

[2] C.J. Chievers, Contractor’s Boss in Iraq Shot at Civilians, Workers’ Suit Say, NYTimes, Nov. 16, 2006, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/17/world/middleeast/17contractors.html?_r=3.

[3] See Report: Most of $1.2 billion to train Iraqi police unaccounted for, CNN, October 23, 2007, available at http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/22/dyncorp.spending/index.html

[4] See US-Iraqi contract ‘in disarray’, BBC News, Oct. 23, 2007, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7057629.stm; by Kelly Patricia O’Meara, Insight Magazine, US DynCorp Disgrace, Insight Magazine, Jan. 14, 2002, available at http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11119.

[5] Letter available at http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/letters/contract-oversight/co-gp-20090901.html.

[6] Andrew E. Kramer, 2 Killed in Shooting Mourned Far Beyond Iraq, NYTime, Oct. 10, 2007, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin.

[7] IPOA Member Companies, http://www.ipoaworld.org/eng/ipoamembers.html.

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