Overview

Dear Col­leagues,

A coali­tion of Haiti– and U.S.-based orga­ni­za­tions — Bureau des Avo­cats Inter­na­tionaux, Cen­ter for Human Rights and Global Jus­tice, Insti­tute for Jus­tice & Democ­racy in Haiti, Part­ners In Health, Robert F. Kennedy Cen­ter for Jus­tice & Human Rights, and Zanmi Las­ante — are ask­ing orga­ni­za­tions to join us in call­ing on coun­tries at the Donors’ Con­fer­ence on Haiti to make human rights the guid­ing prin­ci­ple of inter­na­tional assis­tance to Haiti.

Prior to the earth­quake, inter­na­tional assis­tance typ­i­cally did not address the con­stant human rights vio­la­tions expe­ri­enced by the vast major­ity of Haitians. Too often, recip­i­ents of assis­tance were treated as vic­tims deserv­ing of char­ity, rather than indi­vid­u­als enti­tled to human rights.  They were excluded from deci­sions affect­ing their basic rights to food, med­ical assis­tance, water, and housing.

The attached joint let­ter calls on gov­ern­ments to adopt a human rights-based approach—which requires empow­er­ing the Hait­ian peo­ple, strength­en­ing the capac­ity of the gov­ern­ment to guar­an­tee human rights, and mak­ing assis­tance account­able and trans­par­ent to the Hait­ian people—for all assis­tance to Haiti.

We hope that you will join us in this call so that we can show donor gov­ern­ments that global civil soci­ety is united in sol­i­dar­ity with the Hait­ian peo­ple. Your sup­port is cru­cial to ensure donor gov­ern­ments respect the human rights of all Haitians and do not repeat the mis­takes of the past.

We will deliver this mes­sage to donor states, inter­na­tional finan­cial insti­tu­tions, and the Office of the UN Spe­cial Envoy to Haiti on March 17th, two weeks before the Donors’ Con­fer­ence at the UN.  If your orga­ni­za­tion would like to sign this let­ter, please reply to sepper@exchange.law.nyu.edu by March 17, 2010 with the name of the orga­ni­za­tion and the coun­try where it is located. Please note we can only take orga­ni­za­tional sig­na­tures and can­not take any edits.

Thanks, Brian

Eng­lish Version

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Kreyol Ver­sion of Letter

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