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Africa: Solidarity with Haiti
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Feb 2, 2010 (100202)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
"Despite $402 million pledged to support the Haitian government's
Economic Recovery Program [in April 2009] ... as of yesterday we
estimate that 85% of the pledges made last year remain undisbursed.
... [we don't need more pledges] We need a reconstruction fund
that is large, managed transparently, creates jobs for Haitians,
and grows the Haitian economy. We need a reconstruction plan that
uses a pro-poor, rights-based approach far different from the
charity and failed development approaches that have marred
interactions between Haiti and much of the rest of the world for
the better part of two centuries." - Dr. Paul Farmer, U.N. Deputy
Special Envoy for Haiti January 27, 2010
As international attention to Haiti begins to fade (see
http://www.google.com/trends?q=haiti&date=2010-1), relief efforts
continue, but reconstruction has hardly begun. Both African
governments and African non-governmental leaders have launched
fund-raising efforts for these long-term needs. But, as veteran
Partners in Health physician and other commentators note, the
danger is that past dysfunctional patterns of international
intervention will be repeated.
As Yash Tandon and other analysts warned in last week's issue of
Pambazuka News (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/467), what has
happened and may happen in Haiti is "a microcosm of the crisis of
development." It will be a test of capacity to respond not just to
natural disaster, but to the man-made disasters that set the
context and the capacity to respond to natural disasters.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains an appeal from the new "Africa
for Haiti" coalition, excerpts from Dr. Farmer's testimony to the
U.S. Senate, and a commentary by Monika Kalra Varma and Kerry
Kennedy, of the RFK Center for Human Rights.
Another AfricaFocus Bulletin sent out today focuses on the urgent
need to cancel Haiti's debt, as well as the role that debt has
played in keeping Haiti in poverty for over two centuries.
Among other commentaries and background on Haitian reconstruction:
Amy Wilentz, "The Haiti Haters"
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100208/wilentz
Letter to PJ Patterson, Caricom's representative to the Montreal
Conference on Haiti, by Norman Girvan
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/Girvan-jan-26_7355109
Note by Jocelyn McCalla, Senior Advisor, Bureau of Haiti's Special
Envoy to the UN, former Executive Director, National Coalition for
Haitian Rights
http://jmcstrategies.com / direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/ya9dgo8
Official Website of Montreal Ministerial Conference on Haiti,
January 25, 2010
http://www.international.gc.ca /
direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/ycxwkgw
Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti
http://www.ijdh.org
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++
Pan-African solidarity with Haiti
Press Release, 22nd January 2010
Africa for Haiti
http://www.africaforhaiti.com
[For more information contact:
Buhle Mpofu-Makamanzi, African Monitor tel: +27 21 713 2801,
mobile: +27 82 898 848, buhle@africanmonitor.org,
http://www.africanmonitor.org
Bhekinkosi Moyo, TrustAfrica, tel: +221 33 869 4693, mobile: +27 78
111 2091, moyo@trustafrica.org, http://www.trustafrica.org]
The earthquake that recently struck Haiti has caused unprecedented
devastation and suffering to the country and its people.
Wednesday's aftershock aggravated an already grave humanitarian
crisis.
Across Africa, government, church, business and civil society
leaders are mobilizing support for the people of Haiti. In South
Africa, CIVICUS and its partners - African Monitor, TrustAfrica,
the Southern Africa Trust, CAF Southern Africa, the South African
Red Cross Society, the National Welfare Forum, and Ivan May through
1485 Radio Today on 1484 AM in Jozi and through SADC (also DStv
169), the Synergos Institute, the NEPAD Business Foundation and the
African Women's Foresight Network* - have agreed to join what is
known as the "Africa for Haiti Campaign" and to help in
co-ordinating efforts.
[* The Members of the African Women's Foresight Network are: Bisi
Adeleye Fayemi, Bineta Diop, Aleya Hammad, Gra‡a Machel, Gertrude
Mongella, Gisele Yitamben, Mamphela Ramphele, Mary Wandia.]
The campaign has the support of church, business and civil society
leaders including Mrs Gra‡a Machel, Archbishops Desmond Tutu,
Njongonkulu Ndungane, Malusi Mpumlwana, Thabo Makgoba, and
businessmen Trevor Ncube and Reuel Khoza.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation hosted a press conference at its
offices in Houghton on 22 January where more details were provided
about the "Africa for Haiti" Campaign.
The "Africa for Haiti" campaign will identify, in partnership with
Haitian civil society organizations, initiatives in which it can
assist. It also hopes to provide Africans from all walks of life an
opportunity to demonstrate their collective solidarity and support
for the people of Haiti thereby uniting Africans in compassion and
giving.
Addressing the press conference Mrs Machel suggested that the
"Africa for Haiti" campaign focuses its efforts on reconstruction
in Haiti. The objective of this campaign is not to provide
immediate relief but rather to contribute toward the medium to
long-term reconstruction of communities in Haiti. As a result, it
is estimated that fundraising for this campaign may continue for
six months.
The campaign also aims to unite individuals, NGOs and corporates
across Africa behind this cause by disseminating information and
enlisting support from their extensive networks.
Testimony of Dr. Paul Farmer to the US Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations
27 January 2010
[Excerpts: full testimony, including footnotes, available on
http://standwithhaiti.org / direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/yenzhhn]
Thank you for inviting me to testify today before the Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations. I speak as the U.N. Deputy Special
Envoy for Haiti - President Clinton, as you know, is the Special
Envoy - and also as a physician and teacher from Harvard who has
worked for over twenty-five years in rural Haiti. Today, my hope is
to do justice to Haiti not by chronicling the events of the past
two weeks, which are well known to you, but by attesting to the
possibility of hope for the country, and of the importance of
meaningful investment and sustainable development in Haiti.
That said, I will not pretend that hope is not at times difficult
to muster.
As I was flying from Port-au-Prince to Montreal on Monday, headed
to a conference on coordinating responses to the massive
earthquake, I did the painful math in my head and counted close to
fifty colleagues, friends, and family members who had lost their
lives in the space of a minute.
The afternoon of the earthquake, several of my colleagues from
Partners In Health and the UN, were, ironically, in Port-au-Prince
for a meeting about disaster risk reduction. Partners In Health,
through its Haitian sister organization, provides health care to
the rural poor. By focusing on training and employing local talent,
we have grown a great deal over the years. We are currently serving
a population of well over 1.2 million and count about five thousand
employees, most of them community health workers.
Of course, not all our colleagues survived. But the vast majority
of them did survive, and they have spent the last two weeks working
day and night to relieve the staggering suffering of the wounded
and displaced. President Clinton, our colleagues, and I have been
in the cities of Port-au-Prince, Jacmel, and L‚ogƒne, as well as
the less-affected Central Plateau and Artibonite Valley. Everywhere
we have seen acts of great bravery and solidarity.
In addition to the heroism of friends and colleagues, I would like
to note for the record the dignity and patience of the
long-suffering Haitian people. ... A few nights ago, we sat in
empty wards: hearing of impending aftershocks, the patients bolted
outside with their IVs dangling from their arms. They refused, as
have so many, to sleep inside the building - any building - but
instead found tarpaulins and sheets, and lay down in the open
courtyard.
This scene has repeated itself throughout the country and is a
reminder of the logistics challenges facing all those who would be
involved in the provision of shelter, clean water, and healthcare.
The relief efforts, focused now on addressing the initial wave of
devastation from the earthquake, will soon turn to a new set of
concerns. Hastily cobbled together camps are at risk of outbreaks
of cholera and other waterborne disease. The Haitian government has
wisely proposed avoiding huge camps, which will be difficult to
manage, but we must hasten our efforts to get tents, tarpaulins,
and latrines or composting toilets to Haiti. It is humbling to see
the relief efforts be so slow - in large part because delivery of
services was so weak before the quake. Now we must do more to get
food and water to people every day for some time to come. Creating
safe schools and safe hospitals, even makeshift ones, is a known
need in rebuilding a society, and storm resistant housing must also
be a carefully considered priority since there is little time
before the rainy season. Students need to be back in school; the
planting season cannot be missed and requires fertilizer, seeds,
and tools.
How will we fund such settlements, ongoing relief, the sowing of
seeds, and the reconstruction that must follow? Major pledges have
been made by the U.S., Canada, Japan, Spain, Brazil, the European
Union, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, and
others. Indeed, most countries have responded. Even in far away and
once-afflicted Rwanda, a group of community health workers making
less than $200/month have been able to pull together $7000 in
donations for their colleagues in Haiti. This is but a small
portion of the billions needed, but hard to surpass as an eloquent
testimony of human solidarity.
Even if adequate resources are available, the task before us will
be extremely difficult. Medical jargon, though at times arcane, can
be helpful here. Today, Haiti is facing what we would term "acute
on chronic" problems. Before January 12, the country was already
facing huge long-term challenges in public health and education,
the unemployment rate over 70%, and a majority of its population
was living on less than two dollars a day. Food and water
insecurity were already huge problems. Does this catastrophe create
a chance for all of us to have a sounder, more solidarity-based
relationship with Haiti? Or is it to be yet another chapter in a
jeremiad of suffering and abuse of power? In my last testimony
here, in 2003, I expressed concern that the latter possibility was
likely given our policies at that time. Today I will spend my time
focusing on the potential for an entirely reconsidered relationship
between the two oldest independent countries in the Americas: Haiti
and my own.
Let me offer, as one example of the difficult relations between
Haiti and the international community (and an echo of the
nineteenth-century machinations I discussed in my last testimony
before this committee), the donor conference I attended here in
Washington last April. It was one of only two donor conferences I
have ever attended, the second being in Montreal earlier this week.
The results of the first are noteworthy and worrisome: despite $402
million pledged to support the Haitian government's Economic
Recovery Program, when the country was trying to recover from a
series of natural disasters resulting in a 15% reduction of GDP, it
is estimated that a mere $61 million have been disbursed. In the
Office of the Special Envoy, we have been tracking the disbursement
of pledges, and as of yesterday we estimate that 85% of the pledges
made last year remain undisbursed.
Many of us worry that, if what's past is prologue, Haitians
themselves will be blamed for this torpor. But as we have argued
before, there are serious problems in the aid machinery, and these
have contributed to the "delivery challenges" on the ground. The
aid machinery currently at work in Haiti keeps too much overhead
for its operations and still relies overmuch on NGOs or contractors
who do not observe the ground rules we would need to follow to
build Haiti back better. The fact that there are more NGOs per
capita in Haiti than in any other country in the hemisphere is in
part a reflection of need, but also in part a reflection of
overreliance on NGOs divorced from the public health and education
sectors.
Haiti will continue to need the contractors, and the NGOs and
mission groups, but more importantly we will need to create new
ground rules - including a focus on creating local jobs for
Haitians, and on building the infrastructure that is crucial to
creating sustainable economic growth and ultimately reducing
Haiti's dependence on aid.
In other words, what we need is a way of "building back better"
that strengthens governance but also strengthens the Haitian
economy to provide for the needs of its people, especially the vast
majority of Haitians who are desperately poor. There is an
opportunity not only to build Haiti back better, but to build a
more functional and beneficial aid structure. Over the past two
decades, US aid policies have seesawed between embargoes and
efforts to bypass governments, including elected ones not to
Washington's taste. Neither the international community nor the
United States provided credible, long-term, financial investment in
Haiti. Restructuring foreign aid and forgiving Haiti's crippling
debts are essential to helping the country recover. US laws,
including the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and its later
revisions, prevent direct investment in the public sector; we will
need to revisit these policies. Debt forgiveness is also needed to
ease the financial drain that would otherwise hinder economic
recovery and growth.
In building back Haiti, a credible body that has been working in
Haiti could help to house a recovery fund. We need to commit funds
and also to disburse them. To quote Jeff Sachs, "Haiti does not
need a pledging session; it needs a bank account to fund its
survival and reconstruction." Such an account should be managed in
collaboration with partners, the UN, and, of course, Haitian
leadership, which would work directly and openly with partners to
design and implement recovery plans coordinated at central and
local levels. The effort must include a comprehensive post-disaster
needs assessment, which should be supported by the US and other
partners.
...
I joined President Clinton six months ago as his deputy in the UN
role he originated. As Special Envoy for Haiti, President Clinton
has focused his attention not only on holding donors to the
financial pledges they made, but also on reducing the risk of
disasters and on job creation through the massive public works that
are necessary to reforest Haiti, protect watersheds, and improve
agricultural yield the backbone of the Haitian economy. ...
This has been our mission: to build back better from the 2008
storms. We believe that these efforts were beginning to bear fruit.
We had scheduled a meeting last week in the Hotel Montana to bring
in another round of investors and also to discuss job creation. As
many of you know, this hotel is no longer standing, and most inside
it perished on January 12. But the need for such investments, and
the need for public works that would create hundreds of thousands
of jobs, remains.
If there is any silver lining to this cloud, it is that we can push
job creation. It is a strange irony that supporters of economic
assistance to Haiti are now obliged to shill for "cash for work"
programs - for the quaint notion that people should be paid for
their labor. Let us at least be honest: it is absurd to argue that
volunteerism and food-for-work programs will create sustainable
jobs. But if we set the ground rules on reconstruction correctly,
we will be able to create sustainable jobs.
In other words, if we focus the reconstruction efforts
appropriately, we can achieve long-term benefits for Haiti. The
UNDP is helping to organize programs of this kind, which should be
supported and extended around the country. Putting Haitians back to
work and offering them the dignity that comes with having a job and
its basic protections is exactly what brought our country out of
the Great Depression.
This was always the right thing to do, and aid programs
persistently fail to get it right. So here is our chance: if even
half of the pledges made in Montreal or other such meetings are
linked tightly to local job creation, it is possible to imagine a
Haiti building back better with fewer of the social tensions that
inevitably arise as half a million homeless people are integrated
into new communities.
Haiti needs and deserves a Marshall Plan - not the "containment"
aspects of that policy, unless we are explicit about containing the
ill effects of poverty, but the social-justice elements. But we
need to be honest about the differences between post-war Europe and
Haiti in 2010. Part of the problem, I've argued, is the way in
which aid is delivered now as compared to in 1946 - well before the
term "beltway bandits" was coined. We need a reconstruction fund
that is large, managed transparently, creates jobs for Haitians,
and grows the Haitian economy. We need a reconstruction plan that
uses a pro-poor, rights-based approach far different from the
charity and failed development approaches that have marred
interactions between Haiti and much of the rest of the world for
the better part of two centuries.
Our country can be a big part of this effort. Debt relief is
important, but only the beginning. Any group looking to do this
work must share the goals of the Haitian people: social and
economic rights, reflected, for example, in job creation, local
business development, watershed protection (and alternatives to
charcoal for cooking), access to quality health care, and gender
equity. Considering all these goals together orients our strategic
choices. For example, cash transfers to women, who hold the purse
strings in Haiti and are arbiters of household spending, will have
significant impact. This is a chance to learn and move forward and
build on lessons learned in adversity - to build
hurricane-resistant houses with good ventilation to improve air
quality from stove smoke; to build communities around clean water
sources; to reforest the terrain to protect from erosion and to
nurture the fertility of the land for this predominantly
agricultural country. ...
As a doctor, I can tell you that bad infrastructure and thoughtless
policy are visible in the bodies of the poor, just as are the
benefits of good policy and well-designed infrastructure. In my
almost 30 years in Haiti I have witnessed many political
interventions and multiple coups. They have been unpleasant, even
if their effects pale in the shadow of what we are now
experiencing. Many people look at Haiti and despair. They say that
aid is wasted, that there is no hope for this country. I would
answer them with the positive experience of building Haitian-led
programs in the Central Plateau and Artibonite Valley regions that
have created five thousand jobs for people who would otherwise have
no steady work. I advance this model not because it is associated
with our efforts, but because job creation is the surest way to
speed up the cash flow that is essential now. It is also the
fastest way to make amends for our past actions towards Haiti,
which have not always been honorable.
...
For two centuries, the Haitian people have struggled for basic
human and economic rights, the right to health care, the right to
education, the right to work, the right to dignity and
independence. These goals, which Haitians share with people all
over the world, should direct our policies of aid and rebuilding.
As I wrote with colleagues in a recent op-ed - which is available
in my written testimony - as physicians working in Haiti, we know
first-hand that Haiti itself will soon be the casualty if we do not
help build back better in the way envisioned by Haitians
themselves.
Guiding Haiti's Roadmap to Recovery with Human Rights
By Monika Kalra Varma and Kerry Kennedy, February 1, 2010
Kerry Kennedy is president and founder of the Robert F. Kennedy
Center for Justice and Human Rights. Monika Kalra Varma is director
of the RFK Center for Human Rights.
http://www.fpif.org / http://www.rfkcenter.org/node/437
Overwhelmed by sadness, empathy and disbelief, the world's eyes are
focused on the rescue and relief efforts for those in Haiti.
However, many who have worked in Haiti fear that a preventable
long-term disaster lies on the horizon if international
interventions don't break with past patterns. As international aid
begins to pour into Haiti, we have a brief moment to break with
past mistakes and bring real change to the country.
The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights (RFK
Center) has partnered with the grassroots medical group Zanmi
Lasante/Partners In Health in Haiti for the last eight years.
During that time, U.S and international aid efforts could be
characterized at best as unsustainable, and at worst, deliberately
harmful.
In 2000, the United States and the Inter-American Development Bank
approved millions of dollars of what would have been lifesaving
loans for improvements to water, health, education, and road
infrastructure, only to later withhold these funds because they
opposed then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. While the loans were
eventually released, communities where the very first water
projects were to be financed still lack access, 10 years later, to
reliably clean drinking water, contributing to countless deaths
from waterborne illness.
In 2004, the international community pledged $1 billion to support
Haiti. The RFK Center, along with Zanmi Lasante and the NYU Center
for Human Rights and Global Justice, tried to track the fulfillment
of those pledges, but never received clear and consistent answers
from donor states on the status of the aid. With no transparency or
coordinating body to turn to, the Haitian people had no hope of
knowing if that money ever got to Haiti, much less where it was
directed and how it could be used to improve their communities.
Haitian government sources later confirmed that most of the pledges
had never been fulfilled.
In 2008, after hurricanes ravaged the country, the international
community convened another donor conference resulting in over $324
million in pledges. Prior to the earthquake, most of those pledges
had still not been fulfilled.
Historically, interventions in Haiti have been viewed through the
lens of charity. The international community, NGOs, international
organizations and donor states have gathered time and again to
announce pledges of support, only to quietly back away from these
commitments. International goodwill is certainly critical today to
Haiti's future, but charity alone will not be enough to ultimately
rebuild a safer and more sustainable Haiti. Only by forging a new
path, guided by a commitment to the human rights of the Haitian
people, can the international community help to create real,
lasting change.
Charity is a personal act of choice with no real repercussions.
Human rights are legal obligations, grounded in our shared
acknowledgement of human dignity - something that every government
must respect and no government can take away.
In the aftermath of this disaster, every country and international
organization working toward recovery in Haiti needs to ensure that
their actions will promote the respect and dignity of the Haitian
people based on constitutionally and internationally recognized
rights to water, health, and education. By partnering with the
Haitian government and local communities in assessing the nation's
recovery needs and making long term pledges to support the
government of Haiti in meeting these needs, donors can pave a
sustainable path towards recovery. Additionally, the donor nations
should commit to making their aid transparent so every Haitian
knows where funds are going. Accountability mechanisms are needed
to ensure that the government of Haiti, the international community
and NGOs use these funds appropriately.
As the world looks for a way to help Haiti rebuild after the
earthquakes, the international community has opportunity to avert
a second manmade disaster. The United States, as well as
international donor states and institutions, must act now to end a
painful history of irresponsible aid policies in Haiti. By acting
immediately, as recovery plans are developed, we can honor the
survivors of this tragedy by supporting Haitians as they build a
better Haiti.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.
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