Updates

"We Became Garbage to them"

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Read International Action Ties’ (IAT), member organization of Haiti Response Coalition, recently released report entitled: “We Became Garbage to them:” New IAT report on IDP expulsions.

HRC announces: Pwoje Temwen / The Witness Project

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

Port-au-Prince, Haiti, August, 2010 – The Haiti Response Coalition announces the initiation of its Witness Project /Pwoje Temwen, which aims to provide a network for reporting and accessing resources for vulnerable populations such as women and children who are victimized by rape, assault and other gender-based violence, particularly those residing in camps in Port-au-Prince.  The Witness Project / Pwoje Temwen specifically will address the gap between the affected population and the services available to it in the NGO and UN/OCHA communities. Ultimately, it aims to diminish the number of violent crimes against women, and therefore support an atmosphere of increased security.

During the six-month pilot phase, which is scheduled to begin by the end of July, The Witness Project / Pwoje Temwen will be promoted in two target locations: The Champ de Mars camps and the relocation camps at Tabarre Issa and its surrounding community, thus outreaching to a total population of nearly 55,000 residents.   Many victimized persons who are now concentrated in the camp cities of Port-au-Prince are unaware of their rights and unable to identify when those rights have been violated. The Witness Project / Pwoje Temwen will simultaneously raise the target population’s awareness of their rights while providing them with an outlet to share their concerns and have those concerns receive a response.

The Witness Project / Pwoje Temwen will assist the UN and other organizations by helping them to hear the voices of the most vulnerable Haitians in the earthquake affected communities, and by transferring concerns to the appropriate actors so that Haitians can receive assistance, services and advocacy when appropriate.

This Project will provide a multi-dimensional mechanism for individuals to report their concerns and take the first step in a potential complaint process. A hotline and response center will be established to make the mechanism as accessible as possible. A strategic promotion campaign will inform the population of the Witness Project Hotline.

To learn more and/or offer support for this timely and desperately needed project, contact:

Melinda Miles, Co-Founder and Co-Director of Haiti Response Coalition Melinda@konpay.org

Regine Zamor, Project Director  of Witness Project / Pwoje Temwen regine.zamor@gmail.com

The Reality of Living in Camp Corail

Sunday, August 15th, 2010

Tents shake in the wind as a storm arrives at the Corail relocation camp for internally-displaced people – earthquake survivors – in Haiti

Thanks to Melinda Miles for video footage posted here.

Suffering continues more than 6 months later in "Model Camp"

Friday, July 30th, 2010

More than six months later, human suffering continues on a daily basis in Camp Corail, which was supposed to have been a “model camp” for displaced persons in Port au Prince.

"It must be hard to sleep ..."

Friday, July 30th, 2010

This video clip features people forced to have to live in the median of the highway behind Carrefour.  After watching and listening to this one minute clip, you too might think “it must be hard to sleep”.

New Report released

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Read the report jointly released by the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, TransAfrica Forum, MADRE, and two universities:

“Our Bodies are Still Trembling: Haitian Women’s Fight Against Rape”

Haiti: Six Months Later

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Six months after Haiti’s 7.0 earthquake … and the majority of Haitian people are still struggling to secure humane living conditions and their basic human needs like potable water, food and sanitation.   This begs the question: “How are the billions of dollars of relief and reconstruction aid being spent?”

HRC member organizations continue to ask this question and monitor the situation on the ground – in the camps.  Based on their research, conversations and observations, they have compiled reports that highlight Haiti’s situation 6 Months Later.

Please see the following reports that were discussed on Tuesday, January 13th, at the Congressional Briefing in Washington, DC:

Haiti Six Months Later: Reports from the Ground – Camps Conditions, Decentralization, Elections

Presenters Include:

Mario Joseph, Bureaux des Avocats Internationaux (BAI)

Manolia Charlotin, Haiti 2015

Nicole C. Lee, Esq,., TransAfrica Forum

Melinda Miles, Haiti Response Coalition & Let Haiti Live

Reports Discussed Include:

The International Community Should Pressure the Haitian Government For Prompt and Fair Elections – Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti / BAI

Haiti Cherie, My Dear Haiti - TransAfrica Forum

Haiti’s Answer for Six Months & Sixty Years - Let Haiti Live, A Project of TransAfrica Forum

Haiti Six Months after the Devastating Earthquake: Russian TV Interview with Melinda Miles

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Haiti 6 Months after the Devastating Earthquake

HAITI’S ANSWER for Six Months & Sixty Years

Monday, July 12th, 2010

By Melinda Miles, Let Haiti Live

a project of TransAfrica Forum

July 12, 2010

I. Introduction

“People died because centralization forced everyone to be in Port-au-Prince – everything goes via the central authority: there’s no ability for local government to do anything. All the major universities, to get a passport, or a driving permit, means coming to the capital. So, when Port-au-Prince collapsed, the state collapsed, and the people with it.”

- Reflections on reconstruction, Oxfam meeting, March 5, 2010

“We have to take advantage of this catastrophe and say, ‘The clock is set at zero.’ We have to build another Haiti that doesn’t have anything to do with the Haiti we had before. A Haiti that is sovereign politically and that has food sovereignty.”

- Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, Executive Director of the Peasant Movement of Papaye, “The Clock is Set at Zero” by Beverly Bell, Other Worlds, March 3, 2010

The question in Haiti today is more profound than most realize. As we commemorate the six month anniversary of the devastating 7.0 earthquake on January 12, 2010, international aid agencies, the United Nations and NGOs are focused on transitions: transitional shelters, transitional camps, transition plans. All of this begs the question, to what is Haiti transitioning? The answer to this question has been shockingly absent from debates in the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Clusters, coordination meetings for those engaged in the earthquake response. All the dimensions of the interim response and the short-term solutions are debated and discussed, but the elephant in the room remains the biggest question of all: what will finally emerge from Haiti’s recovery process?

The plan for Haiti’s future must include and be guided by the vision of those who are living the reality of life after the quake, those who will carry it forward: Haitians. They have articulated this vision already, many times, before and after hurricanes, political upheavals and the earthquake. Decentralization.

For decades, centuries even, Haiti’s finances and politics have been centralized in one capital city, leading to a severe inequality in the distribution of resources and ultimately causing the gross overpopulation of the capital, as the hope for access to resources and work lured millions to migrate there. Aid from the international community has reinforced this imbalance between distribution of the population and distribution of development projects, investment, infrastructure and other resources. Consider, for example, that although the agricultural sector is the source of livelihood for the majority of Haitians, only 3-4% of the national budget is allocated to the Ministry of Agriculture[1].

Well before the earthquake, living conditions for the majority of Port au Prince residents had been steadily deteriorating due to the fact that the city was built to accommodate a population of a few hundred thousand, not the nearly three million that reside there.

_____________________

[1] Camille Chalmers, PAPDA in MCC’s “Disaster to Decentralization: Haiti’s long term recovery.”

This population concentration created the conditions for more than 230,000 people to die unnecessarily during and in the aftermath of the earthquake.   This fact is arguably one of the gravest indicators for the need to decentralize. Finances, politics, education and health care cannot continue to be concentrated in only this one urban area.  Haitians are calling, as they have in the past, for a new Haiti, a Haiti that is more than just the Republic of Port-au-Prince. While there are more than two million people living in Port-au-Prince, the other eight million live outside the capital, mainly in rural areas.

Will the country be rebuilt to what it once was, or will a better Haiti be founded on the ruins left by the earthquake?

Millions of lives and billions of dollars hang in the balance of this unanswered question. Not one more life needs to be lost and not one cent needs to be spent to keep Haiti in its current position —  at the bottom — in terms of standard of living, access to health care, education, food security and other key indicators. The competing development and recovery plans for Haiti -  that of the international community (where the majority of financial resource is held) vs. that of the Haitian people – must  come together in one unified plan.  The  international community must listen to the Haitian people about how they envision the focus of the recovery through decentralization; after all, they have repeated over and over this vision and plan for Haiti.

Concrete and realistic steps to decentralize governance, investment, infrastructure, production and development have been articulated in strategies from international economists, the Haitian government, the International Monetary Fund, the Haitian Constitution and most recently in the blueprint for investment in Haiti’s future: the Action Plan for the Reconstruction and National Development of Haiti.
On the six-month anniversary of the earthquake, the international community must step back and look at the answer Haitians have known for many years. Decentralization is the key to unlocking Haiti’s potential to produce enough food for everyone to eat, to create jobs to keep the youth in the provinces and to sustain and grow livelihoods outside of the capital. In addition to these long-term solutions, decentralization is also the answer to the short-term crisis, the goal of the transition. In other words, investing in the development of the Haiti that is outside of Port-au-Prince and locating a vast array of development projects as well as cash for work in rural areas gives the incentive necessary for the internally-displaced people (IDPs) of the most heavily earthquake-damaged areas to leave the tent cities and return to their families outside of Port-au-Prince. Without immediate, concrete action, Port-au-Prince will become a city of slums, not just a city with slums, and Haiti will forever be a fragile state in need of assistance.

II. Centralized Haiti: The Republic of Port-au-Prince

As much as the quake was natural and unexpected, the extensive destruction it created, particularly in the capital, was precipitated by the historic centralization of finance, commerce and politics in Port-au-Prince, and the lack of investment in the countryside. Decades of neglect have turned huge swaths of Haiti’s agricultural land, at one time some of the richest and most fertile in the world, into desolate areas that produce partial harvests at best; as a result many rural people migrated to the cities in search of work.

The centralization actually began under the colonial regime, when the French set up a capital city at the port of Cap-Francois, now the city of Cap-Haitien. After the Haitian revolution, though, eleven regional centers were created in an effort to develop urban areas outside of the capital, and to increase the capacity of rural areas. This system functioned, albeit imperfectly, and represented a long period of a somewhat decentralized economy.  The U.S. occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934 changed this system of eleven regional centers to one centralized capital of politics and commerce, a change that brought widespread poverty to Haiti for the first time.[2]

Pre-earthquake Haiti suffered from a deep inequality in the distribution of schools and health care facilities, in addition to the centralization of government and markets in Port-au-Prince. The only international airport and the most important seaport are in the capital, as well as nearly all of the universities. Rural areas have primary schools at best; all secondary schools are located in urban areas. Although assembly factories have long been touted as key to Haiti’s development, only two free trade zones exist, and the majority of Haiti’s factories are also in Port-au-Prince.

All of these factors contributed to the heavy concentration of people in the capital city and its large metropolitan area. Aerial views of Port-au-Prince are almost completely devoid of green and filled with the gray of concrete block buildings. In fact, there was hardly an open space in the city before the quake, and densely packed poor neighborhoods known as bidonvil climbed the steep hillsides all around the city.

Many have pointed out that there were too many people living in Port-au-Prince, and that victims died because of their anarchic building practices.   That is only one small piece of the story, though. It does not explain or even consider why so many people were so desperate that they had to migrate to and live in an unsafe shantytown in Port au Prince in the first place. The fundamental cause of population concentration in Port-au-Prince, however, was the decades-old policy of devaluing agriculture and the refusal to invest in rural areas. The result: conditions that precipitated the extremely high loss of life. In addition, lack of investment in infrastructure and ports outside of the capital posed serious challenges to the emergency response after the earthquake. Haiti’s one international runway and the damaged wharf in the Bay of Port-au-Prince slowed the delivery of aid and human resources, and resulted in many preventable deaths.

______________________

[2] Georges Werleigh interview with the author, January 12, 2003. Quoted in “Let Haiti Live: Unjust U.S. Policies Towards Its Oldest Neighbor”, eds. M. Miles & E. Charles

III. The Immediate Need: IDPs at Six Months

“Plans for moving the displaced population out of tent cities and into more durable shelter, not to mention permanent housing, remain in early draft form.”

- “Haiti at a Crossroads” U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, June 2010

The biggest obstacle to moving people out of the unhealthy, inhumane and dangerous spontaneous communities that sprang up in the aftermath of the earthquake is the question of where to relocate these internally displaced people (IDPs). Due to the confusion that has been created by the outrageous idea that somehow property rights – the ability to lay claim to a piece of land and have the sole ability to exploit and profit from said land – are on par with the right to survive, Haitians have been left to suffer in tent cities that don’t even deserve to be called camps. The Haitian government is not invoking eminent domain to make land available to families that are living in the parks, streets, and medians of Port-au-Prince, Leogane and Jacmel.

The tent cities are so overcrowded that they do not meet international standards for camps; only one temporary settlement in the country meets those standards at the present time. OCHA has stated that it is not actually possible – nor is it desirable – to bring the camps up to the standards. In reality these are new slums. Every open space, every park and yard, is now occupied by people with nowhere to go. There is no protection for the population living in camps and an epidemic of gang rape has been sweeping through the Port-au-Prince camps for months.

The aid community has intentionally left the inhabitants of camps without access to better basic services. It is a strategy underway right now to avoid luring people back from the countryside with the promise of services in the camps. But there is something perversely blame-the-victim about implying that people would prefer to live in these dangerous, violent slums in the midst of the rubble of Port-au-Prince.

In reality, people are staying because there is nowhere else for them to go. Without investment in the countryside, rural areas have been on a steady decline. Of the 600,000 survivors who left the capital after the earthquake, many have returned because the provincial areas are not able to absorb more people. However the fact is that people would leave, and want to leave, the terrible conditions in the Port-au-Prince camps. No one would choose to live with such indignity, in squalor, with no protection.

Haitians would leave Port-au-Prince if there were jobs and services in the other parts of the country. Ideally, the Government of Haiti would resolve the land policy issues and begin making land available to survivors in Port-au-Prince. However, it is very likely that this obstacle will continue to prevent the Government from relocating people. If the right investments are made now, the people will go where they have opportunities, and they will stay where they see a future for their families.

IV. The Answer: Concretizing Decentralization

“In the longer term, the Government needs to consider more permanent solutions to the problems that plague Port-au-Prince including land scarcity, over-crowding, and an unsustainable strain on services. In particular, this means seriously considering the concept of ‘decentralization,’ and whether to invest significant resources into developing alternate economic centers away from Port-au-Prince.”

“There is an agreed upon development framework for Haiti rebuilding [Action Plan for National Recovery and Development in Haiti]. The Government of Haiti, donors, and NGOs now need to come together and determine specific details of this plan in order to begin implementing key priorities.”

- “Haiti at a Crossroads” report by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, June 2010

Decentralization is the short-term immediate solution to the terrible living conditions of Haiti’s IDPs, and at the same time it is the long-awaited manifestation of the majority of the population’s deepest desire and dream for their future: it is a long-term strategy to redistribute resources and bring the Haitian people out of desperate poverty.

The first concrete step in the realization of decentralization is recognition by all the actors involved in Haiti’s recovery that there is a plan already on the table. If each actor then played its proper role, the process of decentralization could commence.

Key Actors and Their Roles:

1. The Government of Haiti has created the Action Plan for the Reconstruction and National Development of Haiti contingent to the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) that was conducted by national and international experts and was open to NGO and civil society participations. The Action Plan integrated a number of strategies already articulated in the Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (the DSNCRP) written in November 2007 with the intent of “making a quantitative lead forward” between 2008 and 2010. The DSNCRP itself drew from the Statement of General Policy ratified by the Parliament in June 2006 as a follow up to the Interim Cooperation Framework adopted in 2004-2005.

Now that the Action Plan exists, it is critical for the Government of Haiti to take action to begin the decentralization of its own administration, by following the steps laid out in the Action Plan, which is summarized below.

2. The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) is co-chaired by Haiti’s Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive and former U.S. President Bill Clinton and is tasked with the coordination, planning and execution of development projects, including the review and approval of projects. Although it was slow in getting stated, the IHRC is now in place and should move immediately to fund the Government of Haiti’s Action Plan.

3. Non-governmental organizations and international charities have already received over one billion dollars in donations to help Haiti, but the vast majority of this money has not yet been put into action. Now is the time for NGOs to coordinate with the Government of Haiti’s Action Plan and to undertake complementary and supportive projects throughout the country. For the past several months the NGO community has claimed there is no clear plan, and many of the charities and NGOs that are currently sitting on millions of dollars in donations are devising their own ten-year plans for the reconstruction of Haiti. However it is the national Haitian plan that must be prioritized.

4. The international community, especially donor institutions and governments, must meet their pledges for the response in Haiti. Many have waited for the IHRC to be ready to coordinate and supervise the distribution of aid. Now that it has been established and is ready to function, there is no excuse for pledges to remain unfulfilled.

5. The most important actors in the future of Haiti, the Haitian people who make up the civil society, must organize themselves and advocate for their rights and for their vision of the future of Haiti. It has been over twenty years since the Haitian Constitution was revised to reflect the desire of Haitians and the utter necessity for decentralization in order to establish a strong economy and better standards of living for all Haitians.  In addition to advocating for their vision and getting their needs heard and met, Haitian civil society – including all community-based, grassroots oriented organizations as well as NGOs – must be vigilant monitors of their government, the IHRC and the NGOs in the country to ensure that they are honest stewards of funds entrusted to them, and that they carry out the Action Plan with integrity.

Concrete Steps to Decentralize:

Several strategic plans and critiques already exist including the 1987 Constitution, the November 2007 Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy, the December 2008 report by Oxford Economist Paul Collier for the UN, the March 2010 Action Plan for the Reconstruction and National Development of Haiti based on the earthquake Post-Disaster Needs Assessment, and the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s “Haiti At A Crossroads” report, released in June 2010.

The following four themes are all addressed in the Action Plan, and most are also treated in at least one of the pre-existing plans/reports. There is no better time to launch these efforts than immediately. Hundreds of thousands of survivors already left Port-au-Prince and other earthquake-affected areas and returned to the countryside. One example of the window of opportunity is the number of educated individuals who have returned to the countryside, and the larger number of children in rural areas in need of schools. Building more schools now takes advantage of potential teachers and creates incentives for families to remain in the countryside, while at the same time beginning to fill a gap in access to education, an endemic problem.

Here is a summary of the concrete strategies to solve Haiti’s biggest challenges via decentralization:

1. Infrastructure:

• The Collier report encouraged focusing “infrastructure provision on breaking bottlenecks in the economy.” He specifically talked about building better “feeder roads to potentially productive areas” improving “access to inputs as well as access to markets for outputs.” In order to maximize the profitability of mango exportation, one of Collier’s key recommendations to strengthen Haiti’s economy, he stated: “the export of mangoes requires better road networks in mango-growing areas.”

• The DSNCRP also laid out plans for more balanced national road network that could encourage regional development to reach its potential in hopes of “re-establishing balance by fostering the emergence of big regional metropolises” and “guaranteeing consistent connections throughout the country.” It also called for strengthening the capacity of international seaports in the provinces, and developing “a road network to improve regional integration with the Dominican Republic.”

• The Action Plan is very specific about roads and ports, stating that: “a proper road network is essential.” There are 500km of roads that need to be finished, and the Plan calls the road construction “a precondition for effective decentralization and devolution, including that of the state.” The Action Plan also states that the international air traffic into Haiti “will be spread over three major airports located close to major cities: Cap Haitien, Port-au-Prince and Les Cayes” effectively ending the capital’s monopoly on international air travel. Sea ports are also included in the Action Plan’s strategy: “other port infrastructure will be rehabilitated or constructed to enable the industrialization of other areas of the country to split the job opportunities in the territory and promote the creation of clusters and sub-regional poles for development.”

2. Basic services

• The DSNCRP includes some of the richest strategies to decentralize basic services. In terms of education, it calls for at least one public school through grade six in each of Haiti’s 565 communal sections. This would “reduce the disparities between geographical departments and between urban and rural areas in the distribution of available schools.” For health care, the plan calls for the restoration of referral hospitals at the departmental level, the rehabilitation and construction of health centers, and the rehabilitation of specialized hospitals throughout the country.

• The Collier report recommends that electricity be made available in regions outside of Port-au-Prince to power what he calls factory “islands” like the free trade zone in Ouanaminthe. Unlike Port-au-Prince based factories, this trade zone in the northeast buys its electricity from across the border in the Dominican Republic and therefore enjoys stable and reliable power. Although it is arguable whether or not industrialization based on assembly for export is a desirable form of development for Haiti, it is clearly on the agenda of the international community and Haitian Government, and if Collier’s strategy is implemented, industry would be developed in pockets of the country where employment, roads, and energy infrastructure are badly needed, and would bring these advantages to various regions.

• The Action Plan also includes a strategy for expanding the delivery of electricity in the “developing zones and sub-zones of the country, particularly in the main towns of departments and districts” and specifically calls for the construction of a hydroelectric dam in the Artibonite, the construction of a power substation in Tabarre, and the “development of different local distribution networks of electric power to fuel growth sectors”. To expand the availability of health care, the Action Plan urges the” construction of eight referral hospitals in the administrative centers of the departments at an average cost of $30 million USD each.” Related to health is waste management, and the Action Plan speaks of waste removal from ten major urban areas.

3. Political and governance

• Haiti’s 1987 Constitution is the best source of concrete steps to decentralize governance. Recently, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti released a comprehensive report on political participation and elections that includes a thorough explanation of one of the key measures described in the Constitution to decentralize decision-making:

“The ASEC system is a large pyramid structure, designed to decentralize democracy by ensuring that those in power are involved in politics at the very local level, where it is hard for centralized money to penetrate.  ASECS (Assemblés des Sections Communales) are the foundation of the pyramid structure.  Haiti is divided into 10 Departments, each Department is divided into municipalities (or communes), and each municipality is split into communal sections.  Each communal section elects a Sectional Assembly (or ASEC).  The ASECS play an advisory role to the CASECS, which administer local government.  The ASECS also look over the CASECS’ shoulders, to make sure they are spending the money well.

“Each ASEC sends a representative to the Municipal Assembly.  The Municipal Assembly plays a similar watchdog/advisor role at the municipal level.  The mayor is supposed to report to it on the use of municipal resources, and cannot sell state lands in the commune without the Assembly’s approval.  The Municipal Assembly is also responsible for drawing up the list of nominees for judges in the peace courts in the Department.

“Each Municipal Assembly sends a representative to the Departmental Assembly.  The Departmental Assembly selects the members of the Departmental Council, which administers the Department.   Departmental Assemblies plays a similar watchdog/advisor role at the Departmental level, and the Departmental Council reports to it.  The Departmental Assembly is also responsible for drawing up the list of nominees for judges in the trial courts and appeals courts in the Department.  Each Departmental Assembly sends a representative to the Interdepartmental Assembly.  The Interdepartmental Assembly helps the executive branch and is involved in policy planning.  The Assembly is entitled to attend and vote at Ministerial Council meetings that deal with issues within its domain.”

• The DSNCRP emphasizes territorial development for economic growth and security, stating: “political and economic decentralization should be synchronized.” It describes six major reform programs to modernize the State including the “effective launching of the decentralization process” as defined in the 1987 Constitution. Concretely, this means the establishment of the three levels of territorial governments (the Collectivités Territoriales) who influence the executive, the judiciary and the electoral system (as described above). The legal framework for decentralization is the Charter for Territorial Government, because “territorial development entails decentralization.” The specific strategic lines of action:
  • Reorganization of the Ministry of Planning and External Cooperation
  • Finalization of the law on territorial improvement and local development
  • Decentralization of the MPCE to the arrondissement level
  • Preparation of the new national master plan for territorial improvement and development
  • Preparation of local master plans for territorial development and improvement in the arrondissements
  • Revision of the way the national territory is subdivided
  • Introduction of operational planning instruments
  • Reorganization of the public investment program into a national component and local component
  • Structuring of development stakeholders
  • Supervision of territorial governments in the area of development planning
  • Promotion of territorial development.

• The Action Plan also includes specific steps to create “a Unitary State which is strong, acts as a guarantor of the general interest and is highly devolved and decentralized.” The Plan outlines measures costing $175 million for a twelve-month period including these objectives:
  • Within 5 years, reduce the proportion of State functionaries in administration to 20% and bring that of decentralized services to 80%
  • Completion of administrative centers in departments and districts, encouraging government officers to settle in the provinces by providing beneficiary incentives and housing help and also by offering career development advantages.
  • Within 5 years, regional development centers have local services provided by their municipality, including water, sewers, solid waste, and maintenance of municipal roads. 50% within 5 years, the entire population within 10 years.
  • Training and recruitment of executives (at least 3 senior executives per municipality) and building offices with technical equipment in regional development centers.

• In their report, “Haiti At A Crossroads”, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee encouraged a de-consolidation of decision-making power, specifically encouraging President Preval to “empower his lieutenants to make key development decisions about where to permanently house displaced citizens, where to allocate resources, and how to prioritize rebuilding.”

4. Agriculture and national production

• The Action Plan contains the best instructions for “boosting domestic production” by investing in rural areas outside of the urban centers. First it explains: “agriculture, livestock and fisheries, together constitute one of the primary forces of economic revitalization and recovery of regional and local economies.” Five programs are targeted for implementation:

1. Funding for purchase of distribution of fertilizer, seeds, plowing equipment, tractors, tools, and fishing equipment at reasonable prices to increase productivity.
2. Funding for digging hill lakes and construction of irrigation networks to improve water management and increase agricultural productivity.
3. Finance the construction of rural roads to open up farming zones.
4. Finance the recapitalization of agricultural enterprise with access to credit for farmers, financing the development of small and medium enterprises that increase the value added to production, limit the losses incurred during transformation of products and increase incomes of farmers.
5. Finance the improvement of conditions for slaughter and preservation of meat, to guarantee quality and increase profitability.

V. Conclusion: Six Months and Sixty Years

“There must be a strategy that is centered on the needs of the people. That’s what is most important. There must be an economic strategy that is focused on the international market and an economic strategy based on how the state can support the most dynamic players in the economy.

“The most dynamic actors, up until the present, are within the peasant sector. Despite the fact that 50% of the population works in the agricultural sector, despite the fact that it produces about half the food consumed in the country, it is a sector that has been completely neglected, with very little investment by the state.”

- Camille Chalmers, PAPDA, MCC’s “Disaster to Decentralization: Haiti’s long term recovery.” June 8, 2010

“A strategy that can take the society beyond recovery to economic security.”

- Haiti: From National Catastrophe to Economic Security, A Report for the Secretary General of the United Nations, by Paul Collier, December 2008

Many of the agencies engaged in post-earthquake rebuilding are facing a fundamental question, whether they realize it or not. Will the millions of dollars earmarked for Haiti today be used to build a better Haiti, or will the international community simply restore Haiti to where it was before the earthquake, unchallenged in its title of “poorest country in the Western Hemisphere”?
The Government of Haiti’s Action Plan outlines concrete steps that can have both immediate and long-term impact on the living conditions of the majority of Haitians. The real solution is a decentralized Haiti and the de-concentration of the population in Port-au-Prince. It is a solution for today, six months after the earthquake that shattered Haiti’s capital city. It is also a solution for sixty years from now, for a hundred years from now, because it creates the means necessary for resources to be redistributed in Haiti. It creates the circumstances Haitians need so they all can access basic services and employment, no matter the region of the country in which they reside.

It seems unlikely, unfortunately, that the Government of Haiti will solve the land policy issues that are currently preventing it from creating viable options for survivors currently living in tent cities. Even with pressure and/or support from the international community, those with a vested interest in private property continue to have more access and capacity to pressure the government. Decentralization can and will ameliorate the situation of people living in the inhuman living conditions  in the camps, which is an urgent and absolute need. If IDPs cannot be given land or permanent homes, decentralization promises that they do not have to remain in Port au Prince for survival.  Projects outlined in decentralization plans are exactly what are needed to reverse the problem of overpopulation in Port au Prince; they offer all Haitians hope for jobs, health care and education outside of Port au Prince. These plans are accomplishable, and they provide truly Haitian answers to Haiti’s longest standing challenge: pulling the majority of the population out of poverty that is misery.

Reports Cited:

Haiti: From National Catastrophe to Economic Security, A Report for the Secretary General of the United Nations, by Paul Collier, Department of Economics at Oxford University, December 27, 2008. Read it here: www.focal.ca/pdf/haiticollier.pd

The International Community Should Pressure the Haitian Government For Prompt And Fair Elections, The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, June 30, 2010. Read the full report here: http://ijdh.org/archives/13140

Plan D’Action Pour Le Relèvement et Le Développement National, English translation: Action Plan for the Reconstruction and National Development of Haiti, Government of the Republic of Haiti, March 2010. Read the plan in English here: researchforhaiti.typepad.com/files/pdna_english-1.pdf

National Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, DSNCRP, prepared by the International Monetary Fund, March 2008. Read the English translation here: http://bit.ly/cyZpIU

Haiti At A Crossroads, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, June 2010. Report available here: http://wwww.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/MYAI-86Q5C4?OpenDocument

Disaster to Decentralization: Haiti’s long term recovery, film by the Mennonite Central Committee, June 8, 2010. See the film here: http://mcc.org/stories/videos/disaster-decentralization

The first major example of the Preval Government and international community’s reconstruction: Camp Koray (Corail)

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Reported by Etant Dupain

(read Kreyol version here) Refuse the climb to Morne Cabrit (named Goat Mountain for its steep slopes), turn left and drive for ten minutes if you have a good car – walk for fifty minutes if you have good feet. Turn again, and enter the second road on the right. You are in Koray.

There are no lights; the road is not paved. There is only dust and ancient forsaken grass growing in this area.

It is here that the Haitian government and the United Nations, along with the American Embassy and their NGO acolytes, decided to construct a humiliating village to put the victims who lost their homes during the earthquake.

The most significant thing about Koray is that the people are from the spontaneous camp at the Petion ville Golf Club. According to the American Embassy, the people living in that camp were in danger because it was a geographically vulnerable area, although no such case was ever reported before the presence of the victims there.

In the area of Koray there are no trees. After four in the afternoon, the mosquitos reign. Around this sizeable camp, which will be receiving internally displaced people from more than five other camps in Petion ville and Delmas, are deforested mountains that the victims have as a mural to look at during the day. One doesn’t have to ask how this plain, filled with little tents, is affected by rainfall.

Imagine that you are on a plain without trees, with nothing but dirt and deforested mountains surrounding you, and you hear that there will be more than five hours of rainfall…

The second place to ask this question is at the American Embassy, which promised in 1986 to deliver seven million trees to help combat erosion in Haiti. Ask them also: why there is “danger” just below the residence of the Ambassador, who is the neighbor of the Petion ville Golf Club, and the real reason that people are being displaced from their camps.

The victims have been displaced to an area without trees, without water, mixed with dust and burning sun, and a wind that declares war against the people, tearing up tents that wouldn’t hold up for two months even without wind.

The matter requires reflection. If there is wind strong enough to detach a tent, a raging sun and no trees to give people shade, even the dust could make a little peace and recognize that it is an inhabitable place. But, this isn’t the reality. It is people who aren’t in need of a bathroom and aren’t thirsty for water who can’t see these problems.

Much of the local press, like Radio Metropole, have praised this camp as a good example for the forced displacement of more than one million three hundred thousand people who do not have any place whatsoever to live. Perhaps this is because Dessalines already gave away all the people’s land, making them always live in the street and without hope.

Joseph Mucioleme, a fifty-five year old man who lost his house on January 12, had left Gonaives in 1983 after losing all his pigs when the U.S. Government and the Governement of the Dictator Jean Claude Duvalier killed the Haitian Creole pigs under the pretext of the African Swine Fever.

Joseph was a refugee in the Petion ville Golf Club with his two children; today he is one of the victims who live in the isolation of camp Koray. In his tent, Joseph has rice and oil he received two days ago, but he has no means to cook the food because he doesn’t have a stove or any of the other ingredients to prepare food.

Hunger in the desert is like running from the rain and falling in the river, according to Joseph. The most grave aspects of Joseph’s case is that all of his family are in Port-au-Prince, and it was in the lower part of the city where he could find work hauling loads to buy food for himself and his children. Now he is dispensable – condemned to this high desert until he is deported the same humiliating way.

It costs 100 gourdes, or $2.90 U.S. dollars, to take public transportation back and forth from the city. If Joseph had a radio, he could have heard about the arriving NGOs and all the money they received in his name, while he is obligated to spend the rest of his life in the desert camp unless he finds the money to return home.

None of this is surprising. The government, the United Nations and the Haitian elite – the bourgeois class – have had time to make the false assertion that 70% of all that the country has lost was lost from the holdings of the bourgeois. That is to say, they have had the time to decide how they will redistribute the new debt they call funds for reconstruction.

Don’t allow the personal interests of the bourgeois and the acolytes of the Preval government to lead us to forget the Haitian heritage of the Konbit, the concept we practice of working together.

The international community and the government are not intelligent because they are playing with fire when you consider the numbers of victims searching for a peaceful way out of the crisis who have been patient as they encounter problem after problem. This is a provocation by the international community and the government by not taking on their responsibilities.

Don’t criticize me if I finish without mentioning that Koray has no school, health center, public market or good road. Not only do they not have these things, but there isn’t even any sign that these things will be provided. At the moment you are reading this there are people being coerced to live in a cemetery in a desert.

Dessalines said: If Haiti is paradise it must be paradise for all Haitians, the same as if it is hell it must be hell for all Haitians.

Charlemagne Peralte: long live just war.