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Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Cultivating Haitian Hope
Beyond her displacement camps and their many obstacles, Haiti is taking some baby-steps towards her anticipated recovery. The long-awaited plans, surfacing gradually, offer a real glance into the paths that will lead the country away from its tumultuous past. While these steps may seem too insignificant for major news organizations to notice, Haitians whose lives depend on the successful completion of those projects applaud the initiatives.
Haiti Hope Project (HHP) is one such plan that brought together a coalition of businesses, government, and civil society partners to develop a sustainable mango industry in the country. Towards the end of March 2010, The Coca-Cola Company (CCC) and TechnoServe –a nonprofit organization– announced the project after a meeting held earlier in the month with Jean-Max Bellerive, the Prime Minister of Haiti. Many feel that Bellerive’s enthusiastic seal of approval of the Project hinted at new beginnings in Haitian politics and , perhaps, confirmed the government’s engagement and commitment to the development of Haiti’s economic infrastructure.
During their joint press release, the companies indicated that TechnoServe would implement the Project on the ground: a plan that would create new economic opportunities for 25,000 Haitian mango farmers and their families. The NGO has established a strong record of accomplishments in that field managing similar partnerships around the world –most notably– with banana, cashews, cocoa, and coffee.
In addition to Coca-Cola’s $3.5 million investment in HHP, INTER-AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK (IDB) also pledged $3 million through its multilateral Investment Funds (MIF). « We are proud to join forces with The Coca-Cola Company in this endeavor, which we hope will become a model of how the private sector can play a critical role in Haiti’s recovery. We call on other corporations to follow their example, helping the Haitian people build a more prosperous future, » said Luis Alberto Moreno, IDB’s president and CEO.
Recently, HHP gained more momentum when it announced more partners that pledged financial support. Acting through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and in coordination with the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), the US Government publicly announced an initial investment of $1 million. Talking about the potential success of the HHP, Kenneth Merten –US ambassador to Haiti declared– it is « Empowering the people of Haiti and embracing their entrepreneurial spirit, while working in alignment with the Government of Haiti’s priorities, will be critical in helping Haiti build back better. »
Furthermore, the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund also announced a contribution of $500,000 to support the formation and financing of mango producer groups, nurseries, and collection centers to help farmers. As a result, total investment in Haiti Hope Project has reached $8 million.
Largely under the radar however, is HHP’s insistence on an improved participation of women in the labor force during its implementation phase; a beginning many hope will create a paradigm shift from inherent gender-based inequities prevalent in Haiti’s business communities.
A world away, on the educational front, a 20-year plan to reinvent Haiti’s education systemfinally emerged. Critics of the Haitian government have argued, perhaps justifiably, “Talk and promises have been exceedingly more abundant than visible improvements.” However, the ambitious plan presented by the government and its foreign partners would provide free or nearly free education from kindergarten through the 12 grade.
Exposing pre-quake conditions, the Miami Herald revealed the disturbing realities of Haiti’s broken education system. Out of 800 babies born every day, a lucky seven eventually makes it into a university. Ninety percent of the schools are private and have little to no government oversight.
However, this long-term plan endorsed by the recovery commission included a $4.3 billion expenditure over a two-year period during which a new $15 million, 320-bed teaching hospital would be constructed in Mirebalais, a town in central Haiti. The government would also build 625 new primary schools, literally tripling the number of publicly financed schools. It would also retrain 90 percent of the country’s teaching force — 50,000 people — to teach the new curriculum, and it would train 2,500 new teachers a year, many through a program patterned on Teach for America.
Like the HHP, the education plan is not a shortsighted initiative. The expertise of Paul Vallas, successful school reformist in both Chicago and post-Katrina New Orléans, brought a fresh perspective to Haiti’s educational system.
Vallas reasoned, « If you subsidize schools that are of higher quality, that are using the national curriculum, that have certified teachers that have higher quality instruction and that are either waiving their tuition or charging affordable tuition costs, that is where those parents will gravitate. » Many observers agreed that such a comprehensive approach could plant some seeds of intellect and hope in the promising future of the nation while generating a range of options for Haitians.
Rapadoo,
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Beginning of the End
Corruption begets more corruption, the unscrupulous feasts, and the vulnerable loses the self.
“The mother came back, got her daughter and checked her daughter and she said, ‘her inside was so’ --she emphasized-- ‘opened.’ And then she asked the daughter, ‘what happened to you?’ And the daughter said, ‘while I went to the bathroom there was this man that held me and had sex with me’.”
To say “Beginning of the End,” is not to indulge misplaced nostalgia or sentimentality. That scenario, difficult as it might have been to read, have finally exposed an age-old concealed window into the stark realities of scores of Haitian women and children, Flore, in this particular instance. She is a 10-year-old girl who has been sexually assaulted three times in the camp where she lived with her mother.
The horror
Flore’s mom described her daughter’s ordeals through the reporting of Carla Murphy, a journalist covering the rebuilding process in Haiti. Murphy used the pseudo name “Flore” to protect the identity of the child.
The first man who ‘wasted’ her daughter, the mom explained, was a friend who asked for Flore to babysit his child while he went out. She later found out that he repeatedly raped Flore when she watched his baby. The second attack came at the hands of a 22-year-old man, literally. She caught him red handed, his fingers inside of her daughter. Furious, she had him thrown in jail only to watch him roaming the same camp later. The aforementioned third episode, naively recounted by the child, occurred at night.
The cataclysmic earthquake has not only affected Haitian women disproportionately, but has also created new norms for them. Gender discrimination, and structural inequalities have literally reshaped their realities. In many instances, affected women have had to defend themselves, their children, and aging parents against sexual violence. A Human Rights Watch report highlighted a woman whose kidnappers took to an undisclosed location where she was “gagged, beaten repeatedly, and gang-raped for two to three days until she was finally able to escape.
The presence of an effective Haitian government to meet obvious systematic security needs is but an illusion and the UN response units are a scarce resource; hence, the rapists, pedophiles, and child traffickers alike have created their own version of the Wild West in the camps, which many have branded “breeding grounds for criminals.”
Abnormal Norms
The dysfunctional judicial system, ineffectiveness of the police force, and an increased tolerance on the part of the victims have all but ensured the elusiveness of the culprits, condoned their sick behaviors, and perpetuated their vicious cyclical tendencies. In June 1999, 600 police officers --10 percent of the force-- were dismissed on human right violations, including sexual violence. Further characterization by Pierre Denize, Haiti’s Chief of Police then, unearthed the roots of the problem. “Haitian police force was the product of a society whose historical development was such that it did not recognize nor have any experience of an institutional human rights policy,” he expressed to the United Nations’ Commission of Human Rights. In addition, The Lancet published a chilling mortality study of Haiti, which revealed, in no small measures, that a staggering 35,000 women were raped between March 2004 and December 2006 in the capital alone during the instability that followed the ousting of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.
Meanwhile, government officials have continually downplayed the presence of a systemic problem; hence, the barely noticeable –underreported-- empirical evidence has not done any justice to the victims. Nevertheless, the sharp increase of rape cases since Jan. 12th of this year can barely be dismissed as random or sporadic acts. According to its July 19th preliminary report, the Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV) has informally tracked 230 rape cases in only 15 of the 1,300 camps. Moreover, a survey conducted in March 2010 by the University of Michigan revealed that 3 percent of women and girls living in displacement camps have been sexually assaulted, half of whom, minors.
Long Road Ahead
It has become abundantly clear that the atrocities against women and children in Haiti are a byproduct of systemic failures and increased vulnerabilities of the displacement camps. As one coalition of
Haitian civil society groups noted, “The extent of the disaster is certainly linked to the character of the colonial and Neo‐colonial State our country has inherited, and the imposition of neo‐liberal policies over the last three decades.”
Beyond its necessary legislative and judicial infrastructure, Haiti needs a mechanism for inclusive participation and interactive engagement of all stakeholders. That is, men, women, and children – rich or poor-- have to be an integral part of ongoing discussions and strategic planning. Transitioning from a status quo, which --for far too long-- has been insensitive to their ordeals, is a daunting task.
Clearly, such an intergenerational initiative has to be spoon-fed to Haitians. Eventually, the increased knowledge will help remap the psychographics of the cultural consciousness. Ideological changes are complex and require elaborate skills and a great deal of time to materialize, as UNICEF’s 2010 report indicates. Moving too fast risks alienating the victims and/or provoking more aggression. Some women may even be reluctant to move away from the inhumane treatments that they have learned to recognize as a safe place.
Broader Perspective
Several NGO have rightfully called for Haiti’s leaders to prioritize their responses to remedy current atrocities. However, Haiti’s emergent political and social culture presents a rare opportunity to discover her sustainable roots and incite, in the context of evolutionary ideology, a psychological revolution in the malleable cognition of her youths.
Failure to design and implement an effective strategy with the participation of all Haitians would be inadequate and would exacerbate structural human rights infringements that pre‐date the earthquake. The devastating result would leave the most vulnerable members of Haitian society: women, children, and the poor in an even more fragile state.
Rapadoo,
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Corrosive Legacy
Shards of untold chronicles of deceit and distrust have poisoned the atmosphere in Haiti over the past couple of centuries: residual resentments over tumultuous relationships between the country and the world, particularly the United States. Those historical scars have casted some antagonistic clouds over the authenticity and genuineness of the world’s sudden altruistic and empathic initiatives.
Characterized by the Dalai Lama, “such a massive show of global assistance and solidarity -- one sign of the world's increased interdependence -- would not have been possible 100 years ago,” and many observers have agreed. As the shocking images grabbed the world’s attention, governments around the globe pledged about $10 billion over the span of 10 years to help with the long-term reconstruction of Haiti. In addition, individual benevolence had also funneled about $1.3 billion through NGOs and other aid organizations with direct access to the people of Haiti.
Nevertheless, history may disagree with the naïveté of some perceptions, as many now tend to look at Haiti’s prolonged torments through the prisms of finality. In fact, it may outright reject the notion that the recent chaotic implosion is the turning point for the poor nation. This is due, in large measure, to a legacy of corrosive policies aimed at-- according to some-- “hindering any step towards progress” of several generations.
Those policies or “Haiti’s Death Plan”, as Tom Reeves explained in his extensive report, have literally constituted a death grip around the neck of a feeble nation then scrambling to establish its identity.
The U.S. and its powerful, influential imperialist partners needed to ensure that Haiti’s abolitionist ideals didn’t spill over into the entire Western Hemisphere. Hence, Haiti’s turbulent history was marked by centuries of strategic invasions, presidential assassinations, military coups, civil unrests, embargos, outright neglect, dismissals, and denials. In the meantime, Haiti’s economic infrastructure regressed to prehistoric status while its citizens starved. Consequently, some Haitians have been wondering about the true intentions of the foreigners this time around.
As recently as 2004, the incriminating fingerprints of the U.S. and its loyalists were found all over the civil unrest that led to the removal of the democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide whom they restored to power only ten years prior. To accomplish this endeavor, U.S. Special Forces (about 200 of them) trained a 600-member paramilitary army of anti-Aristide Haitians in the neighborhood country of Dominican Republic and supplied them with 20,000 M16 rifles. Hipolito Mejia, the president of the Dominican Republic, inked that initiative.
Further, the same U.S. government, currently one of the largest donors in the rebuilding efforts that managed, in 2001, to convince Europeans countries, the IMF, WORLD BANK, and the European Union to suspend credits for Haiti. In addition, it also funds the International Republican Institute (IRI) with $3 million annually, an organization with strong connections to well-known criminals and thugs who led the civil uprising and eventual overthrow of Aristide. For instance, three months after the IRI met with the leader of the anti-Aristide movement, Guy Phillippe, 20 of his commandos attacked a hydroelectric plant in Haiti’s central plateau killing a security guard.
Not surprisingly though, incidents such as those were nothing new to Haitians; they have been at the mercy of imperialism’s iron fists since 1915 with the first U.S. invasion. It was then characterized as a strategic deterrent to growing German geopolitical ambitions over Haiti’s accessibility to the Panama Canal. However, five additional U.S. military interventions in Haiti would follow, yet the people of the country, 70 to 80 percent of whom has been unemployed, have not experienced any significant improvements in their lives as a result.
In light of this perpetual cycle, some have even conceded that every foreign intervention has left the country worse off and that the first sovereign black state in the Western Hemisphere was being punished for their insolence 206 years ago; hence, the residual resentments.
With presidential elections scheduled for November 28, 2010, what could be the agenda of the Obama Administration and his loyal imperialist following? “This was one of those moments that calls for American Leadership,” he argued passionately soon after the disaster leveled Port-au-Prince, and added that this intervention was “for the sake of our common humanity.”
On the other hand, several hundreds NGOs, with enough cash to perhaps purchase the entire country, continue to operate in stealth mode, about 24,000 foreign troops are on the ground, a crippled government plagued by a history of corruption, and enough power starved political parties to fill all 50 seats in the United States’ National Governor Association. This scenario may have provided some validity to the concerns and nervousness of so many Haitians.
While this impotent people look outward to the international gods to wave a magic wand and make its troubles disappear, they also question the credibility of the flood of emotions thrown at them. Meanwhile, some familiar tune has invaded the atmosphere in Haiti: it will take some drastic steps to convince donors to honor their pledges.
"I'm going to call all those governments and say, the ones who said they'll give money to support the Haitian government, I want to try to get them to give the money, and I'm trying to get the others to give me a schedule for when they'll release it,"
These are the words of former President Bill Clinton in a televised interview with CNNs Anderson Cooper.
Rapadoo,
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Renewed Hope or Despair
CNN announced this morning that Haitian-born philanthropist, Wyclef Jean, would officially announce his bid for the November 28th Haitian presidential race on Larry King tonight. That event would undoubtedly underline the singer’s global reach since he would become the first Haitian presidential candidate to make such an announcement abroad. More significantly however, it would perhaps show the disadvantage of the competition, including his own uncle and ambassador to the U.S., Raymond Joseph. In addition, Jean told the press that he would also resign from Yele Haiti, his charity organization to focus on his campaign.
‘Not a Joke’
"It's not something that was taken lightly, it's not a joke, it's something very, very serious," younger brother --Samuel Jean-- told the Associated Press in a phone interview. According to many Haitians, this stage would demonstrate the hip-hop artist’s grasp of public relations and media matters. Should that be the case however, what should we say to those who think that he is tending the wrong media since the Haitian media would play an indispensable role covering his national campaign? Still, his brother maintained, “It is different for us, but we a proud of him and we are going to support him in any way we can.”
‘Not like the others’
Inarguably, his loyal and empathic commitment to the neglected majority coupled with the inherent distrust of Haitians in their corrupted political system would put a populous wind at his back going into November. A commonsensical scenario that would also make him an overwhelming favorite as the people of Haiti has desperately been waiting for its Moses to lead it to its promise land. Among the enthused are Dominique Lapierre, a sales person in Port-au-Prince and 28-year-old Michelle Volma.
“He is not like the others, he has an authentic heart,” Lapierre said. “Wyclef has done so much for this country,” she continued, “especially for the youth. Lapierre then declared, “I believe that he can really change this country.” Similarly, Volma feels “Haiti needs something new. I’ll vote for him,” reported the Associated Press. She found his age and outsider status very attractive. In fact, many of Jean’s supporters share her views. They cling to his genuine motivation and hang their hats on the fact that his vast wealth makes him less likely to do this for personal gain, the perpetual cycle of local politicians.
On the other hand, growing murmurs escaping the debris inhabiting the land would pose an important question: could the hip-hop icon take ravaged Haiti on the road to recovery and finally put it on the map?
‘Not a politician’
“I don’t really think he knows the country, he’s like an American,” argued 27-year-old Anise Ulysse to the Christian Science Monitor. Ulysse said she would not vote for anyone in the up coming elections because “It’s difficult for Haitians to have any faith in the election, we are so used to politicians taking advantage of us,” she argued, “The people living on the streets have other things to think about” she later added. Marie Lacrete, 26, also echoed these very sentiments highlighting Jean’s lack of a college education. “I don’t have a problem with Wyclef, but he’s not the right person to be president,” Lacrete Said. “He’s a musician, not a politician,” she added. She also pointed out the singer’s wealth, popularity, and the people lack of understanding on the issues would help him galvanize votes.
The 3-time Grammy Award winner will have to do much to appease his critics and the fact that he has chosen a primetime international stage to roll out his campaign made the stakes even higher. “He can’t even manage an enterprise properly,” decried Lacrete, referring to TV station Telemax, which –she said-- has been on the decline since its acquisition by the singer. “How is he going to manage Haiti?” The presidency is no small task especially after the recent catastrophe. Hence, what Jean says tonight could potentially make or break his dreams.
Rapadoo,
Friday, July 30, 2010
Democracy for Sale
"If I was president, I'd get elected on Friday, assassinated on Saturday, buried on Sunday, Then go back to work on Monday." These are mirthful lyrics from Wyclef Jean’s song “If I was President.” Although seemingly farfetched, some troubling realities of Haitian presidential history are embedded within those lines. Ironical, should he really become president of Haiti next year.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Wyclef Jean, Haitian-born entertainer -- Grammy Award winner—is entertaining the idea of entering the up-coming presidential race in his homeland.
“An opportunity that he’s exploring and exploring seriously,” declared his brother Sam Jean, who runs Wyclef’s charitable organization, Yele Haiti Foundation. Sam added, “Most of the population in Haiti is under the age of 26, I believe, so the youth have really clamored to him.”
This latest news sent shock waves through the Haitian community. The successful hip-hop singer is well known for his stardom as well as his philanthropist and humanitarian work geared towards the poorest of Haiti; however, his political ambitions --to this point-- remained inconspicuous. As for his eligibility to run for presidential office, Article 135 of the Haitian constitution spells it out as follow:
a. Be a native-born Haitian and never have renounced Haitian nationality.
b. Have attained 35 years of age by the Election Day.
c. Enjoy civil and political rights and never have been sentenced to death, personal restraint or penal servitude or the loss of civil rights for a crime of ordinary law.
d. Be the owner in Haiti of at least one real property and have his habitual residence in the country.
e. Have resided in the country for five consecutive years before the date of the elections.
f. Have been relieved of his responsibilities if he has been handling public funds.
Although the 37-year-old has yet to officially declared his candidacy, some reports have indicated that he has already filed the necessary papers to become an official candidate. Meanwhile, his camp maintained that, “at this time, Wyclef Jean has not announced his intent to run for Haitian president. If and when a decision is made, media will be alerted immediately,” leaving the idea floating in the realm of possibilities.
Perhaps most interestingly or even ironical, Raymond Joseph -- Jean’s uncle – Haiti’s ambassador to the U.S., told the Christian Monitor that he will also run for President on November 28th this year. He would not dispel reports on the likelihood of his nephew running for the highest office during the phone interview; nonetheless, he stated, “ No, I wouldn’t say running against, I would say running parallel.” This would seem to indicate that Jean may be orchestrating a major PR campaign to not only test public opinion but to also mobilize his fan base and possibly throw all of his weight behind his uncle close to election day, an Everest of an endorsement.
Not surprisingly, Eduardo Gamarra, a political science professor at Florida International University and a close follower of Haitian affairs said, "I think he [Joseph] would be a strong contender, I’m not endorsing him, but I am saying that he does fit the profile of what many expect to see in the next round: someone able to engage the international community." Gamarra did however concede that Jean probably had more resources to run a campaign than the other candidates emphasizing the importance of money.
Rapadoo,
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