Friday, April 23, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Perspective from Haiti
Brian Price's article in Yale Daily News on his perspective from his recent trip to Haiti.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
What Bill Clinton's Mea Culpa Should Mean
Ruth Messinger
President and Executive Director, American Jewish World Service
As many of us have been paying close attention to the long-awaited passage of health care reform last week, it was easy to miss something else that was absolutely extraordinary. Former President Bill Clinton said at a recent Senate hearing that he regrets the impact in Haiti of the free trade policies that became a hallmark of his presidency.
"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake," Clinton said this month. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."
Sadly, he's right. The rapid lowering of agricultural trade barriers in Haiti combined with misguided U.S. food aid policy allowed American agribusinesses to flood the country with cheap surplus rice and force tens of thousands of local farmers out of business. According to the Associated Press, six pounds of imported rice now costs at least a dollar less than a similar quantity of locally-grown rice. So how can a Haitian farmer compete? The past 15 years have shown they simply can't.
Prior to the era of so-called "free trade", Haiti could feed itself, importing only 19 percent of its food and actually exporting rice. Today, Haiti imports more than half of its food, including 80 percent of the rice eaten in the country. The result is that Haitians are particularly vulnerable to price spikes arising from global weather, political instability, rising fuel costs and natural disasters, such as earthquakes that register 7.0 on the Richter scale. In fact, since the January earthquake, imported rice prices are up 25 percent.
It is especially fitting that President Clinton's mea culpa comes as the Jewish community worldwide prepares to observe Passover. The story of Passover is a stark reminder that communities cannot rely solely on others to provide for their needs. Until people are empowered to help themselves, in-kind assistance from the outside is useful only in the immediate aftermath of acute emergencies. Long-term needs must be met principally through a community-led approach. The lesson we take from Passover is that once the Israelites spoke out against slavery their prayers for freedom were finally answered.
Today, the people of Haiti are speaking as loud as they can. They desperately want a voice and central role in the reconstruction of their country, including the ability to meet the country's nutritional needs with food produced by Haitians in Haiti. In fact, President Rene Preval, himself a rice grower, has asked for international food aid to be replaced by financial support for farmers and the re-development of the agricultural sector. Preval knows that sustained success in rebuilding depends on food sovereignty, or the ability for Haitian farmers to grow their own crops and feed their own communities.
Is the international community getting the message? It's hard to say. The AP also reported that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided nearly four times as much in-kind food aid since January as it invests each year in Haitian agriculture. There is of course a need in grave circumstances for actual shipments of food - but for decades we've used in-kind food as a tool for destroying local agricultural markets on an ongoing basis, not as a last resort measure to be used in emergencies after all possibilities for local purchase have been exhausted. Until our government abandons a system that dumps surplus from American agribusiness on the developing world, its efforts at ending hunger will remain counterproductive. Then again, if you are the D.C. lobbyist for Big Ag, maybe that's the point. Maintaining the developing world's cycle of dependence is profitable business.
The time has come for us to pay attention, to heed the wishes of the Haitian people to be empowered. We must demand that the purpose of our work in Haiti is not to merely rebuild an export market for our surpluses, but rather to support a Haitian-led effort to create a country that can stand on its own, build a sustainable economy and feed its people. Over the next couple of months, Congress will be discussing how to allocate more than $1.6 billion in supplemental funding for Haiti. I urge you to contact your elected representatives and let them know that this money must be used to empower communities, not corporations.
Each year, during Passover, we say "let all who are hungry, come and eat." Then, ironically, we proceed to enjoy a wonderful meal with our families and friends while our front doors remain closed. If you will be celebrating Passover this year, I ask that you open your doors -- at least metaphorically -- and hear those calls from a country just a few hundred miles off our shore. Recognize that the people of Haiti may not need our food. Rather, they need us to listen as they tell us how we can really help.
President and Executive Director, American Jewish World Service
As many of us have been paying close attention to the long-awaited passage of health care reform last week, it was easy to miss something else that was absolutely extraordinary. Former President Bill Clinton said at a recent Senate hearing that he regrets the impact in Haiti of the free trade policies that became a hallmark of his presidency.
"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake," Clinton said this month. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."
Sadly, he's right. The rapid lowering of agricultural trade barriers in Haiti combined with misguided U.S. food aid policy allowed American agribusinesses to flood the country with cheap surplus rice and force tens of thousands of local farmers out of business. According to the Associated Press, six pounds of imported rice now costs at least a dollar less than a similar quantity of locally-grown rice. So how can a Haitian farmer compete? The past 15 years have shown they simply can't.
Prior to the era of so-called "free trade", Haiti could feed itself, importing only 19 percent of its food and actually exporting rice. Today, Haiti imports more than half of its food, including 80 percent of the rice eaten in the country. The result is that Haitians are particularly vulnerable to price spikes arising from global weather, political instability, rising fuel costs and natural disasters, such as earthquakes that register 7.0 on the Richter scale. In fact, since the January earthquake, imported rice prices are up 25 percent.
It is especially fitting that President Clinton's mea culpa comes as the Jewish community worldwide prepares to observe Passover. The story of Passover is a stark reminder that communities cannot rely solely on others to provide for their needs. Until people are empowered to help themselves, in-kind assistance from the outside is useful only in the immediate aftermath of acute emergencies. Long-term needs must be met principally through a community-led approach. The lesson we take from Passover is that once the Israelites spoke out against slavery their prayers for freedom were finally answered.
Today, the people of Haiti are speaking as loud as they can. They desperately want a voice and central role in the reconstruction of their country, including the ability to meet the country's nutritional needs with food produced by Haitians in Haiti. In fact, President Rene Preval, himself a rice grower, has asked for international food aid to be replaced by financial support for farmers and the re-development of the agricultural sector. Preval knows that sustained success in rebuilding depends on food sovereignty, or the ability for Haitian farmers to grow their own crops and feed their own communities.
Is the international community getting the message? It's hard to say. The AP also reported that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided nearly four times as much in-kind food aid since January as it invests each year in Haitian agriculture. There is of course a need in grave circumstances for actual shipments of food - but for decades we've used in-kind food as a tool for destroying local agricultural markets on an ongoing basis, not as a last resort measure to be used in emergencies after all possibilities for local purchase have been exhausted. Until our government abandons a system that dumps surplus from American agribusiness on the developing world, its efforts at ending hunger will remain counterproductive. Then again, if you are the D.C. lobbyist for Big Ag, maybe that's the point. Maintaining the developing world's cycle of dependence is profitable business.
The time has come for us to pay attention, to heed the wishes of the Haitian people to be empowered. We must demand that the purpose of our work in Haiti is not to merely rebuild an export market for our surpluses, but rather to support a Haitian-led effort to create a country that can stand on its own, build a sustainable economy and feed its people. Over the next couple of months, Congress will be discussing how to allocate more than $1.6 billion in supplemental funding for Haiti. I urge you to contact your elected representatives and let them know that this money must be used to empower communities, not corporations.
Each year, during Passover, we say "let all who are hungry, come and eat." Then, ironically, we proceed to enjoy a wonderful meal with our families and friends while our front doors remain closed. If you will be celebrating Passover this year, I ask that you open your doors -- at least metaphorically -- and hear those calls from a country just a few hundred miles off our shore. Recognize that the people of Haiti may not need our food. Rather, they need us to listen as they tell us how we can really help.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Experts urge change in “culture of aid” to Haiti
From Caribbean360
NEW YORK, United States, March 8, 2010 – A delegation of human rights experts is preparing to visit Haiti to assess the human rights and aid situation in the earthquake-crippled nation and to urge the international community to follow a series of guidelines they have prepared to help donors to "overcome the mistakes of the past."
The team will be conducting its assessments through interviews and onsite visits both inside and outside of Port-au-Prince, focusing on towns where dislocation has been most acute since the January 12th earthquake.
The trip, scheduled for March 9th to 12th, comes ahead of the March 23rd hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, where members of the delegation will provide testimony aimed at encouraging the commission to formally investigate the human rights impacts of post-earthquake aid on behalf of the Organisation of American States.
It also precedes the much-anticipated March 31st Haiti Donors' Conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York, where future aid to Haiti will be discussed. The groups recently issued a list of recommendations outlining a rights-based approach to aid delivery in advance of that conference, and have a long history of working on aid and human rights issues in Haiti.
The delegation will consist of representatives from prominent human rights organisations - the Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at NYU School of Law and the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights (RFK Center) - and Haitian experts from the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) and Zanmi Lasante/Partners in Health.
They plan to conduct what they describe as the first of a series of assessments that will span the coming year.
One member of the delegation, Monika Kalra Varma, executive director of the RFK Centre, told IPS "Rhetoric and goodwill go only so far. Forging a real partnership with the Haitian people will require a total change in the culture of delivering aid to Haiti. Yet if that kind of partnership is not achieved, we will have more of the failures we have seen for decades.”
Noting that this is a requirement not only for country donors but also for the large number of international NGOs operating in Haiti, she said the Haitian people "must have an active voice" in what is being planned for their country.
"This is not simply a Port-au-Prince problem," she stressed. "A million people have fled the capital for safer locations elsewhere, usually with family members. Those people too must be included in the new partnership."
The groups are recommending "a rights-based approach”. They want donor states to act with full transparency and accountability, making information about their plans and programmes available to all, and work with the Haitian government to set up public monitoring and reporting mechanisms.
They called for the creation of a multi-donor fund that includes Haitian officials, civil society and community-based organisations as voting members on the governing committee, and urged that donors build the capacity of the Haitian government to manage its own aid programmes.
"This requires donors to work directly with the government of Haiti to identify needs and to develop, implement, and monitor programmes to provide basic public services, including education and public health, water, and sanitation services," the groups declared.
The capacity of the Haitian government to budget, disburse funds, and implement projects in a transparent way should be a high priority, the groups say. They are also recommending the creation of a "public web-based database to report and track donor pledges, disbursed funds, recipients, sector areas, and expected outcomes under the aegis of the Multi-Donor Fund."
"This is not simply a Port-au-Prince problem"
--Monika Kalra Varma
They must prioritize programmes benefiting vulnerable groups, including women and children, the disabled, the elderly, and internally displaced persons.
Accountability plays a major role in the series of recommendations. The groups propose the establishment and funding of a mechanism "to measure and monitor the outcomes of assistance projects at the community level”.
“All findings should be made public. This mechanism should be administered by the Government of Haiti in partnership with civil society and community-based groups and should include a mechanism for Haitians to register complaints about problems with implementation of projects,” they propose.
International aid to Haiti has been problematic for decades before the earthquake flattened the country's capital city, Port-au-Prince, leaving a million homeless and killing an estimated 200,000.
Aid to Haiti has been marked by frequent interruptions, particularly in assistance from the US, for political and ideological reasons. (IPS)
NEW YORK, United States, March 8, 2010 – A delegation of human rights experts is preparing to visit Haiti to assess the human rights and aid situation in the earthquake-crippled nation and to urge the international community to follow a series of guidelines they have prepared to help donors to "overcome the mistakes of the past."
The team will be conducting its assessments through interviews and onsite visits both inside and outside of Port-au-Prince, focusing on towns where dislocation has been most acute since the January 12th earthquake.
The trip, scheduled for March 9th to 12th, comes ahead of the March 23rd hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, where members of the delegation will provide testimony aimed at encouraging the commission to formally investigate the human rights impacts of post-earthquake aid on behalf of the Organisation of American States.
It also precedes the much-anticipated March 31st Haiti Donors' Conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York, where future aid to Haiti will be discussed. The groups recently issued a list of recommendations outlining a rights-based approach to aid delivery in advance of that conference, and have a long history of working on aid and human rights issues in Haiti.
The delegation will consist of representatives from prominent human rights organisations - the Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at NYU School of Law and the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights (RFK Center) - and Haitian experts from the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) and Zanmi Lasante/Partners in Health.
They plan to conduct what they describe as the first of a series of assessments that will span the coming year.
One member of the delegation, Monika Kalra Varma, executive director of the RFK Centre, told IPS "Rhetoric and goodwill go only so far. Forging a real partnership with the Haitian people will require a total change in the culture of delivering aid to Haiti. Yet if that kind of partnership is not achieved, we will have more of the failures we have seen for decades.”
Noting that this is a requirement not only for country donors but also for the large number of international NGOs operating in Haiti, she said the Haitian people "must have an active voice" in what is being planned for their country.
"This is not simply a Port-au-Prince problem," she stressed. "A million people have fled the capital for safer locations elsewhere, usually with family members. Those people too must be included in the new partnership."
The groups are recommending "a rights-based approach”. They want donor states to act with full transparency and accountability, making information about their plans and programmes available to all, and work with the Haitian government to set up public monitoring and reporting mechanisms.
They called for the creation of a multi-donor fund that includes Haitian officials, civil society and community-based organisations as voting members on the governing committee, and urged that donors build the capacity of the Haitian government to manage its own aid programmes.
"This requires donors to work directly with the government of Haiti to identify needs and to develop, implement, and monitor programmes to provide basic public services, including education and public health, water, and sanitation services," the groups declared.
The capacity of the Haitian government to budget, disburse funds, and implement projects in a transparent way should be a high priority, the groups say. They are also recommending the creation of a "public web-based database to report and track donor pledges, disbursed funds, recipients, sector areas, and expected outcomes under the aegis of the Multi-Donor Fund."
"This is not simply a Port-au-Prince problem"
--Monika Kalra Varma
They must prioritize programmes benefiting vulnerable groups, including women and children, the disabled, the elderly, and internally displaced persons.
Accountability plays a major role in the series of recommendations. The groups propose the establishment and funding of a mechanism "to measure and monitor the outcomes of assistance projects at the community level”.
“All findings should be made public. This mechanism should be administered by the Government of Haiti in partnership with civil society and community-based groups and should include a mechanism for Haitians to register complaints about problems with implementation of projects,” they propose.
International aid to Haiti has been problematic for decades before the earthquake flattened the country's capital city, Port-au-Prince, leaving a million homeless and killing an estimated 200,000.
Aid to Haiti has been marked by frequent interruptions, particularly in assistance from the US, for political and ideological reasons. (IPS)
Friday, March 5, 2010
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