The Haiti Report is a summary compilation of events as described in Haiti and international media prepared by Konbit Pou Ayiti/KONPAY. It does not reflect the opinions of any individual or organization. This service is intended to create a better understanding of the situation in Haiti by presenting the reader with reports that provide a variety of perspectives on the situation. To make a donation to support this service: Konbit Pou Ayiti, 7 Wall Street, Gloucester, MA, 01930 or visit our website: www.konpay.org 

IN THIS REPORT:
- US and Other Donors Support Education
- Countries Call for Extension of UN Peacekeeping Mission, Deadline is October 15
- Improved Environment for Freedom of Expression
- DR to Lead Hemisphere Fight Against Rubella
- New Border Forces Have Taken Control of Haiti-DR Border
- Promoting Renewable Energy in the Caribbean
- Sektè Popilè Belè Commemorates Victims of Bel-Air Assault
- Increased Access to Health Care in Central Plateau
- Cell Phones in Haiti, Digicel Signs up More Than 1 Million
– from Jubilee USA: Haiti: Digging Through A History of Economic Violence

US and Other Donors Support Education:
Thousands of Haitian schools reopened for the new school year last month, thanks in part to the support of the United States and other international donors. As Haiti’s government works to recover from years of instability, foreign aid remains a key source of backing for its struggling education system. One year ago, violence between criminal gangs, Haitian police and U.N. peacekeepers tore apart Cite Soleil. Since then, joint police efforts have brought peace to the nation’s largest slum and allowed residents to return and businesses to reopen. While the streets are much safer after the crackdown, there are still few opportunities for Haiti’s youth to receive an education and rise out of poverty. On one cite Soleil corner, resident Job Civil says he and many others wish for opportunities to help them escape long days of boredom. He says young people have little support, and what they need is an environment that will give them an education and create jobs in the community.

For years, Haitian schools have suffered from lack of resources and trained staff. Less than 70 percent of children attend primary school, and a fraction of those will go on to complete high school and college. One of the reasons is that the cost of schooling can be high for many families in Haiti, where public funding supports only about 10 percent of the nation’s 15,000 primary schools. Religious groups, community organizations and other private groups support the vast majority of schools, such as the St. Germain school in Port-au-Prince. The school’s assistant principal, Ernst Alexis, says conditions in Haiti mean that parents bear a large share of the financial burden for their children’s education. He says students, parents and schools must make constant sacrifices, and many families will do anything to find ways to send their children to school. Alexis says many families struggle to pay school fees and purchase supplies for their children, and while some students can afford textbooks, others make do with photocopies.

In addition to supporting security efforts, the United States, United Nations and other foreign partners have been trying to help rebuild Haiti’s education system. Over the past three years, the United States has given $24 million to education efforts in Haiti, to train teachers, develop programs and buy supplies. At a recent ceremony in the capital, officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development presented a check for $8 million for new textbooks and other materials for the new school year. Haiti’s Education Minister Gabriel Bien-Aime welcomed the U.S. support to help expand the Haitian government’s role in education. He says the money will help schools overcome some of the difficulties, as the government tries to provide books, uniforms and other materials to students. (VOA, 10/5)

Countries Call for Extension of UN Peacekeeping Mission, Deadline is October 15:
Countries in the U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti are eager to stay until the job of bringing security to the impoverished country is done, Brazil’s ambassador to Haiti said. The mandate of the U.N. mission dispatched to Haiti in 2004 and led by Brazil is up for renewal on Oct. 15. Haiti’s path to stability will take more time, Ambassador Paulo Cordeiro de Andrade Pinto said in telephone interview from Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince on Tuesday night. Andrade Pinto, who met with officials from countries in the U.N. force last week, said they showed enthusiasm for continuing the mission. However, the renewal resolution should also change the mission’s priorities to focus less on security and more on helping development, he said. ”This peacekeeping effort must be well-formed and stay in Haiti as long as it is necessary,” he said, adding that he believed most Haitians want the nearly 9,000-strong force to stay. (Reuters, 10/3)

The Bahamas has called on the United Nations (UN) to continue its mission in Haiti for sustainable development, peace, security and democracy. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Brent Symonette made the plea in an address at the 62nd Session of the UN General Assembly in New York on October 2. ”We urge the international community to support the people of Haiti in this quest,” he said. At a time when the international community is engaged in serious reflections regarding the history and consequences of slavery and the slave trade he said The Bahamas wishes to recognise Haiti as the only country to liberate itself from slavery and for the inspiration this provided to the international campaign against slavery. ”Since modern forms of slavery still exist and many people continue to be held in servitude we must not relent in our resolve until everyone is able to enjoy and exercise the freedoms which this organisation has worked so diligently to recognise, uphold and defend,” Symonette said. He noted that despite Haiti’s proud history of becoming the first black republic in 1804 challenges have beset The Bahamas’ neighbour for generations. ”Haiti’s return to democratic order last year was especially welcomed and we celebrate the strides Haiti is making along the difficult and arduous road to peace, security and development,” Mr. Symonette said. “We heartily commended President (Rene) Preval and his administration for their stewardship of this demanding process.” He also commended the Organisation of American States (OAS) for its unstinting support of the people of Haiti. ”The United Nations Mission in Haiti continues to play a vital role in this process and The Bahamas supports the call for that mission to be maintained so as to consolidate the gains made to date and thus place our CARICOM sister country on a firm and lasting path to sustainable development, peace, security and democracy,” Symonette said.(Caribbean Net News, 10/5)

Improved Environment for Freedom of Expression:
There has been an improvement in the situation of freedom of expression in Haiti, officials of the Organization of American States claim. The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the OAS made the claim during a recent visit to Haiti. Officials claim that the information received from distinct sectors affirms that there has been an improvement in the situation in the country. But they urged for the adoption of measures to effectively protect the right to freedom of expression. These include ensuring the effective and prompt investigation, prosecution and punishment in cases of assassination of journalists, and determining whether the murder was related to journalistic activity. And the adoption of measures to ensure that domestic legislation is compatible with the American Convention on Human Rights regarding the right to freedom of expression as well as the creation of laws in the area of access to information to ensure that access to public information is guaranteed as a human right. The current visit of the Office of the Special Rapporteur to Haiti, that took place from September 26th through September 28th, was based on efforts by the present government to improve the human rights situation in the country. (Hardbeatnews.com, 10/5)

DR to Lead Hemisphere Fight Against Rubella:
Dominican Republic will head the hemisphere’s fight against rubella and the congenital rubella syndrome, with the designation of the First Lady Margarita Cedeño as the continent’s ambassador for the elimination of the disease. Cedeño’s designation took place during the Pan-American Health Organization’s (OPS) 27th Pan-American Sanitary Conference, held from October 1 to 5. In her speech before the OPS the Dominican First Lady said last year more than five million Dominicans between seven and 39 years of age were vaccinated against rubella and the congenital rubella syndrome nationwide, which prompted the international organism to grant the certificate on the disease’s elimination. Cedeño said Dominican Republic is also committed to collaborate with Haiti to eradicate the disease and will accompany the Haitian authorities in the vaccination effort slated for November. (Dominican Today, 10/6)

New Border Forces Have Taken Control of Haiti-DR Border:
The Specialized Frontier Security Corps (Cesfront) appears to have taken effective control of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. According to the commanding general, Adriano Silverio Rodriguez, “not even a reminder” has passed through the border. During the first days and nights of their new job, the Cesfront troops have picked up weapons and contraband goods as well as illegal immigrants trying to enter the DR under the cover of darkness. General Silverio did not tell reporters that there was a total cessation of illegal activities along the border, but he emphasized that new patrols were in place to greatly reduce the flow of illegal goods. As perhaps an additional proof that things were changing, the “El Espia” (The Spy) column in Diario Libre carried a note telling of an incident in Jimani whereby a Cesfront lieutenant stopped a group of civilians crossing the border assisted by a Dominican army major. Although the major attempted to pull rank, the lieutenant stood firm and the major had to back down. Some observers of the scene described it as “a good start.” (DR1 Daily News, 10/1)

Promoting Renewable Energy in the Caribbean:
Latin American energy and security policy expert Johanna Mendelson-Forman is in the DR to promote the expanding use of renewable energies. The DR is one of four countries (the others are Haiti, St. Kitts-Nevis and El Salvador) participating in the U.S.-Brazil Biofuels Partnership outreach program. Her visit is sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank, the Organization of American States and the United Nations Development Fund. Mendelson has advocated for a Hispaniola project on bioenergy, saying that it could create significant benefits for peace and security, and lay the foundation for greater cross-border cooperation with Haiti. Mendelson is a senior associate of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. Under the partnership, the world’s two largest ethanol producers are committed to helping less-developed countries in the Western Hemisphere to promote production of biofuels from local crops, and reduce their dependency on fuel oils. The partnership also intends to advance the research in and development of more efficient biofuel technologies and to work toward a greater convergence of biofuel standards around the world. For starters, the partnership is funding feasibility studies to determine which types of sugarcane and other plants, such as castor bean and jatropha shrubs, are best suited to local conditions and examine other factors such as soil quality, environmental impact and the potential for rural development. The partnership was based on findings in a report, “A Blueprint for Green Energy in the Americas” prepared for the Inter-American Development Bank. See www.iadb.org/biofuels/ and lugar.senate.gov/energy/hearings/pdf/060622/Forman_Testimony.pdf (DR1 Daily News, 9/20)

Sektè Popilè Belè Commemorates Victims of Bel-Air Assault:
Two years ago, on September 30, 2005, the de facto government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue and President Boniface Alexandre launched a fatal assault on the people of Bel Air, a popular district within Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince. Bel-Air residents speaking of the assault, widely considered it similar to the attacks that US soldiers have launched in Baghdad, Iraq. A mass in memory of the victims of the assault, which Bel Air residents now refer to as “Operation Baghdad” was celebrated on Sunday at the Church of Notre Dame du Perpétuel Secours, which is also the site of the Lady of Perpetual Help. In attendance were Annette Auguste “So An”, a folk singer and Fanmi Lavalas activist, many residents, victims and local Lavalassians as well as journalists of the international media. Also in attendance was Paul Denis, a leader of Organisation du Peuple en Lutte (OPL), an anti-Aristide political party. Attendees were unsure if Denis was attending in an attempt to make peace with the people that his past actions had harmed so much or if it was purely a provocation. But in the church, in a communal atmosphere, there was a feeling of open dialogue, something that Haitian priest Gerald Jean-Juste called for last month.

Bel Air is a poor hillside district within Port-au-Prince. From Bel Air one can see the National Palace, the National Port Authority (APN) and other zones. It is also a zone of pilgrimage where people travel through to visit the well-known and beautiful church. According to Bel Air residents, the de facto government’s assault targeted those who called for the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, flown out of the country by US troops on February 29, 2004. Aristide maintains that he was taken against his will. An official investigation was never carried out by the OAS despite requests by CARICOM, numerous African countries, Venezuela and Cuba. Evens Elisma, a member of Sektè Popilè Belè, read a message of thanks but also of dissatisfaction: ”Today we gather in front of all the authorities local and international and everyone present at the feet of the Notre Dame of Perpetual Help who is the protective one and champion of peace in Haiti. We ask for health, work, education and vocational training this year. We thank the mothers of Bel Air, because they didn’t retreat when the de facto government asked them to leave the church which would have allowed them to use heavy weapons against the people. To all of them we say thank you. Sektè Popilè Belè organized this event because it marks the first birthday of the year of Peace, and the second birthday of the Baghdad Operation launched against the people of Bel Air.” Sektè Popilè Belè stressed two other points. First Preval’s statement “Look at me in the eyes, I look at you in the eyes.” They responded that Preval’s expression should be directed at former allies of Aristide who betrayed Haitian democracy and participated in the coup d’etat of 2004 which cost Haiti thousands of lives and uprooted many more. Secondly, they stressed that the local population’s agreement with MINUSTAH to guarantee peace and security for Bel Air has not been honored by the UN soldiers. (People’s Weekly World Newspaper, 10/04)

Increased Access to Health Care in Central Plateau:
An increasing number of Haitians living in the rural Central Plateau region will soon be able to access healthcare with help from a Miami-based group. The Green Family Foundation, a philanthropic organization that supports health programs locally and in Haiti, says it is committing an additional $2.4 million over the next five years to fund community health programs in rural Haiti as part of its expanding global health initiative. The foundation, led by Miami Beach documentarian Kimberly Green, made the announcement this week during former President Bill Clinton’s third annual Clinton Global Initiative in New York. The event brought together more 1,300 world leaders in business and healthcare as well as heads of state including Haiti President René Préval. ’’More people will have access to healthcare, more will have access to drugs and there will be more treatment of TB, Malaria and HIV,’’ Green said. Earlier this year, Project Medishare, a medical mission affiliated with the University of Miami and partly funded by the Green Family Foundation, reported that it had seen a significant drop in HIV rates in Thomonde, the central plateau town where it has been providing healthcare for years. Green said that while some of the funds will go toward helping Project Medishare continue its work in Thomonde, the funds also will support other clinics in the area, expanding the number of people being served from 45,000 to 75,000. Part of the money also will go toward development activities with a focus on eliminating hunger, improving income and providing clean water and education. ’’We are putting over 50 percent of the foundation’s budget into this program,’’ Green said. Still, getting Haiti on the global healthcare agenda is not easy said Green, who noted much of the discussion this week in New York has focused on Africa. But by spending time with those who are succeeding in Uganda and elsewhere on the Africa continent, she said, she hopes to solutions for Haiti both with the fundraising and the needed focus. (Miami Herald, 9/28)

Cell Phones in Haiti, Digicel Signs up More Than 1 Million:
In a country where most people live without paved roads, running water or even electricity, there’s one modern convenience that more than a quarter of the people are enjoying: a cellphone. Cellphones are connecting Haitians in unheard-of ways, touching the lives of rich and poor, farmer and urbanite, and propelling this Caribbean nation to nearly first-world stature — at least when it comes to talking on the phone. Consider what life was like for Soimise Lautin before her daughter handed her a cellphone a year ago. To contact relatives, the charcoal merchant had to take a three-hour journey in overcrowded buses along perilous rural roads. ”Now I don’t have to do that. I just call to know what is happening,” said Lautin, one of the millions of Haitians without any of the country’s 150,000 expensive and often unreliable land lines. “It has changed my life.”

While the penetration of land lines remains at just 2 percent countrywide, cellular penetration has increased from zero to 29 percent in less than 10 years, according to government figures. The industry represents the largest investment in Haiti in decades. ”Cellular brings to the poor and marginalized people the feeling that they are part of the society,” said Jean-Marie Raymond Noel, who oversaw a recent U.N. Development Program study of 13 major Haitian cities that showed four out of five households had at least one cellphone. The revolution is not limited to Haiti. Cellphones also are spreading rapidly across the Caribbean region, where government deregulation has led to competition, drastically reduced rates, increased access, better service and even societal changes. The cellular expansion has sprouted related businesses. In Haiti, enterprising Haitians have realized they can make a living charging others to use their cellphones, and have set up shops along the streets. 

In Jamaica, like in Haiti, much of the cell expansion is credited to Digicel which debuted in the Caribbean in 2001 with an offer of affordable service. The telecommunications provider signed up 100,000 customers in 100 days. In response, other companies have been forced to fast-track offerings of high-tech devices like the BlackBerry, whose availability in the Caribbean significantly lagged that in the United States until recently. The marketing blitz has extended to South Florida, where local radio ads inform Caribbean natives that they can now pre-pay cellular minutes for friends and relatives on the islands. Haiti’s HaiTel company allows Floridians to buy a phone over the Internet and have it delivered anywhere in the mountainous country. ”Digicel is the new word for competition in Haiti,” said Kesner Pharel, a leading Haitian economist. “The revolution isn’t just with the cellphones but the way these people are managing their companies. They are going right to people’s faces and selling their companies.”

Digicel nonetheless recorded a 144 percent increase in overall regional subscriber growth, with 5.2 million users in the 12-month period ended in June. With 1.6 million customers in Haiti, Digicel’s customer base there is now nearly as big as that in Jamaica. Digicel had projected signing up 300,000 users over two years. It instead lined up 1 million in only eight months. ”Haiti has been a phenomenal success,” Delves said. “Our experience has exceeded any of our initial expectations.” Digicel’s decision to enter the Haitian market was not based on a formal market survey, Delves said, rather via two days of driving the traffic-clogged streets of this capital city. ”What we saw was a huge population that was being completely underserved,” Delves said. “There’s just so much trading in Haiti done on the streets. There’s a big cash base and market there.” (Miami Herald, 9/30)

Haiti: Digging Through A History of Economic Violence
In mid-August 2007 Nazaire St. Fort and myself took a tap-tap transport heading out on Delmas toward downtown Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. We soon passed in front of the National Palace, the seat of so many past Haitian presidents and governments. Crossing a street near the palace, we reached the Ministry of Planarization and right next to it the Ministry of Finance.  We visited two other government ministries soon after, spending the next few days traveling between them all, entering into rarely touched archives and in the process probably bugging quite a number of ministerial employees (although making friendly acquaintances along the way). In one archive a young page told us that he believed some of the documents had disappeared under the previous unelected interim government, but he could tell us little more. His boss did not seem friendly to the question when we pressed the issue. But overall, what we found was astonishing.

Combing Through the Past: Our main goal was to gather as many national government budgets as we could find from the ‘90s and 2000s for further study. Many of Haiti’s past government budgets are unavailable online and we could not find any hard copy versions of any of the budgets amongst any of our friends or contacts. But finally there they were. We found them or at least some of them in a glass cabinet of an employee at one of the ministries. The employee was more then willing to answer our numerous questions and even copied a few prints on his old copy machine. First, we looked through a national government budget booklet from 1990, then another from the 1996 to 1997 fiscal year, which on the first few pages listed foreign loans and aid coming into the country. It appeared to amount to a few hundred million dollars for the year, possibly more. The smiling government economist sitting in his chair leaned back. He seemed surprised that Nazaire and I, both university students — but from different countries, one from Haiti and one from the United States — were so fascinated with looking at these old, wrinkled financial dossiers now mostly frayed at the corners. If anything, we were not short on questions. We asked about the preceding years; where were the budgets for the fiscal years of 1997 to 1998, 1998 to 1999 and 1999 to 2000?  He responded that between the years 1997 and 2000, because of an intransigent Senate, the government worked off of the same 1997 budget. 

A History of Economic Violence: Some of the donor-friendly elite Haitian political parties throughout this time period (1997 to 2000) were successful in holding up Haiti’s legislature. They were upset with elections that were not going their way. And other upsetting factors included mass organizing on the part of popular movements and Haiti’s poor against the privatization program for which the  country’s elite had so firmly advocated and staked their political fortune. In 2000, Haiti entered another election cycle, which overwhelmingly confirmed that Haiti’s impoverished opposed the neoliberal wide-scale privatization programs advocated for by the donors and their local arbiters. The U.S. representative at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) with Pres. George W. Bush in office was soon lobbying for an all out embargo on financial aid to Haiti’s elected government. A top representative of the International Republican Institute (IRI) made a similar argument in front of a U.S. congressional hearing. The Haitian government economist smiled because he knew what we were trying to figure out.  “So you want to know how much Aristide got cut off from?” He referred to Haiti’s former elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had returned to office in 2001 after leaving office in the first ever democratic handover of power in Haiti, in 1996. The ministerial economist handed us a sizable booklet, showing the 2001 government budget. Upon opening the booklet, our jaws dropped.

Showing the Money: Nearly all of the foreign loans and aid had disappeared. The money had vanished. Government road construction, AIDs programs, water works and health care that were often contingent upon these funds would have undergone a major funding crisis. So what happened? This would have had to have led to a severe tightening of resources; penny pinching just to get by; severe destabilization; and an economic catastrophe. On the positive side, all we could glean was that the Haitian government received a tiny sum of aid from Taiwan and a small loan from Venezuela. We estimated — adding the foreign funding in with the actual real tax income of the government — that Haiti, according to the 2001 budget, had been cut off almost entirely from what should have been around 40 percent to 55 percent of its total budget. We could not believe our eyes.

The Truth? How could we have read so many journalists’ stories on Haiti, even written stories on Haiti ourselves and never realized the full extent of this financial aid embargo? I had studied and researched a good deal on development, donor organizations, foreign aid and even dependency in Haiti but had never seen anything like this: Aid starvation was used to such a large extent to crush an elected government. It all became so much more clear just by looking at the numbers. The aid embargo was so cruel, so inhumane that Columbia University economist Jeffery Sachs could not contain his disgust: “U.S. officials surely knew that the aid embargo would mean a balance-of-payments crisis, a rise in inflation and a collapse of living standards, all of which fed the rebellion.” How can we even begin to study Haiti during the 2000 to 2004 period without fully studying the effects of this embargo? How can Haiti develop if aid is so heavily fluctuating, flooding into the country during times of palatable pro-privatization governments with the spigot cut off when governments desire to preserve their civil enterprises?

The only helpful material I have been able to find that actually discussed well the aid embargo were a number of distressful reports sent out by Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health and the book Let Haiti Live published just prior to the 2004 coup of then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.  Let Haiti Live includes a foreword by minister-activist Jesse Jackson and Haitian literary giant Edwidge Danticat. This book was a work meant to be read, but sadly few saw its pages. And even fewer would see them in time. Haiti deserved and deserves an international outcry over the unjust policies responsible for an unquantifiable amount of suffering. The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center, one of the few with the long-term commitment to pursue this in the legal arena, late last year brought a lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury Department (the initial promoters of the aid embargo on Haiti). If the RFK is successful in its lawsuit, it would be a monumental victory. Similarly, if Jubilee USA and solidarity groups are successful in pressuring the U.S. Congress to support dropping Haiti’s onerous and odious debt, this debt cancellation could benefit millions. The ability of Haiti’s sovereign institutions have long been twisted and contorted by foreign donors, but by supporting Jubilee USA’s work together with both drop-the-debt activists and faith-based communities across North America we can and will achieve some economic justice! (Jubilee USA Network, Jeb Sprague)