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When this article appears on
the morning of March 31, the
much ballyhooed “International
Donors Conference Towards a New
Future for Haiti” will be getting underway
at UN Headquarters in Manhattan.
While demonstrators in the
street outside protest the continuing
US and UN military occupation of
Haiti, now over six years old, and
the Haitian people’s exclusion from
deliberations on the country’s reconstruction,
dignitaries inside like UN
Special Envoy to Haiti Bill Clinton,
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon,
and Haitian President René Préval
will unveil a plan with lots of pomp
and ceremony but which boils down
to just one thing: Washington’s takeover
of the “new” Haiti.
Hyperbole? Unfortunately, no.
The lead editorial in the New York
Times, which generally articulates the
thinking of the US power elite, lays
it out clearly: “The plan envisions a
multidonor trust fund managed by
the World Bank that pools money
for big projects and avoids wasteful
redundancy. The Haitian Development
Authority would approve
the projects; outside auditors would
oversee the spending.” (Our emphasis
added.)
Translation: the World Bank,
not Haiti, will run the show, a council
of foreigners (with a sprinkling of
token Haitians) will rubberstamp directives,
and other foreign overseers
will supervise the Haitians carrying
out the directives.
Although lots of international
“friends of Haiti” will be involved
in this circus, Washington is the
ringleader, using handmaidens like
Canada and the Dominican Republic.
The meetings to prepare the ground
for Mar. 31 were held in Montreal on
Jan.25 and Santo Domingo on Mar.
15-17.
Préval has generally implemented
Washington’s austerity and
privatization dictates, making him
a US darling and the Haitian people’s
bogeyman. However, after the
quake, he and his prime-minister
made some imprudent complaints
about being sidelined while the US
and NGOs ham-fi stedly directed relief
and reconstruction efforts. Washington
put him back in his place by
calling him corrupt, a charge Préval
called “arrogant.” Despite such outbursts,
Préval appears to be behaving
again but still promoting the fi ction
that he’s deciding things.
“Haiti is an independent government,
an independent country
and the government must say what
must be done,” he told Al Jazeera
in a Mar. 29 interview when asked
who was in charge in Haiti. “But the
government doesn’t have the fi nancial
means to do it. So we will have
to speak to the donors so that they
make available the funds for the
government to do what it desires to
do.” As for the foreign experts which
will dominate in the Haitian Development
Authority, he explains that
“a lot of our professionals are dead”
and “we are leaning on the NGOs to
help us to do what we need to do
right now.”
The centerpieces of the US, UN,
and World Bank plan for Haiti are
sweatshops and tourism. Of course
there is lip-service paid to the concerns
raised by Haitians about revitalizing
agriculture and making the
country self-suffi cient in food again
after 25 years of neo-liberal deconstruction.
“Decentralization” is another
key theme, but, done a certain
way, this can also weaken and circumvent
Haiti’s central government,
which Washington has sought to do
since the Haitian people elected exiled
former President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide in 1990. “Raising money for Haiti is
all well and good. But which Haiti
is getting the money?” asked Vijay
Prashad, Director of International
Studies at Trinity College in Hartford,
CT. “Is the Haiti of structural adjustment,
the raft on the Caribbean,
fated to being reduced to a factory
and a port for Royal Caribbean’s
cruise ships? All the efforts thus
far seem to suggest that this is the
Haiti that is being promised.” that is being promised.”
In articles, radio shows, conferences,
demonstrations and graffi ti,
the Haitian people have made their
opposition to this plan known but
“Haitian civil society has been completely
bypassed in decision-making
regarding the post-earthquake
reconstruction process,” wrote Bev
Bell of the economic justice group
Other Worlds earlier this month.
“The Haiti government’s Post-Disaster
Needs Assessment, launched
February 18, granted one week,
March 14-20, for ‘consultation with
civil society and the private sector,’
according to the terms of reference.
However, the government [had] to
approve the draft plan on March 15.
Furthermore, the government has
failed to invoke even the token discussions,
not consulting civil society
in any way except informally with
some businesspeople and several
non-governmental organizations
who do not speak for citizens.” |
