A food
distribution program aimed at expectant and new mothers and
their babies may have increased the number of girls and women
getting pregnant in and around the town of Savanette, located in
Haiti’s Centre département (province).
That's the perception of many
residents and even beneficiaries of a USAID-funded World Vision
“Multi-Year Assistance Program” (MYAP), running from 2008
through September 2013 here and in a number of communities in
Haiti. As part of the MYAP, World Vision distributes food to
pregnant women and mothers of children six to 23 months old
(so-called “1,000 day programming”), as well as to vulnerable
populations such as people living with AIDS, orphans, and
malnourished children.
“There are some people getting
pregnant every year” in order to get free food, claimed Carmène
Louis, a former beneficiary. “That’s why there are more children
around. If you want to get in the program, you can’t unless you
are pregnant… You see youngsters [getting pregnant at] 12 or 15
years old! I think it’s a real problem for Savanette.”
But she also admitted that some
of her neighbors were hungry, saying “things are getting worse,
not better.”
While the lack of up-to-date
statistics prevented Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) from verifying
whether or not the birthrate had indeed risen in Savanette, an
investigation carried out over the course of a year discovered
that many in this village near the Dominican Republic border –
including respected elders, community radio members, an
agronomist, and several beneficiaries – believe the MYAP has
caused girls and women to resort to pregnancy in order to
receive the bulgur wheat, beans, vegetable oil, and flour at
monthly distributions.
A USAID-funded report on food
aid programs in Haiti appears to confirm the perception.
Evaluators for the 2013 USAID-BEST Analysis noted “a rise in
pregnancies in one rural area and the possibility of this
phenomenon being linked to public perceptions of 1,000 days
programming,” although the report did not name which “rural
area."
Like many others questioned,
agronomist Ruben Louis Jeune swore to the phenomenon and
expressed concern.
“There are people who get
pregnant on purpose,” he said, noting that often “youngsters are
making babies. The population is growing, people are having
children but they will not be able to afford to take care of
them or pay for school.”
Asked about the possible
increased pregnancies, Haiti's Secretary of State for the
Revival of Agriculture said that, while he was not familiar with
the case, it was not out of the question.
“I have worked in the Central
Plateau for 15 years,” he told HGW. “If I talk to you just about
the perverse effects of the programs I myself have seen in front
of my eyes… there are so many!”
The World Vision MYAP program
also provides pregnant women and young mothers with prenatal
care as well as support for vegetable gardens, “Behavior Change
Communication” education, and other benefits via “Mothers
Clubs.” In addition, the program has many other aspects related
to helping Haitian farmers improve their animal husbandry or
crop output, including technical assistance and training for
farmers associations, distribution of seeds and livestock,
support for improving irrigation, and other help.
HGW did not look at those
aspects of the program. Journalists focused only on the food aid
and its real or perceived impacts in and around Savanette.
The food assistance program is
an attempt by USAID to target vulnerable populations, especially
children.
The Haitian government and
foreign agencies say at least 21% of all children suffer from
“stunting,” meaning they are under-weight and under-height for
their age. Some provinces are worse than others, and rural
children generally have a higher stunting prevalence.
Beginning in 2008, USAID funded
MYAPs to be run by World Vision, ACDI/VOCA and Catholic Relief
Services in three different regions of the country, providing
money as well as food: about 14,000 metric tons (MT) of food aid
per year during the 2011-2013 period. (The organizations
received and distributed higher amounts in 2010 and 2011 as part
of the earthquake response.)
World Vision received 4,275 MT
for FY2012 and approximately 3,830 MT for FY2013, which ended on
September 30. The U.S.-based agency also received almost US$80
million for the grant, to which they added some of their own
funding. The program cost over US$90 million for 2008-2012 and
was extended for one year. (HGW could not find the cost of the
additional year.)
World Vision’s food
distribution programs on La Gonâve, the Central Plateau, and
parts of the Artibonite province cost about US$4.5 million per
year, according to the agency’s communications officer Jean-Wickens
Méroné.
According to a World Vision
evaluation of its own work, published in 2012, the food aid has
had positive effects. During the first three years of the MYAP,
the internal report says, the amount of “stunting” dropped for
children aged six to 59 months went from 23.5% to 6%.
Food aid is "more negative than
positive”
Some in and around Savanette are
undernourished. In the last two years of FEWSNET reports, the
Savanette region is pretty consistently considered “stressed,”
which is #2 on a scale of #1 to #5, #1 being “no food
insecurity” and #5 being “catastrophe/famine.”
“There is hunger here,”
agronomist Jeune noted. “The distribution of food is not in and
of itself a problem. It has a small positive impact, but when
you investigate, you see that it is more negative than
positive.”
Like Jeune, farmers and
residents of Savanette have many questions about the program,
which comes on of decades of food aid.
In addition to the real or
perceived pregnancy increase, HGW also discovered that farmers
and agronomists are convinced food aid has helped create a
culture of dependence, discouraging people from working all of
their plots and planting formerly important grains like sorghum.
It has also encouraged consumers to buy imported rice rather
than buy or grow sorghum, corn, and other crops, as in the past.
Even beneficiaries raised
questions about the program. In the fall of 2012, HGW
journalists queried 25 beneficiary families. All of them said
they had land and were farmers. Two-thirds said that – given the
option – they would prefer to receive seeds to food aid. (Some
beneficiaries said they did receive a one-time donation of
vegetable seeds.)
Merilus Derius, 71, said he
thinks the younger generations do seem to want to farm, and he
added that they not value some the foods he grew up eating.
“People are neglecting their
fields!” the farmer told HGW. “Before, we used to be able to
live off our land.”
While Derius admitted that
environmental degradation and other factors have contributed to
decreased agricultural output he also blamed the invasion of
food aid and cheap foreign food, which people buy instead of
local products.
“Now we have this food called
‘rice husks.’ In the Dominican Republic, they give it to
animals. In Haiti, people eat it! But before, farmers grew
sorghum and ground it. They grew Congo peas, planted potatoes,
planted manioc. On a morning like this, a farmer would make his
coffee and then – using a thing called ‘top-top,’ a little mill
– he would crush sugar cane and boil the sugar cane water, and
eat cassava bread, and he would have good health!” he said.
“When you lived off your garden, you were independent… But when
your stomach depends on someone else, you are not independent.”
World Vision does not believe
its program creates dependency because most of the program is
concerned with helping farmers improve their production.
“It is a program that
encourages resiliency and independence, after a certain period,”
World Vision’s Director of Operations, Lionel Isaac, told HGW.
Indeed, it would be unfair to
blame the World Vision program for all of Savanette’s woes.
Jeune, other agronomists, and farmers like Derius hope that the
plethora of recently announced government and foreign
agricultural projects will help their region, which is capable
of producing sorghum, corn, many kinds of vegetables and fruits,
tubers, and livestock products like milk. The area has a lot of
potential, Jeune said, but archaic farming methods, with few or
no agricultural inputs, keep it from being self-sufficient.
“All of the communes produce
food,” Jeune noted. “If farmers had technical assistance, they
would make more money and the quality would improve also.”
Questions About a Food Distribution
On March 18, 2013, HGW journalists observed
a food distribution that raised questions about how
beneficiaries are treated.
Food was handed out to people
who had stood in line for many hours, sometimes to groups who
would divide it up. Journalists witnessed shoving and even
fighting, as well as older women sitting on the ground, picking
individual lentil beans.
“At a lot of distributions, you
see pushing,” Jeune told HGW. “Old people are sometimes hurt.
Even if food is being handed out, basic principals should be
respected.”
Questioned in 2012, about
one-third of 25 beneficiaries said they had been mistreated
during food distributions.
World Vision workers did not
want HGW to videotape the March 18 distribution where – at the
end of the distribution – some food had not been handed out.
“You can’t film here!” one of
the men yelled, shoving the journalists. Along with others, he
tried to force journalists to turn off their camera and leave.
Members of the community radio
station and other bystanders protected the journalists, who were
eventually allowed to continue their work. World Vision
officials in the capital later apologized for the attack, saying
they had disciplined the employees.
Haiti Grassroots Watch is a collaboration of two Haitian
organizations, Groupe Medialternatif/Alterpresse and the Society
for the Animation of Social Communication (SAKS), along with
students from the Faculty of Human Sciences at the State
University of Haiti and members of two networks – the network of
women community radio broadcasters (REFRAKA) and the Association
of Haitian Community Media (AMEKA), which is comprised of
community radio stations located across the country. This series
produced by HGW is distributed in collaboration with
Haiti
Liberté. |