Farrakhan arrived in Port-au-Prince on Sunday and is being received very well among politicians and the people.

Minister Farrakhan lands in Haiti

By Richard B. Muhammad Editor | Last updated: Dec 13, 2011 – 12:57:44 PM

(FinalCall.com) – Media turned out for a major press conference at Toussaint L’Ouverture Airport in Port-au-Prince when the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan arrived in Haiti, the western hemisphere’s first Black republic.

The Minister’s arrival Dec. 11 sparked a flurry of activity and meetings, which included the press conference and a reception that evening attended by some of Haiti’s national lawmakers, said Abdul Akbar Muhammad, international representative of the Nation of Islam.

During the reception, Min. Farrakhan walked through Haiti’s history and independence heroes in a masterful way, said Mr. Akbar Muhammad.

“He talked about the importance of Haiti, the Caribbean, and what Haiti was and is,” the longtime aide to Min. Farrakhan said. “This trip to Haiti has been overwhelming, in terms of their reception of the Minister, it was almost unbelievable.”

Min. Farrakhan shared how Voodoo was important to the country’s coming to birth and though Haitians may be Christians and Muslims, leaders of the spiritual movements need to come together for the good of the country, he continued.

The Minister was scheduled to be in Haiti for five days and is looking at how the Nation can help Haiti rebuild almost two years after a major earthquake.

“I have longed throughout my life to set my foot in the sacred soil of Haiti,” Min. Farrakhan said, at the airport press conference.

Haitian Foreign Minister Laurent Lamor welcomed the Minister at the airport. President Michel Martelly is scheduled to meet with Min. Farrakhan during the visit.

Haitians welcomed the Minister is a wonderful way, said Mr. Akbar Muhammad.

The Haitian government has provided security and transportation within the country, he added.

Prior to his visit, the Minister and the Nation of Islam donated a $150,000 water purification system to Haiti in August, on the 200th anniversary of the gathering that led to the Haitian Revolution. The 30,000 gallon-a-day system, which is solar powered, was installed in partnership with activist Ezili Danto and her Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network. The installation included a weeklong training on the system and a delegation of Nation of Islam Muslims primarily of Haitian descent. The water will be distributed to different communities in Port-au-Prince. Cholera, a waterborne disease, has killed hundreds and injured thousands in Haiti, and the system was part of an effort by Min. Farrakhan to directly help the poorest and most vulnerable Haitians. Cholera is widely believed to have been introduced by unsanitary practices of a contingent of UN peacekeepers.

MINUSTAH by the Numbers, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Thursday, 08 December 2011 14:19

The United Nations Peacekeeping operation in Haiti, MINUSTAH by its French acronym, has been the target of recent popular protests and a source of controversy because of its role in re-introducing cholera to Haiti, the sexual assault of a young Haitian man and other past abuses. On November 3, 2011 the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and Bureau des Avocats Internationaux filed a legal complaint on behalf of over 5,000 cholera victims seeking damages from the United Nations. The UN has so far not responded or given a timetable for a response. Here is MINUSTAH, by the numbers: Percent of worldwide UN peacekeepers that are in Haiti, despite it not being a war zone: 12.5 Number of MINUSTAH troops (military and police) currently in Haiti: 12,552 Rank in size among the 16 UN peacekeeping operations worldwide: 3 Rank in size of Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo, respectively: 1, 2 Percent of Haiti’s annual government expenditures to which MINUSTAH’s budget is equivalent: 50 Percent of Haiti’s GDP to which MINUSTAH’s budget is equivalent: 10.7 Total estimated cost of MINUSTAH since the earthquake: $1,556,461,550 Percent of UN peacekeeping operations worldwide funded by the United States: 27 Percent the U.S. has disbursed out of its $1.15 billion pledge at the March 2010 donor conference: 18.8 Percent of the U.S.’ contributions to MINUSTAH since the earthquake that this represents: 41 Factor by which MINUSTAH’s budget exceeds the amount of funds the UN’s cholera appeal has raised: 8 Percent of MINUSTAH’s budget it would take to fully fund the UN’s cholera appeal: 1.7 Number of days operating expenses it would take to fund a cholera vaccination campaign that would cover the entire country: 18 Percent of a single day’s MINUSTAH budget that the cholera vaccination pilot program will use over its multiple-week lifespan: 40 Minimum number of people killed from cholera in Haiti since October 2010: 6,908 Number of people killed by homicide in Haiti in 2010: 689 Number of people, per 10 million (roughly the population of Haiti), killed by homicide in Brazil, the largest troop contributor to MINUSTAH: 2,270 Number of cholera victims who filed a claim with the UN seeking damages: 5,000 Number of cholera victims: 513,997 Rate per minute that Haitians were falling ill with cholera in July 2011: 1 Amount by which MINUSTAH’s budget exceeds the UN’s 2012 humanitarian appeal for Haiti: $562,517,100 Number of MINUSTAH personnel who were repatriated this year after a cell phone video emerged showing troops sexually assaulting a young Haitian man: 5 Number of successful prosecutions against over 100 MINUSTAH troops repatriated to Sri Lanka after allegations of involvement in child prostitution surfaced in 2007: 0 Number of standing claims commissions set up by the UN under Status of Forces Agreements so that local population may have means of redress from peacekeepers, historically: 0 Years MINUSTAH has been in Haiti: 7 Shortfall in trained national police officers that are supposed to take over for MINUSTAH: 10,000 Rank among Haiti’s top donors, including governments, that MINUSTAH would be if its budget went towards relief and reconstruction efforts: 3 Date on which cholera was discovered: October 21, 2010 Date the head of MINUSTAH was reported saying it was “really unfair” to accuse the UN of bringing cholera to Haiti: November 22, 2010 Distance, in miles, from the Nepalese MINUSTAH base to the location of the first reported case of cholera: .1 Date on which scientific paper confirmed that Haitian and Nepalese samples of cholera were “almost identical”: August 23, 2011 Days since the cholera outbreak it has taken for the UN to accept responsibility: 413 (and counting) Date on which MINUSTAH’s mandate was extended through 2012: October 14, 2011 Percent of Haitians in a recent survey who said they wanted MINUSTAH gone within a year: 65 Sources: 1. According to the United Nations there are currently 99,329 uniformed peacekeeping troops across the World. In Haiti there are 12,552. 2. MINUSTAH. 3. United Nations Peacekeeping. 4. United Nations Peacekeeping Fact Sheet. 5. IMF data and MINUSTAH. 6. IMF data and MINUSTAH. 7. The 2009/10 budget was $611,751,200, the 2010/11 budget was $853,827,400 and the 2011/2012 budget is $793,517,100. To reach the total since the earthquake, half of the 2009/10 total was added to the entire 2010/2011 total and to half of the 2011/2012 total. Data from UN Peacekeeping. 8. U.S. and Europe fight over cuts in peacekeeping, from Foreign Policy’s Turtle Bay blog. 9. UN Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti. 10. See 7 and 8, above. 11. According to the United Nations Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, $95 million has been contributed to the cholera appeal. 12. The cholera appeal is seeking $109 million, leaving a shortfall of $14 million. 13. Estimated cost of a cholera vaccination program covering the entire country is $40 million. 14. The cost of the pilot cholera vaccination program is about $870,000. 15. Ministère de la santé publique et de la population. 16. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. 17. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. 18. Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. 19. Ministère de la santé publique et de la population. 20. Jake Johnston and Keane Bhatt, Not Doing Enough: Unnecessary Sickness and Death from Cholera in Haiti. CEPR. 21. The UN’s 2012 Humanitarian Appeal for Haiti is for $231 million. 22. UN peacekeepers to be deported from Haiti, UN Media. 23. Greg Grandin and Keane Bhatt, 10 Reasons Why the UN Occupation of Haiti Must End. The Nation. 24. Amy Lieberman, Haiti Cholera Case Raises Questions About U.N. Accountability. World Politics Review. 25. MINUSTAH 26. It is estimated that Haiti needs 20,000 trained police, they currently have around 10,000. 27. UN Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti. 28. Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. 29. Jessica Desvarieux, TIME: At the Heart of Haiti’s Cholera Riots, Anger at the U.N. 30. Final Report of the Independent Panel of Experts on the Cholera Outbreak in Haiti. 31. The UN continues to deny responsibility. 32. MINUSTAH. 33. Gordon and Young, Columbia University. Although the headline reads “Survey Shows 60% of Haitians Support Troubled Peacekeeping Mission”, the data shows that 30% want immediate withdrawal, 10% want withdrawal within 6 months and an additional 25% want withdrawal within a year. With due respect to Harper’s. Tags: minustah

Statistical Analysis Shows that OAS Action Was Inconsistent with Election Data

For Immediate Release: October 17, 2011
Contact: Dan Beeton, 202-239-1460

Washington, D.C.- An Organization of American States (OAS) Mission overturned the results of the first round of Haiti’s presidential elections last year, despite that it had no statistical evidence to do so, a new Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) paper finds.

“The OAS’ actions in taking the unprecedented step of overturning an election, without a recount or evidence for its action, casts serious doubt on the institution’s credibility as an independent, neutral arbitrator or election observer,” CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said. “It’s difficult to see this as anything other than a political intervention.”

Weisbrot added: “Any government considering having the OAS involved in their election in any way should reconsider until the organization has conducted an investigation of their abuses in Haiti, and taken steps to make sure that this can’t happen again.”

Weisbrot noted that the purpose of the CEPR paper was not to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Haiti’s government, nor to provide evidence as to who should have been elected president.  Rather, the purpose was to investigate whether the OAS had any statistical or empirical basis for its unprecedented action in reversing the election results.

The paper, “The Organization of American States in Haiti:  Election Monitoring or Political Intervention?” by David Rosnick, shows that the OAS’ prescribed methodology of discarding “suspect” vote tally sheets would not be expected to move the vote count closer to the intent of the voters. After throwing out a number of vote tally sheets, the results of the first round of the election were reversed, with Michel Martelly (now president) taking second place, and Jude Célestin pushed into third, and thereby eliminated from the second round runoff election. The United States government subsequently put enormous pressure on the government of Haiti to accept the elimination of the government’s candidate (Célestin). Recently revealed Wikileaks cables show that Washington had turned against the government of Haiti for political reasons.

“The point is not that the OAS and CEP [Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council] ought to have incorporated imputations into the official count, but that they did in fact impute zeros for these sheets,” the paper states.

By means of a thorough statistical analysis of all of the tally sheets from the first round of elections, the author was able to model hundreds of possible scenarios based on imputations for the missing and excluded data. The results showed that Célestin, not Martelly, was by far the most likely second place finisher in the first round.

The OAS Mission, the paper notes, only examined a portion of the total tally sheets, and the tally sheets it chose to discard were from disproportionately pro-Célestin areas. The OAS did not use any statistical inference to in order to estimate what the result might have been had they examined the other 92 percent of tally sheets that they did not examine. Nor did the OAS attempt to account for the impact of more than 150,000 missing or excluded votes, nearly 12 percent of the total.

The paper concludes that the OAS Mission “considered four approaches to remedy the high rate of irregularities in the tally sheets.  Of these, three— voiding the entire election, conducting a revote in selected problem areas, or conducting a nationwide recount—would have at least addressed that question.  It is most unfortunate that the OAS chose to simply throw out selected ballots for technical reasons.”

“It is absurd for the OAS to then reverse the results of the first round of the election, or to support any results,” the paper states in its conclusion.

The election was also marred by the exclusion of the country’s most popular political party, and a record low turnout in both rounds (less than 24 percent participation in the first round).

###

The video is about 48 minutes long.  The link is: 

Haiti: After the Quake – Al Jazeera Correspondent – Al Jazeera English

By Associated Press, Published: September 14

One of the more interesting facts about the board is that it will have 32 members and Clinton will be joined by former leaders of Spain, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Bolivia and Colombia, as well as bankers and executives with expertise in energy, cruise line, media and real estate. If you take the worst case scenario, the representatives will likely be:

Jose Maria Aznar of Spain

Oscar Arias of Costa Rica

P. J. Patterson of Jamaica

Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada of Bolivia

Alvaro Uribe of Colombia

P. J. Patterson is the only one confirmed so far.  If any or all of the remaining four join the advisory board this again will be another rip-off of the people of Haiti.  Aznar is a fascist; Arias is a double-dealing “peacemaker” who was particularly slimy regarding peace agreements in Nicaragua and Honduras; Sanchez de Lozada, known as “Goni” was the privatization king of Bolivia especially gas fields, also he sent the Bolivian army to shoot protesters where approximately 70 were killed and the people of Bolivia literally road him out of the country; and finally, the one and only Alvaro Uribe — liar, thief, murderer, drug business, shall I stop here?

The first meeting will be September 21 in New York.

Haiti pres, Clinton form board to court investors

Friday, September 09, 2011

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haiti’s president yesterday unveiled an advisory board of former leaders, business executives and bankers that he hopes can make this poor Caribbean nation a more business friendly place and attract foreign investment.

President Michel Martelly announced that the panel he has created with former US President Bill Clinton will help redevelop Haiti, whose capital and outlying cities were shattered in last year’s earthquake.

Former US President and UN special envoy to Haiti, Bill Clinton, second right, and Haiti’s President Michel Martelly, second left, walk through the gardens of the National Palace, to a news conference in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday September 8, 2011. Martelly announced the creation of the Presidential Advisory Council on Economic Growth and Investment to be headed by Clinton. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) 1/1

“To build the economy, we need new ideas and new investments,” said Laurent Lamothe, a telecommunications entrepreneur who is a senior adviser to Martelly. He will be co-chairman of the council with Clinton, the United States special envoy to Haiti.

The council will be similar to a reconstruction panel set up in the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake to coordinate international aid for rebuilding Haiti.

The new panel will focus on expanding the economy by luring investors to create new businesses. Martelly has said he wants to create 500,000 jobs over the next three years.

Overseas companies have long been leery of investing in Haiti because there is red-tape, confusion over laws, insecurity, and sometimes political instability.

Investors could be further reluctant to do business in Haiti because of an uncertain political environment. Martelly has yet to install a government almost four months after his inauguration, with the first-time politician seeing his first two nominees for prime minister rejected by parliament.

The government announced this week that Martelly’s third nominee for the post is Garry Conille, a longtime development worker for the United Nations who worked as an aide to Clinton in his role as UN envoy.

A report released yesterday by the International Crisis Group took note of Martelly’s announcement at his May inauguration that “Haiti is open for business.”

“But a functioning, professional (police force) is a prerequisite to move the country forward,” the group said in a report on the need for police reform.

The new Presidential Advisory Council on Economic Growth and Investment is a hybrid of sorts — part think tank, part marketing outfit, part consulting firm and full-time liaison between potential investors and the government. It also aims to give Martelly and lawmakers ideas that could make Haiti more attractive to investors.

Clinton will be joined on the 32-member board by former leaders in Spain, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Bolivia and Colombia, as well as bankers and executives with expertise in energy, cruise line, media and real estate.

The board members will also serve as mini-ambassadors, spreading word that Haiti is eager for investment.

“Clinton typically talks about Haiti wherever he goes,” said Edwin Phanord, an adviser to the council. “So we take Clinton and multiply him by 30.”

Garry Conille:
The Neo-Liberal Pedigree of Haiti’s Latest Prime Minister Nominee
At Washington’s behest, a liberal technocrat appears poised to take over Haiti’s most powerful executive post

But now, following interventions by the U.S. Embassy (see accompanying article by Yves Pierre-Louis Garry Conille’s Nomination as Prime Minister:Washington puts its foot down!) and UN Special Envoy Bill Clinton with Martelly and Parliamentary leaders, a “compromise” nominee has emerged: Garry Conille, Clinton’s chief of staff in Haiti. Barring any surprises in the all-important background documents, Conille’s ratification is all but assured.

Garry Conille, 45, is the son of a Serge Conille, who was a government minister under the Duvalier dictatorship. He graduated from the Canado highschool in 1984 and trained as a doctor in Haiti’s State University Medical School. He then went on to earn a Master’s degree in Health Policy and Health Administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He then became a protégé of economist Jeffrey Sachs, who runs the liberal Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York. Sachs is often credited as the father of the “economic shock therapy” that was applied to formerly Communist countries in Eastern Europe after 1989. The “therapy” involved privatizing publicly owned industries, slashing state payrolls, dismantling trade, price and currency controls, in short, the same neoliberal “death plan” policies which Washington and Paris have sought to apply in Haiti over the past 25 years.

Sachs apparently had second-thoughts about the policies he spawned after their disastrous effects on working people and began to propose poverty alleviation, particularly through the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) which were put forth in a September 2000 United Nations summit of 191 nations. The eight goals, to be achieve by 2015, included targets to “reduce extreme poverty and hunger by half,” “achieve universal primary education,” and “reduce infant mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three-fourths” and “stop the spread of pandemic diseases.” To report on how to achieve these goals, Sachs directed ten “Task Forces” of the UN’s Millennium Project, which according to its website included “researchers and scientists, policymakers, representatives of NGOs, UN agencies, the World Bank, IMF and the private sector.”

It is in this MDG work that Conille became one of Sachs’ collaborators (he is an adjunct research scientist at the Center for Global Health and Economic Development of Sachs’ Earth Institute). In May 2006, Conille co-authored with Sachs a set of recommendations to the incoming administration of President René Préval that called on the Haitian government to “establish a clear and consensual path out of poverty, that builds upon outreach to the business community,” the same “business community” which had responded to democratically-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s proposed “path out of poverty” with a bloody 2004 coup. (In fairness, Sachs and, according to sources who have spoken to him, Conille opposed that coup.) They also called on Haiti “to reach agreements with the IMF and World Bank on a new three year development program,” the same international banks whose “development programs” have been underdeveloping Haiti for decades.

Principally, and not surprisingly, the prescription of Conille and Sachs was for “Haiti to establish a development strategy and implementation plan consistent with achieving the Millennium Development Goals.”

African economist Samir Amin submits the Millennium Development Goal strategy to a withering analysis in the March 2006 issue of Monthly Review. “A critical examination of the formulation of the goals as well as the definition of the means that would be required to implement them can only lead to the conclusion that the MDGs cannot be taken seriously,” Amin writes. “A litany of pious hopes commits no one. And when the expression of these pious hopes is accompanied by conditions that essentially eliminate the possibility of their becoming reality, the question must be asked: are not the authors of the document actually pursuing other priorities that have nothing to do with ‘poverty reduction’ and all the rest? In this case, should the exercise not be described as pure hypocrisy, as pulling the wool over the eyes of those who are being forced to accept the dictates of liberalism in the service of the quite particular and exclusive interests of dominant globalized capital?”

Amin takes special aim at MDG # 8: “Develop a global partnership for development.”

He responds: “The writers straightaway establish an equivalence between this ‘partnership’ and the principles of liberalism by declaring that the objective is to establish an open, multilateral commercial and financial system! The partnership thus becomes synonymous with submission to the demands of the imperialist powers.”

Writer Naomi Klein, the author of the best-selling book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” also points to the contradictions of Conille’s mentor in a 2007 interview with Oscar Reyes in “Red Pepper Magazine.”

“A lot of people are under the impression that Jeffrey Sachs has renounced his past as a shock therapist and is doing penance now,” Klein explained. “But if you read [Sachs’ book] ‘The End of Poverty’ more closely he continues to defend these policies, but simply says there should be a greater cushion for the people at the bottom.” In fact, “This is really just a charity model,” Klein concludes. “Let us be clear that we’re talking here about noblesse oblige, that’s all.”

So this is what Conille represents: the liberal wing of the U.S. bourgeoisie as represented by Sachs and Clinton.

When Dr. Paul Farmer, now acting as Clinton’s deputy UN Special Envoy, embarked on his new role in 2009, he had to put together a team. “Jeff Sachs helped me try to recruit Garry Conille, a Haitian physician schooled in the ways of the UN, to head the team,” Farmer writes in his just published book, “Haiti After the Earthquake.” “But Conille was otherwise occupied, the UN told us.” At that time, Conille was the UN Development Program’s Resident Representative in Niger. But then, two months ago, he became Clinton’s chief of staff with the title “Resident Coordinator of the UN System in Haiti.”

As Samir Amin points out in his MDG analysis: “The United States and its European and Japanese allies are now able to exert hegemony over a domesticated UN.” It appears likely that they will also be controlling a thoroughly domesticated Haitian prime minister.
]]> http://hcvanalysis.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/garry-conille-the-neo-liberal-pedigree-of-haitis-latest-prime-minister-nominee-by-kim-ives/feed/ 0 magbana http://hcvanalysis.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/haiti-violent-altercation-between-prime-minister-nominee-garry-conille-and-presidential-adviser/ http://hcvanalysis.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/haiti-violent-altercation-between-prime-minister-nominee-garry-conille-and-presidential-adviser/#comments Sun, 11 Sep 2011 23:01:20 +0000 magbana http://hcvanalysis.wordpress.com/?p=6618 ]]> Stay tuned, folks!

‘Violent Altercation’ between Prime Minister-designate Garry Conille and Presidential Adviser

Dr. Garry Conille and Michel Martelly

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (defend.ht) – Witnesses present at the Karibe Hotel on Saturday reported a violent altercation between the Prime Minister-designate, Dr. Garry Conille and advisers to the President Michel Martelly.

Radio Caraibes RTVC reported the altercation occurred as advisers to the President asked Dr. Conille to sign an undated letter of resignation from his post as Prime Minister, before becoming Prime Minister.

Refusing to sign the letter, Dr. Conille called for officers of the Police Nationale d’Haiti (PNH) to ensure his safety from the field.

Following this dispute, the Prime Minister-designate canceled a meeting with the Private Sector Forum casting doubt on his future intentions to serve as Prime Minister.

Sources of RTVC confirm that Dr. Garry Conille held talks late on Saturday on the subject with President Martelly to express his profound disagreement with this practice, however, without giving details.

According to corroborating sources of RTVC, advisers Thierry Mayard-Paul and Patrick Rouzier were at the root of the confrontation.

Conille currently holds a couple of position in the United Nations including Chief of Staff to the Head of the UN Envoy to Haiti, former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Many Parliamentarians have hinted they would reject the prime minister designate if he is not resigned from the United Nations.

UN Troops In Haiti Accused of Sexual Assault

Video Of Incident May Make Charges Stick This Time

Greger Cal­han, For­mer BAI Legal Intern

Amid great fan­fare, and sur­rounded by an entourage equal to his sta­tus as newly elected Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic, Michel Martelly vis­ited the Canaraan dis­place­ment camp out on the bar­ren out­skirts of north­ern Port-au-Prince early this sum­mer. He had a mes­sage to the approx­i­mately 30,000 fam­i­lies who eke out an exis­tence there: Fac­to­ries are coming.

Not just fac­to­ries, but hous­ing, jobs, ser­vices, invest­ment, edu­ca­tion, and opportunities—everything dreamed of but denied in the 20-cruel months which have fol­lowed Haiti’s earth­quake. Cer­tainly the promises con­tained a dou­ble edge—many res­i­dents would face evic­tion to make way for indus­trial buildings—but for those sur­viv­ing among the harsh con­di­tions of Haiti’s most for­got­ten camp, any cause for hope was wel­come and the President’s mes­sage met a sup­port­ive and opti­mistic embrace.

The larger story of Canaraan is tightly linked to its neigh­bor, camp Corail, once touted as the very model for the inter­na­tional community’s human­i­tar­ian effort in Haiti.

The Corail exper­i­ment, and its dis­mal con­se­quences, is well doc­u­mented in a recent Rolling Stone arti­cle: In short, sev­eral thou­sand earth­quake vic­tims were relo­cated from urban Port-au-Prince to tem­po­rary shel­ters planted in an empty waste­land some dis­tance north of the city.

Marked by the inef­fi­ciency, con­fu­sion, and high-handedness emblem­atic of Haiti’s stalled recon­struc­tion effort, the Corail ‘model camp’ did not go as planned, leav­ing trans­planted fam­i­lies far from eco­nomic activ­ity and at the mercy of flood­ing, land­slides, and hurricanes.

It is widely rec­og­nized as a failure.

Yet any major build­ing project, even an ulti­mately unsuc­cess­ful one such as Corail, offers hope of some­thing to those who have noth­ing, and soon enough Corail was sur­rounded by the sprawl­ing series of unplanned set­tle­ments now known col­lec­tively as Canaan or Canaraan. Like Corail, Canaraan res­i­dents are vul­ner­a­ble to wind and water and find them­selves cut off from the eco­nomic life of the city. But lack­ing Corail’s offi­cial des­ig­na­tion as a camp for inter­nally dis­placed per­sons (IDPs), Canaraan res­i­dents are rou­tinely dis­missed as mere ‘squat­ters’ unwor­thy of assis­tance how­ever press­ing their need. Ignored by both the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment itself, and the 3,000+ inter­na­tional NGOs which func­tion like a de facto shadow gov­ern­ment, Pres­i­dent Martelly’s visit to Canaraan was thus both a val­i­da­tion of resident’s exis­tence and a sign that per­haps their luck was about to change.

So far, at least, it has not.

Months after the visit, Canaraan is with­out signs of progress or con­struc­tion, and res­i­dents’ for­mer opti­mism is increas­ingly guarded, if not aban­doned out­right. The future of tex­tile fac­to­ries in Canaraan remains a ques­tion with­out an answer, but it is worth ask­ing why pow­er­ful actors, both Hait­ian and inter­na­tional, con­tin­u­ally present them as a cure-all for Haiti’s many ills. Fac­tory projects have been a sta­ple of USAID projects for a gen­er­a­tion, and enjoy the promi­nent and high-profile sup­port of fig­ures such as Bill Clin­ton and Ban Ki Moon. The Fac­tory Solu­tion pre­dates the earth­quake, and has not been shaken by it. It now rep­re­sents the sin­gle most sig­nif­i­cant inter­na­tional effort to impact the eco­nomic lives of Hait­ian people.

One need not dig too deep to find the dark side to this pro­posed answer to Haiti’s prob­lems. To make way for con­struc­tion, for exam­ple, Canaraan fam­i­lies would be dis­placed from the flat­lands into uncer­tain hous­ing on the same tree­less hills where land­slides killed 23 peo­ple just two months ago.

It is unclear how many of the res­i­dents of the sprawl­ing camp will find employ­ment in the pro­posed indus­trial com­plex, but cer­tainly fewer than the many tens of thou­sands of peo­ple who cur­rently live there. Even for those for­tu­nate enough to obtain work, for­eign owned tex­tile fac­to­ries in Haiti have devel­oped a noto­ri­ous rep­u­ta­tion for unsafe con­di­tions, work­place intim­i­da­tion, union-busting, and wages so shock­ingly low that it is vir­tu­ally impos­si­ble for even a small fam­ily to rely on them for sur­vival. (Wages amount to approx­i­mately US $3 a day for tex­tile labor, an in depth report on labor con­di­tions in Haiti can be found here).

In this envi­ron­ment of kick­backs and sex­ual harass­ment, where nearly all employ­ees labor with­out ben­e­fit of union rep­re­sen­ta­tion or health insur­ance, the prospects for Canaraan res­i­dents will likely remain grim even if the President’s promises come true.

This is not to con­demn all fac­to­ries out of hand—factory work is not inher­ently a social evil. In many societies—including our own—factory labor has pro­vided a path­way out of poverty. For their part, res­i­dents in Canaraan express a desire for jobs above all else, and are even will­ing to accept evic­tion from their homes for fac­to­ries that every­one knows will refuse to pay a sub­sis­tence wage.

Yet Canaraan res­i­dents’ desire for fac­tory work must be under­stood against a back­drop of eco­nomic and polit­i­cal forces which have left Haiti’s poor strik­ingly boxed-in on all sides by bad options. Phys­i­cally, the choice between over­crowded slums, flood-prone plains, and denuded hill­sides have left Canaraan res­i­dents per­ilously exposed to dan­ger, whether they decide to remain in the city or flee to its out­skirts. Like­wise, decades of US-driven trade pol­icy has left fam­i­lies with few mean­ing­ful eco­nomic choices except fac­tory work—effectively sell­ing their labor to north­ern busi­nesses at bar­gain base­ment prices.

Such a nar­row­ing of options is not an accident—it is the inten­tional result of express U.S. for­eign pol­icy. It may come as a sur­prise to many Amer­i­cans that the weight and pres­tige of their nation’s diplo­macy was thrown into an effort to thwart rais­ing Haiti’s min­i­mum wage above 31¢ an hour, but this is pre­cisely the sort of for­eign machi­na­tion that Haitians have been forced to live with for decades.

U.S. diplo­matic cables, recently exposed by the group Wik­ileaks, detail the extent of this med­dling, in which US mus­cle was engaged to sab­o­tage par­lia­men­tary efforts to raise wages to a level capa­ble of sup­port­ing dig­ni­fied existence.

Against this back­drop, Canaraan res­i­dents’ approval of their President’s mes­sage emerges as a ratio­nal response to a set of arti­fi­cially con­strained options. A house on a landslide-prone hill is prefer­able to a tarp on a flood-prone plain—likewise, a factory’s star­va­tion wages are prefer­able to none at all. And what other options are there? Flooded with highly sub­si­dized for­eign food prod­ucts, Haitians have watched the dec­i­ma­tion of their agri­cul­tural sec­tor. Forced to open bor­ders to rav­en­ous (and some­times preda­tory) for­eign com­peti­tors, Haiti has seen its domes­tic enter­prises left stunted.

As a result, the eco­nomic poli­cies of the world’s pow­er­ful have effec­tively pushed Haiti’s poor into an ever nar­row­ing chute—the only escape being into the arms of US, Cana­dian, or Korean tex­tile cor­po­ra­tions and their cut-rate sub-contractors in Haiti.

And with the wage increase suc­cess­fully neu­tral­ized, it’s now impos­si­ble to earn a liv­ing even at that.

Yet beneath that sur­face enthu­si­asm, Canaraan res­i­dents voice a com­plex mix of hope and res­ig­na­tion, sto­icism and anger, which is every bit as com­pli­cated as the geopo­lit­i­cal forces presently at work upon them.

Derided by the pow­er­ful as oppor­tunists and squat­ters, Canaraan res­i­dents’ most sim­ple acts of daily life—planting seeds for a dozen stalks of corn on a small plot of land, rebuild­ing the tarp roof of a Lutheran church, sell­ing goods at mar­ket to send chil­dren to school—seem like acts of defi­ance against a global eco­nomic order deter­mined to reduce peo­ple to a state of dependence.

No one, per­haps not even Pres­i­dent Martelly him­self, really knows whether the fac­tory project will ever actu­ally mate­ri­al­ize, whether its promised employ­ment will allow an escape from poverty, or if instead it will prove as illu­sory as count­less other promises made to camp res­i­dents by politi­cians, diplo­mats, NGOs, and the inter­na­tional community.

But one thing is clear, until the pow­er­ful actors pre­sum­ing to decide Haiti’s future put the auton­omy, dig­nity, and well-being of Haiti’s poor major­ity at the cen­ter of recon­struc­tion efforts—instead of sim­ply instru­men­tal­iz­ing them as a pool of cheap labor—Canaraan fam­i­lies will not be able to break out of the trap of poverty, for­eign fac­to­ries or not.

See Orig­i­nal Post: http://www.jofr.org/2011/09/01/out-of-options-in-haiti/