RISING FROM THE RUBBLE
(Newsweek) - By Nausheen Husain and Tania Barnes
Haiti’s artists have always been inspired by tragedy. The earthquake gave them new fodder for creativity.
Roughly an hour before the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in January, Frantz Zephirin, one of the country’s best-known painters, was drinking beer at a bar in Port-au-Prince. After a discussion at a nearby table turned into a heated political debate, Zephirin paid his check and left with a friend. Moments later the earth shook. Walls crumbled. Houses collapsed. Sound reverberated around them. “I thought it was a bomb,” he says. After the great shaking had ceased, Zephirin looked and saw that the bar had turned to rubble. Stunned and saddened, he walked to the beach later that night and painted by candlelight. “I saw so many things I can’t explain to people, so much death and devastation,” he says. “I want to paint everything I saw.”
Close to nine months after the earthquake that killed more than 200,000 in Haiti, the city of Port-au-Prince is still in ruins. Reconstruction has been slow, and more than a million people remain homeless. Yet the country’s artists—those on the island as well as their counterparts abroad—are using their limited resources to channel the nation’s suffering, hope, and anxiety into new paintings, crafts, and sculptures.
In the process, they have created a market for post-earthquake Haitian art, particularly in the United States. Recently, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., opened an exhibit of post-earthquake paintings and drawings by Haitian children. In September, Macy’s partnered with Haitian artists on a new line of home-décor handcrafts, Smithsonian magazine commissioned a painting by Zephirin for its cover last month, and the Miami International Airport opened an exhibit featuring works created by Haitian artists in the wake of the disaster.
The 4,000-square-foot gallery features voodoo flags made with beads and sequins, intricate metal carvings made from flattened oil drums, and carnival masks made from papier-mâché. “This exhibition is a testament to their optimism,” said Yolanda Sanchez, the airport’s fine-arts director.
That optimism—long a cornerstone of Haitian art—has helped the country survive its difficult history. More than 200 years ago, Haiti was created in the aftermath of a massive slave uprising against the French. Since then, the nation has suffered a host of indignities: invasion, isolation, and poor self-governance. Yet out of this misery has grown a rich artistic tradition that draws heavily on African, Taíno, voodoo, and Catholic influences. “Haiti doesn’t have car factories. It doesn’t have steel plants,” says Richard Kurin, the undersecretary for history, art, and culture at the Smithsonian. “Culture is one of the few resources Haitians have. Art has become a way for them to preserve their dignity.”
Art has also provided a way for Haitians to reckon with tragedy. Since the quake, various relief groups and nongovernmental organizations have set up dozens of art-therapy camps for children and adults in Port-au-Prince and other nearby areas. “We use art as a meditation,” says Mazen Aboulhosn, a psychologist for the International Organization for Migration. “It’s easier to talk about difficulties through…art…than talking directly,” says Patricia Landinez, a psychologist for the United Nations Children’s Fund.
Those difficulties are evident in Zephirin’s work. In the piece commissioned by the Smithsonian entitled And Haiti Will Bloom Again, the artist paints the island as a dark mass filled with crosses. In the clouds, a watchful eye is crying. Yet there is also a sense of hope; in the center of the painting, large, colorful birds deliver flowers, money, and justice to the island in their beaks.
A sense of hope also permeates Eight Days, a children’s book by the Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat and illustrated by Alix Delinois. Danticat wrote the story to explain to her 5-year-old daughter what happened during the earthquake. Published in September, the book follows a young boy named Junior who spends more than a week beneath the rubble. To quell his fears, Junior imagines the good parts of life on the island: singing loudly in church, playing hide-and-seek with his friends, and catching mouthfuls of rain during a storm. Then, miraculously, he is rescued. Throughout the story, Delinois’s bright, colorful drawings mirror Danticat’s message of hope and resilience. “After a tragedy, we’re always trying to get a sense of who we are,” says Danticat. “Art is proof that we’re alive beyond breathing.”
For André Eugène, an artist known for making macabre sculptures from wood, scrap metal, and skulls, the earthquake has given him new inspiration. “I find myself making sculptures of pregnant women,” he says. “I’ve started to create art about giving life.”
Monday, October 4, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
ARTICLE - IOM ENGINEER KILLED
IOM: ENGINEER KILLED OUTSIDE HAITI RELOCATION CAMP
(AP) - By Jonathan M. Katz
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Gunmen killed an engineer supervising the building of shelters at a relocation camp for Haitian earthquake survivors, forcing construction to be suspended on part of the site, the International Organization for Migration said Saturday.
The body of 42-year-old Pierre Richard Denis was found Friday on the outskirts of the quake-ravaged capital near the Corail-Cesselesse relocation camp, apparently several hours after he was shot, IOM country spokesman Leonard Doyle told The Associated Press.
Denis was returning to work aboard a group taxi around 3:30 p.m. after cashing his first monthly paycheck when he was shot twice. Haitian police investigating the murder suspect the motive was robbery. A police report said the group taxi, known as a "tap-tap," was followed by unknown assailants aboard a motorcycle after Denis left a bank in Port-au-Prince.
There have been no arrests made in the case.
"It was a despicable act against a talented and hardworking IOM staff member totally dedicated to helping the earthquake victims and their families," IOM Director General William Lacy Swing said in an e-mailed statement.
It is not clear if Denis, a Haitian national, was visibly identifiable as a staffer with the international organization. Some colleagues said he was wearing an IOM cap at the time, Doyle said.
The camp at Corail was chosen by the Haitian government as its first official relocation space months after the Jan. 12 quake. Placed on a parcel of government-seized former sugarcane land larger than Manhattan it is home to about 7,000 people, most relocated from the Petionville Club golf-course camp in the devastated Delmas section of the capital.
The area was billed as a refuge from the golf course's flood-prone slopes, but was criticized by Oxfam and other aid groups for being too remote. The AP found the selected site belonged to a Haitian company whose president headed the government committee that chose it.
Since then Corail's ShelterBox tents have been repeatedly battered by storms. Damage from a Sept. 24 blast of wind and rain prompted the immediate relocation of 110 families within the camp to more durable wood-and-metal transitional shelters Denis was helping to build. IOM is suspending work at the site where Denis was supervising in the wake of the shooting.
Denis leaves a wife and two children aged 8 and 11 years, IOM officials said.
(AP) - By Jonathan M. Katz
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Gunmen killed an engineer supervising the building of shelters at a relocation camp for Haitian earthquake survivors, forcing construction to be suspended on part of the site, the International Organization for Migration said Saturday.
The body of 42-year-old Pierre Richard Denis was found Friday on the outskirts of the quake-ravaged capital near the Corail-Cesselesse relocation camp, apparently several hours after he was shot, IOM country spokesman Leonard Doyle told The Associated Press.
Denis was returning to work aboard a group taxi around 3:30 p.m. after cashing his first monthly paycheck when he was shot twice. Haitian police investigating the murder suspect the motive was robbery. A police report said the group taxi, known as a "tap-tap," was followed by unknown assailants aboard a motorcycle after Denis left a bank in Port-au-Prince.
There have been no arrests made in the case.
"It was a despicable act against a talented and hardworking IOM staff member totally dedicated to helping the earthquake victims and their families," IOM Director General William Lacy Swing said in an e-mailed statement.
It is not clear if Denis, a Haitian national, was visibly identifiable as a staffer with the international organization. Some colleagues said he was wearing an IOM cap at the time, Doyle said.
The camp at Corail was chosen by the Haitian government as its first official relocation space months after the Jan. 12 quake. Placed on a parcel of government-seized former sugarcane land larger than Manhattan it is home to about 7,000 people, most relocated from the Petionville Club golf-course camp in the devastated Delmas section of the capital.
The area was billed as a refuge from the golf course's flood-prone slopes, but was criticized by Oxfam and other aid groups for being too remote. The AP found the selected site belonged to a Haitian company whose president headed the government committee that chose it.
Since then Corail's ShelterBox tents have been repeatedly battered by storms. Damage from a Sept. 24 blast of wind and rain prompted the immediate relocation of 110 families within the camp to more durable wood-and-metal transitional shelters Denis was helping to build. IOM is suspending work at the site where Denis was supervising in the wake of the shooting.
Denis leaves a wife and two children aged 8 and 11 years, IOM officials said.
ARTICLE - STORMS
CIVIL PROTECTION DIRECTOR: AT LEAST 5 DEAD, 1 MISSING AFTER STORM STRIKES SOUTHERN HAITI
The Associated Press (CP)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haiti's civil protection chief says five are dead and another person missing after a storm struck the country's southern peninsula.
Civil protection head Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste says the deaths were caused Friday in the western areas of the mountainous southern peninsula by rushing rivers and mudslides.
More than a dozen houses were struck by a landslide. More than 300 people were evacuated from flooding rivers.
Radio Kiskeya also reported damage to farms and roads.
The area was not seriously affected by the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and southeastern Haiti.
Haitian officials issued a yellow alert for further flooding across the country on Saturday.
The Associated Press (CP)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haiti's civil protection chief says five are dead and another person missing after a storm struck the country's southern peninsula.
Civil protection head Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste says the deaths were caused Friday in the western areas of the mountainous southern peninsula by rushing rivers and mudslides.
More than a dozen houses were struck by a landslide. More than 300 people were evacuated from flooding rivers.
Radio Kiskeya also reported damage to farms and roads.
The area was not seriously affected by the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and southeastern Haiti.
Haitian officials issued a yellow alert for further flooding across the country on Saturday.
ARTICLE - BLUE HAITI
BLUE HAITI
(New York Times) - By Monique Clesca - Op-Ed Contributor
Looking out the window as the plane descended, I saw that Haiti had changed color. The familiar earthy brown tones of the mountains surrounding Port-au-Prince were no longer visible; instead, everything I could see was deep blue — the color of the thousands of tarpaulins covering the landscape.
I had last seen my country one afternoon back in January, when I was evacuated four days after the earthquake. Returning last month for a four-week trip, I was afraid to see what I would find.
A soft rain greeted me when I stepped off the plane, as if to wash away my anxiety. So did the energizing rhythm of a calypso band playing under a nearby canopy. Dancing post-earthquake, I thought, had to be indecent. Instead I rocked slightly to the beat, smiled at one musician and put some dollars in his hat. The airport had been partly destroyed, and there was no air-conditioning at baggage claim, but I was happy to be home.
The traffic jam on the way to my house was an opportunity to slowly take in the changed neighborhoods, the camps, the rubble. I saw that the giant Caribbean supermarket I’d shopped at many times had collapsed and the small church of Ste. Thérèse, where I had attended funerals and weddings, was gone.
But above the devastation, I was surprised to see billboards advertising concerts by Haiti’s best-known musicians, like T-Vice, Carimi and Tropicana. Perhaps, I realized, dancing wasn’t entirely out of the question. Several musicians have already written songs about the quake. Many people sing along to this one: “Under the tarps, you are being ignored/ Tents and sheets, they don’t want to see you./ Fissured homes are being ignored.”
In many ways, Haitian art and folklore have begun to incorporate the earthquake that leveled Port-au-Prince as well as Jacmel, Petit-Goâve and Léogâne. In the art market of Pétionville, the hilly suburb that has become the de facto center of the capital since the earthquake reduced the city’s main square and shopping district to rubble, paintings of destruction scenes are for sale. They go for $50 to $400, depending on whether the buyer is foreign or Haitian and whether he knows how to bargain.
Haitians have even invented their own name for the earthquake: “Goudou Goudou.” It’s an onomatopoeia; when the earth shook, the rumbling sounded something like that.
But most of all, the earthquake has become the main theme of Haitian storytelling. I spent the month visiting friends, and all were eager to tell me about Goudou Goudou. All needed to say where they were when it happened, and what they had lost by the time it ended. Telling their stories was a way to affirm that they were still among the living, and not among the dead.
Joe, an architect, lost his house, his aunt and uncle, and an overflowing file of drawings. He is lucky because he was able to move in with a sister.
Évelyne also lost her home but went back the next day to search the rubble and found her passport and her cat.
Pat lost both his parents and his family home, and Nono lost his bakery.
Danielle slept in a tent in the parking lot of her office building for six months.
Émile sleeps with his family in a tent in his backyard; they can still use the kitchen in their damaged house. He joked that their tent was as opulent as that used by the president of Libya, Muammar el-Qaddafi.
Most cannot afford to rebuild, and even if they had the money, many are too traumatized to begin.
Pat complains that his hands have been shaking uncontrollably ever since the earthquake.
Marie told me about her cousin, who still cannot sleep in a regular bed. He had a home office, and when the earthquake hit, the office collapsed. His beloved secretary of 30 years was buried inside. He moved in with Marie, and every night since, he has put down a mattress in her kitchen to sleep. At first, her family laughed, but it has now been nearly nine months and the laughter has stopped. He is a grown man, a 60-year-old, and they are worried. She asked: What will it take for him to rebuild his confidence, his life, his business?
Some people want to talk about what they can’t remember: Amnesia after severe shock is common. I had lunch with one friend just a few hours before the earthquake, and she didn’t remember a thing about the meal.
Another had amnesia for several weeks after the quake. The last thing she could remember was the co-worker sitting to her right at a meeting dying instantly, and the man on her left, who survived, yelling, “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me.” Nothing else, not even that she walked nearly eight miles home from her office in high heels and a disheveled dress with her face decorated with mortar from the crumbling walls.
After all this talk, I felt I needed to get out and see some familiar sights. The Rex Theater, where I saw concerts, plays and movies as a child, was still standing, but there were cracks all up and down its gray walls. Fanal, my favorite crafts store, was gone. The Sacré-Coeur church, where I had my first communion, was mostly destroyed, but the cross stood defiantly in the ruins.
The country I knew has collapsed and a new one is growing in its place. On the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, a huge provisional city called Canaan is being constructed and populated. Wood poles hold up walls and roofs of blue tarpaulins. Some of the structures even have traditional terraces in front, like real houses. How provisional is this, I wondered? Will it become another slum like La Saline or Cité Soleil? How long will people stay?
Then there are the tents — in the middle of residential streets, in soccer fields and parks, on the prime minister’s lawn. Some tent cities have restaurants, brothels, bars, beauty salons. Some offer medical clinics, latrines, water distribution, post-trauma counseling sessions. My friend Jeanine pointed out that, for many of the residents, it is the first time that they have ever had access to such services. I wondered if they might start to expect these things, to realize they have a right to shelter, medicine, sanitation and education, and that it is the government’s obligation to provide them.
This is not to say that it is possible to find much good in those living conditions. The torrential rains are a menace, particularly when they come with strong winds that rip open the tents.
Violence — including sexual violence — is an ever-present threat.
A woman I know, Solène, told me she was attacked in her tent in the middle of the night by over 30 men and women with picks, guns, wooden planks and rocks. They had come with kerosene to burn her alive because she was accused of being a werewolf. A police unit rescued her; although her physical wounds healed in a month, she will never go back to her old neighborhood. The police weren’t much help: an officer said she really did look like a werewolf, and released the aggressors. She said she gets her energy and courage from God.
I wish I had that faith. Right after the earthquake, many people, myself included, said that this was Haiti’s chance, that we could use the momentum of this suffering and solidarity to propel the country into the 21st century, and finally rid ourselves of that humiliating epithet, “poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.” But after my month home, I am not so sure.
For all the vibrancy and resilience hidden under Haiti’s tents and tarps, the rebuilding — what my friends call the “refoundation” — has been slow. It is not hard to understand why.
Just before I returned to the United States, I went to see Bartho, a friend and former colleague who lost three of his five children. He explained to me how each died, how he could not see their bodies. “Why did this happen?” he asked, his body fidgeting wildly, his voice cracking. I didn’t know what to say; all I could do was listen. For my friend, as with Haiti, the pain of the disaster remains as palpable — and debilitating — as it was on that January day nearly nine months ago.
(New York Times) - By Monique Clesca - Op-Ed Contributor
Looking out the window as the plane descended, I saw that Haiti had changed color. The familiar earthy brown tones of the mountains surrounding Port-au-Prince were no longer visible; instead, everything I could see was deep blue — the color of the thousands of tarpaulins covering the landscape.
I had last seen my country one afternoon back in January, when I was evacuated four days after the earthquake. Returning last month for a four-week trip, I was afraid to see what I would find.
A soft rain greeted me when I stepped off the plane, as if to wash away my anxiety. So did the energizing rhythm of a calypso band playing under a nearby canopy. Dancing post-earthquake, I thought, had to be indecent. Instead I rocked slightly to the beat, smiled at one musician and put some dollars in his hat. The airport had been partly destroyed, and there was no air-conditioning at baggage claim, but I was happy to be home.
The traffic jam on the way to my house was an opportunity to slowly take in the changed neighborhoods, the camps, the rubble. I saw that the giant Caribbean supermarket I’d shopped at many times had collapsed and the small church of Ste. Thérèse, where I had attended funerals and weddings, was gone.
But above the devastation, I was surprised to see billboards advertising concerts by Haiti’s best-known musicians, like T-Vice, Carimi and Tropicana. Perhaps, I realized, dancing wasn’t entirely out of the question. Several musicians have already written songs about the quake. Many people sing along to this one: “Under the tarps, you are being ignored/ Tents and sheets, they don’t want to see you./ Fissured homes are being ignored.”
In many ways, Haitian art and folklore have begun to incorporate the earthquake that leveled Port-au-Prince as well as Jacmel, Petit-Goâve and Léogâne. In the art market of Pétionville, the hilly suburb that has become the de facto center of the capital since the earthquake reduced the city’s main square and shopping district to rubble, paintings of destruction scenes are for sale. They go for $50 to $400, depending on whether the buyer is foreign or Haitian and whether he knows how to bargain.
Haitians have even invented their own name for the earthquake: “Goudou Goudou.” It’s an onomatopoeia; when the earth shook, the rumbling sounded something like that.
But most of all, the earthquake has become the main theme of Haitian storytelling. I spent the month visiting friends, and all were eager to tell me about Goudou Goudou. All needed to say where they were when it happened, and what they had lost by the time it ended. Telling their stories was a way to affirm that they were still among the living, and not among the dead.
Joe, an architect, lost his house, his aunt and uncle, and an overflowing file of drawings. He is lucky because he was able to move in with a sister.
Évelyne also lost her home but went back the next day to search the rubble and found her passport and her cat.
Pat lost both his parents and his family home, and Nono lost his bakery.
Danielle slept in a tent in the parking lot of her office building for six months.
Émile sleeps with his family in a tent in his backyard; they can still use the kitchen in their damaged house. He joked that their tent was as opulent as that used by the president of Libya, Muammar el-Qaddafi.
Most cannot afford to rebuild, and even if they had the money, many are too traumatized to begin.
Pat complains that his hands have been shaking uncontrollably ever since the earthquake.
Marie told me about her cousin, who still cannot sleep in a regular bed. He had a home office, and when the earthquake hit, the office collapsed. His beloved secretary of 30 years was buried inside. He moved in with Marie, and every night since, he has put down a mattress in her kitchen to sleep. At first, her family laughed, but it has now been nearly nine months and the laughter has stopped. He is a grown man, a 60-year-old, and they are worried. She asked: What will it take for him to rebuild his confidence, his life, his business?
Some people want to talk about what they can’t remember: Amnesia after severe shock is common. I had lunch with one friend just a few hours before the earthquake, and she didn’t remember a thing about the meal.
Another had amnesia for several weeks after the quake. The last thing she could remember was the co-worker sitting to her right at a meeting dying instantly, and the man on her left, who survived, yelling, “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me.” Nothing else, not even that she walked nearly eight miles home from her office in high heels and a disheveled dress with her face decorated with mortar from the crumbling walls.
After all this talk, I felt I needed to get out and see some familiar sights. The Rex Theater, where I saw concerts, plays and movies as a child, was still standing, but there were cracks all up and down its gray walls. Fanal, my favorite crafts store, was gone. The Sacré-Coeur church, where I had my first communion, was mostly destroyed, but the cross stood defiantly in the ruins.
The country I knew has collapsed and a new one is growing in its place. On the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, a huge provisional city called Canaan is being constructed and populated. Wood poles hold up walls and roofs of blue tarpaulins. Some of the structures even have traditional terraces in front, like real houses. How provisional is this, I wondered? Will it become another slum like La Saline or Cité Soleil? How long will people stay?
Then there are the tents — in the middle of residential streets, in soccer fields and parks, on the prime minister’s lawn. Some tent cities have restaurants, brothels, bars, beauty salons. Some offer medical clinics, latrines, water distribution, post-trauma counseling sessions. My friend Jeanine pointed out that, for many of the residents, it is the first time that they have ever had access to such services. I wondered if they might start to expect these things, to realize they have a right to shelter, medicine, sanitation and education, and that it is the government’s obligation to provide them.
This is not to say that it is possible to find much good in those living conditions. The torrential rains are a menace, particularly when they come with strong winds that rip open the tents.
Violence — including sexual violence — is an ever-present threat.
A woman I know, Solène, told me she was attacked in her tent in the middle of the night by over 30 men and women with picks, guns, wooden planks and rocks. They had come with kerosene to burn her alive because she was accused of being a werewolf. A police unit rescued her; although her physical wounds healed in a month, she will never go back to her old neighborhood. The police weren’t much help: an officer said she really did look like a werewolf, and released the aggressors. She said she gets her energy and courage from God.
I wish I had that faith. Right after the earthquake, many people, myself included, said that this was Haiti’s chance, that we could use the momentum of this suffering and solidarity to propel the country into the 21st century, and finally rid ourselves of that humiliating epithet, “poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.” But after my month home, I am not so sure.
For all the vibrancy and resilience hidden under Haiti’s tents and tarps, the rebuilding — what my friends call the “refoundation” — has been slow. It is not hard to understand why.
Just before I returned to the United States, I went to see Bartho, a friend and former colleague who lost three of his five children. He explained to me how each died, how he could not see their bodies. “Why did this happen?” he asked, his body fidgeting wildly, his voice cracking. I didn’t know what to say; all I could do was listen. For my friend, as with Haiti, the pain of the disaster remains as palpable — and debilitating — as it was on that January day nearly nine months ago.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
ARTICLE - LEVER OUT OF AID TRAP
HAITI MUST USE ELECTION TO LEVER OUT OF AID TRAP - U.N.
(Reuters) - By Pascal Fletcher and Simon Denyer
PORT-AU-PRINCE - Haitians should seize U.N.-backed electionsin November as an opportunity to build a better nation from the ruins of this year's earthquake by taking charge of future development and shedding years of aid dependency, the top U.N. official in Haiti said.
Edmond Mulet said the Nov. 28 presidential and legislative polls to be held 10 months after the massive Jan. 12 earthquake would be a chance for Haiti to shake off its identity as a weak, unstable, poverty-ridden "Republic of NGOs" dominated by foreign aid organizations.
"We've had billions of dollars spent in Haiti over years with zero impact on the rule of law -- that has to change," Mulet said in an interview on Wednesday at the sprawling U.N. logistics base in the quake-ravaged Haitian capital.
As the world pumps hundreds of millions of dollars more aid into the crippled Caribbean state, Mulet said Haiti's leaders must show the political will to break the cycle of dependency and shape and lead a viable sustainable state governed by laws that will attract investors and foster economic development.
"Nobody wants to reconstruct Haiti the way it was, we have to do it completely differently now," Mulet said, evoking the "build back better"motto that has become the mantra of Haiti's foreign relief partners helping in the reconstruction effort.
Mulet, a Guatemalan U.N. veteran who heads a 12,000-strong blue-helmet peacekeeping force in Haiti, said the international community, wary of chronic corruption, mismanagement and instability in Haiti, had actually contributed to weakening the government by often sidelining it from essential tasks.
"We have created these parallel structures, in education, in health services, in all sorts of responsibilities that the Haitians should be assuming themselves," he said.
This had led to the proliferation of 10,000 foreign NGOs in Haiti, many operating without regard or accountability to the government, creating a "Republic of NGOs" that effectively excluded Haitians from running their own country.
"We, the international community, have to change the way we work in Haiti," Mulet added.
"I really firmly believe that all the reconstruction effort, all the investments, humanitarian assistance, everything the peacekeeping mission has done for many years now, everything will be in vain unless the Haitians themselves lead in creating the rule of law in Haiti," he said.
"We have to work with the government and through the government, with Haitian institutions, if we want to build those capacities," said Mulet, who is Special Representative in Haiti for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
"It's building blocks, little by little ... it takes time," he said.
AVOIDING A POWER VACUUM
Mulet rejected suggestions Haiti was not in a condition to hold successful, credible elections so soon after a huge natural disaster that killed up to 300,000 people and pole-axed what was already the Western Hemisphere's poorest economy.
"It's technically possible, it's logistically possible, the security is there," he said. With more than four million voters registered, 66 political parties participating and 19 presidential candidates standing, the ingredients were there for Haitians to democratically choose new leaders, he added.
"Without elections, what are the options? The vacuum, the instability, the breaking down of all the structures here."
Among the major challenges that will face the new Haitian leader who will be chosen to replace President Rene Preval was rebuilding a frameworkof legality in Haiti to underpin the post-quake reconstruction and future growth and development.
"There is no land registry, no civil registry, no functioning courts,"Mulet said.
Foreign donors have pledged $9.9 billion for post-quake reconstruction, $5.3 billion for the next two years alone.
"You can bring money to rebuild the city, reconstruct, you can have infrastructure, build roads, airports, you can build all that, but that will not be sustainable in the mid-and long-term, if you don't have rule of law here," he said.
Mulet said U.N. policing before the quake helped to break up criminal gangs who were killing, kidnapping and extorting in Port-au-Prince. Some 850 jailed gangsters were among over 5,000 convicts who escaped in the chaos of the Jan. 12 quake and U.N. and Haitian police were working to stop them from regrouping.
The current U.N. peacekeeping operation has been in Haiti since 2004.
Security experts said several hundred million dollars of suspected laundered illicit drugs funds had appeared in the local banking system since January, and arms had been detected entering the country, suggesting any power vacuum could be quickly exploited by criminal or destabilizing elements.
Other major challenges included the resettlement of around 1.3 million quake homeless and establishing the conditions to foster domestic and foreign investment projects to create jobs and livelihoods for destitute survivors of the quake.
"We can't ask those people to go back to the places they were living before, it's impossible," Mulet said, calling for a "re-energized" private sector.
Mulet was optimistic the U.N.-backed elections could leverage change, but warned: "Without a global rule of law in Haiti, I think we'll have a peacekeeping mission here for many, many decades and I don't know if the international community is willing to continue subsidizing this country forever."
(Reuters) - By Pascal Fletcher and Simon Denyer
PORT-AU-PRINCE - Haitians should seize U.N.-backed electionsin November as an opportunity to build a better nation from the ruins of this year's earthquake by taking charge of future development and shedding years of aid dependency, the top U.N. official in Haiti said.
Edmond Mulet said the Nov. 28 presidential and legislative polls to be held 10 months after the massive Jan. 12 earthquake would be a chance for Haiti to shake off its identity as a weak, unstable, poverty-ridden "Republic of NGOs" dominated by foreign aid organizations.
"We've had billions of dollars spent in Haiti over years with zero impact on the rule of law -- that has to change," Mulet said in an interview on Wednesday at the sprawling U.N. logistics base in the quake-ravaged Haitian capital.
As the world pumps hundreds of millions of dollars more aid into the crippled Caribbean state, Mulet said Haiti's leaders must show the political will to break the cycle of dependency and shape and lead a viable sustainable state governed by laws that will attract investors and foster economic development.
"Nobody wants to reconstruct Haiti the way it was, we have to do it completely differently now," Mulet said, evoking the "build back better"motto that has become the mantra of Haiti's foreign relief partners helping in the reconstruction effort.
Mulet, a Guatemalan U.N. veteran who heads a 12,000-strong blue-helmet peacekeeping force in Haiti, said the international community, wary of chronic corruption, mismanagement and instability in Haiti, had actually contributed to weakening the government by often sidelining it from essential tasks.
"We have created these parallel structures, in education, in health services, in all sorts of responsibilities that the Haitians should be assuming themselves," he said.
This had led to the proliferation of 10,000 foreign NGOs in Haiti, many operating without regard or accountability to the government, creating a "Republic of NGOs" that effectively excluded Haitians from running their own country.
"We, the international community, have to change the way we work in Haiti," Mulet added.
"I really firmly believe that all the reconstruction effort, all the investments, humanitarian assistance, everything the peacekeeping mission has done for many years now, everything will be in vain unless the Haitians themselves lead in creating the rule of law in Haiti," he said.
"We have to work with the government and through the government, with Haitian institutions, if we want to build those capacities," said Mulet, who is Special Representative in Haiti for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
"It's building blocks, little by little ... it takes time," he said.
AVOIDING A POWER VACUUM
Mulet rejected suggestions Haiti was not in a condition to hold successful, credible elections so soon after a huge natural disaster that killed up to 300,000 people and pole-axed what was already the Western Hemisphere's poorest economy.
"It's technically possible, it's logistically possible, the security is there," he said. With more than four million voters registered, 66 political parties participating and 19 presidential candidates standing, the ingredients were there for Haitians to democratically choose new leaders, he added.
"Without elections, what are the options? The vacuum, the instability, the breaking down of all the structures here."
Among the major challenges that will face the new Haitian leader who will be chosen to replace President Rene Preval was rebuilding a frameworkof legality in Haiti to underpin the post-quake reconstruction and future growth and development.
"There is no land registry, no civil registry, no functioning courts,"Mulet said.
Foreign donors have pledged $9.9 billion for post-quake reconstruction, $5.3 billion for the next two years alone.
"You can bring money to rebuild the city, reconstruct, you can have infrastructure, build roads, airports, you can build all that, but that will not be sustainable in the mid-and long-term, if you don't have rule of law here," he said.
Mulet said U.N. policing before the quake helped to break up criminal gangs who were killing, kidnapping and extorting in Port-au-Prince. Some 850 jailed gangsters were among over 5,000 convicts who escaped in the chaos of the Jan. 12 quake and U.N. and Haitian police were working to stop them from regrouping.
The current U.N. peacekeeping operation has been in Haiti since 2004.
Security experts said several hundred million dollars of suspected laundered illicit drugs funds had appeared in the local banking system since January, and arms had been detected entering the country, suggesting any power vacuum could be quickly exploited by criminal or destabilizing elements.
Other major challenges included the resettlement of around 1.3 million quake homeless and establishing the conditions to foster domestic and foreign investment projects to create jobs and livelihoods for destitute survivors of the quake.
"We can't ask those people to go back to the places they were living before, it's impossible," Mulet said, calling for a "re-energized" private sector.
Mulet was optimistic the U.N.-backed elections could leverage change, but warned: "Without a global rule of law in Haiti, I think we'll have a peacekeeping mission here for many, many decades and I don't know if the international community is willing to continue subsidizing this country forever."
ARTICLE - CROP AND FOOD SECURITY
FAO/WFP CROP AND FOOD SECURITY ASSESSMENT MISSION TO HAITI
21 September 2010 - Mission highlights
(ReliefWeb) Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO); United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)
Full_Report (pdf* format - 32.6 Kbytes)
SPECIAL REPORT
Mission Highlights
• Despite the late start of the 2010 spring rainy season, rainfall was generally favourable and a good foodcrop harvest is expected.
• Compared to the bumper 2009 spring season harvest, the Mission estimates a slight decline in the 2010 outturn of the maize, sorghum and plantain crops. Root crop production would remain similar.
• However, production of pulses has been seriously affected by the late onset of rainfall and the excessive humidity at the end of the growing cycle and production is expected to decrease by 17 percent compared to the spring of 2009.
• The aggregate 2010 crop production (including all seasons) is forecast at about 503 600 tonnes of cereals, 148 000 tonnes of pulses, 1 232 900 tonnes of root crops and 313 200 tonnes of plantain representing a reduction of 9 percent, 20 percent, 12 percent and 14 percent in cereals, pulses, root crops and plantain respectively.
• The total import requirement in the 2010/11 (July/June) marketing year is put at 711 000 tonnes (in cereal equivalent) of which 525 000 tonnes are expected to be imported commercially. This leaves an uncovered deficit of about 186 000 tonnes.
• An estimated 600 000 people fled the affected urban areas following the 12 January 2010 earthquake and sought shelter in the countryside; this, together with heavy damages to infrastructure, have led to sharp declines in income and food availability, along with price hikes.
• Some improvement in the food situation was observed between February and June 2010 through food assistance, the resumption of agricultural activities helped by the distribution of seeds and fertilizers, access to cash/food for work income-generating activities, and the recovery of agricultural and non-agricultural food trade.
• The food security situation in the North-West, the central highlands (plateau central) and the Western parts require close monitoring and detailed assessments in the coming months. Food insecurity is also prevalent in some other areas of the country and the EFSA II, as well as other studies, are expected to provide further Programme recommendations based on household level data.
Full_Report (pdf* format - 32.6 Kbytes)
21 September 2010 - Mission highlights
(ReliefWeb) Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO); United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)
Full_Report (pdf* format - 32.6 Kbytes)
SPECIAL REPORT
Mission Highlights
• Despite the late start of the 2010 spring rainy season, rainfall was generally favourable and a good foodcrop harvest is expected.
• Compared to the bumper 2009 spring season harvest, the Mission estimates a slight decline in the 2010 outturn of the maize, sorghum and plantain crops. Root crop production would remain similar.
• However, production of pulses has been seriously affected by the late onset of rainfall and the excessive humidity at the end of the growing cycle and production is expected to decrease by 17 percent compared to the spring of 2009.
• The aggregate 2010 crop production (including all seasons) is forecast at about 503 600 tonnes of cereals, 148 000 tonnes of pulses, 1 232 900 tonnes of root crops and 313 200 tonnes of plantain representing a reduction of 9 percent, 20 percent, 12 percent and 14 percent in cereals, pulses, root crops and plantain respectively.
• The total import requirement in the 2010/11 (July/June) marketing year is put at 711 000 tonnes (in cereal equivalent) of which 525 000 tonnes are expected to be imported commercially. This leaves an uncovered deficit of about 186 000 tonnes.
• An estimated 600 000 people fled the affected urban areas following the 12 January 2010 earthquake and sought shelter in the countryside; this, together with heavy damages to infrastructure, have led to sharp declines in income and food availability, along with price hikes.
• Some improvement in the food situation was observed between February and June 2010 through food assistance, the resumption of agricultural activities helped by the distribution of seeds and fertilizers, access to cash/food for work income-generating activities, and the recovery of agricultural and non-agricultural food trade.
• The food security situation in the North-West, the central highlands (plateau central) and the Western parts require close monitoring and detailed assessments in the coming months. Food insecurity is also prevalent in some other areas of the country and the EFSA II, as well as other studies, are expected to provide further Programme recommendations based on household level data.
Full_Report (pdf* format - 32.6 Kbytes)
Friday, October 1, 2010
ARTICLE - HOW FOOD AID CAN HARM
LESSONS FROM HAITI: HOW FOOD AID CAN HARM
(The Atlantic) - Peter Duffy
Marion Doss/flickrIn reviewing William Easterly's book on the failures of development aid, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Effort to Aid the Rest Have Done so Much Ill and So Little Good (2006), Nobel laureate Amartya Sen wrote in Foreign Affairs, "The challenge is to respond to the plight of the hopelessly impoverished without neglecting to insist that help come in useful and productive forms."
Or, as the Chinese proverb has it, "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime."
If only it were that easy. What if our prospective fisherman is starving? Surely it wouldn't be a problem to give him free fish, at least until he's ready to learn his new trade. What if he doesn't have a fishing pole? Should you give him one? (Maybe you should sell it to him. That way he'd truly value it.) But what if the fish in the pond have already been overfished? What if they are contaminated with toxins? What if fishing requires a prohibitively expensive permit? The potential problems are endless. It isn't surprising that one of the best development blogs out there is titled Good Intentions are Not Enough. Helping distressed people is tough. We've been failing for millennia.
Perhaps the greatest problem is the damage our food aid causes to farmers in developing countries, who are essential to the future health of their societies.The U.S. government's good intentions—we are the largest source of international food aid in the world by far, spending about $2 billion in taxpayer money each year—are directed not toward the suffering masses but to American farmers and shippers whose voices are heard most clearly in Washington. Under U.S. law, nearly all of our food aid is produced in the United States—predominantly by large agribusinesses like Archer Daniel Midland—and nearly all is delivered to stricken countries by American shippers. The system is shamefully rife with inefficiencies and misplaced priorities. For one, only 35 percent of the U.S. food aid budget is actually spent on food, according to a Government Accountability Office study from 2007.
But perhaps the greatest problem is the damage our food aid causes to farmers in developing countries, who are essential to the future health of their societies. Often in the news lately has been the harm that U.S. deliveries have done to the Haitian rice industry over the past few decades. On March 10, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bill Clinton apologized for his administration's role in exporting cheap U.S. rice to Haiti, undercutting local growers.
According to a study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Haitian farmers provided 47 percent of the country's rice in 1988. By the 2008, the figure had dropped to 15 percent. And in a recent report on NPR's Planet Money, reporters described how bags of American rice are still being sold in Haitian markets.
"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked," said Clinton, who may play a greater role in the future of Haiti than any figure since Toussaint L'Ouverture. (He is U.N. Special Envoy and co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, which is deciding how billions in recovery money will be spent.) "It was a mistake," he added. "I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did. Nobody else."
Haitian President René Préval, an agronomist, is so mindful of the harm caused by free food that he was already calling for an end to it in March, a decision that was not universally applauded in his hungry country. The U.N.'s World Food Programme (WFP), a major distributor of U.S. food aid, began phasing out its large-scale distributions in May under orders from the Préval government. WFP is now offering food and cash to Haitians who are employed on community improvement projects—clearing rubble, installing drainage —"designed in partnership with the Haitian government and with input from beneficiaries." Referring to the lack of free food, Frantz Magellan Pierre-Louis, a spokesperson for the mayor of the town of Jacmel, told the Globe and Mail newspaper in late April, "I don't know what the consequences will be, but I'm sure it's going to be a problem."
More than half a century ago, exactly these sorts of debates were being played out in Ireland and Britain when the Irish potato crop partially failed in the autumn of 1845. Although the potato almost single-handedly kept Ireland's rural population alive, the British government was loath to dispense "gratuitous" aid, believing it best to institute measures that sought to help the Irish help themselves out of their misery. London organized public works projects, offered government-procured food for sale to the laborers, and forbid interference with the Irish export market. After the potato crop failed completely in 1846—which signaled the onset of an acute food crisis—the British government reversed course, ending the public works projects (a failure anyway) and distributing free soup. The soup kitchens were up and running for five months before the government introduced a more restrictive relief scheme that privileged long-term reform over charitable assistance, even though the crisis was far from over. It was a disastrous decision that would be largely maintained even when an additional potato failure (the third in four years) pushed the death toll to a million, earning the catastrophe the title of the Great Irish Famine.
If the British government was fixated on the long-term health of the Irish economy to the detriment of its starving citizens, particularly in the post-1847 phrase of the Famine, the American government (which, it should be noted, is responding to crises outside its borders) is more interested in the quick-fix approach that ignores the realities of the future. Yet it would easy to improve the U.S. government's food aid policies by simply buying food from farmers in the countries affected by the crisis, a practice that has been adopted by most other donor nations. There are signs that Washington is changing its ways, if slowly. A small pilot program in the 2007 Farm Bill and a provision in a 2008 appropriations bill earmarked funds for the local and regional purchase of emergency food aid. The Global Food Security Act, which waiting for a vote in the Senate, would establish a U.S. Emergency Rapid Response to Food Crises Fund that would authorize a $500 million appropriation for the same purpose.
The hope is to create "permanent good out of transient evil." The words were written by Charles Edward Trevelyan, the hardhearted British Treasury official who has been pinned with the blame for the excess deaths of the Famine. Perhaps it's time to acknowledge that Sir Charles wasn't always wrong.
(The Atlantic) - Peter Duffy
Marion Doss/flickrIn reviewing William Easterly's book on the failures of development aid, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Effort to Aid the Rest Have Done so Much Ill and So Little Good (2006), Nobel laureate Amartya Sen wrote in Foreign Affairs, "The challenge is to respond to the plight of the hopelessly impoverished without neglecting to insist that help come in useful and productive forms."
Or, as the Chinese proverb has it, "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime."
If only it were that easy. What if our prospective fisherman is starving? Surely it wouldn't be a problem to give him free fish, at least until he's ready to learn his new trade. What if he doesn't have a fishing pole? Should you give him one? (Maybe you should sell it to him. That way he'd truly value it.) But what if the fish in the pond have already been overfished? What if they are contaminated with toxins? What if fishing requires a prohibitively expensive permit? The potential problems are endless. It isn't surprising that one of the best development blogs out there is titled Good Intentions are Not Enough. Helping distressed people is tough. We've been failing for millennia.
Perhaps the greatest problem is the damage our food aid causes to farmers in developing countries, who are essential to the future health of their societies.The U.S. government's good intentions—we are the largest source of international food aid in the world by far, spending about $2 billion in taxpayer money each year—are directed not toward the suffering masses but to American farmers and shippers whose voices are heard most clearly in Washington. Under U.S. law, nearly all of our food aid is produced in the United States—predominantly by large agribusinesses like Archer Daniel Midland—and nearly all is delivered to stricken countries by American shippers. The system is shamefully rife with inefficiencies and misplaced priorities. For one, only 35 percent of the U.S. food aid budget is actually spent on food, according to a Government Accountability Office study from 2007.
But perhaps the greatest problem is the damage our food aid causes to farmers in developing countries, who are essential to the future health of their societies. Often in the news lately has been the harm that U.S. deliveries have done to the Haitian rice industry over the past few decades. On March 10, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bill Clinton apologized for his administration's role in exporting cheap U.S. rice to Haiti, undercutting local growers.
According to a study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Haitian farmers provided 47 percent of the country's rice in 1988. By the 2008, the figure had dropped to 15 percent. And in a recent report on NPR's Planet Money, reporters described how bags of American rice are still being sold in Haitian markets.
"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked," said Clinton, who may play a greater role in the future of Haiti than any figure since Toussaint L'Ouverture. (He is U.N. Special Envoy and co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, which is deciding how billions in recovery money will be spent.) "It was a mistake," he added. "I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did. Nobody else."
Haitian President René Préval, an agronomist, is so mindful of the harm caused by free food that he was already calling for an end to it in March, a decision that was not universally applauded in his hungry country. The U.N.'s World Food Programme (WFP), a major distributor of U.S. food aid, began phasing out its large-scale distributions in May under orders from the Préval government. WFP is now offering food and cash to Haitians who are employed on community improvement projects—clearing rubble, installing drainage —"designed in partnership with the Haitian government and with input from beneficiaries." Referring to the lack of free food, Frantz Magellan Pierre-Louis, a spokesperson for the mayor of the town of Jacmel, told the Globe and Mail newspaper in late April, "I don't know what the consequences will be, but I'm sure it's going to be a problem."
More than half a century ago, exactly these sorts of debates were being played out in Ireland and Britain when the Irish potato crop partially failed in the autumn of 1845. Although the potato almost single-handedly kept Ireland's rural population alive, the British government was loath to dispense "gratuitous" aid, believing it best to institute measures that sought to help the Irish help themselves out of their misery. London organized public works projects, offered government-procured food for sale to the laborers, and forbid interference with the Irish export market. After the potato crop failed completely in 1846—which signaled the onset of an acute food crisis—the British government reversed course, ending the public works projects (a failure anyway) and distributing free soup. The soup kitchens were up and running for five months before the government introduced a more restrictive relief scheme that privileged long-term reform over charitable assistance, even though the crisis was far from over. It was a disastrous decision that would be largely maintained even when an additional potato failure (the third in four years) pushed the death toll to a million, earning the catastrophe the title of the Great Irish Famine.
If the British government was fixated on the long-term health of the Irish economy to the detriment of its starving citizens, particularly in the post-1847 phrase of the Famine, the American government (which, it should be noted, is responding to crises outside its borders) is more interested in the quick-fix approach that ignores the realities of the future. Yet it would easy to improve the U.S. government's food aid policies by simply buying food from farmers in the countries affected by the crisis, a practice that has been adopted by most other donor nations. There are signs that Washington is changing its ways, if slowly. A small pilot program in the 2007 Farm Bill and a provision in a 2008 appropriations bill earmarked funds for the local and regional purchase of emergency food aid. The Global Food Security Act, which waiting for a vote in the Senate, would establish a U.S. Emergency Rapid Response to Food Crises Fund that would authorize a $500 million appropriation for the same purpose.
The hope is to create "permanent good out of transient evil." The words were written by Charles Edward Trevelyan, the hardhearted British Treasury official who has been pinned with the blame for the excess deaths of the Famine. Perhaps it's time to acknowledge that Sir Charles wasn't always wrong.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)