May 2005

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Untangling Strands of Hope in Haiti

Jake Miller is the communications coordinator at Grassroots International, 179 Boylston Street, 4th floor, Boston MA 02130, 617/524.1400, (www.grassrootsonline.org).

The bullet hole in a Port-au-Prince taxi's windshield. Photo: Jake Miller

The traffic of downtown Port-au-Prince is a writhing Gordian knot. With no working traffic signals, intersections are snarls of cars turning every which way from every possible lane. Making a left turn requires a series of bluffs and feints, plaintive hand gestures, and eliciting the elusive kindness and cooperation of other drivers; when succesful, it seems miraculous given the context. The taxi I was in, the vehicles of the Haitian National Police (HNP), and even many of the simplest pick-up trucks-turned mini-buses, had bullet holes in their windshields.

From March 30-April 6, 2005, I traveled to Haiti with several colleagues to meet with representatives of social movements, human rights organizations, and alternative development groups in Port-au-Prince and the Central Plateau. Everywhere we went people were working hard to overcome the challenges that Haiti faces -- fierce poverty, failing infrastructure, a plenitude of men with guns, and a long history of national leaders and international interventions that haven't had the interests of the people of Haiti at heart. Negotiating this tangle of problems seems more daunting than braving Port-au-Prince traffic.

Organizers were attempting to build coalitions; mobilize people who have been repeatedly attacked for their political beliefs; and find effective ways to advocate for change with a state so under-funded as to be practically non-existent. "One of the major problems in Haiti right now is a crisis of citizenship," said Elifaite Saint-Pierre, Secretary General of the Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organizations (POHDH). "People don't have any way of expressing their needs."

As we made our way around downtown, I was amazed to see that many of the places where the most dramatic events of Haiti's recent history took place are practically next door to one another. The national prison, where thousands of people languish without charges, is a few blocks away from the National Palace, the President's residence and the seat of power in the nation. The Ethnology School, site of some of the most heated student protests against ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the fall of 2003, is around the corner from the palace. Aristide's supporters burned parts of the school down to put a stop to the protests, and it's currently draped in razor wire while it's being rebuilt.

The streets of downtown Port-au-Prince are also the entry point to several "popular neighborhoods," slums and shantytowns where thousands still regularly march and rally to demand the return of Aristide. Armed gangs terrorize the population: on the one side, Aristide loyalists; on the other, members of the former military (including those who led an armed insurgency that helped drive Aristide from office).

The current transitional government -- led by President Boniface Alexandre and Prime Minister Gerard Latortue -- has limited power, limited resources, and a very keen sense of its limited legitimacy. To buttress the interim government, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has a broad mandate -- to provide security and stability, facilitate disarmament, collaborate with the National Police, foster good government, prepare for elections, and monitor and investigate violations of human rights -- but has done very little to achieve any of these goals. According to a joint report by the Harvard Law Student Advocates for Human Rights from Cambridge, Massachusetts and Centro de Justiça Global, from São Paulo Brazil, published in March, 2005, "After eight months under MINUSTAH'S watch, Haiti is as insecure as ever." (For a copy of the report, see www.law.harvard.edu/programs/hrp/CAP/current/americas/haiti.html, or call 617/495-9362).

With 6,000 troops and 1,400 civilian police officers, MINUSTAH has done almost nothing to begin the process of disarmament. Locals say that every few nights the national television network shows someone handing in a few broken, worthless weapons. The government proclaims this a successful operation.

There are also allegations that MINUSTAH forces have witnessed human rights violations by the HNP and failed to investigate, and it is clear that the UN has done nothing to reinforce, professionalize, or train the HNP. The UN has done almost nothing to end the pattern of corruption, politicization, and human rights violations by police officers. Opponents of Aristide say things have gotten better; his supporters say things have gotten worse. Everyone agrees that the level of insecurity is intolerable, that the criminal justice system is broken, and that impunity and the politicization of the police remain critical problems.

On April 9 and 10, 2005, HNP and UN forces killed the leaders of two notorious armed factions (gangster Jean Anthony Rene, A.K.A. Grenn Sonnen, and prominent rebel Remissainthe Ravix, who was one of the four main leaders of the armed insurgents who helped drive Aristide from office in February 2004), but such operations will not solve the problem of endemic societal insecurity. In late March there were shootings at the home of the Minister of Justice, a grenade attack on the offices of Provisional Electoral Commission, and gunshots exchanged at the headquarters of the U.N. mission. Meanwhile, elections are planned for this fall.

Exsersive Servil, the appointed Delegate from the Central Department (Haiti's legislators represent regions known as departments), said that the first step to returning Haiti to stability must be elections, because the interim government doesn't have financial resources or legitimacy. Still, he said, "Everyone who's thinking hard about this, everyone who's lucid, is nervous. The disarmament never happened. There are so many guns in circulation."

A recent Inter Press Service article by Jane Regan outlined some of the other obstacles that the Provisional Electoral Commission must overcome. Even the simple logistics are daunting. There are 91 political parties and 4.2 million voters to register with a new, high-tech computerized system in the next three months, all in about 420 registration centers. Elections are scheduled for October and November, 2005, for every elected office in the nation -- more than 1000 posts including the entire parliament, local mayors, and President. (To read Regan's article, please see www.ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=28168).

Then there are the groups who want to keep the elections from happening, from across the political spectrum. Regan quoted John Joseph, a member of Aristide's Lavalas political committee from Cité Soleil: "As long as Aristide isn't back in Haiti, there won't be any elections. If they want to call it a 'selection' of one of the mercenaries who work for the imperialists, fine, but you can't call that elections." As the elections approach, concerns about insecurity grow. Haiti's first democratic elections were held on November 29, 1987. That morning, 34 voters and election workers were murdered by armed thugs allied with the army. The vote was cancelled after three hours of voting to avoid further bloodshed. "This massacre is always in people's heads," said Maxime Rony, from the Alternative Justice Program and coordinator of POHDH. "The way insecurity is growing every day that memory is even more vivid than ever."

"There are key cities around Haiti and neighborhoods within Port-au-Prince where millions of people can't venture out to do anything safely, let alone vote," Rony said. "The population is held hostage first of all by a group of gangs with guns and then, occasionally, when they intervene, by the police."

It's quite a traffic jam: the state can't gain legitimacy without elections; fair elections can't be held until the safety of voters and candidates can be assured; security requires disarmament; people aren't likely to disarm as long as they legitimately fear that the government will persecute them, and legitimately believe that the government will offer no solutions to the problems that they face in everyday life.

Even the most basic services, like clean water and public sanitation are absent. According to the United Nations World Development Index, the percentage of people with sustainable access to improved water actually fell from 53% in 1990 to 46% in 2000. Fully 80% of diseases in Haiti are related to poor sanitation and dirty water. A woman working in a small peanut butter processing co-op in Papaye, in the Central Plateau said, "We've had government after government and they ignore our problems. They don't care about water, they don't care about food, they don't care about us."

Despite these daunting obstacles, some people and organizations are still struggling to foster cooperative left turns.

In small towns in rural Haiti, groups like the Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP) are constructing communal water systems where municipal water does not exist. In the cities, workers are organizing unions to fight for their rights on the job. But in order for these small victories to make a difference to all the people of Haiti, there need to be a series of systematic changes. There also need to be new ways of collaborating between the different sectors of Haitian society, and between the people of Haiti and their neighbors in the international community.

It's a long, rugged road. There are no short cuts, but there are some signs that these collaborations are beginning. An international fact finding and solidarity mission led by Argentine Nobel Peace Laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Nora Cortiñas of the Mothers of May Square-Founder's Line in early April, 2005, has begun to outline a proposal for a new kind of international cooperation, based not on military force but in real, people-to-people solidarity. Representatives from Brazil's Landless Workers Movement (MST - please see Peacework, February 2004) and from other members of the international rural peoples' association, Via Campesina, have begun a series of exchange programs with the Peasant Movement of Papaye and other rural groups, bringing their experience and human resources to bear on the challenges of rural life in Haiti. And, the human rights coalition POHDH has been providing legal support to budding unions in Haiti's free trade zones.

As Maxime Rony said, "There needs to be a different conception of what international cooperation is. Every time the international community tries to establish 'cooperation' they're simply putting pieces in place that serve their own interest. We advocate for cooperation that would serve the interest of the people here."

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