Does Haiti Really Need More Prisons?

Dady Chéry has the answer:

"Canada and the U.S. are itching to build prisons in Haiti.  True, Haiti’s prisons hold three times more prisoners than the capacity for which they were built, but Haiti does not need more prisons, it needs better prisons and fewer prisoners.  Already Haiti has the lowest per-capita number of inmates in the Caribbean, at a rate of 55 per 100,000.  It turns out that more than two thirds of those incarcerated have never been tried. In prison: young, old, and contagious are thrown together.  Two hundred of seventy five inmates have died of cholera because the prisons are not supplied with clean drinking water.  Many of the inmates are political prisoners who were locked up after Aristide’s overthrow.  The sensible thing to do is to respect these individuals’ rights.  This should have the salutary effect of dropping Haiti’s incarcerations to a number very close to the country’s prison capacity."

This and more facts here:
Haiti Has Lowest Inmate Per Capita in Caribbean and 70% Await Trial | Haiti Chery by Dady Chéry ht.ly/kfDa6








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VIDEO: Haiti Reporters interview Raoul Peck about his film "Mortal Assistance"

Raoul Peck is the internationally acclaimed Haitian director of such films as Lumumba, Man by the Shore and Moloch Tropical.

This interview with Port-au-Prince based young reporters about his latest film Assistance Mortelle (Mortal Assistance) which aired on French channel Arte this week and premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, is in French. I jotted down its key points in English while watching:

• "I wanted that we be the ones telling our story for a change, to turn the tables for a moment. What I see on the airwaves is the not the country I know. Haitians do not have a voice."
• "When asked why the aid is not working, "international" actors always say you can't trust Haitians, the Haitian state is weak. I had to break that litany of pretexts that prevents us from looking at the real problem."
• " Along its 60 year history and everywhere it goes (Africa, Latin America included), "Development Aid" is ultimately neither "aid" nor "development". Looking at many African countries, one has to ask, where is the evidence of success? Have the lives of these countries really changed, do those countries export more than before, are there less inequalities, is there less infant mortality?"
• "Aid" is deceptive because 40% of what is supposedly given is not spent in the supposed target country but in the donor country."
• "Had the Haitians within the CIRH/IRCH [Bill Clinton-led International Reconstruction Commission for Haiti] not been marginalized, they could have played a crucial role relaying information to the population and to the ministries both of which were kept at bay."
• Peck did the film out of the frustration of being in Haiti shortly after the earthquake and not being able to help because of the lack of coordination between various international actors who were ultimately there to serve their own interests first.

Can I go one step further Mr. Peck and say that ultimately the "aid", by functioning parallel to the Haitian government  and excluding it from "aid" coordination, ultimately weakens the very Haitian institutions it claims to bolster? 

VIDEO LINK:  http://ht.ly/k8PPK



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Raoul Peck: Haitian State Too Weak To Be Blamed for Aid Management Failure

From the Director of the forthcoming film Mortal Assistance. Couldn't have said it better myself:

« L’aide est violente, arbitraire, aveugle, imbue d’elle-même. Un monstre paternaliste qui balaie tout sur son passage. Elle fait semblant de résoudre les problèmes qu’elle s’applique à entretenir », critique le cinéaste dans le film.
En marge de la projection, Raoul Peck est intervenu pour souligner l’intérêt de sortir du discours permanent de critiquer l’Etat haïtien dans la gestion de l’aide humanitaire en évoquant comme argument la faiblesse de celui-ci.
Cette tendance empêche d’aborder les discussions structurelles, relatives au sens même de l’aide, explique t-il.
Le cinéaste plaide en faveur de la prise en compte des compétences haïtiennes dans la reconstruction du pays.
« Le terrain est vicié par un ensemble d’influences que nous ne contrôlons pas. Quand quatre-vingt pour cent de l’argent du budget d’un Etat n’est pas entre ses mains, c’est une grande perte de légitimité et de pouvoir », fait-il remarquer.
Soulignant le dysfonctionnement de l’aide, il appelle tous ceux qui sont impliqués dans cette reconstruction à rebattre les cartes et repenser l’ensemble du dialogue enclenché.

Source: L’aide à la reconstruction d’Haïti, un échec, selon le film « Assistance mortelle » projeté à Port-au-Prince http://ht.ly/jSXcy Alterpresse

TRANSLATION:

"The aid is violent, arbitrary, blind, self-important. A paternalistic monster which sweeps everything in its wake.  It acts like it is solving problems that it in fact maintains" says the director of the film.

Raoul Peck intervened to stress the importance of getting out of the discourse of permanently criticizing the Haitian government's management of the humanitarian aid citing the state's weakness.

This tendency avoids structural discussions having to do with the aid itself.

The filmmaker pleads in favor of using Haitian competencies in rebuilding the country.

"The terrain is maligned by a set of influences that we do not control. When 84 percent of the money in a government's budget is not in its hands, it is a huge loss of legitimacy and power" he adds.

Underlining the dysfunction of the aid, he calls on all those implicated in the reconstruction to reshuffle the cards and rethink the conversation."

Can I get an A-MEN? 

 (Raoul Peck is a prominent and internationally acclaimed Haitian filmmaker. His films include Man by the Shore and Lumumba.)







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Haiti: Negative Effects of "Aid" on Social Fabric According to the World Bank and Haiti Grassroots Watch

"Elite capture": according to a World Bank report, the people and organisations that tend to benefit the most from “community driven development” or CDD projects in poor countries are those who already enjoy privilege and power at the local level.

Still according to World Bank representatives: "When someone gets a project, they do it not only to make money, but also, they immediately start making plans to become mayor or deputy.”

Organizations are created solely to go after the funding. “There are a lot of organisations founded to channel funding from ‘NGOs,’” Mark Schuller added. “You could call those organisations ‘fake’’ or maybe ‘pocket organisations,’ because they have a piece of paper in their pocket that says they are an organisation, but for the majority of the population, they don’t really exist.”

Kòdinasyon Oganizasyon Bene (KOB)'s Elace Dirou lamented that “when these projects come into our communities, they actually destroy organisations. They make people become enemies. People that used to share what little they had – salt, matches, etc. – now turn their backs.”

Schuller also deplored what he sees as dependency and loss of self-reliance: “Because foreigners are the ones helping, after a while, people even cease to believe in Haitians! They say ‘Haitians can’t do anything’ because the NGO is doing all the work in their neighbourhood.”

SOURCE: IPS – In Haiti, Aid Dollars Corroded Social Fabric | Inter Press Service http://ht.ly/hheFz

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Haiti: Allegations that Duvalier was given back ill-gotten goods

"Depuis quelques mois, tous les biens de Duvalier lui ont été restitués, des fonds de pensions lui ont été accordé, même un passeport diplomatique lui a été octroyé." AlterPresse - Haïti-Duvalier : Nouveau rendez-vous à la cour d’appel le 31 janvier http://ht.ly/hcrJW

Translation: 

"Starting a few months ago, all of Duvalier's property has been restituted to him, he has been given a pension and has even received a diplomatic passport."

 


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Africa: Mali and CAR Demystified in 4 Paragraphs

"The insurgents have the most modern weaponry. They seized the weapons when France and its NATO allies destroyed Muammar al-Quathafi's government in Libya, freeing up large arsenal of arms to any armed militia that could carry them away. So France is trying to clean up a mess it helped create.

Even if the insurgents are pushed back, France and its NATO allies may not be in a position for long-term commitment to Mali's security -- at some point France will withdraw, especially if the conflict starts affecting Hollande's political fortunes back home.

France is not committing armed forces in Mali out of the goodness of President Francois Hollande's heart. Mali will have to pay, probably with resource concessions -- the leadership will also become even more beholden to France for years to come. Empire never works for free. 

There are many hidden hands fueling the conflict in Mali. Two years ago the United States sent Rangers supposedly to hunt for Joseph Kony, the Lord's Resistance Army leader.  Why no update on this hunt? What have the U.S. forces been doing as the Seleca rebels marched towards Bangui?"



 Source: Africa: The Empire Strikes Again http://ht.ly/gSRc4 Black Star News





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Haiti: Quick facts regarding rice farming, IMF, World Bank and Arkansas

"Since 1995, when it dropped its import tariffs on rice from 50 to 3 percent as part of a structural adjustment program run by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, Haiti has steadily increased its imports of rice from the north. Today it is the fifth-largest importer of American rice in the world despite having a population of just 10 million. Much of Haiti's rice comes from Arkansas; each year, Riceland Foods and Producers Rice Mill send millions of tons of rice down the Mississippi river on barges to New Orleans, where the rice is loaded onto container ships, taken to port in Haiti, and packaged as popular brands such as Tchaco or Mega Rice. Haiti today imports over 80 percent of its rice from the United States, making it a critical market for farmers in Arkansas." Subsidizing Starvation - By Maura R. O’Connor | Foreign Policy http://ht.ly/gUtvN

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Haiti: Quick facts of the day about aid money whereabouts according to Center for Global Development

"94% of humanitarian funding went to donors' own civilian and military entities, UN agencies, international NGOs and private contractors."

"You can look at procurement databases to track primary contract recipients, but it is almost impossible to track the money further to identify the final recipients and the outcomes of projects."


"Breaking the figures down by donor isn't much better: 60% of US-disbursed recovery funding is "not specified" (pdf), as is 67% of Canada's aid to Haiti (pdf). Data for the European commission shows that 67% of humanitarian funding and 43% of recovery funding is to "other international NGOs" (pdf). Data reporting becomes even more opaque when one looks for the specific organisations, agencies, firms or individuals that have received grants or contracts in Haiti. Detailed financial reports and rigorous impact evaluations are hard to find."


"Of the thousands of projects being run in Haiti, we found only 45 organisation- or project-level evaluation reports at the end of 2011. A total of 23 reports do not have specific project data and only four have any specific detail about how the money was spent."

"The Government of Haiti has received just 1 percent of humanitarian aid and somewhere between 15 and 21 percent of longer-term relief aid."

Source: Haiti's earthquake generated a $9bn response – where did the money go? | Vijaya Ramachandran and Julie Walz | Global development | guardian.co.uk http://ht.ly/gQoP0
(Authors of: Haiti: Where Has All the Money Gone? : Center for Global Development : Publications http://ht.ly/gQnTp)

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