Haiti: Where Will the Poor Go? / Où iront les pauvres d'Haïti ?by SETH DONNELLY

Publié par siel sur 23 Août 2014, 09:18am

During my last trip to Haiti this June with a delegation of students and human rights observers, we were exposed to the raw violence of the ongoing forced dispersal of the poor. On May 31st, the ...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/21/haiti-where-will-the-poor-go/

On June 19th, perhaps as the bulldozers were still clearing the rubble of people’s homes in downtown Port-au-Prince, Bill Clinton received the “Lifetime Achievement Award” for his work in Haiti from the Happy Hearts Fund in the NYC Cipriani Restaurant. The award ceremony was led by Petra Nemcova, a super model who runs the foundation and who is the girlfriend of the current Haitian Prime Minister, Laurent Lamothe. Also in the audience was Haitian President Michel Martelly who received an award for his “leadership in education”. Outside of the lavish restaurant, a group of Haitian activists and their allies protested the ceremony, chanting “Clinton, where is the money for reconstruction?”.[iv]

The timing of these awards is particularly absurd. According to the news website “Tout Haiti”, earlier this April, two prominent lawyers have petitioned Haiti’s Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes to demand an audit of Bill Clinton’s management of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC). A federal audit, conducted by the US Government Accountability Office and released on October 9th, 2013, raised major concerns about the USAID’s recent work in Haiti, particularly on Clinton-backed projects.[v]

But there is a deeper issue than alleged missing funds, mismanagement, and shoddy, incomplete aid projects. The deeper issue is Clinton’s agenda for “development” in Haiti: a strategy that is not really healthy development at all, but rather mal-development in the service of corporate exploitation of the country’s resources and people. Expanding this corporate-driven mal-development was a central agenda for Clinton in the 1990s, just as it is for the Obama Administration today.

As President, Clinton pushed this strategy when he pressured the Haitian government to open up its economy to US-subsidized, big business rice exports, thereby driving many Haitian rice farmers out of business and crippling Haiti’s domestic rice industry.[vi] Though Clinton publicly apologized for this “trade policy”, he has been pursuing a similar corporate strategy through his handling of “aid” as head of the Clinton Foundation and the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) since the 2010 earthquake.[vii] He has been a vigorous supporter of the new Caracol Industrial Park, funded in large part by USAID. The “park” consists of garment sweatshops, offering substandard, unlivable wages. This has been a boon to companies that can have clothing assembled in Haiti by workers receiving near-slave wages, then sold in the US without having to pay any customs.[viii] However, as investigative reporter Jonathan Katz notes, the “park” has not been such a boon to the local Haitians:

“But less than a year after Caracol Industrial Park’s gala opening — with Bill and Hillary Clinton, Sean Penn, designer Donna Karan and Haiti’s current and former presidents among the guests — the feeling these days is disappointment. Hundreds of smallholder farmers were coaxed into giving up more than 600 acres of land for the complex, yet nearly 95 percent of that land remains unused. A much-needed power plant was completed on the site, supplying the town with more electricity than ever, but locals say surges of wastewater have caused floods and spoiled crops.

“Most critically, fewer than 1,500 jobs have been created — paying too little, the locals say, and offering no job security. “We thought there was going to be some benefit for us,” says Ludwidge Fountain, 34… He worked for two months at the park as a guard, taking home about $3.40 a day, until his contract ran out. “Maybe it’s good for some of the people inside the park. Everyone else got nothing.”[ix]

Likewise, Bill Clinton has funneled aid money to establish a business venture between Coca-Cola and local mango farmers, using existing mango groves and using land for new groves to produce exports for Coca-Cola and its “Haiti Hope” project (an Odwalla drink). About the project, Clinton stated:

“The Coca‑Cola Company responded to Haiti’s urgent immediate needs with financial support and beverages. The Haiti Hope Project goes a step further and exemplifies the innovative role that partnerships with the private sector can play in the reconstruction of Haiti.”[x]

According to Coca-Cola’s website, $9.5 million has been raised since 2010 to launch this project tin a public-private partnership. Coca-Cola claims to have 19,000 mango farmers “enrolled” in the project, frequently organized into co-ops, and that half of these farmers are women. Moreover, Coca-Cola claims that 10 cents on every bottle of “Odwalla Mango Tango Smoothie” purchased will go back to “Haiti Hope”. [xi] The Clinton-Bush Fund gave a grant of more than $500,000 to the project.[xii] Projects such as this do not advance Haiti’s vital need for food security, but instead tether the well-being of Haitian farmers to the fickle tastes of more affluent, primarily “First World”, consumers.

The Clinton Foundation is also funding similar agricultural, “supply chain” projects involving peanut and coffee farmers. The Foundation claims to be assisting these farmers by funding the construction of regional depots, providing marketing and technical assistance, as well as linking the farmers to buyers elsewhere, such as the Four Season Restaurant chain.[xiii]As with the Coca-Cola Project, this “market-driven” and export-led approach to agricultural development fails to directly address Haiti’s vital need for domestic food production and security. While Haitians produce more coffee, peanuts, and mangos for export, they remain dependent upon overpriced, US corporate food imports while growing tracts of their land are being leased off to “foreign investors” for “industrial parks” and tourist sites.

Then there is the infamous Oasis Hotel in Port-au-Prince, a huge, elite structure built to court rich tourists and foreign investors. It is “awkwardly” close to the houses and shacks of the poor that lack decent sanitation, plumbing, and electricity. The Clinton-Bush fund allocated $2 million in “aid” to construct this hotel.[xiv] Clinton is likewise allocating more Foundation aid into the construction of new Marriott Hotel.

Les invités + les 2 stars Martelly et Clinton à" l'award ceremony" organisée par Petra Nemcova, un mannequin qui dirige la fondation Happy Hearts Fund et qui est également la "girl friend" du Premier ministre Laurent Lamothe

Les invités + les 2 stars Martelly et Clinton à" l'award ceremony" organisée par Petra Nemcova, un mannequin qui dirige la fondation Happy Hearts Fund et qui est également la "girl friend" du Premier ministre Laurent Lamothe

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Haiti: Where Will the Poor Go? / Où iront les pauvres d'Haïti ?by SETH DONNELLY

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