BUT HAITI''S POPULAR ORGANISATIONS SAY NO TO STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT.
BUT HAITI''S POPULAR ORGANISATIONS SAY NO TO STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT.
The recently announced 40% increase in the amount of European Union aid to Haiti is welcome, but it must be directed to meet the demands of the country's poor majority In 1995 the international community provided Haiti with over US$500m.in aid, yet the living standards of the poor continued to deteriorate. Ill-directed allocations of aid do nothing to improve the lives of ordinary Haitians, and only enrich the staff of foreign non-governmental organisations while increasing the debt that Haiti must eventually repay.
European Union aid should not be conditional on the Haitian government's acceptance of the IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programme. Haiti's popular organisations reject the structural adjustment programme, having already experienced its negative effects over the last decade. Enforced adoption of further neo-liberal 'reforms' will bring about a disaster for the poorest and weakest inhabitants of Haiti.
For the 70% of the population working in the agricultural sector the most important reform is agrarian reform. A comprehensive programme to redistribute land and to guarantee security of tenure is essential if Haiti is to develop in a way that will benefit the majority of its people, and if it is to tackle a catastrophic environmental crisis.
In the mountains agrarian reform is necessary to halt deforestation and soil erosion. On the plains agrarian reform is necessary to provide employment and a living for peasants relocating from the mountains, and to share more equally the country's natural resources. At present, on the fertile agricultural plains, share-cropping peasants are obliged to give away half their harvest in rent to landlords. They are routinely thrown off their land after only a few years. If the Haitian government is serious about boosting agricultural production it must undertake an agrarian reform in conjunction with the peasants' organisations. Peasant organisations are clear that agrarian reform does not just mean a redistribution of land, but must be accompanied by state intervention in the agricultural sector in the form of subsidised fertilizers and transport, the provision of irrigation systems and roads, and the levying of tariffs to protect Haitian produce from US imports. Peasant producers, and small-scale urban and rural merchants also desperately need assistance in the form of credit. Efforts to reintroduce the native Creole pig that was eradicated in the early 1980s should be stepped up.
Foreign aid can be beneficial if it is disbursed in a way that involves the recipients in how and where it is spent. Haiti's popular organisations have the knowledge and the expertise to make sure this money is spent wisely and not wasted. They should be central to the construction of an effective and lasting development strategy.
The issues of aid and economic development are of crucial importance, yet the Haitian government is ignoring the input of the organisations that truly express the aspirations of the majority. The current course of capitulation to the dictates of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank will set back the chances of equitable economic development and of genuine democracy in Haiti.
This press release was based on meetings between a six-person delegation from the Haiti Support Group and representatives of numerous popular, or grass roots, organisations in Haiti at the end of June 1996.
The Haiti Support Group delegation met representatives of the following organisations:
Haitian Platform to Advocate for Alternative Development (PAPDA),
Association for Haitian Cutural Research and Empowerment (ARAKA),
Haitian Information Bureau, National Popular Assembly (APN),
Union of Young Revolutionaries of Sarthes, Cite Soleil,
Women's Health Clinic of Carrefour Feuilles,
Collective to Mobilise against the IMF,
Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organisations,
Heads Together Small Peasants - Tet Kole Ti Peyizan,
Peasant Organisation of the Plain of Leogane (OPPL),
Integrated Development Project of Desarmes, Artibonit,
Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP)
