Haiti Reborn is a program of the Quixote Center. We work in the United States to build grassroots activism to support just U.S. policies toward Haiti. We also work to support grassroots organizations in Haiti, including the reforestation program in Gros Morne, and the Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV) in Port-au-Prince.
There have been a number of good articles exploring the background of the food crisis in Haiti and globally. I would like to share a couple of those here.
The first is from Mark Schuller, a professor at Vasser University who published an article with IRC America's Program on the Haitian Food Crisis. Mark's article nicely integrates local dynamics with international processes.
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Yesterday the House of Representatives passed the Jubilee Act. The amendment on Haiti debt cancellation also passed - by unanimous consent. Below we have press releases from Jubilee USA about the Jubilee Act, and from Alcee Hastings (D-FL) office, the sponsor of the Haiti amendment.
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This is from the Jubilee USA Network
Full House of Representatives Expected to Consider Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation Next Week
WASHINGTON - Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of more than 80 religious denominations, development agencies and human rights groups, today heralded the passage by voice vote in the House Financial Services Committee of the Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation (HR 2634).
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Any sustainable future in Haiti requires a re-ener
gized rural economy. This
article provides some excellent background on the destruction of Haiti's aricultural economy and student demands to change course.
Latest from Haiti Analysis on student demonstrations calling for a change to Haiti's agricultural policies. The story was picked up by Inter-Press Service.
Photos from the press conference and protest.
Posted by Tom Ricker in tomr's blog
We also want to point our several publications on Haiti's debt that can be used for education and advocacy that came out in December.
The Center for Economic Policy Research prepared a report "Debt Cancellation for Haiti: No Reason for Further Delays."
Marlene Bastien of FAMN (Haitian Women of Miami) published an appeal for immediate cancellation in the Miami Herald (link goes to article reprint at the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti)
Joe Emersberger published an article on Monthly Review's website on Haiti's debt Friday that has good background and summary of the two articles mentioned above.
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Preval's January 1st Speech, in Gonaives, Haiti can be read in english at the MINUSTAH website (other source welcome!) The economy is a major theme of the speech, of course. Mid-way through the speech Preval mentions a program that is interesting for potentially meeting dual goals - reforestation and employment. It is an imagintative approach that if truly participatory could help by creating an economic incentive to plant. Such an approach could be expanded to other products as well...
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URGENT ACTION APPEAL
- From Amnesty International USA
To read the current Urgent Action newsletter, go to
http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/newslett.html
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For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa33607.pdf
18 December 2007
UA 336/07 Fear for safety / Possible "disappearance"
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We are still pressing ahead on a separate resolution the calls for Haiti’s debts to be cancelled immediately (H Res 241). One of the main reasons we are pressing for this resolution is that all of Haiti’s multi-lateral creditors (World Bank, IMF and Inter-American Development Bank) have already agreed to cancel Haiti’s debts – but they insist on making Haiti wait in order to implement a number of policy conditions. One of these conditions is the drafting of a “Policy Reduction Strategy Paper” that outlines how the government of
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(The column below originally appeared in The Progressive, November 7, 2007: http://www.progressive.org/mp_danticat110707)
A new study on the early path of the AIDS epidemic threatens to stigmatize Haitians and Haitian-Americans once again. Late last month, a group of researchers published a study that concluded that the explosion of the AIDS pandemic in the United States resulted from the virus first being brought from the Congo to Haiti around 1966 and then to the United States “after a single migration of the virus out of Haiti in or around 1969.” Now I am not a scientist and I don’t pretend to understand every detail of the research conducted by the group, led by Michael Worobey of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. (The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.) But prominent physicians argue that the group’s conclusions are highly debatable. And, by pinning the blame on a Haitian “immigrant host,” they could have potentially devastating consequences.
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