One of tango’s best definitions is that of expert Horacio Ferrer, “Tango is music, a dance, a way to see the world, a philosophy, a feeling, a sensitivity, an emotion. It is the mythical dimension of reality, nostalgia, abandonment. It is lovers’ separation, the sadness of lost love, the indifference of the world to pain, the poetry of neighborhoods, the value of friendship…”.

To those themes one should add those tangos that were devoted to a particular street or neighborhood. One of the first tangos dedicated to a street is the one called Caminito (Little Walk), a street located in the neighborhood of La Boca, in Buenos Aires. Although it was created in the decade of the 1920s, Caminito is still one of the most popular tangos of all times.

La Boca is one of the first areas the original Spanish conquerors came to in Buenos Aires. Since the 1880s, Italian immigrants -particularly those from Genoa- who came to Buenos Aires, lived there. That neighborhood was also inhabited by gauchos, creoles and country people. La Boca is now one of Buenos Aires' poorest neighborhoods. Only the street called Caminito, whose houses are now being repainted, retains something of its older allure.

The birth of the tango Caminito is an unlikely story of a musician and a poet, both of them tango experts, and how their friendship with an artist, a painter who gave the name to the street, sparked the creation of that tango. It is also the story of how the street called Caminito became one of the most visited streets in Argentina, an obligatory stop for all tango lovers worldwide.

The creator of Caminito’s music was Juan de Dios Filiberto, a native of La Boca. The writer of the lyrics was the poet Gabino Coria Peñaloza, born in Mendoza, a province in Argentina bordering Chile. And the artist was Benito Quinquela Martín, also a native of La Boca. Quinquela Martín has immortalized that area in a gigantic collection of paintings characterized by their bold colors.

The history of the tango Caminito is still shrouded in mystery. According to some, the name comes from a small road in the town of Olta, in the province of La Rioja. For other tango enthusiasts, the name of the tango is related to the street in La Boca, the neighborhood where the musician Filiberto was born and grew up. Both sides seem to have part of the truth.

The composer Filiberto didn’t achieve his musical expertise very easily. When he was young he worked in different trades. Talking about his musical beginnings he used to say, “When I entered the musical Conservatory I was over twenty-five, and my shoulders were used to the work of the stevedore, blacksmith, metal fitter and caldron maker. My fingers were stiff and clumsy for the keyboard and the fingerboard.” He was, however, passionate about tango and when he became famous he used to say, “My music is many things put together but, overall, it reflects my feelings. In art it is not enough to feel, but to know how to express that feeling.”

He studied violin and music theory in a musical academy in Buenos Aires. Later, Filiberto was given a scholarship to study with a well-known musician, Alberto Williams, and took lessons in counterpoint, piano and guitar. But it was in Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires’ most prestigious classical music theater, where he worked as a technical assistant, where he had a shattering musical experience. In Teatro Colón, Filiberto heard for the first time Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which opened new musical horizons in his life. “Beethoven,” he used to say, “was my musical God.”

Filiberto frequently walked through one of La Boca’s narrow roads to meet his friends. They were frequently greeted from a window by a young woman living in that area. Some believe that he created the music of Caminito as an homage to that little walk and to that woman. Filiberto later formed his own orchestra, continued composing and his music became known all over the world. Ten years after his death, as a special homage to him, the Juan de Dios Filiberto National Orchestra of Argentine Music was created.

When Filiberto was looking for somebody to put words to his music, the painter Quinquela Martín introduced Peñaloza to him. Quinquela Martín, who called Peñaloza a “crazy poet,” thought that he was the ideal person to put words into Filiberto’s musical compositions. Although Filiberto collaborated with Peñaloza in creating other tangos, none of them surpassed the popularity of Caminito.

At a meeting in a Buenos Aires coffee place, Filiberto told Peñaloza that he had composed the music of a tango inspired in his strolls through an alley in La Boca. After humming a few bars he asked Peñaloza if he would write the lyrics for that tango. Peñaloza responded that he already had something he had written after a love affair in La Rioja and recited it to Filiberto. Filiberto enthusiastically adapted the music to those lyrics and Caminito was born.

Peñaloza’s lyrics were written while visiting La Rioja, a province in Argentina, where he had been stranded by heavy storms in the town of Olta. In that town, Peñaloza met a pretty young school teacher called María and created the lyrics in a rapture of enthusiasm after meeting and falling in love with her. With María, Peñaloza used to take long walks along a narrow dirt road.

Since she went away (Desde que se fué)

she never came back (nunca más volvió)

I will follow her footsteps (seguiré sus pasos)

Little walk, goodbye. (Caminito, adiós).

Caminito was first heard in Buenos Aires at a contest for native songs for the carnival parade of that year, where it won an award. Soon afterwards, it was performed at the Rural Society of Palermo, in Buenos Aires and was later recorded by Carlos Gardel, a tango singer who went onto become a legendary singer from Argentina. Since then, Caminito became one of the three most famous tangos of all time.

Most Argentines can repeat by heart the beginning of the tango’s lyrics,

Caminito that time has erased
(Caminito que el tiempo ha borrado)

and that one day saw us passing by
(que juntos un día nos viste pasar)

I came for the last time
(he venido por última vez)

I came to tell you my woes.
(he venido a contarte mi mal).

Originally, the name of the street Caminito was given by Benito Quinquela Martín, an artist who lived in La Boca and whose vibrantly colored paintings are a historic portrait of life in that area. The story of his life reads like a novel.

In March of 1890, a few weeks old child was left in a Buenos Aires orphanage called Casa de Expósitos under the care of an order of nuns called the Sisters of Charity. The child, who was wrapped in expensive clothes, had with him a handwritten note that said, “This child has been baptized and given the name Benito Juan Martín.” Together with the note there was a shawl with an embroidered flower cut in half. Whoever left the child thought that perhaps it would be possible to reclaim him later by showing the shawl’s other half.

The child stayed with the nuns until he was 6 years old, when he was legally adopted by a poor couple, owners of a modest charcoal business in La Boca. He was lovingly cared for by this couple and forged a unique bond with his adopted mother, a woman with humble origins. His father worked as a stevedore in the nearby port area.

Because he had to help at home, Benito was unable to finish elementary school. When talking about his childhood he said, “I had to leave school before learning the multiplication tables.” When he was 15 years old his adopted father asked him to help him with his work as a stevedore in the port, a work that Benito did for several years. When he was seventeen years old, and while still working at the port, he started taking painting lessons at an academy in La Boca, where he met Filiberto and started a friendship that was to last all their lives.

Benito was part of a group of rowdy youngsters who used to go from house to house playing tangos. Once, when playing at a poor tenement house, they learned that there was a woman seriously ill. They were leaving the place when the sick woman asked them to play a tango. As soon as they finished playing, the woman died. Some of the youngsters felt a sense of guilt that their music had provoked the woman’s death but Filiberto retorted, “If she had to die it is better that she died this way. It must be wonderful to die listening to a tango!”

Benito had taken his adopted father’s name and was now called Benito Quinquela Martín. In the same way that Beethoven’s music had “illuminated” his friend Filiberto, Rodin’s book on art had illuminated Quinquela. He would later remark, “Because my academic studies were rudimentary, I had to rely a lot on intuition and emotion. In those two words I found my best guides and teachers.”

Although at the beginning Quinquela combined both his work as stevedore and charcoal merchant with that of painter, he later decided that he would dedicate himself only to painting for the rest of his life. Most of his paintings reflect harbor scenes and the shipyards in La Boca. They are a song to the working men through the prodigal use of color. It was that characteristic of painting workers that made Mussolini exclaim, after meeting the painter in Italy, “Lei e il mio pittore!” (You are my favorite painter!). When Quinquela asked him why he said so Mussolini responded, “Because you are a painter of the working man.”

One day, unannounced, Quinquela was visited in his precarious studio by Pio Collivadino, who was the Director of the National Academy of Art in Buenos Aires. It was a meeting that would dramatically change Quinquela Martín’s life. Collivadino was instrumental in Quinquela Martín’s showing his work –since the beginning to great critical and popular acclaim- at the Witcomb Gallery and then in the aristocratic Jockey Club, both in Buenos Aires. He later showed his work in Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, Rome –where, in a visit to the Vatican he was received by Pope Pious XI- New York, Havana, Paris, and London.

Received and admired by royalty in the countries he visited, Quinquela Martín became one of the best known Argentine painters. His paintings are now in the most important museums in the world. He also became a philanthropist who donated land to build schools, a children’s clinic, a theater and a museum in La Boca.

When he became famous and was financially comfortable, Quinquela Martín decided to improve the looks of one of the streets in La Boca which had been a pasture ground. Through donations of painting to the people living there, Quinquela helped to keep the tradition of having the houses painted in bright colors.

One of the brightest streets was a little walk, through which both Quinquela Martín and Filiberto used to walk. He decided to call it Caminito, and wrote that name on a piece of wood that was attached to one of the houses. In 1959, that name was officially adopted by the Municipality of Buenos Aires, in a ceremony with fireworks that had as a background the howling of the ship’s foghorns. Quinquela Martín would later say, “I think that we can say with optimism that in La Boca we have won the battle for color.”

In 1971, a street called Caminito was inaugurated in La Rioja, a belated homage to Peñaloza. Today, the other Caminito, the one located in La Boca harbors an independent theater, an open air art gallery where both professionals and aficionados sell their work and where tango enthusiasts dance to the music of tango. The name of Quinquela Martín is now indelibly connected to that street, and to La Boca.

Dr. César Chelala is an international public health consultant and an award winning writer and photographer.

All photos were provided by the author.

Thoughts on Women at the RevCon

Wandering around the UN building provides surprises from time to time. 
On Wednesday I walked around a corner and almost ran into a speech of Ban Ki-Moon. After his remarks he came my way and, when I smiled at him, shook my hand. Despite the fact that his hands are unbelievably small I felt really excited and -I must admit- ran straight to the computer to write to my dad that I just shook hands with the Secretary General.

However, while interviewing the fabulous Rebecca Johnson yesterday, I realized that it’s people -or should I say women- like her who make this conference interesting, not the Secretary General (who by the way didn’t even speak about the Review Conference).
 
Reaching Critical Will, publishers of the ubiquitous News in Review, the definitive RevCon newspaper is a project of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, but also the Acronym Institute and many 
other disarmament NGOs are led by women.

Things happening outside the conference from NPTTV on Vimeo.

Over the course of the past three weeks, we’ve had the chance to talk to many women whose tireless work and expertise enabled us to do our work and keep track of things at the RevCon. Beatrice Fihn and Ray Acheson, editors of the News in Review are two of them. Last Tuesday I had the chance to interview Sharon Dolev, an Israeli campaign leader who tries to form a movement against nuclear weapons in Israel – where it is illegal even to say that the country HAS atomic bombs. Sharon is a really brave and interesting woman who speaks openly about failures and mistakes of Israel, no matter what opposition she has to face back home.

In an environment dominated by men who do not want to give up their “power” and “deterrence” based on nuclear weapons, the women in the NGOs are doing such an important job pointing out how wrong they are. In a discussion about the Middle East, Sharon said “They don’t have to know how to build the bomb in order to know building the bomb is wrong”. So simple, so true. Also it was the female member of the Finnish delegation who spoke out honestly and frankly about the problems and key players positions in Europe related to Nuclear Sharing.

I then I attended an event with survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, so-called Hibakushas. The strength the two Japanese ladies showed in sharing their experiences impressed me much more than any speech held by an “important” man. The women here have the will and the courage to speak out. For them, it’s not only a job to work for nuclear disarmament, but an affair of the heart – that’s what gives them the strength to raise their voice and makes their message so compelling. In the NGO meetings every morning the room is crowded with women – but every time I get to sneak into meetings of delegates I notice the 
stunning majority of men. Under all the chair positions there is only one female diplomat. Maybe we should start asking ourselves how the conference, what the disarmament movement would look like if that was 
not the case. Maybe the people who started most if not all wars in history, who often feel they have to show their power and strength wherever they go, are not the ones who should decide over the world’s future - alone.
 
So on the occasion of our 50th video going online, I am proud to recommend two other videos with female activists – one (in German with English subtitles) with Annalena Baerbock of the board of directors of 
the European Greens Party who talks about civil use and its role in the NPT and what Germany and others should do about it.

The other one features Alice Slater, New York Director for the Nuclear Peace Foundation who takes ous through the history, aims and structure of the Abolition 2000 NGO Network and its work towards disarmament.

The problem of Iran and Israel from NPT TV on Vimeo.

Next week we may be able to make an interview with a female young Egyptian delegate – so stay tuned for the conference that is now getting exciting and thrilling – with the announcement of new Iran sanctions 
package diminishing the possibility of securing consensus for this RevCon’s outcome. But at yesterday’s event it was once again a woman to stand up and say: “We cannot give up. This treaty is the only thing 
we’ve got. When our children ask us ‘where were you when they decided over the world’s security’, we can say that we were here and we fought – for us and for them. So don’t lose the vision. It’s the thing that keeps us going”


Feminist greetings from New York

Anne


“If we rural women can organize ourselves together to form a bloc, we could accomplish a lot of things,” says Yvette Michaud, founder of the National Coordinating Committee of Peasant Women (KONAFAP by its Creole acronym). The committee is a first-ever effort to unite, on a national basis, the voices and interests of this large and excluded sector of the population.

KONAFAP was formed two years ago by women from the 56 member organizations of the Haitian National Network for Food Sovereignty and Security. KONAFAP is still in a building stage, and to date only a few organizations are active within it. Those members are excited about the future potential of the group.

• A new national organization of Haitian rural women opens up possibilities for women to participate in shaping the direction of their country. Photo: Salena Tramel, Grassroots International.•

Here, three organizers within KONAFAP discuss the status of rural women, challenges they face to organizing as women, advances they have made toward gender justice, and what they hope for in a rebuilt Haiti. The women are Marie Berthine Bonheur from Croix des Bouquets, Bertine Petit from Cabaret, and Yvette Michaud from Grand Goave.

Please talk about rural women in Haiti, and why you are organizing a national committee.

Yvette Michaud: As peasant women in Haiti, we saw that all the activities focusing on women always happened in Port-au-Prince. The coordinator for women from the [non-governmental organization] Action Aid in Brazil invited me to Brazil to learn about women and natural resources. When I returned to Haiti, we in the Haitian National Network for Food Sovereignty and Security passed a resolution to say we were going to establish a national women’s peasant organization.

The coalition is so young and we have budgetary problems, so we haven’t reached out to all the women’s groups yet. And everything we do in still in cooperation with mixed-gender groups.

Bertine Petit: An organization of peasant women means a lot. Even Haitians in the government reject peasant women, even the Ministry of Women. They don’t remember peasants or our culture at all.

Michaud: We know there are more women in Haiti than men, and more people in the countryside than the city. We already work in agriculture, we work preserving fruit, we do the marketing and sell the food, we plant, we raise the children. What women do, we don’t say that the men can’t, but they can’t do the things that are necessary for survival without us.

Marie Berthine Bonheur: Women are the poto mitan, central pillar, of society. Where there are women, there are many sacrifices made, and a real development of the possible.

What challenges do peasant women face, and what changes are you advocating?

Petit: What are called rights, I don’t think Haitian women, especially peasant women, know them.

Bonheur: Like little maids.

Michaud: More like slaves. On paper they say that all people have rights. In reality that’s not what happens.

In the mountains, the state hasn’t established any social services for us. Women don’t have health care and don’t have hospitals to deliver their babies. You can’t even get a birth certificate in the countryside. Women need good education for themselves and their children.

You used to see boys going to schools more often than girls. Only men had the rights to education and leisure. Things have started to get better. But even today, women have to cook the food, wash, iron, get the water, raise children, and take the children to school.

One of our main objectives is for women to know their rights from their homes to the society. We’re ready to do everything possible to get our rights respected. We’re ready to hold demonstrations, do sit-ins, circulate petitions, and do advocacy, to demand services from the state. The state owes us; it’s not a gift. It’s their responsibility to give services to everyone, especially peasants.

Petit: We need a state that, when they see something that needs to happen, follows through. There is no action. No leadership.

Bonheur: Women experience violence, too. And when we go to court, the men are usually the judges, and they tease and mock the women, especially in cases of rape. They receive women very poorly.

Michaud: Rape happens a lot especially on little girls, 12 or 14 years or so. But in the past ten years or so, there’s been an improvement in the violence. Now that men know that women can denounce them, they temper themselves a little. But that doesn’t mean that the violence has gone away. And it’s not only physical, it’s verbal, sexual, emotional, all sorts. We know that other kinds of violence can be just as damaging as physical.

That’s one of the reasons why we’ve started to organize as women, apart. In a mixed-gender group, if a woman’s husband beats her, she can’t say anything about it. But in all-women’s groups, she can get support from others and advice.

What has been your experience of organizing women, especially in women-specific groups?

Michaud: There are some violent men who prevent women from attending women’s meetings, because they know women can speak freely and badly about them. Sometimes the men use violence to stop the women from going, but it’s much less these days than it used to be. Usually women are prevented de facto because they have so much work in the house.

Or what often happens in mixed-gender groups is that women are there, but they don’t get to participate. You don’t hear women’s voices. They have to bring the water, make the food, clean the rooms. They are almost there for service instead of as members.

Why a group like this one is important is that women’s organizations give space where we can think about ourselves and our future. In women’s groups, women are more comfortable to speak. They participate freely. We want to create more of these spaces so women aren’t servants while men think and talk.

Bonheur: They have more force.

Michaud: For example, the MPP [Peasant Movement of Papay] has three branches: mixed, women, and youth. The women have special activities they do, like preserving fruit. The women have a cooperative, and a popular credit bank that charges 2% interest. We do big activities, big demonstration to put our demands forth, big demonstrations about the non-governmental organizations who say they are giving aid and then don’t. The women of MPNKP [National Peasant Movement of the Papay Congress] have held demonstrations to put out their demands, especially about the reconstruction.

We have a lot to say about the upcoming election. We want women to participate, both in voting and as candidates. We want to have our own representation in the parliament.

For International Women’s Day [March 8], we had a big demonstration that left [the village of Papay] and went to Hinche. Women came from everywhere. It wasn’t a celebration because our country is in a disaster, but it was a day of reflection.

What are your hopes for the post-earthquake reconstruction?

Bonheur: The reconstruction plan the foreigners have is no good.

Michaud: Right; their agenda doesn’t correspond with ours. We have things to say about the reconstruction plan. The country depends on Haitians. It’s true that we have a government without a plan, and the international community is imposing what’s good for it. If Haitians want Haiti to have a better future, we are the ones who must decide what that future is and construct it.

I know there are a lot of women who are working with men in civil society toward proposals about the reconstruction of the country, alternatives so that everything isn’t left in the hands of a small group which doesn’t really have the will to change the country: corrupt government officials, the international community giving orders, the elite who doesn’t want change because it’s against their interests.

There is a lot of chance to develop agriculture. We produce the food that is healthiest, without GMOS or chemicals.

Haiti is a mountainous country. We can’t say that all the mountains will get irrigated, but they could do more irrigations canals, mountaintop catchment lakes, and cisterns. That way, the country could produce so that its children can eat.

We especially need a decentralization of services. A lot of parents lost children because they had gone to Port-au-Prince to learn skills or go to university. If we had decentralization, all those people wouldn’t have died. All the services in Port-au-Prince must be out in the countryside, too. We are people, too.

Petit: They could put universities in the countryside for peasant children, plus give us recreation, schools, health care. The government needs to address the needs of the peasant sector.

Bonheur: All the state offices that are in Port-au-Prince, there should be branches in the countryside. We need to be able to stay on our own land.

It would be good to have a fund to buy local seeds. It would best favor the Haitian peasantry to plant our own seeds on our own lands. It’s up to us to say what type of seeds we want. We can’t accept these foreigners giving us GMO seeds which aren’t good for health or land. GMOs will do us harm and aggravate the problems of our agriculture.

Petit: All Haitians have to put their heads together to reconstruct the country.

Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, www.otherworldsarepossible.org, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Listen to the May 16th broadcast of Sundays at Five by clicking the play button below.

Kate Daniels and Jessica Mosby discuss the continuing crisis in the Gulf of Mexico following the BP oil rig explosion on April 20th. The show’s special guest this week is Mac McClelland, human rights reporter for Mother Jones magazine. Mac joins us from Grand Isle, Louisiana where she is investigating the worsening situation. Mac reports that the oil fumes are nauseating and raising concerns about public health. In addition, the potential economic impact may prove devastating to a region dependent on tourism as long as beaches are closed and restaurants remain empty.

Guest Biography: Mac McClelland is an expert on human rights, refugee populations, and Burma. McClelland is on staff at Mother Jones as their human rights reporter, with other work published The Nation, GQ The Daily Beast, The National Post, the Anderson Cooper 360 blog, Orion, AlterNet, as well as various literary journals and anthologies. She is author of For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story from Burma's Never-Ending War.

About the Broadcast: The WIP’s Executive Editor, Kate Daniels teams up with identical twin sister Ali Daniels to present Sundays at Five, a weekly radio broadcast on KRXA, Monterey Bay's Progressive Talk Radio station. The twins share stories and discuss topics ranging from campaign finance reform to the phenomenon of Facebook. Tune in every Sunday from 5-6 pm PDT or listen online. Podcasts of previous broadcasts are available on The WIP Talk.

Make a cup of tea and join the conversation!

The National Law Journal, www.nlj.com is seeking nominations for the "Washington's Most Influential Women" report.

Candidates should be lawyers based in the Metropolitan Washington area - in private practice, government, public interest groups, lobby shops or academia - who have made a national impact in the law and legal business.
Holding high office or another position of authority isn't enough; we're looking for women who have made things happen.

Send a one-page summary of the nominee's qualifications by May 26 to Elizabeth Engdahl at eengdahl@alm.com

In part II of an interview, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste discusses the role that agriculture can play in Haiti in addressing both the environmental and food crises. (See “The Clock is Set to Zero” for the first part.) Jean-Baptiste is the Executive Director of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP by its Creole acronym) and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP). Until this year, he also sat on the international coordinating committee of Vía Campesina, a confederation of organizations of peasant, family, indigenous, and landless farmers from more than sixty countries.

• Fast-growing plants and used tires in a demonstration garden of the Peasant Movement of Papay. Haiti's movement of small farmer advocates ecological agriculture as well as policies which protect both the environment and local production. Photo: Roberto (Bear) Guerra.•

The solutions Jean-Baptiste and many other Haitians propose reside in part in one set of policies and programs which can restore land and other riches of nature, and another set which can protect small-scale, sustainable agricultural production from agribusiness. An additional part of the solution rests in agro-ecology, a model of agriculture based on environmental health. Developed as an alternative to the Green Revolution, agro-ecology urges local production of healthy, organic food for local markets. It values biodiversity and traditional knowledge, and opposes genetic modification and patenting of seeds. Haiti is among the many countries with thriving movements of organized farmers who are advancing this model.

Jean-Baptiste gave this interview from Papay, where the MPP has created ecological demonstration gardens. The farmers maximize the productivity of small pieces of land in ways which sustain, rather than exhaust, it. They use all natural resources efficiently in bio-loops. They germinate seedlings inside of discarded tires and use other inventive gardening methodology. They are growing fast-growing plants which yield harvests in six weeks, in addition to other organic vegetables and medicinal plants. Their goats, rabbits, and chickens consume kitchen and garden waste and, from it, produce manure which is then used as fertilizer. Compost serves as additional fertilizer. The operation also involves draining gray water from kitchens and showers, and running it through several ponds filled with sand, gravel, and charcoal; with the cleaned water that emerges, they breed fish and irrigate gardens. MPP also employs cisterns, gravity-fed irrigation, and other catchment and watering systems to conserve and maximize water during dry season.

This interview predated the news that Monsanto has donated 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable seeds to Haiti. For Jean-Baptiste’s and the MPP’s response, see “Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Seeds.”

“In contrast to the destruction that the industrial sector is causing around the world, Vía Campesina and other groups such as Friends of Nature have done studies that show that peasant and family agriculture can combat climate change. I’m in a Vía Campesina commission on climate change, and there we’re clear: to impact climate change, we have to change the mode of agricultural production. Peasants around the world are very vigilant about this. In Haiti we have an advantage, which is that the majority of peasants grow only organically.

“We see the development of Haiti through the production of local, organic food; the conservation of that food; and its transformation into products for the cities. The peasants have said, ‘Let’s talk about storage and transformation and commercialization in local and national markets. Let’s develop an economy where peasants have control.’ This could really develop the riches of the country while bringing Haiti back environmentally.

“We see reforestation as extremely important. Haiti has less than 2% tree cover. Two years ago we asked for each rural section to plant 10,000 trees each, or 56,000 trees each year. That would allow us to cover the country.

“Also, if we could plant fruit orchard plantations, that would have three objectives. It would protect the environment. It would give peasants income so that wouldn’t have to cut down tress to make wood charcoal. It would also mean that we wouldn’t have to depend any more on the Dominican Republic for the lemons, the coconuts, the oranges and other food we consume.

“I talked with an exporter who told me that 200,000 cases of Haitian [Madame] Françique mangos are sold in five square kilometers in Manhattan. That means that there is an enormous market for mangoes in the U.S., which could also help us combat deforestation.

“One thing we need for that to happen is integrated water management systems. Now because of deforestation, when it rains, we get floods. Maybe an earthquake comes every 50 or 100 years, but floods are each year, and hurricanes almost every year. Houses get washed away, animals get washed away, land gets washed away, people get washed away. I was talking with a peasant who said we used to have two seasons: the dry season and the rainy season. Now we have two seasons: the dry season and the flood season.

“With good irrigation systems we could produce a lot of food and we could help the environment. In Haiti, we have 300,000 hectares of land that could be irrigated, but we have maybe 30,000 or 40,000 that have a good irrigation system now.

“We’re developing different irrigation systems with wells that you pump with solar panels. You can use cisterns that catch water on the roof. We’ve had great experiences with one or two families capturing 15,000 liters of water that have carried them through the dry season. We have other, more advanced systems of mountaintop catchment lakes, which let you to hold rain in lakes that you make with bulldozers or abundant peasant labor, so that when the dry season comes you can have water and you can still grow food. You can also treat gray water, like in the MPP center; we treat the water that comes from the shower and kitchen with a series of lakes with gravel, sand, and charcoal.

“One of the things we’re doing is creating solar energy, because peasants should have electricity. One member of MPP has two lightbulbs run from a solar panel. He can play his radio, charge his telephone, even watch television.

“All our public positions are clearly against genetically modified seeds and against agro-fuels.

We’re in a heated battle against the introduction of GM [genetically modified] seeds and against jatropha plantations. We’re especially against jatropha, the plant that has a seed that gives oil which you can make agro-diesel from. We don’t call it bio-diesel, because we in Vía Campesina are clear that ‘bio’ means life and that you can’t mix life with diesel and big business. They say jatropha is a miracle plant, but from other studies and my own, I know it’s a catastrophe plant. One thing we want is a law against jatropha and a law against the introduction of GM seeds. Last year we marched to the parliament, and we were well-received. In October we met with the parliament again, and we were going to meet them again in January but now we’re in a national crisis. But peasants are very vigilant about this.

“We in Haiti are committed to staying a county where organic, biological agriculture dominates.

We know that Clinton and the multinationals, the IMF and the WTO, have another plan for us – one based on the import of GM seeds and food aid, one based on making us grow for export, including growing for agro-diesel. But we’re putting on pressure to say: no, that’s not what Haiti needs, here is what popular Haitian organizations want, here is our agenda.”

Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, www.otherworldsarepossible.org, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

This article is co-written by Beverly Bell and Tory Field.

The U.S. Congress has passed bi-partisan legislation, the Haiti Economic Lift Program (HELP) Act, that would extend and expand current trade law with Haiti to increase U.S. imports of Haitian assembled textiles. Passed May 5 and 6 by the House and Senate, respectively, the bill is part of the push by U.S., U.N., other international leaders, and businesses to expand the low-wage assembly industry as the linchpin of Haiti’s post-earthquake recovery. President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law.

• Caption: Mirlene Joanis in front of a poster stating the rights of women factory workers.  Few of these rights are respected.  Photo: Beverly Bell.•

“This important step responds to the needs of the Haitian people for more tools to lift themselves from poverty, while standing to benefit U.S. consumers,'' said a statement by former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton about the bill.

The benefit of cheap imports for U.S. consumers is one matter, sweatshops as Horatio Alger tool another. To date, the assembly industry in Haiti has not provided poverty alleviation. Most factory workers live direly impoverished lives on the industry minimum wage of 125 gourdes (US$3.09) per day, without the opportunity to raise their pay, learn skills, or advance professionally. The right to unionize is protected in the constitution, but prohibited in practice by the standard management response of firing workers who attempt to form unions. The jobs are insecure, as factories can and do leave without notice to find cheaper labor or other conveniences elsewhere. The Canadian apparel manufacturer Gilden Activewear, for example, decided to quit Haiti within one day of the January 12 earthquake, shifting its Haiti- based operations to the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Honduras instead. The factories offer little in the way of health or safety protections. Repetitive motion injuries and failing eyesight are only two of common occupational hazards.

Nor does the assembly industry offer a model of sustainable or sovereign national development. The products made in Haiti’s textile factories are not generally made out of Haitian fabric or on Haitian-made machinery. Once assembled, the goods are not consumed in Haiti but are shipped abroad. Haiti’s only role in the process is as a stopover in the production process, where cheap labor keeps profit margins high.

The HELP Act expands on the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act of 2008 (HOPE II), which removes tariffs on certain types and quantities of Haitian-assembled garments into the U.S. HELP would increase the volume of fabrics that are eligible to be imported into the U.S. from Haiti duty-free, from 70 million square meter equivalents to 200 million. It would also extend to 2020 the time frame of the trade relationship.

The U.S is joined by the U.N. in placing sweatshops at the forefront of the post-earthquake rebuilding plan. The textile industry had already been given a leading role, prior to the earthquake, in the U.N.’s development plan for Haiti. The blueprint, written in 2009 by an Oxford University professor, Paul Collier, said, “The garments industry has the scope to provide several hundred thousand jobs to Haitians… It is truly important that this opportunity should be taken.”

In a speech at a donor conference on Haiti in April 2009, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said of his trip to Haiti with U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti Bill Clinton: “We saw children, well-fed by the World Bank and the World Food Program, happily going to school… We visited a textile factory, employing thousands of people that could easily become a prototype for many others…We friends of Haiti must work with the government and the private sector to create jobs and spur economic growth by taking full advantage of openings to international markets.”

Other development models exist, based on promoting human capacity in conditions where poverty can truly abate and workers can take greater control over their lives. Haitian social movements have insisted that post-earthquake redevelopment must lead toward a just and equitable economy. For specific proposals, see “Haitian Led Reconstruction Development” and “Raising Up Another Haiti”.

The Haitian government is on board with assembly sector as priority, too. Discussion at the recent international donor conference on Haiti in New York on March 31 featured textiles, together with agriculture and tourism, as the basis of its post-earthquake recovery plan. According to the plan, “the Hope II law provides an initial framework for using Haiti’s comparative advantages, to benefit from its workforce…”

The proposal submitted by the Haitian government to the March 31 donor conference called for building “regional development centres” for displaced people whom the government hopes to relocate outside of Port-au-Prince. Textile factories will play a critical role there. It claims that the success of these areas will “depend largely on incentives for industrial, commercial, and tourist development.” President René Préval has said that an assembly factory will be constructed at the site of the tent camp Corail Cesselesse that the government has created near the town of Croix-des-Bouquets. On March 24, the Minister of Commerce announced the creation of three new free trade zones in and around Port-au-Prince.

Mirlene Joanis, the Director of Communications for the Center for the Promotion of Women Workers, has a different view of development. She spoke from the Center’s office, which is surrounded by factories in Port-au-Prince’s industrial park.

“What’s bizarre is that, while they say they count on the subcontracting [assembly] sector most for the creation of jobs, they can’t count on it for development. This industry can’t lead to development in Haiti because it’s so unstable. That’s the mark of this sector: instability. Today people find a job, tomorrow the factory goes somewhere else and they no longer have their jobs.

“Also, it’s one of the sectors that’s most marginalized, where the state least takes into account the rights of people. Regardless, the factories gets franchise privileges and tax privileges.

“These jobs can be a relief for people who have the illusion that they are working. The minimum wage is so low; it can’t resolve anyone’s daily problems. And it’s not just money; the workers have to have social advantages, such as the right to housing, right to health care, right to hygiene, to take transportation, right to food…. The totality of these social rights would add a lot to the value of minimum wage, but not one of them is respected. They don’t even give people potable water. They just buy tanks of untreated water in trucks; people have to buy their own little plastic sacks of water out of their 125 gourdes. I give this example as the most basic of rights, the right to drink water, but they don’t even offer that.

“They’ve been talking about HOPE II as though it’s Haiti’s salvation. But in a context where people’s rights are not respected, it can’t relieve the misery of the people.

“If union rights aren’t protected, there’s no way this sector will improve. People must be able to raise their demands and say, “Respect my rights.” That doesn’t exist. Even the movement for the minimum wage to be raised to 200 gourdes… people took to the streets to demand it at the last minute, but it ended badly for them. Many lost their job as a result. The state must enforce people’s rights so they have a vehicle for making their demands. We have to have a government that considers people’s rights.

“Our biggest problem in this sector is that we’re in an anarchic situation. The boss has money, he can call the minister. When the worker goes to ask for her rights to be respected, that means nothing. She can organize a union, but the boss will fire her immediately, and then there’s no more union.

“Marginalization is one of the biggest complaints in this country. Some groups are considered human beings, others aren’t. Some have rights, others don’t. As long as that is not resolved, they can come in with all the billions of dollars in reconstruction they want, but without the principle of respect for rights, we’re not going anywhere.

“But as for development from this sector, that’s got nothing to do with it. It’s just going from bad to worse, with no relief of the workers’ misery in sight.”

Tory Field is an organizer, farmer, and Program Associate at Other Worlds.

Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds,www.otherworldsarepossible.org, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Listen to the May 16th broadcast of Sundays at Five by clicking the play button below.

A brutal conflict has persisted in Northern Uganda for over two decades. It is the most violent and longest running conflict in all of Africa with systematic human rights violations including rape, abduction, and torture. This week Kate and Ali interview Garrett Glick from Invisible Children, an organization using the power of media to inspire young people to help end this war. On April 22nd Garrett interviewed Ugandan peacemaker Jolly Okot for The WIP Talk.

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About the Broadcast: The WIP’s Executive Editor, Kate Daniels teams up with identical twin sister Ali Daniels to present Sundays at Five, a weekly radio broadcast on KRXA, Monterey Bay's Progressive Talk Radio station. The twins share stories and discuss topics ranging from campaign finance reform to the phenomenon of Facebook. Tune in every Sunday from 5-6 pm PDT or listen online. Podcasts of previous broadcasts are available on The WIP Talk.

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“A new earthquake” is what peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news that Monsanto will be donating 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable seeds, some of them treated with highly toxic pesticides. The MPP has committed to burning Monsanto’s seeds, and has called for a march to protest the corporation’s presence in Haiti on June 4, for World Environment Day.

In an open letter sent of May 14, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the Executive Director of MPP and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP), called the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti “a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds…, and on what is left our environment in Haiti.” Haitian social movements have been vocal in their opposition to agribusiness imports of seeds and food, which undermines local production with local seed stocks. They have expressed special concern about the import of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

• Jonas Deronzil from Verrettes has been farming since 1974. Like small producers throughout Haiti, his meager income from corn, rice, and beans is threatened by new competition from Monsanto. Photo: Beverly Bell.•

For now, without a law regulating the use of GMOs in Haiti, the Ministry of Agriculture rejected Monsanto’s offer of Roundup Ready GMO seeds. In an email exchange, a Monsanto representative assured the Ministry of Agriculture that the seeds being donated are not GMO.

Elizabeth Vancil, Monsanto’s Director of Development Initiatives, called the news that the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture approved the donation “a fabulous Easter gift” in an April email. Monsanto is known for aggressively pushing seeds, especially GMO seeds, in both the global North and South, including through highly restrictive technology agreements with farmers who are not always made fully aware of what they are signing. According to interviews by this writer with representatives of Mexican small farmer organizations, they then find themselves forced to buy Monsanto seeds each year, under conditions they find onerous and at costs they sometimes cannot afford.

The hybrid corn seeds Monsanto has donated to Haiti are treated with the fungicide Maxim XO, and the calypso tomato seeds are treated with thiram. Thiram belongs to a highly toxic class of chemicals called ethylene bisdithiocarbamates (EBDCs). Results of tests of EBDCs on mice and rats caused concern to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which then ordered a special review. The EPA determined that EBDC-treated plants are so dangerous to agricultural workers that they must wear special protective clothing when handling them. Pesticides containing thiram must contain a special warning label, the EPA ruled. The EPA also barred marketing of the chemicals for many home garden products, because it assumes that most gardeners do not have adequately protective clothing. Monsanto’s passing mention of thiram to Ministry of Agriculture officials in an email contained no explanation of the dangers, nor any offer of special clothing or training for those who will be farming with the toxic seeds.

Haitian social movements’ concern is not just about the dangers of the chemicals and the possibility of future GMO imports. They claim that the future of Haiti depends on local production with local food for local consumption, in what is called food sovereignty. Monsanto’s arrival in Haiti, they say, is a further threat to this.

“People in the U.S. need to help us produce, not give us food and seeds. They’re ruining our chance to support ourselves,” said farmer Jonas Deronzil of a peasant cooperative in the rural region of Verrettes.

Monsanto’s history has long drawn ire from environmentalists, health advocates, and small farmers, going back to its production of Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. Exposure to Agent Orange has caused cancer in an untold number of U.S. Veterans, and the Vietnamese government claims that 400,000 Vietnamese people were killed or disabled by Agent Orange, and 500,000 children were born with birth defects as a result of their exposure.

Monsanto’s former motto, “Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible,” has been replaced by “Imagine.” Its web site home page claims it “help[s] farmers around the world produce more while conserving more. We help farmers grow yield sustainably so they can be successful, produce healthier foods… while also reducing agriculture's impact on our environment.” The corporations’ record does not support the claims.

Together with Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer, Monsanto controls more than half of the world’s seeds. The company holds almost 650 seed patents, most of them for cotton, corn and soy, and almost 30% of the share of all biotech research and development. Monsanto came to own such a vast supply by buying major seed companies to stifle competition, patenting genetic modifications to plant varieties, and suing small farmers. Monsanto is also one of the leading manufacturers of GMOs.

As of 2007, Monsanto had filed 112 lawsuits against U.S. farmers for alleged technology contract violations or GMO patents, involving 372 farmers and 49 small agricultural businesses in 27 different states. From these, Monsanto has won more than $21.5 million in judgments. The multinational appears to investigate 500 farmers a year, in estimates based on Monsanto’s own documents and media reports.

“Farmers have been sued after their field was contaminated by pollen or seed from someone else’s genetically engineered crop [or] when genetically engineered seed from a previous year’s crop has sprouted, or ‘volunteered,’ in fields planted with non-genetically engineered varieties the following year,” said Andrew Kimbrell and Joseph Mendelson of the Center for Food Safety.

In Colombia, Monsanto has received upwards of $25 million from the U.S. government for providing Roundup Ultra in the anti-drug fumigation efforts of Plan Colombia. Roundup Ultra is a highly concentrated version of Monsanto's glyphosate herbicide, with additional ingredients to increase its lethality. Colombian communities and human rights organizations have charged that the herbicide has destroyed food crops, water sources and protected areas, and has led to increased incidents of birth defects and cancers.

Vía Campesina, the world’s largest confederation of farmers with member organizations in more than sixty countries, has called Monsanto one of the “principal enemies of peasant sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty for all peoples.” They claim that as Monsanto and other multinationals control an ever larger share of land and agriculture, they force small farmers out of their land and jobs. They also claim that the agribusiness giants contribute to climate change and other environmental disasters, an outgrowth of industrial agriculture.

The Vía Campesina coalition launched a global campaign against Monsanto last October 16, on International World Food Day, with protests, land occupations, and hunger strikes in more than twenty countries. They carried out a second global day of action against Monsanto on April 17 of this year, in honor of Earth Day.

Non-governmental organizations in the U.S. are challenging Monsanto’s practices, too. The Organic Consumers Association has spearheaded the campaign “Millions Against Monsanto,” calling on the company to stop intimidating small family farmers, stop marketing untested and unlabeled genetically engineered foods to consumers, and stop using billions of dollars of U.S. taypayers' money to subsidize GMO crops.

The Center for Food Safety has led a four-year legal challenge to Monsanto that has just made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. After successful litigation against Monsanto and the U.S. Department of Agriculture for illegal promotion of Roundup Ready Alfalfa, the court heard the Center for Food Safety’s case on April 27. A decision on this first-ever Supreme Court case about GMOs is now pending.

“Fighting hybrid and GMO seeds is critical to save our diversity and our agriculture,” Jean-Baptiste said in an interview in February. “We have the potential to make our lands produce enough to feed the whole population and even to export certain products. The policy we need for this to happen is food sovereignty, where the county has a right to define it own agricultural policies, to grow first for the family and then for local market, to grow healthy food in a way which respects the environment and Mother Earth.”

Many thanks to Moira Birss for her assistance with research and writing.

Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, www.otherworldsarepossible.org, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

This piece was co-written by Alejandro M. Garro and César Chelala.

Baltasar Garzón, a Spanish “investigative magistrate” in charge of triggering the investigation of crimes of national or international significance, is now himself under investigation. Conservative groups accuse Garzón of prevaricato judicial (roughly translated as “abuse of a judge’s power”) for having intentionally bypassed a 1977 amnesty law, opening an investigation on human rights abuses committed during Spain’s civil war. If indicted of that charge, the General Council of the Judiciary may temporarily remove him from office.

For many years, Judge Garzón has engaged in a crusade against Al-Qaeda terrorists, Latin American dictators (including Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet,) Russian thugs, and powerful Spanish politicians accused of corruption. In addition, he started an investigation of torture claims by former Guantánamo detainees and for crimes committed by Colombia’s FARC rebels.

Garzón pursued those cases under a controversial statute (subsequently repealed) allowing Spanish courts to exercise “universal” jurisdiction over crimes against humanity, regardless of the country where they were perpetrated and the nationality of victims or perpetrators. These high-profile cases brought Judge Garzón powerful enemies all over the world, not to speak of the antagonism he provoked on Spanish government officials and among his own colleagues, many of who see him as an embarrassing self-promoter.

In October 2008, Judge Garzón launched an investigation on the torture, forced disappearances and summary executions perpetrated between 1932 and 1952 under Franco’s dictatorship. Those crimes are allegedly covered by a blanket amnesty enacted by the Spanish Parliament in 1977 (similar to the general amnesties adopted by Argentina, Chile, and several other countries during the 70s and 80s) and a recent “Historical Memory Act” aimed at forgiving and forgetting Spain’s troubled past.

One may legitimately disagree with decisions taken by Judge Garzón. However, in this particular case, he did what he was required to do under international law. Far from abusing his power, Garzón properly applied international conventional and customary law, which preempts Spain’s domestic amnesty to the extent it is aimed at covering massive and systematic human rights abuses. Two supranational tribunals (the European and Inter American Courts of Human Rights), as well as two UN committees (the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Committee Against Torture) have consistently condemned blanket amnesties which deprive victims of serious human rights abuses of an effective remedy.

Even if the Spanish Supreme Court ultimately decides that Garzón overreached his authority by ignoring the 1977 amnesty law, such decision may be challenged before the European Court of Human Rights, which has held that, in principle, blanket amnesties violate the member states’ duties to investigate systematic and massive violations of human rights. Thus, Judge Garzón had more than plausible reasons for refusing to apply Spain’s amnesty law.

Admittedly, Judge Garzón is a polarizing figure with a penchant for high-profile cases. One may legitimately disagree, from a political standpoint, with his decision to unearth crimes of the past or feel understandably uncomfortable with his showy profile. Yet, while consistently fighting against the powerful of all political persuasions, he has courageously expanded the protective reach of international human rights law, as shown by the precedent established in the Pinochet case.

Whatever personal opinion one may hold on Garzón as an individual and beyond his controversial civil war investigation, the decision to go after him for opening an investigation of Franco’s worst human rights abuses seriously undermines Spain’s credibility in fighting against impunity. More importantly, it ignores that, under international law, Spain’s sovereign decision to forgive and forget its past cannot be adopted at the expense of the victims’ right to justice, truth, and adequate reparations for serious and systematic human rights abuses.

• The authors: Alejandro M. Garro and César Chelala.•

Alejandro M. Garro is Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia University and Senior Research Scholar of the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law. César Chelala is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award.

On April 15, the Haitian Parliament ratified a law extending by 18 months the state of emergency that President René Préval declared after the earthquake of January 12. The parliament also formally ceded its powers over finances and reconstruction, during the state of emergency, to a foreign-led Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti (CIRH). The CIRH’s mandate is to direct the post-earthquake reconstruction of Haiti through the $9.9 billion in pledges of international aid, including approving policies, projects, and budgeting. The World Bank will manage the money.

• The Unknown Slave in Port-au-Prince's central park, now surrounded by a refugee camp. The monument commemorates the successful uprising against French colonialists and slave owners. By formal parliamentary vote last month, Haiti is once again under the control of foreigners.  Photo: Tory Field.•

The majority of members on the CIRH are foreign. The criterion for becoming a foreign voting member is that the institution has contributed at least $100 million during two consecutive years or has canceled at least $200 million in debt. Others who have given less may share a seat. The Organization of American States and non-governmental organizations working in Haiti do not have a vote.

The CIRH is headed by U.N. Special Envoy Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. The only accountability or oversight measure is veto power by Préval. Few expect him to employ his veto option, both because his record is not one of challenging the international aid apparatus and because of possible repercussions, in terms of the dollar flow, by the CIRH.

The Parliamentarians further abrogated constitutional process when they granted Préval and other elected officials the right to extend their terms in office until May 14, 2011, (five years to the day from when Préval was inaugurated) if new elections do not occur before the end of November. The constitution was approved in 1988 by a population which had just emerged from the 30-year dictatorship of ‘presidents-for-life’ François and Jean-Claude Duvalier, and as such contains curbs against concentration of power by the executive. The possibility of extension of Préval’s term, combined with Préval’s right to rule by decree through the extended state of emergency and Parliament turning its power over to the CIRH, has brought Haitians into the streets in repeated demonstrations.

Antonal Mortiné is a journalist, legal expert, and executive secretary of the Haitian Platform of Human Rights Organizations (POHDH by its French acronym). POHDH is an eight-member coalition promoting justice and peace; civil and political rights; social, economic, and cultural rights; the rights of women and children; and disability rights. In an interview, he expressed himself on Haiti’s reconstruction, the role of the international community within it, and the fact that Haiti has just legally ceded its independence to a body determined in large part by levels of aid dollars given.

“Despite the difficulties, we recognize that the earthquake offered an enormous opportunity to construct Haiti with new values. We talk about construction instead of reconstruction, because we don’t need the old Haiti or the old Port-au-Prince to be reconstructed. We want a new Haiti. Unfortunately, we’re not moving in that direction.

“Shortly after the earthquake, the Haitian government came up with the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment [the framework for reconstruction]. This is a technical plan which has no vision of a new Haiti. It was done without the participation or even the consultation of Haitian actors from different social sectors, from the diaspora, or even from parts of Haiti besides Port-au-Prince. It doesn’t take into account that the country was constructed on a basis of inequality, lack of respect for fundamental human rights, and widespread exclusion.

“Social movements, especially the human rights sector and the POHDH, had proposed, first, that the government host a national consultation process, including people in the refugee camps. We wanted to build a consensus, with participation and vigilance by different sectors, about the life and construction of the nation after the earthquake. We also proposed, second, that there be a consultative body, including different sectors and different branches of power, to develop the construction plan. No one paid us any attention.

“On top of that, we have the international community, which didn’t respond to the crisis by promoting the interests of the Haitian people. Instead, they took advantage of the situation to further entrench their own power. Since 1804, when Haiti became the first black republic, the international community has always used strategies to get their hands on Haiti. For example, we’ve had three military occupations in less than one century: the one by the U.S. from 1915 to 1934, the multinational force that brought Aristide back in 1994 and then stayed until 1998, and then an interim multinational force that started on February 28, 2004, and that they reorganized into MINUSTAH [United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti] of that same year.

“There are examples of help that’s come that’s been meaningful, like solidarity from international social movements and from Haitians throughout the country. Cuba is giving health aid [through 1,600 volunteer doctors], and Guadalupe and Martinique have offered space and health facilities for people to go heal there. Other countries and peoples have come to help us, too, and we appreciate that a lot.

“But the US and Canada came militarily. Notably, 20,000 US soldiers arrived without any authorization, either through the U.N. or the OAS or CARICOM [Caribbean Community]. We didn’t need that; we weren’t at war. We didn’t need tanks; we needed engineers, tractors, nurses, doctors, architects, and psychologists. We needed geologists who could talk about possibilities for future earthquakes. We didn’t need soldiers; we needed people who could help free those who were trapped in the rubble and pull out those who had died in the rubble.

“Now they’ve developed the CIRH, which has moved the military occupation we had to a new level of economic and political occupation, though we already had an economic occupation with the lowering of trade barriers and the destruction to local production.

“The CIRH only gives power to the Haitian executive branch and the international community. This doesn’t respond to constitutional norms; it’s illegal. The constitution talks of three branches, but only one is involved in the CIRH. Only those close to the president, plus a commission of which majority power is foreign, have power. This has made Haiti a rèstavak [child slave] and opens the doors for the dictatorial powers we used to have to return. This is not the path to democracy.

“The CIRH has no accountability to anyone, especially to the parliament which voted it in. The only body to whom it is accountable is the World Bank, which holds and controls all the aid. This will give it the chance to have even more of a diktat than it has in the past thirty years. We have an expression that says, ‘Who finances, controls.’ There are no internal controls, and Parliament doesn’t have to receive reports, nor does it have any oversight.

“The CIRH is only for the rich. All it takes to belong is to give $100 million in cash. It’s the commercialization of the country; we’ve become merchandise. Haiti is just a space for others to come use their economic and political power. They’re transforming a natural catastrophe into an opportunity to occupy our country, to use it as a base for addressing other problems in Caribbean basin, to invade Haiti with their products, and to put national production even more on its knees. And our government isn’t resisting this at all.

“We’re against the large international NGOs and governments which are taking advantage of the situation on the backs of the people – especially the people who are sleeping in the streets under huge rains and winds, who have such insecurity and vulnerability and danger, who are now at risk of another natural catastrophe with the hurricanes coming.

“We’re against the extension of the executive’s mandate. Since last week, there has been a lot of resistance mounting against the president, the CIRH, and the emergency law. Those mobilizations are called by organizations with no credibility with the population. Many people believe that there needs to be movement for change, but not led by those people. But tomorrow there could be a social explosion.

“We send a call to those in solidarity and social movements in all regions of the world: stand with Haiti in its struggle to defend democracy.”

Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, www.otherworldsarepossible.org, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

In spite of some moderate progress in some areas, women’s health needs continue to be unmet in Afghanistan. “Afghanistan is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be pregnant,” states a report on maternal mortality by the Afghan Ministry of Health, UNICEF, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This statement is supported by statistics that show that in Afghanistan one woman dies every 27 minutes from a pregnancy-related condition that is preventable, in most cases, with adequate health facilities and medical care.

Other statistics are equally alarming. Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality rate in the world, and the second highest maternal mortality rate, according to U.S. government’s statistics. Hemorrhaging and prolonged or obstructed labor cause the largest number of Afghan maternal deaths, which could be easily prevented by the presence of a trained midwife during childbirth. However, it is estimated that only 14% of women receive skilled medical attention during that time.

The situation is particularly serious in rural areas, where clinics and hospitals may be hours away on foot. To make matters worse, many clinics lack such fundamental supplies as clean water, lighting and other elements for surgery, blood pressure instruments and equipment to test donated blood for HIV contamination.

Travel is complicated by bad weather conditions, lack of security, difficult roads and rough terrain. It is no surprising, then, that the average life expectancy rate for women in Afghanistan is only 44 years.

Women don’t fare better in the educational front. It is estimated that 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate. Many girls fear going to school for lack of security. Although some aspects of their lives have improved, women are still at a clear disadvantage with men. “Women who try to advocate for their rights in public life are being subject to violence and physical attacks,” said Zia Moballegh, acting country director for the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development.

“Violence targeting women and girls is widespread and deeply rooted in Afghan society,” stated last November Norah Niland, chief UN human rights officer in Afghanistan. Rape, that brutal form of sexual violence, is also a frequent problem. “Our field research finds that rape is under-reported and concealed, and a huge problem in Afghanistan. It affects all parts of the country, all communities and all social groups,” stated Ms. Niland.

It is estimated that one in three Afghan women experience physical, psychological or sexual violence at some point in their lives. Paradoxically, shame is usually attached to the victims, who often find themselves prosecuted for adultery, than to the perpetrators. While adultery is punishable by jail, no provision in the Afghan penal code criminalizes rape.

A sad result of the oppressive atmosphere in their lives is that an increasing number of women in Afghanistan are choosing suicide as a way to escape the violence and abuse in their daily lives, according to a human rights report prepared by Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department. “Self-immolation is being used by increasing numbers of Afghan women to escape their dire circumstances, and women constitute the majority of Afghan suicides,” states de report completed at the end of 2009.

According to the director of a burn unit at a hospital cited in the report, in 2008 more than 80 women tried to commit suicide by setting themselves on fire in the province of Heart. Many among those women died. Last January, two women fled their homes to escape from domestic violence in the Ghor Province in Southwestern Afghanistan. The two women were later arrested; one of them was beaten in public and the other was confined in a sack with a cat, according to Ghor’s Governor.

“I poured fuel over my body and set myself ablaze because I was regularly beaten up by my husband and insulted by my in-laws, said Zarmina, a young woman of 28 told IRIN, a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The abuses to women throughout the country are a serious call of attention to the government. It shows that it not only needs to enact laws protecting women but make sure that these laws are properly followed. It is one of the Karzai’s government most urgent tasks.

Cesar Chelala, MD, PhD, an international public health consultant, is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award.

Listen to the May 9th broadcast of Sundays at Five by clicking the play button below.

Kate and Ali discuss the ramifications of the catastrophic oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. They point out that the media seems to vastly underplay the effects of this disaster, despite the fact that it may result in severe environmental implications. The special guest this week is Dr. Sonja Olson of the Blue Pearl Veterinary Partners in Florida, who specializes in toxicology and wildlife. Dr. Olson explains in full the effects that the oil and the chemical solvents used to combat it will have upon the animals and surrounding environment. The bottom line is that this situation highlights several issues that we must consider for the future: corporate greed, lack of accountability and infrastructure for preventing oil spills, and a dire need to search for sources of alternative sources of energy which are more environmentally friendly.

Please visit the following web sites to see what you can do to help:

National Wildlife Federation
Oiled Wildlife Network
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Sierra Club
Matter of Trust
Dawn Dish Detergent

Guest Biography: Dr. Sonja Olson is head of the emergency veterinary clinic at the Blue Pearl Florida Veterinary Specialists program based in Tampa. She specializes in toxicology and wildlife, and thus has a unique perspective on what may happen to the animals and surrounding environment as a result of this catastrophe.

About the Broadcast: The WIP’s Executive Editor, Kate Daniels teams up with identical twin sister Ali Daniels to present Sundays at Five, a weekly radio broadcast on KRXA, Monterey Bay's Progressive Talk Radio station. The twins share stories and discuss topics ranging from campaign finance reform to the phenomenon of Facebook. Tune in every Sunday from 5-6 pm PDT or listen online. Podcasts of previous broadcasts are available on The WIP Talk.

Make a cup of tea and join the conversation!

“It’s a nightmare from which you never wake up,” said a coordinator for Partners in Health in Port-au-Prince, referring to the January 12 earthquake and its social aftermath.

The ‘nightmare’ has long roots in structural violence, the set of national and international systems and policies that have left the majority in Haiti (and the world) neglected and resource-poor.

Survival in Haiti often balances on a razor-thin wire. The catastrophe which began with the earthquake has, for many, tipped the balance, sending them over the edge.

• What will the future bring them and other earthquake survivors?  Many Haitian women are trying to influence the outcome. Photo: Julie Dermansky©2010, www.jsdart.com.•

The tip can happen with a seemingly small, non-dramatic action: a family’s house was damaged in the earthquake, so it moved elsewhere. But the new home is too far for Dieusel, who used to wash their clothes, to walk, and she has no money for the bus fare. She can’t find anyone else wanting her services, as belts are tightening down the line. She earned about $4 a week before and, while it was always a struggle, she felt she had a reasonably good chance then of keeping her four kids alive. Now Dieusel has no more income with which to feed her children. She refers to their constant hunger as her ‘Calvary,’ a reference to the site of Jesus’ crucifixion.

Dieusel told me the above story on the same day that a driver told me about losing his job when his boss relocated to the U.S. after the earthquake. He, too, has been unable to find anyone else who can offer him a job. Similar stories are playing out across the nation with wearying repetition. Dieusel and the driver, and others like them, had no safety net before the earthquake, and today all bets are off.

A collection of Haitian groups is promoting the social and economic rights of earthquake survivors and others whose vulnerability has grown in the crisis. Having been excluded from all formal processes of consultation and decision-making, grassroots civil society groups are using what tools they have to push their agenda to the center: circulating position papers, mobilizing popular resistance, accessing the media, and promoting international solidarity. A central demand is that the rights to decent housing, jobs, food, water, education, and medical care be fulfilled.

Speaking for Haiti’s social movements, Camille Chalmers of the Platform for Alternative Development in Haiti (PAPDA) told me, “We have to project ourselves into the future. We’re pushing to open space so that the Haitian people can determine their future, and can impact international processes. We’re developing political alternatives about the conjuncture, for a different development. We’re taking these ideas out to discuss with grassroots groups, and also reaching out to the diaspora and solidarity groups in other countries. We’re promoting a culture of resistance.” (For statements and positions of popular movements and the Haitian diaspora on their priorities to guarantee social and economic rights and on the reconstruction, see http://www.grassrootsonline.org/sites/grassrootsonline.org/files/Haitian_Led_Reconstruction_and_Development_-_A_compilation_3-2010.pdf)

The Haitian constitution guarantees “the right to life, health, and respect of the human person” and recognizes “the right of every citizen to decent housing, education, food and social security.”

The U.N. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes “the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions; …to be free from hunger; …[and] to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”

Ricot Jean-Pierre of PAPDA said, “The government has to take responsibility for the lives of its people.”

But, as community organizer Louisnor Gilles told me in a comment I’ve heard stated many times in many ways since the earthquake, “From the first second, the government went deaf, dumb, and mute. Not the first minute – the first second.”

The Haitian government does not bear sole guilt for the failure to guarantee the well-being of those left devastated, or for the failure of the billions in aid money to help stabilize the population in any substantive way. Haiti is now governed an Interim Committee for the Reconstruction of Haiti. Thirteen of its 25 members are foreign, and it is co-led by Special Envoy Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. This formalizes the reality since January 12, which is that policy decisions and program implementation are being led by international governments, the U.N, and large foreign NGOs. They share culpability, through commission and omission, for what was intended as disaster aid instead becoming an aid disaster.

The Haitian and international response to the dire needs of 1.3 to 1.9 million who are living on the streets or in camps is to relocate them to other tents in other camps. “The state owes us a place to stay with security,” said college student (at least until the time of the earthquake; her school is now closed) Edithe Jean-Jacques, who now lives in a tent in the neighborhood of Babiole. Edithe reports that she spends every night wet under the crashing rains.

Hurricane season begins in three weeks, on June 1. At that point, Edithe and all those in her circumstances will be protected by no more than a thin sheet of nylon or cloth. I could find no plan of any Haitian or international government or agency to address this risk in any way, including through the clear first step of providing permanent and sturdy housing.

The displaced people’s camps are a portrait in social neglect and poverty. People are wedged in among strangers, often at no more than an arm’s length away. Residents speak to me regularly about feeling violated by the noise, overcrowding, and constant proximity to hundreds, if not tens of thousands, of strangers. They have nowhere safe or private where they can relieve themselves, bathe, wash clothes, relax, or – for the kids – play. Sometimes wash water can be hauled in from public spigots or from giant plastic bags provided by agencies; sometimes not.

The risk of rape to women and girls in the camps is constant. Abandoned children are at risk of being swooped up in the restavek, child slavery, system by neighbors.

Poverty in the camps is so great that some young girls whose parents have died or are elsewhere resort to prostitution to survive. Malya Villard of the Commission of Women Victim to Victim (KOFAVIV) says, “You pass by tents and see orphaned girls under a man.” The going price is anywhere from US$2.50 to US$5.00.

As for education, following its post-earthquake suspension in Port-au-Prince, schools are now reopening. The conditions in which earthquake victims have been left excludes many, if not most, of those left homeless. “It’s only for the high-ups this year. It doesn’t exist for the poor,” said one woman in a camp. In one spontaneous discussion in a narrow dirt corridor of a camp, mothers reported that none of their children can return to school either because they are too exhausted – “they are sleeping in the mud,” as one said - or because their uniforms were crushed under falling houses and they cannot afford new ones.

Obtaining food is another collective source of stress. The same caveat that applies to all other social basics applies here: few have money to buy it. Food is all too rarely distributed (and then mainly consists of rice) and is given under tense conditions, according to hundreds of interviews I’ve done. Getro Nelio, who was living in the downtown soccer stadium until police destroyed his and others’ shelters and threw them out, described how hundreds of neighbors spent the entire night on the sidewalk when word went out that rice would be distributed at the stadium the next day.

Food has become even less available now that some international agencies have suspended distribution. One is the World Food Program of the U.N., which claims it “is now transitioning its program to support recovery effort though long-term food security and investments in human capital.”

One woman said to me as a U.S. military helicopter passed overhead: “That’s the only thing they give.”

Medical care is, judging from reports, another source of constant worry. Camps are full of sick people, the result of lack of sanitation combined with poor nutrition, stress, and lack of sleep. While some clinics – like those of Partners in Health, the Cuban medical team, and Doctors without Borders – are free, they may require bus fare, which is well out of reach for many families. In the informal research I have conducted by necessity on behalf of friends and allies, I have also found that it is quite common to wait all day and never get seen, because of the volume of people in line. It is also common that, while the first consultation might be free, the specialist or the lab tests to which the patient is referred are not. If all those things are free of charge, in some cases the family still has to purchase medications, there ending the hope for medical relief.

The 57-year-old Sylvanie Sylvain, Getro Nelio’s mother, is one small demonstration of the failure of the medical system. She is ill and needs surgery for her throat. A doctor at the university hospital scheduled her for surgery, but when she went back on the appointed day, she was told that the necessary machine was broken. She was referred to another hospital, but there she would have to pay for the procedure. She has no money.

I hear stories that should never have to be told, such as from a young volunteer nurse from the U.S. whom I encountered in the bathroom of a fancy hotel where I snuck in to wash my face after a sweaty day in the camps. Wide-eyed, she explained that she had just come from delivering a baby at a hospital; her only supplies had been a pair of plastic gloves that she had supplied herself and a cloth that had been used to deliver another baby a few minutes before. She had passed the night before with a young boy who was dying from cerebral malaria; he breathed two times per minute. She had nothing to give him the entire night except one bottle of water.

Some sound and committed international organizations are at work in Haiti, as are foreign foundations and community groups which have come to support the priorities that Haitians have defined for themselves. Haiti is much better off for their help. There are far too many other examples, though, of foreign actors who have sidelined Haitians as decision-makers, project participants, and staff. As for the yawning chasm that exists between the billions in aid and the population in need, four months out is far too late for the excuse of ‘problems in coordination,’ the rationale that several associated with U.N. and other weighty agencies have given me.

Despair is growing. The mother of a teenage girl who had been raped asked, “Can you help us find a psychologist? This whole nation needs a psychologist.” I learned of one 17-year-old who tried to slit her throat. A volunteer from the U.S. who was working at a refugee camp in the town of Jacmel told me about an 18-year-old girl who was so despondent over her and her one-year-old’s life situation that she threw the baby in the garbage. (Volunteers recovered the baby and are now offering the mother psychological help.)

But survivors have also told me repeatedly that they are resigned to do whatever it takes to keep going. They appear, for the most part, tough and strong and stoic. Carolle Pierre-Paul Jacob of the women’s group Solidarity Among Haitian Women (SOFA) characterized the situation this way: “People are despairing but they’re still not hopeless.”

“Hold strong” is the national salutation, the exhortation that ends most human interactions, phone calls, and emails.

“We Haitian people have to carry on,” Ricot Jean-Pierre said. “We are going to continue to demand accountability from our government, the international financial institutions, and the international community.”

And Elitane Athelus, a leader of the street merchants’ group the Women Martyrs of Brave Ayibobo, said, “We won’t stop struggling until the conditions of our lives change. Remember that we already led a revolution with our own two hands. We haven’t lost completely. The water is still running in the canal.”

As a member of my union's representative council, I have sat through many a meeting where the subject of budget cuts, their negative effects, and how to alleviate as many of these negative effects as possible, are discussed. One of the jobs of the teacher's union is to negotiate with the district in order to decide how these cuts can be made with the least possible damage to the students, school programs, teachers, and overall sustainability of the schools in the district.

In order to save positions, our district has offered a retirement incentive to encourage retirees, thereby saving positions of newer teachers while still reducing staff. They have changed the calendar in order to match with other districts thereby stream-lining the bus schedule, and saving money. Our classified staff has been gutted (classified staff covers such jobs as maintenance, tech support, attendance, office secretary, campus security, etc.). Teachers are negotiating a negative change in health coverage. Everyone has given up days of pay. Elective classes have been eliminated. Class size reduction has been eliminated. The school year will be shortened by five days.

Through all of this, the conversation never moves away from the question of how to make parents aware of what is going on so that they will begin to protest the budget cuts. After all, this is not the problem of my district, it's the problem of every district across the state of California. And yet, by and large, parents seem to remain complacent. However, teachers and administrators are continuing to entertain the naive belief that by shortening the school year by five days, or closing the school for a day here and there, parents will be moved to action. But I remain unconvinced.

Who cares if the school year is five days shorter? The school year is too long anyway. When I was a kid, we started school in September, now we start in mid-August. Summer seems to get shorter and shorter. School starts too early in the morning. The day in, and day out grind is exhausting for students and parents alike. Five days off? Closing the school for a Friday here and there? Good riddance! That's one less day I have to set my alarm for six, drag my kids out of bed, divvy up bathroom time, grill them over homework assignments, pack lunches, and make that panicked run to school in the morning, trying to avoid the dreaded and punishable tardy. Sorry, I may be a teacher, but I'm a parents too, and quite frankly, a five day shorter school year sounds great to me. In fact, let's make it ten. What the hell.

Sadly, what I continue to witness is the desire teachers and administrators have to let parents know of their plight, in constant conflict with their desire to continue to give the impression that their school is a fantastic, positive, creative, uncompromised place of learning. In other words, just because we are broke, doesn't mean that we aren't still a GREAT SCHOOL! Until schools can start having honest conversations with their parents regarding the real impacts of budget cuts on the quality of their child's education, parents will continue to be widely complacent in taking action because they aren't in the classroom, and they have no real way of knowing how things are changing.

Instead of entertaining the naive belief that parents are going to care about a shorter school year, schools should stop trying to pretend they are something they are not, and go for brutal honesty. Administrators are always talking about the importance of involving parents and the community in schools, well, here's our chance. Weekly notices should be posted publicly and sent home to all parents notifying them of each and every change, and speaking honestly about what these changes really mean for the health of the school. Here are some possible examples:

Dear Care Givers and Community Members:
Due to budget cuts, we have eliminated the majority of the campus security at your local high school. We are sorry for this inconvenience, however, we have no funds. Because of this, students will be exposed to an increased level of drug trafficking and drug use on campus. We know that much of the drugs being consumed on campus will be consumed in one of our many bathrooms, however, without campus security, we have no way of regularly patrolling these areas. Please do not be surprised if your student sees someone snorting, smoking, or selling illegal substances while at school. We will do our best to continue to provide a safe environment for all students, with a continued dedication to cut down on campus violence and bullying. However, we can only do so much, so there will be no gurantees.
Sincerely,
Your School

Dear Care Givers and Community Members:
Dues to budget cuts, we have been forced to lay off more teachers, and increase class size once again. We feel it is only fair for you to know that your student will be in a Freshman English class this year with at least 35 students. Your student may or may not have a desk, but we promise them floor space. Because many students struggle with Freshman English, and class sizes are so impacted, more students will be failing and falling behind. We apologize for this, but there really isn't anything we can do. Teachers will be modifying their curriculum in order to accommodate the increased student load, and will be focusing instead on classroom management. You can expect your students to have less writing assignments as the teachers will not have time to read papers if assigned. Sorry.
Sincerely,
Your School

Dear Care Givers and Community Members:
Due to budget cuts we have been forced to eliminated and/or severely gut the majority of our creative programs this year. Most students will be unable to get into the elective of their choice. The art program is being cut back. Wood shop is being eliminated completely. Jewelry and textiles fell by the wayside years ago. The music program will be gravely reduced. We apologize for these losses but we can't afford to hire the teachers needed to run the programs. May we suggest you look into creative programs elsewhere. Private music and art lessons, while expensive, should meet your student's needs. Good luck!
Sincerely,
Your School

Until schools start communicating honestly with parents, and stop pretending that they are giving the students everything they deserve, parents will continue to get up every morning -- bleary eyed, packing lunches, mediating bathroom scuffles between siblings, and praying for summer. The sooner the better.

The revelation that the number of opium-addicted Afghan children has reached new highs is a sad unintended consequence of that war. It dramatically illustrates how adult war games can doom generations of children to a miserable life.

A group of researchers hired by the US State Department found staggering levels of opium in Afghan children, some as young as 14 months old, who had been passively exposed by adult drug users in their homes. In 25% of homes where adult addicts lived, children tested showed signs of significant drug exposure, according to the researchers. According to one of the researchers the children exhibit the typical behavior of opium and heroin addicts. If the drug is withdrawn they go through a withdrawal process.

The results of the study should sound an alarm, since not only were opium products found in indoor air samples but also their concentrations were extremely high. This suggests that, as with second-hand cigarette smoke, contaminated indoor air and surfaces pose a serious health risk to women and children’s health.

The extent of health problems in children as a result of such exposure is not known. What is known is that the number of drug users has increased from 920,000 in 2005 to over 1.5 million, according to Zalmai Afzali, the spokesman for the Ministry of Counter-Narcotics (MCN) in Afghanistan. A quarter of those users are thought to be women and children. Afzali stated that Afghanistan could become the world’s top drug-using nation per capita if current trends continue.

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) no other country in the world produces as much heroin, opium, and hashish as Afghanistan, a sad distinction for a country already ravaged by war. This may explain why control efforts so far have been concentrated on poppy eradication and interdiction to stem exports with less attention paid to the rising domestic addiction problem, particularly in children.

Both American and Afghan counter narcotic officials have said that such widespread domestic drug addiction is a relatively new problem. Among the factors leading to increased levels of drug use is the high unemployment rate throughout the country, the social upheaval provoked by this war and those that preceded it and the return of refugees from Iran and Pakistan who became addicts while abroad.

Those who are injecting drug users face the additional risk of HIV-infection through the sharing of contaminated syringes. “Drug addiction and HIV/AIDS are, together, Afghanistan’s silent tsunami,” declared Tariq Suliman, director of the Nejat’s rehabilitation center to the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs. There are about 40 treatment centers for addicts dispersed throughout the country but most are small, poorly staffed and under-resourced.

For the first time ever, an international team including World Health Organization (WHO) officials and experts from Johns Hopkins University and the Medical University of Vienna has joined efforts to design a treatment regime for young children.

The U.S. and its allies have the resources to rapidly expand and adequately fund and resource such treatment and rehabilitation centers throughout the country. Anything less will be yet another serious indictment of an occupation gone astray.

Dr. César Chelala is an international public health consultant and a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award.

“Everything we owned got smashed. We lost everything.”

Getro Nelio was not referring to the devastating earthquake of January 12. The unemployed, 24-year-old Haitian was speaking about losing his home a second time in three months, on this occasion due to the government. Since late March, armed Haitian police have been closing camps and destroying the shelters that quake victims created out of whatever supplies they could scavenge, from cardboard to small strips of tin. U.N. troops sometimes aid in the evictions.

• Getro Nelio, top right, and his family in their home in an internally displaced person's camp in a soccer stadium in Port-au-Prince. Haitian police have since smashed the dwelling and all its contents. Photo: Roberto (Bear) Guerra.•

The expulsions and renewed homelessness come at a time of growing urgency for permanent, sturdy housing, with water, utilities, and sewer, where people can stabilize their lives and rebuild communities. “Decent housing” is protected by both the Haitian constitution and the U.N. International Declaration of Human Rights.

Haitian government officials and international aid agencies have revealed no plan to meet these needs or fulfill these rights of the 1.3 million left displaced - one in nine citizens. Instead, rare public statements evidence conflicting strategies for limited, temporary initiatives.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, government officials spoke of moving people to well-planned camps in advance of the rainy season. In March, officials suggested that people should resume residence in their former homes, many of which they said were still habitable. (Survivors, some of whom watched the walls of their cracked houses lean more with each major aftershock, demurred.) The government’s official reconstruction plan, presented to international donors in March, asserts that it will set up temporary shelters in five locales which will become long-term housing “with sustainable infrastructure and basic services,” but gives little detail of how this is to happen. The government has apparently acquired land to house 100,000 people, but some of it is far from jobs, schools, health care, and food markets, as well as family and community.

International agencies speak of constructing 130,000 “semi-permanent” shelters, some of which will have walls made of tarps. Some international agencies suggest that Haitians will convert their transitional houses into permanent ones, through such additions as chicken wire and plaster. Monetary resources and material aid are in critically short supply among earthquake survivors, and it is not apparent how they will come by such construction materials. Some have not even found their first tent after a three-and-a-half month search, and remain sleeping on sidewalks and in cars.

Hurricane season begins June 1. This month, a Miami branch chief of the National Hurricane Center said that early signs suggest the 2010 season will be “busy." One factor is warm water, and waters in the tropical Atlantic are at their warmest in recorded history. A second factor is that El Niño, which disrupts hurricane formation, is likely to dissipate this season.

Four storms that hit Haiti in three weeks in 2008 killed 793 people and left more than 310 missing, according to Haitian government figures.

Homeless Twice in Three Months

After the earthquake killed Nelio’s father and destroyed the family’s home in Carrefour Feuilles, Nelio spent weeks trying to obtain a tarp or tent for his family to live in. His hopes rose and fell with various promises of agencies and friends. Finally, a foreign photographer whom he had befriended gave him money, and he bought a tent, plus wood and a tarp for a second structure to house his family. The nine members include a child as young as 15 months and his 57-year-old mother. They took up residence in the Sylvio Cator soccer stadium along with about 7,000 other people.

On April 9 or 10 (Nelio was unsure, and press accounts differ), Nelio said that “the director of the camp told us that the next day everyone had to leave the field.” The owner had allegedly demanded the stadium back so that the soccer teams could recommence their practices and games there. “They said they were going to give every family 1000 gourde (US$24.84) and a little three-person tent. The next morning, they started throwing people out. When it happened, I had already left, and my mother had gone out to look for another place to live. People organized a demonstration to demand the aid they promised us.

“When that happened, they sent in CIMO [anti-riot squads] to crush our houses and beat us with sticks as though we were dogs. By the time my mother and I got back, they had already destroyed our little house. One CIMO officer beat me on the head, cutting it open. He beat me on the chest and the back, he pushed me, he pulled his machine gun on me. People were shouting for help. My mother was crying. I told her to relax,” Nelio said.

Nelio reported that at least some of those were present when the eviction started were given small tents. Neither his family nor many others got new housing supplies or assistance in relocating. His family has had to separate. Nelio is living in another internally displaced people’s camp, while other family members are dispersed across town.

Few Options for Those Evicted

Similar expulsions have occurred at a handful of other sites, and more are threatened. As schools begin to reopen throughout Port-au-Prince, residents of some of the 79 camps on school grounds have been evicted.

“The parents and MINUSTAH [the U.N. mission] say that the families have to leave. We understand that, but where are they going to go? They have to give us some alternative,” said Micheline Sainvilus, an unemployed mother of six children who has been living in a cluster of tents filling a small street close to the center of town. Her own children are not in school because they lost their uniforms when their house collapsed.

The U.N. mission announced that the Haitian government declared a moratorium on forced evictions on April 22, but the government itself has remained quiet.

In April, the government opened a large camp called Corail Cesselesse near the town of Croix-des-Bouquets, just under an hour’s drive from downtown Port-au-Prince. Three thousand people have already been relocated there from other camps, and 3,000 more are supposed to join them in the long rows of white tents on white gravel, with no trees or other shade. “It’s a desert, nothing but sand. What are they supposed to do in the sun in the middle of the day?” Nelio asked.

Residents of the camp in the Champs de Mars park have been hearing rumors for weeks that they will be forced to evacuate and move to Corail, but they claim no one has told them anything definitive about their fate. “Croix-des-Bouquets? I don’t know anyone there. How will I work? Where will my kids go to school?” said one woman from her open-air residence under a tarp. “I hear that it costs 100 gourdes ($2.48) to take the bus there,” said another. That is more money than most homeless survivors see in days.

The government has opened a second tent settlement, and several others are under development. Josette Perard, director of the Haiti office of the Lambi Fund, said, “The Haitian people are rebellious. If they don’t want to be there, they won’t stay.”

Uncertainty and Anger over the Future

Most who lost their homes in the earthquake were renters, and have no way to reclaim either their former lodging or the rent which they typically pay in six-month installments. Of those who own their home, several reported in interviews, their land is now buried in rubble and they have no money to pay to clear it so that they erect a shelter. Port-au-Prince is an extremely densely packed city with little open land. Those who choose not to stay in one of the new settlements may be forced to reconstruct substandard houses on steep hillsides and ravines – exactly what caused such a high toll in the recent earthquake.

Anger is growing among the displaced and their allies, with demonstrations following suit. The Support Group for the Repatriated and Refugees (GARR, by its French acronym) is one of many to denounce the action, releasing a statement on April 28 calling on the Haitian government to “assume its leadership in caring for the displaced,” in accordance with the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement by the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Those principles include the following (excerpted):

-National authorities have the primary duty and responsibility to provide protection and humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons;

-All internally displaced persons have the right to an adequate standard of living;

-Authorities shall provide internally displaced persons with food and potable water, basic shelter and clothing; essential medical services and sanitation;

-Authorities concerned shall ensure [that] displaced children receive education which shall be free.

From the camp where he now lives, this time in the Champs de Mars park beside the decimated National Palace, Getro Nelio said, “I’ve been abandoned without any help. The Haitian state isn’t doing anything for anyone. I have nothing. I just sit here with my two arms crossed.”

The 7.3 earthquake which struck Haiti on January 12 was only the start of Haiti’s most recent catastrophe. It has been followed by an ever-deepening social and economic crisis for those whose survival was precarious before the quake, especially among the 1.3 million who were left homeless or displaced. For this group, who are now packed into camps or squeezed into the most marginal of open spaces, some daily elements of life include the following:

• Haitian women and girls in tent camps have no defense against violence and crushing poverty.  Once hurricane season starts, threats to their lives will increase. Photo: Julie Dermansky©2010, www.jsdart.com•

-Rape and other violence against women and girls, at high levels since the earthquake, appear to be rising;

-Poverty and social destabilization are worsening. They find no relief in an environment where people lack dignity, privacy, the fulfillment of basic needs, or control over their lives;

-The Haitian government has recently commenced violent evictions of internally displaced people from their camps, with a plan to relocate them in other vast and sometimes distant tent camps. Some survivors have now lost everything a second time, this time due to police smashing their belongings. Others live in fear that this will soon be their fate;

-While drenching, all-night rains have been a constant since the earthquake, the rainy season commences in earnest in June, with hurricane season just behind. In this context, the tarps, tents, and rickety housing which internally displaced peoples have scraped together become life-threatening.

All of these social crises require the same first redress: housing. Deeper structural solutions are imperative, especially if Haiti is to have a future based on justice and equity, but in the immediate, earthquake survivors must have permanent, sturdy, and dignified homes. These must offer water, electricity, sanitation, and proximity to services.

Instead, three and a half months after the earthquake, housing construction is almost absent among the initiatives of the Haitian government, aid agencies, and international donor community. Relief organizations are planning the construction of 130,000 ‘semi-permanent’ shelters, in which category they include homes made of plastic tarps, according to the Associated Press. This would only marginally address the needs of only one-tenth of those now homeless. National attention is instead focused on moving survivors to new tents in a few, densely populated camps, introducing other extreme problems. (See part II of this article on May 6 for more detail.)

Housing is a guaranteed human right according to both the Haitian constitution and international conventions. The Haitian constitution declares, “The State recognizes the right of every citizen to decent housing.” The U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including… housing.” The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement of the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs declares that “All internally displaced persons have the right to an adequate standard of living [with] safe access to… basic shelter and housing.”

Marie Paul, a now-unemployed street merchant who lives with her mother and two young children in the middle of a narrow street, explained, “If people’s rights were respected, we wouldn’t be living under these sheets today.”

Rising Rape and Violence

Members of the grassroots group Commission of Women Victim-to-Victim (KOFAVIV) tracked 230 rapes in 15 camps, or 15.3 incidents per camp, between the January 12 earthquake and March 21. This figure is based on the findings of a few camp-based outreach workers without any transportation, other research capacity, or sometimes even cell phones, so it surely reflects only a percentage of the actual figure. KOFAIV coordinator Marie Eramithe Delva said that the women’s and children’s rights group now comes across at least one case of rape each day, which she recognizes does not capture the true number. Other, more methodical tracking efforts by Haitian and international organizations are now underway.

Girls and women have the right to be free from rape wherever they are; the problem is not just where they live. However, the conditions of their current residence in internally displaced camps substantially heighten their risk. All are in densely packed and public spaces, while some live in shelters much less substantial than even a tent. Some women and girls are in plain view, under strung-up tarps or bedsheets with limited or no walls. In the absence of private space, females must often bathe outdoors within full sight of all. In camps with gender-segregated outhouses, men sometimes hide in dark women’s bathrooms at night, awaiting a victim. Without the ability to lock themselves in at night, often without male accompaniment, and in tight quarters with up to thousands of men, women and girls are easy prey.

Once they have been raped or attacked, they have nowhere to relocate to be secure from their assailant. In an extensive investigation over two weeks, this writer could find no women’s shelter in Port-au-Prince for survivors, except one that offers a three-day stay. If the survivors report the attacker, they are in even greater danger. Some women have fled town after reporting their rape to the police, for fear of retribution. Others have neither the bus fare to leave nor anywhere to relocate.

The vulnerability is aggravated by the fact that neither Haitian nor international police offer any measurable protection in the camps. In many interviews, women reported that they have never seen Haitian or U.N. security forces in their camps, notwithstanding U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s March 13 statement that the first priority of the U.N. is to protect women.

Some camps have organized all-volunteer security brigades, usually of men, which can be a help. In other camps, women have complained in interviews, men join simply to be able to enter tents and steal with greater ease.

Delva and her family were subject to their third post-earthquake attack on April 26. Two men entered under their open tarp whose boundaries, in today’s reconfigured reality, signifies ‘home.’ By chance, members of the camp security brigade were in the area. While one of the intruders ran, brigade members caught the other and brought him to the police station. “We don’t know what happened to him then,” Delva said.

KOFAVIV co-coordinator Malya Villard Appolon reported that the group knows of only one case where a perpetrator was arrested, in a case which reveals some of the challenges to cracking down on the violence. In a mid-March attack against a woman who wanted her name withheld, two men entered her tent in Camp d’Application in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Martissant. They raped and beat her, inflicting her with a head wound. One of the men then escaped, while police arrested the other. The judge later threw out the case, stating that the doctor’s certificate did not contain the proper stamp, though this is not legally necessary. Relatives of the rapist told the survivor that they would come kill her. The woman went into hiding.

In one of many similar stories, a 15-year-old girl was gang-raped by five men in the last week of April, according to a delegation of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. With no father and a mother in great difficulty, the girl lives with a young friend in a tent in a camp.

Women report living in constant fear for themselves and their daughters. One woman in a meeting of rape survivors in a downtown schoolyard recounted that she and others sleep with machetes under their beds for protection, while another woman said she tries to sleep lightly so she can stay alert to danger. In interviews, residents of several camps across Port-au-Prince said that they hear women being beaten almost every night.

The problem of gender-based violence, in Haiti as everywhere, requires deep solutions, including more effectively stigmatizing, prosecuting, and penalizing it. Haiti faces a further challenge of a weak justice system which is neither upholding laws or protecting citizens, especially vulnerable ones. For now, Haitian and international women’s groups are urging the U.N. and the national government to step up violence prevention measures, such as increasing security in the camps, providing private bathing areas, and providing gender sensitivity training to Haitian police.

As more females become victims, and as hurricane season approaches, the massive international plan to simply move homeless people from to other tent camps is as dangerous as it is nonsensical. It is also a human rights violation. “Do they think we’re animals?” asked one elder woman as she sat on a crate in the mud in front of her tent.

Female Haitians deserve to live out of sight and out of reach of would-be perpetrators, and to bathe, use the toilet, and sleep without terror. Housing will not end the problem of rape and other gender-based violence, but it is the first imperative through which women and girls can begin to protect themselves from harm’s way.

Malaria continues to be endemic in the developing world, causing more than 1 million deaths every year, mostly among children living in Sub-Saharan countries.

Because of the failure to develop a truly effective vaccine against malaria, public health intervention remains focused on controlling the mosquito vector of the parasite that causes the disease. And, just as it has for decades, mosquito control relies mainly on the use of the insecticide DDT (dichloro-diphenyl- trichloroethane). While highly effective in controlling the mosquito population, there are serious drawbacks to DDT use.

The good news is that the results of a new project carried out in Mexico and Central America show that the fight against malaria does not have to depend on using DDT. In Mexico and the Central American countries, it is estimated that around 108.7 million people live in areas that are environmentally favorable to transmission of malaria, with 35 percent at high risk of contracting the disease.

The need to continue to rely on DDT to effectively combat malaria has been the subject of a long running discussion. Although DDT spraying has long been successfully used in controlling the mosquito population and the spread of malaria, it easily enters the food chain and persists for many years in the environment. The result is often serious harm to wildlife. In addition, the mosquito population under attack can become resistant to DDT, making necessary the search for alternatives.

Since 2004, a project funded by the U.N. Environmental Program and the Global Environmental Facility has been carried out with the technical support of the Pan American Health Organization in Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Panama. It was developed on strategies outlined in the "Roll Back Malaria" approach championed by the World Health Organization.

This project was initially implemented in Mexico and subsequently adopted to local areas in the Central American countries. Critical to its success has been the use of public health measures aimed at controlling mosquito breeding and standing sites, rapid diagnosis and treatment of those affected with malaria and active community participation.

Public health measures against malaria had already shown their effectiveness in Central America. During the construction of the Panama Canal, which had been abandoned by the French in 1889 due to financial scandals and the high number of worker deaths from malaria and yellow fever, thousands of lives were saved thanks to public health measures implemented by Dr. William C. Gorgas of the U.S. Army Medical Corps.

Similar public health measures have been applied in the Mexico/Central America project, including participatory community treatment of larval breeding sites, improvements in housing conditions, periodical clearing of vegetation around houses, and elimination of stagnant water near houses. These actions are complemented by a wide array of educational interventions aimed at information about malaria transmission, and rapid diagnosis and prompt treatment of those affected in the community.

Early detection and treatment is crucial for eliminating the parasite carriers. A key aspect has been the collaboration of voluntary community health workers who are taught to make an early diagnosis in situ and to administer complete courses of treatment not only to those affected but to patients' immediate contacts.

The project was carried out in "demonstration areas" selected for their high levels of malaria transmission. In those areas, the number of malaria cases fell 63 percent from 2004 to 2007. In several demonstration areas I visited in Honduras and Mexico as a consultant for the Pan American Health Organization, malaria had practically been eliminated. Plans are under way to expand the project to other regions where malaria remains a serious threat.

One of the advantages of avoiding DDT (and its toxic effects) is the enormous savings realized from discontinuing its routine use. These savings can now be put to good use against other diseases.

Although DDT can still be used in some countries or regions with extremely high levels of malaria infection, the fact that an effective campaign against malaria can be waged without it, and at much lower cost, raises hopes that this approach can be used as time goes on by a wide range of developing countries in the Americas, Africa and Asia.

Dr. César Chelala is an international public health consultant.