Reflecting on cooperatives and economic deveolopment

Last week, the cooperatives in Duchity, Haiti had their second annual meeting. Last year, their group had 300 members and this year they're nearing 1000! Their elected president is a woman, and they have various other women in high ranking positions. In one much-anticipated election, a woman beat out five men to lead one of the committees. This marks huge progress Ina country with such distinct traditional gender roles. Cooperatives often provide women with economic solvency and help them to gain equal status in their communities.

I continue to be amazed at just how effective the cooperative model can be. So many foreigners come to Haiti to build schools and churches, often with great intentions, but the amount of money spent on these projects is incredible! If only people could think of investing in development and empowering Haitians to lift themselves out of poverty, they might start to see some amazing returns for their money. With hard work and cooperation, cooperative members are able to make money and support themselves.

Duchity announced at their meeting that they have purchased their own land. They already have plans to construct a training center, which will be used as a meeting space, a training center, and a community center. And because their cooperative is so productive and profitable, they aren't even asking for any loan money!

Yesterday, I met an international coordinator for the Canadian Pentocostal church. He told me about a community that one of his churches partners with just outside of Port-au-Prince. The priests at that church welcomed the partnership and keep asking money for bigger and bigger projects. For him, it all came to a head with a school that they wanted to build, which he refers to as the Taj Ma-Haiti. He tried explaining to their Haitian partners that any church in Canada would love to have a building like that, but they make do with much less, but Haitian priests were insistent that the school represented what the community needed. The Canadian organization had to take a step back. They hired a Haitian organization, productive cooperatives Haiti (pcH), to do a full community assessment. The Canadian Pentocostal church sees their role in partnering with a church as a commitment to partnering with the whole community and lifting all of God's children to a better standard of living. Now, with the assessment complete, they can approach their church partners with a better understanding of the community, its strengths, and its needs, and everyone can coordinate their efforts in the most efficient development projects. They anticipate doing agricultural training, using appropriate technology to help the fisherman increase productivity, helping the community to improve their access to clean water, and helping them to build successful cooperatives. Over time, each of these investments will make the community more self-sustaining, and then they can decide if their own money would be well spent on a Taj Ma-Haiti, or perhaps a more traditional school building.

The UN Occupation

I don't know that I agree with everything in this article, but it's an interest summary of the balance of power in Haiti.  Just thought I'd share.
~becky

Nick Nesbitt

Haiti: one more shameful UN betrayal

Cholera is just the latest disaster to be linked to the UN in Haiti – and
the election won't change the nature of the mission

   -
    <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/peter-hallward>
   -
      - Peter Hallward <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/peter-hallward>
      - The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian>, Tuesday 23
      November 2010

Almost everyone now accepts that the United Nations brought cholera to Haiti
last month. The evidence is overwhelming and many experts (including the
head of Harvard University's microbiology department, cholera specialist John
Mekalanos<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39996103/ns/health-infectious_diseases>)
made up their minds to that effect several weeks ago.

Poverty and a lack of rudimentary infrastructure compels much of Haiti's
population to drink untreated water, but there has been no cholera there for
decades. Haitians have no experience with – and therefore little resistance
to – the disease. All the bacterial samples taken from Haitian patients are
identical and match a strain endemic in southern
Asia<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11669079>.
Cholera broke out in Nepal over the summer, and in mid-October a new
detachment of Nepalese UN troops arrived at their Haitian base in
Mirebalais, near the Artibonite river. A few days later Haitians living
downstream of the base started to get sick and the disease spread rapidly
throughout the region. On 27 October,
journalists<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101028/ap_on_he_me/cb_haiti_disease_outbreak>visited
Mirebalais and found evidence that untreated waste from UN latrines
was pouring directly into an Artibonite tributary.

By early November, Mekalanos couldn't see "any way to avoid the conclusion
that an unfortunate and presumably accidental introduction of the organism
occurred" as a result of UN troops. Mekalanos and others also refute UN
claims that identification of the source should be a low public health
priority.

Probably as a result of UN negligence, more than 1,200 people are already
dead <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11802488> and 20,000
infected, and the toll is set to rise rapidly over the coming weeks. So is
the number and intensity of popular protests against this latest in a series
of UN crimes and misadventures in Haiti in recent years, which include
scores of killings and hundreds of alleged rapes.

Rather than examine its role in the epidemic, however, the UN mission has
opted for disavowal and obfuscation. UN officials have refused to test
Nepalese soldiers for the disease or to conduct a public investigation into
the origins of the outbreak. Rather than address the concerns of an outraged
population, the agency has preferred to characterise the fresh wave of
protests as a "politically motivated" attempt to destabilise the country in
the runup to presidential elections on 28
November<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11811338>.
Protesters have been met with tear gas and bullets; so far at least three
have been killed.

So far, in fact, so normal. The truth is that the whole UN mission in Haiti
is based on a violent, bald-faced lie. It says it is in Haiti to support
democracy and the rule of law, but its only real achievement has been to
help transfer power from a sovereign people to an unaccountable army.

To understand this requires a little historical knowledge. The basic
political problem in Haiti, from colonial through post-colonial to
neo-colonial times, has always been much the same: how can a tiny and
precarious ruling class secure its property and privileges in the face of
mass destitution and resentment? The Haitian elite owes its privileges to
exclusion, exploitation and violence, and only quasi-monopoly control of
violent power allows it to retain them. This monopoly was amply guaranteed
by the US-backed Duvalier dictatorships through to the mid 1980s, and then
rather less amply by the military dictatorships that succeeded them
(1986-90). But the Lavalas mobilisation for democracy, which began in the
1980s, threatened that monopoly and with it those privileges. In such a
situation, only an army can be relied upon to guarantee the security of the
status quo.

Haiti's incompetent but vicious armed forces, established as a delegate of
US power, dominated the country for most of the 20th century. After
surviving a brutal military coup in 1991, Haiti's first democratically
elected government – led by president Jean-Bertrand Aristide – finally
demobilised this hated army in 1995; the great majority of his compatriots
celebrated the occasion. Lawyer Brian Concannon recalls it as "the most
important step forward for human rights since emancipation from France". In
2000, Aristide was re-elected, and his Fanmi
Lavalas<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanmi_Lavalas>party won an
overwhelming majority. This re-election raised the prospect,
for the first time in modern Haitian history, of genuine political change in
a situation in which there was no obvious extra-political mechanism – no
army – to prevent it.

The tiny Haitian elite and their allies in the US, France and Canada were
threatened by the prospect of popular empowerment, and took elaborate steps
to undermine the Lavalas government.

In February 2004, Aristide's second administration was overthrown in another
disastrous coup, conducted by the US and its allies with support from
ex-Haitian soldiers and rightwing leaders of the Haitian business community.
A US puppet was imposed to replace Aristide, in the midst of savage
reprisals against Lavalas supporters. Since no domestic army was available
to guarantee "security", a UN "stabilisation force" was sent in at the
behest of both the US and France.

The UN has been providing this substitute army ever since. At the behest of
the US and its allies, it arrived in Haiti in June 2004. Made up of troops
and police drawn from countries all over the world, it operates at an annual
cost that is close to twice the size of Aristide's entire pre-coup budget.
Its main mission, in effect, has been to pacify the Haitian people, and make
them accept the coup and the end of their attempt to establish genuine
democratic rule. Few Haitians are likely to forget what the UN has done to
accomplish this. Between 2004 and 2006, it participated in a campaign of
repression that killed more than a thousand Lavalas supporters. It laid
siege to the destitute pro-Aristide neighbourhood of Cité Soleil in
2005<http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/yearman/cite_soleil.htm>and
2006 <http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/1_21_7/1_21_7.html>, and has
subsequently contained or dispersed popular protests on issues ranging from
political persecution and privatisation to wages and food prices. In the
last few months the UN has also kept a lid on the growing pressure in the
capital, Port-au-Prince, for improvement in the intolerable conditions still
endured by about 1.3 million people left homeless after January's
earthquake<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/haiti>
.

Today, cholera or no cholera, the UN's priority is to ensure that next
week's elections go
ahead<http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AF5L220101117>as planned.
For Haiti's elite and their international allies, these
elections offer an unprecedented opportunity to bury the Lavalas project
once and for all.

The political programme associated with Lavalas and Aristide remains
overwhelming popular. After six years of repression and infighting, however,
the political leadership of this popular movement is more divided and
disorganised than ever. Fanmi Lavalas itself has simply been barred from
participation in the election <http://ijdh.org/archives/13138> (with hardly
a whisper of international protest), and from his involuntary exile in South
Africa, Aristide has condemned the ballot as illegitimate. Many if not most
of the party's supporters are likely to back its vigorous call to boycott
this latest masquerade, as they did in the spring of 2009, when
turnout<http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46537>for senate elections
was less than 10%. This time around, however, half a
dozen politicians associated with Lavalas have chosen to run as candidates
in their own name. They are likely to split the vote. Haiti's people will be
deprived of what has long been their most powerful political weapon – their
ability to win genuine elections.

Since it is almost guaranteed to have no significant political impact, this
is one election that might well achieve its intended result: to reinforce
the "security" (and inequity) of the status quo, along with the many
profitable opportunities that a suitably secured post-disaster Haiti
continues to offer international investors and its business elite. "This
will be an election for nothing," says veteran activist Patrick
Elie<http://dizzyshambles.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/interview-with-veteran-activist-patrick-elie/>.
Properly managed, it may even provide an opportunity for rightwing
presidential candidates like Charles
Baker<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Henri_Baker>to pursue the
goal that has long been at the top of their agenda:
restoration, with the usual "international supervision", of Haiti's own
branch of the imperial army.

And if that comes to pass, then when the UN eventually leaves Haiti its
departure may only serve as a transition from one occupying force to
another, reversing decades of popular sacrifice and political effort. In the
meantime, though, it looks as if the UN may soon have more opportunities
than ever before to fulfil its mission in Haiti.

Cholera outbreak

Hi all!

  I'm not in Haiti now, but I really identified with this article.  Unfortunately, a massive cholera epidemic has been dreaded and 100% anticipated since the earthquake.  Sadly, cholera is a water-borne illness that is completely preventable, so starting with prevention now... it's a little late, but better than never.  Now if only this article went on to talk about teaching people to purify water by putting it in soda bottles and leaving it in the sun for two hours and making oral rehydration solutions with simple water, sugar and salt, so that the mysticism and technologies are removed, making health accessible to all.  

- becky


Haiti cholera hospital is a horror scene
Source: AlertNet
Date: 22 Oct 2010

22 Oct 2010 10:54:00 GMT

Written by: David Darg

Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.

We woke to disturbing news on Thursday. Our friends at Partners in Health told us droves of people were arriving at St Marc, sick with diarrhea, and that they were dying from dehydration at an alarming rate. The question was clear, could we mobilize to provide clean water to an area suspected of having Haiti's first major cholera outbreak in decades?

Our staff immediately began loading our trucks with equipment. As we drove the two hours to St Marc emails on my phone showed the death toll was climbing steadily. Everyone was nervous.

We arrived at St Marc hospital to a horror scene. I had to fight my way through the gate as a huge crowd of worried relatives stood outside, while others screamed for access as they carried dying relatives into the compound. The courtyard was lined with patients hooked up to intravenous (IV) drips. It had just rained and there were people lying on the ground on soggy sheets, half-soaked with feces.

Some children were screaming and writhing in agony, others were motionless with their eyes rolled back into their heads as doctors and nursing staff searched desperately for a vein to give them an IV. The hospital was overwhelmed, apparently caught out suddenly by one of the fastest killers there is.

Our friend, Cate Oswald, from Partners In Health came out from a triage tent clutching a hand-drawn map. It showed the local river and the names of a few communities where the patients had been coming from. Cate and some of her colleagues led us into the countryside to find the source of the epidemic.

Soon we were heading down narrow dirt roads with rice paddies and canals on either side. The crisis had started the day before. Doctors realized it was getting serious during the night. By then the villagers had heard of the deaths and word spread quickly not to drink water from the river.

Most people had gone thirsty for hours. The roads were lined with villagers holding buckets, begging for water. Some larger groups had set up road blocks and our convoy was forced to stop and explain that we didn't have water, only equipment to purify water, and that we were heading to the source of the problem. The villagers reluctantly let us pass.

People were constantly trying to flag us down and pointing to sick friends and relatives. One group forced us to stop - they had a girl close to death. PIH staff started her on an IV and placed her in their vehicle. Her mother, clutching another baby, explained that her husband had died yesterday and asked us to save her daughter.

RISING TOLL

We arrived at the place where many of the patients had originated from, a small dusty community called Babou La Port. Our team set up a water purification system, which filters and chlorinates, ensuring that any bacteria or diseases are killed.

As we worked, sick villagers of all ages congregated under the shade of some large trees. The medical staff placed IVs in some. One, a boy named Frantz, was brought to us by his grandmother. He was weak and vomiting. His grandmother was frail and could only point to the river when we asked her how long Frantz had been ill.

Diarrhea is unfortunately a common problem in this part of the world. A villager with cholera might lie down on feeling ill, expecting to get better, and be dead within hours.

Convoys of trucks plastered with the posters of various presidential candidates drove up and down the dirt roads. Many candidates saw this as an opportunity to campaign. They were tossing out small plastic bags of water to the desperate crowds. There were fights for the water and one man was crushed under a truck in the scuffle.

Our filtration unit fired up and word spread quickly. Soon a sea of multi-colored buckets surrounded us. There were no cheers and little laughter; most of the villagers were stunned, afraid and weak. They were just relieved to have water.

Some of our Haitian staff agreed to stay with the system overnight and keep it operating. It was a daunting challenge, to stay awake surrounded by deadly disease and desperate villagers.

Back at St Marc hospital not much had changed, other than the death toll. As I write, the confirmed toll is 135 and rising with thousands more infected. There are still patients being carried into the hospital close to death.

Now however the cries of the mothers are louder and there are even more people at the gates desperate to hear news of their loved ones. The hospital is struggling to cope with such a sudden influx of patients, especially since it is still trying to recover from the January earthquake.

The scenes at St Marc reminded me of Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince after the quake: patients lying in the streets, doctors struggling to cope, mass hysteria and fatigue.

On Thursday morning, as the scale of the problem began to emerge, my friend Dr Koji from Partners in Health shook my hand and said "Let's stop this". The only way to halt a disease like cholera is to stop people from getting infected. The hardest hit areas now have access to safe water, and thanks to people like Dr Koji the sick are receiving treatment.

Reuters AlertNet is not responsible for the content of external websites.

For more humanitarian news and analysis, please visit www.alertnet.org

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Posted By poxvox to Haiti Vox at 10/23/2010 12:40:00 PM