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Emily Steemers

The Assault on Haitian Democracy - 0 views

nacla.org/6700

LACH currentevents haiti democracy politics

shared by Emily Steemers on 20 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Much is at stake in this key election, scheduled for November 28. The winner will be responsible for the colossal task of rebuilding the nation’s shattered infrastructure and psyche after the January 12 earthquake.
  • However, international elites continue to support and fund an election that openly excludes the political party Famni Lavalas, the party founded by former Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide.
  • Not only has Lavalas been excluded from Haiti’s political process by the country’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), its supporters are continually intimidated and violently suppressed by a United Nations army that continues to be in Haiti six years after the 2004 coup that ousted Aristide from the presidency.
  • Emily Steemers on 20 Oct 10
     
    Aug 23, 2010: Discussion of Haitian democracy post-earthquake (Wyclef Jean, etc)
Emily Steemers

Fighting for a Just Reconstruction in Haiti - 0 views

nacla.org/6652

LACH currentevents haiti earthquake

shared by Emily Steemers on 20 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • ut as tenacious as oppression and deprivation have been throughout Haitian history, the country’s highly organized grassroots movement has never given up the battle its enslaved ancestors began. The movement is composed of women, peasants, street vendors, human rights advocates, clergy and laity, workers, and others. The mobilizations, protests, and advocacy have brought down dictators, staved off some of the worst of economic policies aimed at others’ profit, and kept the population from ever fitting quietly into anyone else’s plans for them.
  • “We’ve shared our pain and our suffering,” said Mesita Attis of the market women’s support group Martyred Women of Brave Ayibobo. “If you heard your baby in the ruins crying ‘Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,’ 14 people would run help you. If you don’t have a piece of bread, someone will give you theirs.”
  • “The tremendous chain of solidarity of the people we saw from the day of the earthquake on: That is our capacity. That is our victory. That is our heart. From the first hour Haitians engaged in every type of solidarity imaginable—one supporting the other, one helping the other, one saving the other. If any of us is alive today, we can say that it’s thanks to this solidarity.”
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  • But given the magnitude of the disaster, these efforts by ordinary Haitians have not been enough to help everyone. Neither has international aid, which, according to hundreds of interviews and months of observation, has yet to significantly address any of the needs of vast swaths of earthquake-hit populations. Although a remarkable $9.9 billion in aid has been given or pledged by individuals and organizations throughout the world, there is a huge gap between the dollars and international posturing around aid, on the one hand, and the population in need, on the other. As of early June, hundreds of people in refugee camps reported that they had received little—some rice, perhaps a tent—to nothing at all.
  • Despite their advocacy, the Haitian people, together with their government, have been bypassed in the planning and oversight of how aid money is spent and in reconstruction policies. The international donors’ forums in Montreal (January 25), Santo Domingo (March 17), and New York (March 31), where the large-scale plans were developed, were led by foreign ministers and international financial institutions. UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has touted the process as “a sweeping exercise in nation-building on a scale and scope not seen in generations.”2 But Haitian voices have been lost amid the declarations of the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the U.S. government, and others.
  • The agenda for a just Haitian future is monumental in the best of times. Today it is being shaped by people who still may be accommodating themselves to the fact that their child or mother, not seen since January 12, is dead. It is being shaped by people who are living in tents in squalid, dangerous camps. It is being shaped by people who are profoundly traumatized and have no access to mental health care.
  • It may be that their suffering sharpens the determination to have their needs met in a context of social and economic justice and democracy. That is the perspective, at least, of Ricot Jean-Pierre, director of advocacy for the Platform to Advocate Alternative Development in Haiti (PAPDA). “Sadness can’t discourage us so that we stop fighting,” he said. “We’ve lost people as in all battles, but we have to continue fighting to honor them and make their dreams a reality. The dream is translated into a slogan: Another Haiti Is Possible.”
  • Emily Steemers on 20 Oct 10
     
    July 8, 2010: Aftermath of the earthquake
Emily Steemers

Haiti urges long-term aid from foreign donors - 0 views

www.euronews.net/...g-term-aid-from-foreign-donors

haiti currentevents LACH earthquake

shared by Emily Steemers on 25 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • As more earthquake survivors get their hands on much-needed aid, international donors have been urged to support Haiti for at least five to ten years.
  • “We must think about relocating part of the population, redeploying public services and economic structures differently to take account of the physical and environmental constraints from a sustainable development point of view,” he said. “To achieve that, Haiti needs massive support from its international partners in the medium and long term. The scale of the task demands that we do more, that we do better and, no doubt, that we do it differently.”
Emily Steemers

Cholera in Haiti: This isn't bad luck, this is poverty - Boing Boing - 0 views

www.boingboing.net/...cholera-in-haiti-thi.html

haiti currentevents cholera earthquake LACH

shared by Emily Steemers on 25 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • They clearly need more doctors and nurses, but seemed to have enough oral rehydration solution and IV fluids for now. They obviously need specialized supplies like "cholera beds"—cots with holes cut in them for easier defecation. I asked an 8-year-old named Ritchie if it was hard to "faire toilette" in public (it's all out in the open), and he looked embarrassed and said, "Yes." That got to me.
  • The bug behind this devastation—the bacterium Vibrio cholerae—is a fascinating and frustrating creature. Fascinating, because of its role in the development of epidemiology and what we're still learning from it. Frustrating, because it ought to be relatively simple to treat and prevent infection. We know what to do to help a cholera victim survive. All it takes is access to clean water and the most basic medical supplies. The trouble here isn't science, it's poverty.
  • Today, cholera is all but non-existent in developed countries. Not because we're immune. Not because we have access to a miracle drug. It's simply about money. Money, and the will to build public sanitation systems that treat the poor and the wealthy to an equal level of separation between what we drink and what we excrete.
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  • Right now, people are dying in Haiti not because we don't know how to save them, but because of a lack of access, both to clean water and to Oral Rehydration Therapy. In other words, they are dying not because of a disease, but because of poverty.
Emily Steemers

Haiti earthquake: Aid effort shifts to long-term care - 0 views

www.csmonitor.com/...ffort-shifts-to-long-term-care

haiti currentevents earthquake LACH

shared by Emily Steemers on 25 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Some 300,000 people are receiving water and food rations every day, with the latter number expected to jump to 1 million a day by the end of the week, according to Haitian health officials. After an initial lack of medical supplies that left some Haitian doctors performing amputations without anesthesia, thousands of life-saving surgeries have been performed and medical supplies are generally plentiful.
Emily Steemers

Haiti needs long-term attention - 0 views

www.miamiherald.com/...needs-long-term-attention.html

haiti currentevents earthquake LACH

shared by Emily Steemers on 25 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • One thing is clear. Haiti has suffered an unprecedented blow to all sectors of society. Only a few short days ago, positive stories were emerging from Haiti. People were talking about political stability, nascent economic growth and a long-deserved and hard-earned sense of optimism about the future. Businesses were reinvesting in the nation, bringing new jobs; and elections were scheduled for the end of February. The timing of this tragedy could not have been worse. Despite the recent gains, the earthquake and its deadly impact pose the greatest threat yet to the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.
  • The sheer scale of physical destruction, economic devastation, and human suffering is enormous, and carries with it not only the obvious immediate challenges, but more serious long-term implications for the country's future. Haiti will need a major realignment of its infrastructure as well as its strategies to ensure more effective implementation of policies that can eventually mitigate the impact of natural disasters.
  • The solidarity and support from sister countries throughout the Americas will also be instrumental in fostering a climate of peace and security. This support will be even more important in the months and years ahead as Haiti works to simply return to its condition prior to the earthquake. Haiti's private sector and civil society, as well as its diaspora communities, will have to assume a major role in the country's reconstruction through an injection of human, social and financial capital.
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  • The time for collective and sustained long-term action is now. As hard as it may be to imagine, failure to act could result in even greater losses of the recent social, political and security gains. From the crippling effects of this disaster, Haiti's government, legislators, private sector, civil society and diaspora (with the support of the international community) must transform this tragedy into a moment to engineer a sustainable framework for Haiti's future development.
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