[HaitiReport] Haiti Report for May 18, 2008
 
Date: Sun, 18 May 2008 21:33:01 -0500 (CDT)


Haiti Report for May 18, 2008
Happy Flag Day!

The Haiti Report is a compilation and summary of events as described
in Haiti and international media prepared by Konbit Pou Ayiti/KONPAY.
It does not reflect the opinions of any individual or organization.
This service is intended to create a better understanding of the
situation in Haiti by presenting the reader with reports that provide
a variety of perspectives on the situation.

To make a donation to support this service: Konbit Pou Ayiti, 7 Wall
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IN THIS REPORT:
- Keeping New Mothers Alive
  In Haiti and Rwanda, Reducing Tragedy in Childbirth
- Death Toll for Capsized Boat up to Thirteen
- Calm in Cite Soleil During Protests Sign of Success for Preval
- Deep Roots of Haiti's Food Crisis
- Demonstrators in Les Cayes Temporarily Satisfied with Jobs
- US House of Representatives Passes HOPE II
- Ericq Pierre Blames Corruption for his Rejection for Prime Minister
- Haiti Crime Stats
- US Soldiers Blamed for Death of Spanish Journalist in Haiti
- USAID $15 Million in Emergency Food

Keeping New Mothers Alive
  In Haiti and Rwanda, Reducing Tragedy in Childbirth:
"Obscene" is still the word that comes to mind when we think of
maternal mortality -- and it has been almost 25 years since we first
witnessed death in childbirth. In 1983, as students in one of central
Haiti's fetid clinics, we prepared to celebrate a birth. Although we'd
just met the young woman about to become a mother, her desperate
expression as she began to hemorrhage haunts us still. National
statistics could have predicted the outcome: A 1985 survey pegged
Haitian maternal mortality at 1,400 deaths per 100,000 live births. By
comparison, maternal mortality in the United States last year was 14
deaths per 100,000 live births. Worldwide, 500,000 women die in
childbirth every year; more than 90 percent live in Africa or Asia,
and almost all are poor by any standard. Obscene though it is, death
during childbirth isn't the end of the story. In the world's poorest
areas, many orphaned children wind up destitute and on the streets
within a few years of their mothers' deaths, sometimes resorting to
desperate or criminal measures for food, shelter, clothes or school
fees.

One of the 12 U.N. Millennium Development Goals is to reduce maternal
mortality 75 percent by the year 2015. But we are moving too slowly to
meet this goal, the United Nations says. Today, the maternal mortality
rate in Haiti is less than half what it was a quarter-century ago.
Across the broad swath of central Haiti where we work, we estimate the
number to be well below 100 deaths per 100,000 live births -- not good
enough but a vast improvement, most of it occurring in the past
decade. Change came largely for three reasons.

First, our nonprofit organization, Partners in Health, has worked
closely with the Haitian Ministry of Health to strengthen public
health infrastructure. We have rebuilt, equipped, staffed and stocked
hospitals and clinics; trained nurse-midwives and other personnel,
including more than a thousand community health workers; linked
villages and health centers to district hospitals by modern
telecommunications and ambulance service; and established modern
surgical services for obstetrical emergencies. Second, we have broken
the rule that high-quality health services are a privilege rationed by
ability to pay, not a right. The case was made first for affordable
medicines. Now it is being made for emergency Caesarean sections -- an
essential tool to reduce maternal mortality. Faced with evidence that
maternal mortality was greater where fees were higher, the district
health commissioner for central Haiti announced last August that all
prenatal care and emergency obstetrical services would henceforth be
available free to all patients. He was later echoed by Haitian
President RenC) PrC)val. Third, we have linked prenatal and obstetric
care to an all-out effort to improve access to primary health care.
The presence of functional, accessible public clinics and hospitals
restores faith in the health system, motivates people to seek care
before they are critically ill and allows for preventive interventions
such as prenatal care and family planning.

Consider Rwanda, another country where we work, which is rising
rapidly from its ashes scarcely a dozen years after an appalling
genocide. Rwandan maternal mortality rates in 1995, the year after the
genocide, are unknown. But they are sure to have exceeded the 1,800
deaths per 100,000 live births reported that year in relatively
peaceful Malawi. The situation has improved dramatically since then.
By helping to train and, importantly, pay community health workers,
the Rwandan Ministry of Health is taking steps to link rural villages
to health centers with the capacity to make routine labor safe. Rwanda
is also seeking to make family planning available to citizens and to
increase access to preventive and primary care through basic health
insurance. Maternal mortality has dropped from more than 1,000 deaths
per 100,000 live births between 1995 and 2000 to less than 600 today
-- still terrible but well below the average (940) reported for sub-
Saharan Africa.

At the government's invitation, Partners in Health launched efforts to
strengthen AIDS treatment and primary health services in one region of
rural Rwanda in 2005. Mindful of the lessons learned during two
decades of work in rural Haiti -- and of that young Haitian woman whom
we watched turn abruptly from the anticipation of new life to a
confrontation with death -- we have made reducing maternal mortality
and improving women's health top priorities. And we have welcomed the
opportunity to support Rwanda's commitment to breaking the cycle of
poverty and disease by including health care and education (especially
for girls) in its vision of the future. It's probably no coincidence
that Rwanda also boasts the world's highest percentage of women in
parliament.

Paul Farmer, a professor of medical anthropology at Harvard Medical
School and associate chief of the Division of Social Medicine and
Health Inequalities at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, is a co-
founder of Partners in Health. Ophelia Dahl is executive director of
Partners in Health. (Boston Globe, 5/11)

Death Toll for Capsized Boat up to Thirteen:
A U.N. official says the bodies of two teenagers have been found near
a capsized Haitian sailboat, raising the death toll to 13. U.N.
mission spokesman David Wimhurst says many passengers apparently swam
the 150 yards to shore after the boat began taking on water. It is not
known how many people are still missing. The boat is believed to have
been carrying at least 100 people, plus cargo along Haiti's southern
peninsula to the capital when it tipped late Saturday night. Bodies of
11 people were taken to a Port-au-Prince morgue on Sunday. Wimhurst
said the bodies of a boy and a girl were found early Monday. (AP, 5/12)

  U.N. peacekeeping mission spokesman David Wimhurst said most of the
100 people aboard the vessel were able to swim to safety. The boat
sank after taking on water about 150 yards (150 meters) from shore
late Saturday. Crews recovered 11 bodies from the water according to
Wimhurst and Mayor Evil Lavilette of Pestel, the ferry's departure
point. At least five were children. The boat was on a slow, two-day
journey along the top of Haiti's southern peninsula, transporting
passengers, food and charcoal to the capital, Port-au-Prince. It made
several stops to take on passengers and cargo and was "overcrowded,"
according to Wimhurst. Lavilette said a passenger called him in
distress as the boat foundered, but emergency crews were not able to
reach the ferry quickly because the closest rescue boat was out of
gas. U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police arrived later to help
survivors on the western outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Wimhurst said.
Bad roads and a lack of infrastructure force many on the coastline in
impoverished Haiti to depend on rickety ferries. Some 500 to 700
people were killed in 1993 when an overcrowded ferry traveling a
similar route sank. At least nine people died last year when a ferry
hit a sandbar near the tip of the southern peninsula. (AP, 5/11)

Calm in Cite Soleil During Protests Sign of Success for Preval:
It is a measure of success for President Rene Preval that calm
prevailed in Haiti's largest and most violent slum during recent food
riots in the Caribbean nation. The pacification of Cite Soleil, a
teeming warren of shanties south of Haiti's capital with sufficient
size and guns to undermine governments, is one of the few concrete
achievements of Preval, who starts his third year in office this
week.Residents offer scant praise for the 65-year-old president. Some
suggest that peace in a place so crowded that some families sleep in
shifts is more like the quiet of a graveyard than a sign of hope in
one of the poorest places in the poorest country in the Americas.

Ferocious poverty in Haiti means a recent surge in food prices cut
deep. The prime minister was forced out of office last month after
food riots resulted in six deaths. A number of poor countries have
been rattled by violence over rising food prices blamed on growing
demand in Asia, the use of crops for biofuel, record oil prices and
speculation. Unrest in Haiti could erupt again at any moment, posing
new challenges to Preval's efforts to establish a stable democracy in
a country that has suffered upheaval and dictatorship since it threw
off French rule more than 200 years ago. There is some hope for change
under Ericq Pierre, the former Inter-American Development adviser
expected to be sworn in as prime minister this week. But change has
never come easily amid the deep divides separating Haiti's tiny elite
from its impoverished masses.

"Things got better without the gangs," said Magalie Jean-Noel, a
former school nurse unemployed since she was crippled in a skirmish
between gangs and U.N. troops in September 2005. "People are no longer
running for their lives all the time, but the situation of misery and
hunger is still here." Few seem to think Preval will be ousted, like
so many other elected Haitian leaders have been, before his term ends
in 2011. He became the only leader to win a democratic election, serve
a full term and peacefully hand over power when he first served as
president from 1996 through 2001. But underscoring the fragility of
his government, national security commission head Patrick Elie said
Preval could easily have been toppled by protesters who sought to
storm the national palace last month. The only thing preventing that
was the U.N. peacekeeping force, said Elie. (Reuters, 5/11)

Deep Roots of Haiti's Food Crisis:
Although her countrymen can no longer afford the imported rice that
has come to dominate their diet, Josiane Desjardin sees little hope of
reviving the domestic crop that once grew abundantly in the fertile
estuary of the Artibonite River. There's no turning back the clock,
farmers here say dejectedly, in a countryside ravaged by floods, soil
erosion, misguided trade policy and ongoing landownership disputes.
Subsidized U.S. rice began flooding in 30 years ago, so cheap that
Haitians began eating it instead of the corn, sweet potatoes, cassava
and domestic rice that had sprouted from plains and mountainsides from
the colonial era to the late 1980s. "Miami rice," as Haitians call the
U.S. import, drove rice farmers out of business and incited a rural
exodus that swelled the slums of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Today, more than 70% of Haitians live on less than $2 a day, and the
U.S. rice that is the staple of their diet has doubled in price in
little more than a year. Hungry hordes rioted in the capital last
month, leaving at least six dead by the time President Rene Preval
restored calm by announcing that foreign aid and subsidies would lower
the price of a 110-pound bag of rice to $43 from $51. But importers
and economists warn that those supports are unsustainable and predict
further unrest in this poorest country in the Americas when the
subsidies run out in late summer and, based on current price trends,
the same sack will cost $70.

The answer, experts say, is revitalizing domestic production and
returning to more traditional foods. Rice requires large quantities of
water and fertilizer, but the former is in short supply because of
recent droughts and neglected irrigation canals, and the latter is
soaring in cost as fast as the rice it nurtures. Yet even if Desjardin
could afford to invest her meager $300 proceeds from the past year's
harvest in expansion, the reed-thin peasant has heard speculation
about impending land redistribution and worries that the 1.25-acre
plot she rents could be seized by the state. "No one knows what will
happen to us," Desjardin, 50, said of the 300 or so families that rent
land from 78-year-old Edouard Vieux, a sixth-generation descendant of
a slave general awarded more than 12,000 acres for his role in the
victorious battle that led to Haiti's independence from France in 1804.

Many Artibonite sharecroppers and tenants were displaced a dozen years
ago when Preval, during his previous term as president, oversaw a land
reform that took the properties of large estate owners like Vieux and
carved them into tiny plots for thousands of peasants. But the
recipients were never provided with tools, fertilizer, seeds or
transportation, so they couldn't grow the crops the private landlords
had earlier financed. Never given legal title, the idle peasants were
expelled when owners returned to reclaim their lands after a February
2004 rebellion drove then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile.
It was the second land recovery for Vieux, who lost all but 740 acres
of his ancestor's estate during the Duvalier era, when the father-son
dictatorship sold off most of his property while he took refuge in New
York, Los Angeles and Montreal.

Back on Vieux's land for the last four years, Desjardin recently
harvested her modest paddies. She spread the brown-hulled kernels with
her bare foot to dry in the sun while explaining the disincentives to
expansion. Of the 12 or 13 bags she produces each year, she needs to
keep eight to feed herself and the families of her four jobless
children. The remaining four or five bags bring just enough to pay the
2,000-gourde (about $52) annual rent, buy fertilizer and pay the local
miller.

Even with the lure of record prices for rice, local farmers can't
achieve the economies of scale enjoyed by the U.S. growers, says
Anasthace Vieux, one of the landowner's 14 children. He recalls
visiting a Louisiana rice farm as a student in 1988 and being
"terrified by the size of it. It was like a whole country of rice." In
the three decades since the United States began selling subsidized
rice in Haiti, consumption has doubled to 400,000 metric tons a year,
forcing Haiti to import three-quarters of its need. The USA Rice
Federation last year sold $111.5 million worth here, making Haiti the
fourth most important market for U.S. producers, federation spokesman
David Coia said.

Those trying to feed Haiti's poor lament the dependence on costly
imports, and they fear for the future. "In retrospect, it was a
mistake [to drop tariffs on U.S. imports], but at the time it looked
like the right thing to do because it lowered the prices," said
Clement Belizaire, the son of rice farmers who is project director for
the Florida-based relief organization Food for the Poor, which daily
feeds at least 30,000 people in the slums of Port-au-Prince.

Rice used to be a luxury, not the national dish, recalls Cantave Jean-
Baptiste, country director for the World Neighbors rural development
agency. "In my family, we had it maybe once a month, for special
occasions," he said. "People only started eating it as their main food
when it was very inexpensive. Now, we need to educate people that rice
is not more nutritious than the corn and sweet potatoes we can more
easily grow." (LA Times, 5/13)

Demonstrators in Les Cayes Temporarily Satisfied with Jobs:
The demonstrators who ignited last month's violent protests against
rising food prices in Haiti have accepted U.S.-sponsored jobs rather
than follow through on a threat to launch new riots in the
impoverished Caribbean country. The protesters in Les Cayes, a
southern city where five people were killed in clashes with U.N.
peacekeepers in April, had vowed to take to the streets again by
Monday if parliament failed to ratify a new prime minister to replace
Jacques Edouard Alexis, who was fired by the Senate on April 12.

With shovels and rakes in hand as they cleaned dusty streets and
drainage ditches in a sprawling Les Cayes slum on Tuesday, protest
leaders said they had entered into a shaky truce with the government
but warned that violence could erupt again soon. "We want housing,
government-sponsored community restaurants and stores, professional
schools and health centres," said one, a man of about 20 who gave his
name only as Charles.

"The situation has not changed yet," he added, saying the temporary
jobs handed out by the mayor's office and bankrolled by the U.S.
Agency for International Development, had fallen far short of the
protesters' demands and would only buy peace for a short period of
time. Only 40 protesters have been hired as street cleaners. But their
wages of about $4 (2.06 pounds) per day are more than double the daily
average wage in the poorest country in the Americas. "They try to buy
us off when they distribute food and create a few jobs ... but this
will not solve the problems. We'll take to the streets again as long
as our demands are not met," said Charlemagne Bien-Aime.

The protest leaders, who gather regularly in a tree-shaded cemetery in
the La Savane slum, said on May 5 that Haiti's lawmakers and President
Rene Preval had one week to install a new prime minister to start
addressing their demands. One of their main issues is the cost of
rice, beans and other staples in Haiti, which have more than doubled
over the past few months. (Reuters, 5/14)

US House of Representatives Passes HOPE II:
The U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 2419, the Food,
Conversation and Energy Act of 2008 b otherwise known as the Farm
Bill b by a veto-proof vote of 318 to 106.  The legislation included
the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement
Act of 2008 (HOPE II) which expands trade preferences to Haitibs
textile industry.  The HOPE II Act was championed by Chairman Charles
B. Rangel (D-NY) and Congressman Kendrick B. Meek (D-FL).

bThe Farm Bill should promote nutrition and enhance food access at
home and abroad,b said Chairman Rangel.  bYou canbt always spread
democracy with a rifle and this bill improves on existing measures to
address the crisis in Haiti caused by rising food prices and
persistent poverty.  By extending and strengthening provisions that
would soon expire, we can help give a sense of certainty to investors
to continue the economic growth and development we have built in the
Caribbean region, while creating new opportunities for American
workers, farmers and businesses.b In 2007, H.R. 6111, the Haitian
Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act of 2006
(HOPE) was signed into law.  It was initially thought that within 6
months to a year the HOPE legislation would at least double the number
of jobs in the textile industry in Haiti from 12,000 to a minimum of
24,000.  The legislation however included overly complicated rules
which have made foreign investment in Haiti extremely difficult.

HOPE II will expand the benefits for U.S. apparel imports from Haiti
beyond what Haiti currently receives under the Caribbean Basin Trade
Partnership Act. The average Haitian garment worker earns between $4
and $5 a day, while 80% of Haitians live on less than $2 a day.
Haitians working in the textile industry possess the buying power to
help stimulate the Haitian economy.

Congressman Meek was the first Member of Congress to travel to Haiti
since unrest broke out in Haiti over one month ago due to rising food
prices.  During his trip on April 20 and 21, Congressman Meek met with
Haitian President RenC) PrC)val, U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Janet
Sanderson, representatives from the international community, and
toured Haitian factories that would benefit from the passage of HOPE
II legislation. (Rep. Kendrick Meek, 5/16)

Ericq Pierre Blames Corruption for his Rejection for Prime Minister:
Haiti's newly defeated nominee for prime minister said on Thursday
that parliament rejected him because he refused to accept bribes in
exchange for ministerial appointments. Haiti's lower house of
parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, defeated the nomination of Ericq
Pierre on Monday, five days after he won overwhelming approval in the
Senate. Pierre, a former Inter-American Development Bank adviser,
blamed the loss on his refusal to negotiate with corrupt forces over
ministerial positions, accept envelopes of cash or support local
projects likely to facilitate the re-election of several lawmakers.

"My refusal to negotiate with them has led to my being today put out
of the process by the Chamber of Deputies," Pierre told a news
conference. "The term 'nation' or 'national interest' was never part
of the messages received from the envoys that were pressuring me to
negotiate in favor of their patrons." He denied assertions that his
documents were not in order and said his candidacy was blocked for
political reasons. President Rene Preval nominated Pierre to replace
Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, who was dismissed by the senate
on April 12 after deadly riots over soaring food prices.

Pierre said he had accepted the nomination because he believed the
country urgently needed top leaders who could work toward improving
the livelihood of the Haitian people, many of whom live on less than
$2 a day. "However, at the very beginning of the process, I was
confronted with the forces of corruption," he said without naming any
names. His nomination was defeated by a 53 member-parliamentary bloc
called the Coalition of Parliamentarians for Progress. Coalition
members have been accused of selling their votes or extracting revenge
on the Senate for firing Alexis just weeks after the lower chamber had
given him an overwhelming confidence vote -- accusations they denied.

They said they rejected Pierre because he could not provide birth
certificates showing his grandparents were native-born Haitians, and
because his own identity documents submitted to parliament gave
alternating versions of his name -- some as Pierre Ericq Pierre and
others as Ericq Pierre. Pierre said he was pained by the April food
riots and violent clashes between demonstrators and U.N. peacekeepers
that killed six people. He said he had been prepared to "act fast and
to realize concrete things" to reduce the high cost of living and
reduce the violence. (Reuters, 5/15)

Haiti Crime Stats:
Haiti registered about 130 abductions in the first four months of this
year, according to a United Nations Police report published on
Thursday. Another nine kidnapping cases and 711 arrests of people
allegedly linked to that matter have been reported in May so far, said
Frantz Leurebourg, a spokesman from the UNPOL. Leurebourg added that
33 kilograms of cocaine, US$ 500, and a riffle were seized in a
Haitian National Police and UNPOL joint operation in Northeast
department. The spokesman also said that 154 murders were reported in
different regions of the country from January to April. (Prensa
Latina, 5/15)

US Soldiers Blamed for Death of Spanish Journalist in Haiti:
US soldiers are again in the sight of Spaniards like possible people
in charge for the death of another journalist of this European country
during news coverage of events, this time in Haiti. It is about
Ricardo Ortega, Antena-3 TV Channel special reporter, victim of
shooting in Port Prince in March 2004, while covering a demonstration
pitting supporters and detractors of ousted president Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.

When reporting on the investigations carried out, the family of Ortega
assured in Madrid that the journalist was shot dead by foreign
soldiers forces present in the disturbances in Haiti in 2004, he did
not died victim of the firing, specifically US Marines. That
conclusion is not yet definitive and the parents of the journalist
have already expressed their interest in making Spanish government
officially demand information to the countries that at that time
counted on military soldiers in Haiti. According to the
investigations, Ortega was attacked with heavy munitions, only owned
by Canadian, French and US soldiers, but first two did not make any in
that occasion, whereas US did. (Prensa Latine, 5/10)

USAID $15 Million in Emergency Food:
Today, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator
Henrietta Fore sent the director of her Haiti task force, Alonzo
Fulgham, to Haiti's capital, Port au Prince, to assess a breaking food
crisis. USAID has pre-positioned more than $15 million in emergency
food which can be shipped over water in 2-3 weeks. At present, three
ships with over 6,820 tons of food aid are enroute to Haiti and will
arrive on or about June 4. This shipment consists of corn/soy blend,
lentils, vegetable oil, and soy fortified bulgur wheat. Depending on
the program and commodities, one ton can feed 2,000 people for one day.

USAID is also supporting additional assistance by helping the GOH to
subsidize rice prices with $1 million that, along with other donor
contributions, will be used to purchase rice and reduce the price per
110 pound bag from $51 to $43. The USAID mission is also reprogramming
$5.5 million in developmental assistance to create short-term jobs
over very poor people, working on community improvement projects such
as road paving and canal clearing. These people live in urban areas
where food is available, but they have insufficient funds or no income
to purchase food. This increase in funds will raise the number of
short term jobs in USAID programs from 75,000 to 90,000, an increase
of 15,000 jobs.

All of this is in addition to the annual $35 million in Title II food
aid for Haiti, which is the largest program of its kind in the world.
"The United States is committed to the people of Haiti in building a
stable, peaceful and just society able to provide for its citizens,"
said Fore. "This year, USAID is investing more than $128 million to
shore up Haiti's economy and provide vital social services. Our
response to this latest crisis is part of that continuing support."
SOURCE U.S. Agency for International Development (PRNewswire, 5/15)
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