Originally Published: January 24, 2013
NACLA.org
On January 8, 2013, Canada’s Minister of International
Cooperation—and head of the Canadian International Development Agency
(CIDA)—blindsided Haiti, the United States, and the United Nations by
announcing through the media that he would be freezing any further
distributions of development aid. The announcement made just before the
three year anniversary of the devastating January 12 earthquake has
since created a great deal of controversy for Fantino both within Canada
and abroad, but so far there have been no signs that the decision will
be reversed. Fantino’s reasoning for the shift was due to his
disappointment with the slow process of reconstruction and thus
attempted to justify this position by remarking “Are we going to take care of their problems forever? They also have to take charge of themselves.”
Such a poor characterization of the challenges faced by Haiti and the
Haitian government’s handling of the reconstruction funds is neither
fair nor accurate. According to the CIDA website,
the Haitian government does not receive any direct funding and is not
listed as a primary partner on projects dating back to 2006. In short,
the reality is that the Canadian government does not in fact give aid to
the Haitian government, it instead channels aid to multinational
organizations and NGOs like World Vision, the Red Cross, Oxfam, and the
World Food Program. Judging by the absence of any criticism leveled at
such organizations by Fantino, it would be safe to assume that the
systemic failure (meaning individual successes in a sea of failure) and
siphoning of funding by the NGOs was not problematic.
While agreeing that the slow pace of reconstruction was a
disappointment, Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe challenged the
assertion that the Haitian government was the key figure to blame, stating that
“For any future co-operation, when it’s decided to resume, we will ask
the Canadian government to focus on the priorities of the Haitian
government … Basically, the development assistance, because of the
perceived weakness of Haitian institutions, was routed directly to NGOs
(non-government organizations) and Canadian firms … That weakened our
institutions.” Such has been the deeply politicized pattern governing
Canadian aid to Haiti since the late 1990s.
While Canada has never released an official document outlining the
reasons why they changed distribution of aid to Haiti, using the common
practices of CIDA as a guide, it is generally assumed that they have
followed in the steps of the United States by circumventing the Haitian
government via NGOs. The United States has openly acknowledged this
policy—outlined in the Dole Amendment—which barred USAID from directly
funding the needs or projects of the Haitian government.
The Clinton administration instituted the Dole Amendment in 1995 after prominent Republican figures claimed that
the murder of one of their most vocal anti-Lavalas, anti-Aristide
supporters, Mireille Durocher de Bertin, was politically motivated. As a
result of the restrictions upon aid to Haiti, the United States
directly suspended $50 million of aid to the Haitian government, with
the Dole Amendment being considered a part of a wider Republican plan to
undermine President Clinton’s perceived foreign policy successes,
leaving both the Haitian people and state as collateral damage.
A U.S. Army War College Strategy Paper released in 2001 candidly
outlines the current policy of the United States towards Haiti, stating that
“By keeping initial aid out of the hands of the Haitian government, the
United States can ensure that corruption is minimized, while limiting
the power of the Government of Haiti (GOH). Reduced corruption could be
accomplished by bypassing the GOH in handling any USAID funds, working
instead directly with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) to provide
needed aid. Not only would this reduce corruption, but it would also
demonstrate to the Haitian population that the power of the GOH is
limited.”
Ironically, the United States aimed such harmful policies only
at the Haitian government, which channeled a significant portion of
funds towards instituting basic and accessible levels of public
healthcare and education. For example, the Lavalas administrations of
Aristide and Preval built more schools in
Haiti between 1994–2000 than the whole prior period between 1804–1994
(Lavalas built 195 new primary schools and 104 new public high schools).
With Aristide’s second election in 2000, the United States and Canada
pressured the Inter-American Development Bank to block loans
to fund Haiti’s water and sanitation programs claiming that the
successful completion of the project would increase the popularity of
the Lavalas movement. The importation of the cholera epidemic by the
United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti in October 2010 has only
compounded these aid failures.
It is important to note that while the pre-earthquake economic
circumvention of the government via NGOs played a vital part in the
undermining of the Haitian reconstruction process, Canada and the United
States have also lent political support and funds to the highly
controversial elections in 2010 in which 14 political parties were
banned from participating – including Lavalas. As a result, the
government of President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent
Lamonthe came to power via the lowest voter turnout for a Presidential election in the Western Hemisphere.
Such political manipulation is not new however, as during Aristide’s second term CIDA specifically channeled development
aid to fund opposition groups such as the Group of 184 in order to
destabilize the government. Prominent members of the Group of 184 were
also linked to Canadian garment manufacturers Gildan, who operated
sweatshops within Haiti. The opposition groups such as the National
Coalition for Haitian Rights highlighted the human rights abuses alleged
to have been committed by top Lavalas officials in an effort to
undermine international and regional support for Aristide. With the
success of the coup in February 2004, the very same CIDA-funded groups
reporting on the alleged abuses of Aristide fell totally silent when the
illegal regime of Gerard Latortue was carrying out widespread human
rights abuses in the streets of Port au Prince.
With this troubled past of political and economic intervention in
Haiti in mind, CIDA’s hypocritical accusations of corruption and
mismanagement should be less surprising. With Haiti currently one of
Canada’s largest foreign aid concerns, it remains to be seen how the
relationship in regards to the freezing of development aid could degrade
any further. Haiti has not been receiving the money collected for
reconstruction efforts, but has instead been left to deal with the blame
and accusations of corruption. As a matter of fact, when responding to
the criticism about his decision to freeze aid Fantino remarked “We
should be thanked upside down and sideways. We pledged $400 million
over two years in March 2010 at an international donors conference and
we are one of very few countries that actually meets its commitments.”
It remains unclear why the Haitian people should even think to thank
Fantino, his predecessors, or CIDA. Fantino remarked that “Canada’s
assistance will not be a blank check.” Indeed Fantino must be clueless
to assume that Canada’s “assistance” to Haiti hasn’t been without
conditions. At every opportunity CIDA has sought to undermine Haiti’s
struggle for self-determination, choosing to empower corrupt
industrialists, unaccountable NGOs, and political puppets instead of
helping to build and support a Haitian state via a democratic process
which would be capable of handling its own affairs.
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