A OneWorld Interview:
Inette Durandis, Director General of the National Council of Popular Finance
Sony Eteus, Programmes and Training Director for the Society for the Animation of Social Communication
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Reorientation of international aid for Haiti was the call by a delegation of NGOs from this troubled country during a visit to engage with European governments and the EU organised by Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR). The delegates would like to see the integration of aid within a tripartite framework for national development in which the Haitian government would take the lead in tackling problems, with the participation of local civil society and input from the international community.
Widespread violence and insecurity are the most serious problems in Haiti, according to Sony Esteus, one of the delegates. Illegally armed bands outnumber the police force and the UN troops put together, confirmed Inette Durandis. One third of them are under thirteen and another third under twenty she continued. They believe that disarming these gangs, alongside a national reassertion plan, is essential to provide Haiti with the stability it so badly needs. Only the government could or should take on such responsibility; hence the call for the international community to support the police force of the current interim government.
Debt repayments are crushing the Haitian economy, such as it is. Haiti's debt to international financial institutions and foreign governments has grown from US$302 million in 1980 to US$1.134 billion today, in figures supplied by the Haiti Support Group. Much of this debt stems
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In July 2003, Haiti sent more than 90 per cent of all its foreign reserves to Washington to pay off its arrears
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from loans to the brutal Duvalier dictators who invested very little of it in the country, said Sony Esteus. In July 2003, Haiti sent more than 90 per cent of all its foreign reserves to Washington to pay off its arrears, according to a recent article in the London Review of Books. The message from the Haitian NGOs was clear, we would like to ask the UK and other individual governments to drop the bilateral debt.
International humanitarian aid over the last 50 years has been focused on disaster relief and the consequences rather than underlying causes of poverty. The delegates feel that this approach has undermined local capacity to develop a sustainable infrastructure. It is our national government that is responsible for providing for its citizens, said Inette Durandis. Furthermore, the governments interim cooperative framework for Haiti has had input from the international community, but not from Haitian civil society which has been sidelined from the development debate. It is to address this imbalance and to reclaim local autonomy that the delegates are putting forward the tripartite framework.
What can we do about these seemingly insurmountable problems? We can lobby our own government with the solution that the NGO network has identified in its Europe- Haiti support document. CIIR has produced a postcard which can be sent to Gareth Thomas at the Department for International Development encouraging the government to commit to working within the tripartite framework for Haitian national development.
Interview by Temina Moledina, for OneWorld UK
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