The PAPDA’s concerns following the 23 May donors’ meeting in Brasilia - 6 June 2006

Let’s break with the ICF and the logic of the interim government (of the occupation) in order to find a long-term perspective for national reconstruction - Camille Chalmers

The Haitian Platform of Advocate for an Alternative Development (PAPDA) makes a point of expressing its increasingly grave concerns following press reports on the conclusion of the meeting on Haiti held Brasilia on 23 May involving representatives of 16 countries and 11 international organizations. Questions about our country’s development continue to be badly posed.

First of all, let us stress that the reported conclusions do not respond to the need for a real “revision of international co-operation with Haiti”, currently arranged as the infamous 'Interim Co-operation Framework' (ICF, or CCI in French).

The conclusions of the Brasilia meeting are disappointing because of the lack of innovation, in so far as they just re-arrange the same erroneous, but generally-accepted, ideas as imposed in the past. There is no departure from the course set at the Brussels meeting of 20-22 October which extended the ICF until December 2007.

The extension of the ICF will take place within the framework of a link to a standard Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) while taking account the recent inclusion of Haiti in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative (HIPC).

The PRSP experience shows the inability of this type of programme to instigate a real process of development in the countries of the South. Everywhere it has reinforced the dependence of the economies of the countries of the South, and the theatre of participation and consultation ends up conferring even more power to define national development policies on the Bretton Woods Institutions.

During the Brasilia Conference, an official announcement was made concerning Haiti’s integration into the HIPC group. According to a recent study carried out by the Washington-based Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), the HIPC initiative - started in 1996 following pressure exerted by citizens’ movements throughout the world – has been a complete failure:

1. Out of the HIPC countries (about 40 countries), after having implemented drastic reforms inspired by neo-liberal orthodoxy, 29 countries have reached their decision points, where they start qualifying for debt cancellation, and 18 have reached completion point when debt relief is actually delivered;
2. US$19 billion of debt in these 18 countries has been written off;
3. In half of these 18 countries the debt position is now the same, and sometimes more serious than that which existed before the HIPC initiative began;
4. For 11 countries, the external national debt is higher today than it was before the HIPC initiative;
5. For eight of these countries (Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Mali) the debt to export ratio, which measures the level of indebtedness, once again exceeds the HIPC debt-safety threshold of 150 percent;
6. All 18 post-completion point countries have made only "modest progress" on the Millennium Development Goals, which seek to halve poverty by 2015, and are still very vulnerable vis-a-vis external shocks.

Regarding the ICF, let us stress that the disbursement of about US$900 million and the many projects and programmes supported by this funding have not produced any results likely to re-launch the national economy on a path of growth, and this thus shows the total inability of this strategy to meet the need to restore basic services and state institutions. Also let us recall that during the period May-July 2004, nearly one hundred civil society organizations clearly pronounced against the approach contained in the ICF. At that time, they supported their position by the publication of a series of analytic documents denouncing the framework adopted on 19 and 20 July, 2004.

The failure of the ICF can no longer be covered up. The various evaluation exercises carried out by the international institutions and the Haitian State show very show poor results in relation to the stated objectives. Assessments of the Haitian economy published during the last eight months (by the IMF, the CEPAL, the Central Bank, the CNSA, PFNSA etc.) concur in declaring a largely insufficient growth, a worsening of poverty, and a deterioration in the living conditions of the population exposed to a brutal erosion of its purchasing power. Haiti recorded a GDP growth rate of 1.5%, which is lower than the growth of the population, while we paid more US$101 million in debt servicing. The interim government recorded a tax deficit of about 4.5% of GDP, and 76% of the rural population survives with difficulty on less than US$1 per day. No programme of massive job-creation has been started in spite of the solemn promises of the former Prime Minister, Gérard Latortue.

The ICF has also failed in its objective to provide new mechanisms to coordinate international assistance in Haiti. The experiment of these last two years shows a total failure in this field. The answers provided by the “donor community” are too often weak and incoherent. The succession of expensive and mostly ineffective international meetings (Washington - July 2004, Cayenne - March 2005, Montreal - July 2005, Brussels - October 2005, Brasilia - May 2006) barely mask the competition between the divergent powers and interests. Over these last two years, we have witnessed an inflation in executing units and the wasting of resources. The majority of the ‘Tables sectorielles’ did not function satisfactorily, and the representatives of civil society on the Joint Committee for the Implementation and Monitoring of the Interim Cooperation Framework (COCCI) never met with the civil society organizations that they were supposed to represent. These mechanisms ended up as a mere cosmetic, and instead of improving the State’s capacities for intervention, planning and coordination, contributed to a worsening in the failures and malfunctions of the official authorities.

It is necessary for us to depart from the ICF, and from the paradigm of the label of a bankrupt State, which is often given to us without justification. It is necessary to reconquer our sovereignty and the right to define our options and our development strategies.

The way out of the crisis, and the beginning of a real process of national construction, require a considered rupture with the practices of the past. The ICF must be buried. That does not imply a halt in the implementation of all the committed projects. Certain actions must be maintained, but within the framework of new priorities and a new vision of national development. It is necessary to leave the logic of the ICF, and to resolutely embark on with a view to long-term economic and institutional construction. We are no longer in an interim situation. It is an inappropriate conceptual framework. It is necessary to have the courage to break with the neo-liberal prescriptions, and to build new economic and social policies which are coherent with the satisfaction of the essential needs of the population, and the challenges which face the Haitian people in the 21st century.

On February 7, 2006, the Haitian people clearly expressed its will for change and for regaining hold of its sovereignty. The recent insulting declarations of the new boss of the MINUSTAH, the Guatemalan Edmond Mulet: “We will have to conclude contracts with international civil servants because there are no Haitian civils servants. We will have to bring judges from the French-speaking countries, from France, Quebec and Africa, which more or less control the French legal system”, show that we are still very far from this objective. It is inconceivable that ICF, which was set up - two years earlier - without the real participation of the population and which reaffirms the neo-liberal orientations that are mainly responsible for the current collapse economic of our country, was simply prolonged in contempt of the will clearly expressed by the Haitian people.

A decisive meeting of IFIs, the United Nations and the principal partners of Haiti, will be held in Port-au-Prince on 25 July. We call on Haitian leaders to seize this opportunity to demand a thorough and participative evaluation of the whole ICF, while trying to re-orientate the logic imposed by IFIs and the great powers. We call on our citizens, as well as organizations from all sectors of society, to mobilize themselves to make the voice of the exploited and excluded heard, in order to establish new directions in conformity with the challenges of the moment and the needs of rebuilding our nation. Let’s not keep silent, for that would be an act of complicity with the plans to destroy our country and our economy.

Camille Chalmers
Executive director of the PAPDA
The Haitian Platform of Advocate for an Alternative Development (PAPDA)

(Originally: Inquiétudes et position de la PAPDA suite à la réunion du 23 mai à Brasilia, 6 June 2006 - translated from French by Charles Arthur for the Haiti Support Group)

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'Ideas and Action - Projecting the voices of Haiti's progressive civil society organisations' is a Haiti Support Group project funded by the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (SCIAF).

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The Haiti Support Group is a British organisation working in solidarity with the Haitian people's struggle for human rights, participatory democracy and equitable development, since 1992.

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