'Ideas and Action - Projecting the voices of Haiti's progressive civil society organisations'

SOS Journalistes: New press freedom organisation in action - Volume 1, Number 3, 5th May 2006

Launch of peasant organisation network - Volume 1, Number 4, 9th May 2006

The Collective to Mobilise against the High Cost of Living: Press release on neo-liberal policies and the people's demands - Volume 1, Number 5, 15th May 2006
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- Artibonite Peasants' Movement for Justice

- Association Femmes Soleil d'Haiti (AFASDA)

- Batay Ouvriye - Workers' Struggle

- Fondwa Peasant Association

- Fonkoze - alternative bank for the organised poor

- L'Institut Culturel Karl Lévêque

- Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organisations

- PAPDA - alternative development platform

- Popular organisations in Martissant

- REFRAKA - Haitian Community Radio Women's Network

- SODA - Sosyete Djòl Ansanm pou Demokrasi Patisipatif

- Tet Kole peasant organisation

Batay Ouvriye is an association of unions, committees, and workers from the industrial, agricultural, and informal sectors in Haiti. The association organises workers to defend their rights by forming unions, educating the workers in legal matters as well as articulating their rights to their employers and governmental institutions. Batay Ouvriye has established a centre in Port-au-Prince where workers can meet to develop strategies and decide on actions that need to be taken.

Batay Ouvriye offers services to the workers including legal advice, seminars on the labour codes and other necessary information to help them defend their rights. Batay Ouvriye mobilises workers by distributing leaflets in front of factories and other workplaces to protest violations of workers' rights, and to demand negotiations to address workers' concerns. The organisation is demanding changes to the country's antiquated labour code. The Batay Ouvriye centre also organises debates and discussions on national and international issues.

Batay Ouvriye is a popular organisation that has a focus on organised workers, yet it considers effective results in the long-term will come about not solely as a result of workplace organisation. It aims to educate and mobilise not just the workers themselves but also their families, neighbours and other sectors such as the informal and peasant sectors. For Batay Ouvriye, the problems affecting garment and fruit industry workers for example, cannot be addressed without an understanding of and an involvement in the wider political struggle for participatory democracy and equitable economic development.

Platforme des Organisations Haïtiennes des Droits de l'Homme, or The Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organisations, was formed after the coup d'état of 29 September 1991, and is composed of eight organisations with shared principles and practice. They were united in the belief that the restoration of democracy in Haiti was an essential condition for the respect of human rights. In view of the context of its origins, Platform was predominantly interested in civil and political rights. However, since the general meeting of 1992, economic, social and cultural rights, with a particular accent on women’s rights, have been inscribed as a priority in POHDH’s annual programmes. POHDH, 16, angle rue Wilson 1 et 2 Pacot, Port-au-Prince, HAÏTI. Tél/fax : 245-5401/245-0926 /514-0650. Adresse Postale : BP 19181, Port-au-Prince. E-mail : pohdh@pohdh-haiti.org

The members of the Platform are:

The organisations participating in the Platform share a number of convictions:

- The concept of human rights goes beyond civil and political rights. It is concerned with all aspects of life, particularly social, economic and cultural rights;

- Human rights are not only individual but also collective;

- The struggle for human rights takes place in the context of the permanent struggle for a democratic society - it is not a transient issue;

- The Platform is non-denominational, and is not connected to any political party.

The Platform has the following objectives:

1) to actively engage with the population in the struggle for, and the defence of, human rights;

2) to permit the member organisations to share their experiences, and pool their human and material resources in order to make a coordinated response to the challenges facing human rights in Haiti;

3) to promote concrete actions to respond to the need for training in the field of human rights and to the problem of legal assistance in Haiti;

4) to assure a permanent monitoring of the human rights situation in the country.

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Heads Together Small Peasants of Haiti

Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen

Tèt Kole is a national peasant movement that brought together existing peasant groups (including the Tèt Ansamn groups from the North-West) in September 1986. It is an independent movement without connections to any one individual, any religion, or institution. The objectives of Tèt Kole are:

1) to integrate small peasant farmers into a national movement where they can develop an awareness of their position as an exploited majority with a view to training/education that is both individual and collective.

2) to struggle together with other popular sectors for the establishment of a new, democratic society where the majority has the right to participate in the political and economic decisions for the development of the country.

Tèt Kole is involved in the following activities: farmers' tool banks, community level agricultural production, food storage, commercialisation of food for export, small business such as the production of chocolate, coffee and cassava, environmental protection, and the promotion of women's rights. It is active in all the departments of the country with the exception of the Grande Anse.

Click here for interview with a member of the Tèt Kole national executive, conducted in 1996. The interview is extracted from the Haiti Support Group publication - "Killing Us Softly: grassroots organisations speak about democracy and the 'Death Plan' in Haiti". Among other organisations featured in this pamphlet are the Peasant Organisation of the Plain of Léogane, the Collective to Mobilise Against the IMF and World Bank, and the Platform of Haitian human rights organisations.

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The Haitian Platform to Advocate for an Alternative Development (PAPDA)

Formed in 1995, the PAPDA is a platform which represents a variety of Haitian organisations: grassroots groups, non-governmental organisations, and socio-professional associations. Its perspectives and diverse experiences of struggle for freedom and democracy lead it to question the very basis of the neo-liberal policies applied in Haiti since the beginning of the 1980s. According to the PAPDA, "structural adjustment policies are destroying Haiti's capacity to develop. They are criminal, exhausted policies which have only exacerbated already acute problems of poverty, inequality, and dependence."

In 1995, the PAPDA issued the following warning:

"The International Financial Institutions have charged into Haiti with a standard adjustment package. In spite of repeated promises that the understanding and the support of the population would be sought by a process of consultation, the whole programme is being rushed through with bullying threats and almost secret manoeuvres that exclude civil society and marginalise the Parliament."

"The structural adjustment programme (SAP) is based on a set of dogmas that are debatable in any circumstances, and highly contentious in a poor, unstructured, uncompetitive economy like that of Haiti."

1) The SAP will drastically reduce the role of the State. Yet apart from its traditional role of plunder and repression, that State has always been conspicuously absent from Haitian society. This is already an under-administered country."

2) The SAP will deregulate the economy. Yet as it is Haiti has almost no effective control mechanism protecting consumers and workers, or controlling the activities of a corrupt and monopolistic oligarchy."

3) The SAP will attempt an immediate, enforced integration into the global economy via instant and almost total liberalisation of trade. Yet Haiti is already a devastated, uncompetitive economy with staggering levels of unemployment."

4) The SAP will attempt to assure growth and development by the mushrooming of the light industrial export assembly sector, the increased cultivation of cash crops, and the rapid expansion of tourism. There is absolutely no evidence that this is going to happen, and even if did, none that the gains would trickle down to the mass of the people: urban slum dwellers, small peasant producers, and land-less agricultural labourers."

For more, see the PAPDA web site - click here

Contact: PAPDA, #7 rue Rivière, Port au Prince, Haïti, tél./fax (509) 244.4727, Email: camille.sec-exe@papda.org

PAPDA's Camille Chalmers urges withdrawal of UN troops - January 2005
Camille Chalmers: Against International Intervention - March 2004
The Neoliberal Agenda in Haiti: An Interview with Camille Chalmers in Haiti Progrès - 2002
See Haiti Briefing No. 36 for a 1999 interview with PAPDA's Camille Chalmers
Click here to see a 1997 Multinational Monitor interview with PAPDA's Camille Chalmers
Click here to see a 1996 New Internationalist interview with PAPDA's Camille Chalmers

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