Later today the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on a bill that would support the cancellation of Haiti’s remaining debt to international financial institutions. The Debt Relief for Earthquake Recovery in Haiti Act of 2010 (HR 4573) has passed the House Financial Services committee and it is expected to pass the vote on the House floor. A similar measure (S.2961) was passed by the Senate on March 5th.
These bills directs the secretary of the Treasury to instruct the United States executive directors at the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and other multilateral development institutions to use the voice, vote and influence of the United States to cancel immediately and completely Haiti’s debts to such institutions.
Click here to send a message to your Representative to support debt relief for Haiti.
As I was slowly coming awake one morning, two words made my eyes pop open: extrajudicial killings. Though the radio journalist was not talking about Colombia, she could have been. I was now fully conscious and thinking about the grave situation there. The country doesn’t make the news very often despite the fact that, “with nearly five million internally displaced persons, Colombia is now the Western Hemisphere’s … best hidden humanitarian crisis.”
That startling statistic is included in a summary of a report on a delegation to observe the humanitarian and human rights situation in the southern province of Córdoba that MCC partner Justapaz (The Christian Center for Justice, Peace and Nonviolent Action) participated in last October 2009. The report continues, “Findings… illustrate the growing humanitarian crisis … a deterioration of respect for human rights … and increased violence as a result of growing paramilitary actions.”
Click here to read more. Click here for more information on Days of Prayer and Action.
MCC recently produced a document that identifies key issues for a just response to the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
Here’s an excerpt:
The challenge of rebuilding Haiti is compounded by multiple pre-existing factors such as the devastation of four hurricanes in 2008, an ongoing food crisis, a global economic/financial crisis, environmental degradation, political instability, foreign interventions and liberalized trade/economic policies.
As the international community moves forward with relief and recovery efforts we urge that the following be taken into account:
Sustainable, long-term development coupled with economic reform policies
Transparent and Haitian-led use of donor funds
Clarified mandate and length of stay of U.S. troops
Compassionate and respectful treatment of refugees and immigrants
Join hundreds of congregations in the United States, Canada and Colombia to pray for an end to the Colombian conflict and act for policy changes that better reflect the values of God’s kingdom.
April 18 is the Day of Prayer where congregations will join in worship with Colombian brothers and sisters who endure great suffering and yet respond in faith and sow seeds of peace.
April 19 is the Day of Action to witness and call on U.S. policy to promote peace and justice in Colombia.
MCC partner, Justapaz, has released a report on the humanitarian and political crisis in the Colombian province of Córdoba. The report was produced as a result of a delegation that traveled to Córdoba in October of 2009.
The report indicates that even though paramilitaries were officially demobilized in 2003, groups have rearmed and continue to terrorize the civilian population.
The following is a short excerpt from the report:
The unarmed civilian population continues to be acutely affected. Murder rates in the province have increased over the last two years, displacement continues at alarming rates and crimes committed by paramilitaries go unprocessed. The result is a near complete deterioration of social fabric of Cordoba and civilians’ ability to engage in meaningful civic, business or social activities.
In the absence of other leadership, pastors and lay leaders have galvanized minimal resources to meet the needs of displaced communities, helped communities regain access to lands lost to aggression by armed groups and diligently worked to secure municipal and national resources for humanitarian work in Córdoba. Pastors and lay leaders are often targeted for their community leadership and simply for their physical presence in areas contested by warring groups. Even when they are not directly engaged in politically sensitive issues such as land rights, pastors and lay leaders face intimidation and violence.
“This is not a time for adopting orphan children in droves,” she says. Instead, the answer is “to care for the children where they are, and allow them to find their aunts, their uncles, their grandparents, their cousins.”
She proposes “conscripting an army of grannies” — Haitian women who can be given stipends to foster one or two children at a time. It would be a worthy use of the money pouring into the country from around the world, she says, and her organization is in the process of recruiting American social workers to head to Haiti to build such a project quickly.
More than two hundred years ago Haiti shed the brutal bonds of French slavery and created the first free black nation and the second republic in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti’s abolition of slavery happened at a time when the United States and other western governments continued to profit from the slave trade. Haiti has been paying the price for its freedom ever since.
After Haiti’s independence in 1804, France, with support from the U.S. government, imposed a massive debt of 150 million francs on Haiti ($21 billion in today’s dollars). Haiti struggled to pay off this debt while suffering under several military interventions, dictatorships and economic policies imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. These have destroyed Haiti’s ability to take care of itself and its people.
The latest update from the ground in Haiti indicates that U.S. military personnel are carrying out their operations by showing respect to Haitians. The following is an an email excerpt from MCC Haiti Representative, Kurt Hildebrand:
We drove by a couple of humvees with US military personnel today. We were pleased to see that while they were clearly armed, they did not have their guns out or pointed at anything or anyone. After three years of seeing UN troops driving around with their guns mounted and fingers on triggers, this is a much welcome change.
We welcome and appreciate this fact. However, we are still concerned about the implications of military presence and the long term role of the U.S. military in Haiti.
Click here to read a previous blog post on the deployment of U.S. troops to Haiti.
Rachelle Lyndaker Schlabach writes about Haiti’s need for debt relief in PeaceSigns:
Ben Depp/MCC
Beneath the rubble of crumbled buildings in Port-au-Prince lies a disconcerting reality. Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, owes large sums of money to wealthy countries and international financial institutions.
This past June, debt relief advocates cheered when two-thirds of Haiti’s external debt was canceled. However, Haiti still owes $641 million, much of it to the International Monetary Fund and Inter-American Development Bank.
And the debt burden keeps growing. As I write, the International Monetary Fund has just announced an emergency $100 million loan to Haiti to aid in recovery. While Haiti clearly needs urgent assistance, it should come in the form of grants, not loans.
The irony is that those of us in the world’s wealthiest countries, in fact, owe a debt to the people of the world’s poorest countries, including Haiti. The global financial system that we have set up, and in which we are complicit, has made the rich richer at the expense of the poor.
Posted by Theo Sitther 
