a1985: Ray Joseph - Jean Bertrand Aristide - UN Special Session on Children (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Lucas Stanley <maloukwi@yahoo.com>


PRESS RELEASE

For immediate release

NEW YORK– Several Haitian groups in the tri-state area have teamed up to stage a major demonstration against Haitian de facto President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who is scheduled to speak tomorrow morning (Friday May 10) at the United Nations at a U.N.-sponsored conference on children.

The demonstration will take place at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 47th Street and 1st Avenue, between 9 a. m. and 2 p.m.

Aristide will probably take this opportunity to denounce the international community for withholding some $500 million in aid to the impoverished Caribbean nation, pending a negotiated solution to a two-year-old crisis born of fraudulent elections in May 2000 during which Aristide's Lavalas Family party grabbed almost all elected posts locally and nationally. Aristide's own presidential victory in November 2000 is contested as about 5% to 10% of the electorate bothered to vote in a charade of election.

Aristide is no champion of children. He has been exploiting Haitian youth for his political benefit. Last December 17, Haitians –and the world– were stunned to see teenage Haitian boys with high powered automatic weapons menacingly parading in front of Aristide's palace. That was his response to a dubious attack on the palace by unidentified individuals who mysteriously escaped. The sacking and burning of homes and offices belonging to opposition leaders were carried out by young thugs in the service of the budding dictator.

Demonstrators will denounce insecurity, impunity, poverty and corruption in Haiti under Aristide's watch. It should be noted that since December 17, 12 Haitian journalists have sought political asylum abroad and 50 others are in hiding in the country. At least three judges have fled Haiti to protest the meddling of the Executive in judicial matters. The country has become a haven for South American drug dealers eyeing the lucrative U.S. market. Moreover, most wanted drug dealers by U.S. authorities have found refuge in Haiti, protected by Aristide's apparatus.

For more information, contact spokesman Ray Joseph, at (718) 834-1296. Calls about the demonstration can also be addressed to (718) 468-4422 or 287-3713.

(Endit)

Release

Date: May 9, 2002

Contact: Michelle Karshan, Foreign Press Liaison,

National Palace, Haiti

Telephone: (011509) 228-2058

Email: mkarshan@aol.com

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Pioneer in Children’s Rights in Haiti, to Address United Nations Special Session on Children

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s champion of children’s rights, will address the United Nation’s Special Session on Children in New York this Friday, May 10th at 9:00 a.m.

Immediately following his address before the UN Special Session President Aristide will hold a press conference at the United Nations on the second floor near the Security Council room. Press attending are required by the United Nations to have UN credentials (www.un.org/activities).

For more than sixteen years, President Aristide has devoted much of his efforts to advancing the lives and liberties of Haiti’s young people. President Aristide opened a dialogue seeking to transform the society’s views and treatment of children implementing many changes in the interest of children.

Although President Aristide’s government in 1994 ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, President Aristide took reinforcing children’s rights a step further. He recently spearheaded legislation that was overwhelmingly passed in Fall 2001 prohibiting corporal punishment, exploitation and abuse of children.

The Haitian government is now educating schools, police and the general public through seminars and a public information campaign on using appropriate methods to discipline children in place of corporal punishment.

President Aristide, in an address to his nation prior to departing Haiti for the UN Special Session on Children this morning, said, “this important legislation addresses the structures of violence creating a new mentality, a new reality, in which a new generation of children will grow up in an environment where dialogue is used to resolve problems without violence.”

For two decades President Aristide opened his microphone for children to share their concerns and experiences in the hopes of sensitizing the nation. Through radio and television stations, set up by President Aristide through his center for street children, children are able to get their messages out on a daily basis.

In the mid-80s from his pulpit Father Aristide spoke about the rights of children and founded the Lafanmi Selavi center for street children, many of who had been living in domestic servitude (“restaveks"). President Aristide put the spotlight on the hard lives of Haiti’s poor children who were living under unbearable conditions.

President Aristide has been addressing poverty, which he says is the root cause of street children and restaveks. Lack of access to services, particularly in the rural areas, forces families to send their children into urban areas in hopes they’ll find food, shelter and an education in exchange for work. President Aristide’s program of building schools and medical clinics as well as assisting farmers in rural areas serves to reinforce the countryside hoping to enable families to remain intact.

President Aristide separated children prisoners from adults soon after his return from exile in 1994 and led the way for Haiti’s first juvenile court system, rehabilitation programs, and shelters for street children.

President Aristide reinforced Haiti’s “Universal Schooling” program with the goal of enrolling more of Haiti’s children in school. Calling for an assessment of the numbers of children that were not able to access schooling, President Aristide examined the obstacles that prevent attendance. Responding to the findings of this study, President Aristide was able to clear the way for 160,000 more children to attend school in September 2001.

President Aristide incorporated Haiti’s high school students into his national literacy campaign. Hundreds of teenagers have been trained as facilitators and play an active role in creating a new Haiti by teaching adults to read and write.

President Aristide’s programs, established soon after his return from exile, created Haiti’s first school bus system, a hot lunch program, subsidized text books and school supplies, and expansion of schools through renovating existing schools and building new ones in both urban and rural areas. Additionally, this year President Aristide’s government opened a model daycare center in Port-au-Prince’s Industrial Park for children of factory workers.

Responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis in Haiti, President Aristide recently said, “Everyone has the right to live.” This includes children who are either at risk of contracting HIV through mother to child transmission and the 160,000 children left orphaned because of AIDS. Haiti’s proposal to the Global Fund for AIDS will extend nationwide a pilot program concluded last December that successfully reduced the mother to child transmission rate from 30% to 9% and will also bring economic resources to families affected by AIDS.

During his recent visit to Haiti visiting UNICEF projects, UNICEF’s J.P. Slavin wrote in his personal Notes from the Field, “UNICEF Haiti has a great Country Program in place for 2002-06. Thanks in large part to the Aristide Presidency, especially the work of Haiti's First Lady, and to the work of UNICEF and its partners, HIV/AIDS is now front and center on the national agenda. That was not the case when I lived here in the early 1990s.”

In response to a recent small but significant outbreak of polio on the island in which Haiti is situated the government of Haiti successfully performed two rounds of a massive vaccination campaign. Health workers went door to door in cities as well as remote areas and the program received praise from international health agencies.

President Aristide has long been outspoken about access to medical care and has caused a record number of health stations to be built or renovated in both the countryside and the cities in addition to renovating the labor and delivery department of the major hospital. Critical in addressing infant mortality in Haiti, the government recently reopened its infant rehydration unit at its State University Hospital.

Highlighting the creativity and talents of Haiti’s children President Aristide held a series of children’s events to honor their contributions to Haiti’s culture. Last month a museum showcasing children’s art was opened as President Aristide had promised.

Additionally, President Aristide established a special fund for children to develop and reinforce their artistic talents as well as a scholarship fund for gifted children.

Tele Timoun, the television station created by President Aristide’s center for street children, regularly features children who describe their lives, report on the news and offer social commentaries.

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