21512L (Wucker) WPI report on Haiti human rights (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: "Michele@wucker.com" <michele@wucker.com>

My colleague Andrew Reding, who is the Director of the Project for Global
Democracy and Human Rights at the World Policy Institute, has published a
report on Democracy and Human rights in Haiti. Here is the summary and a
link to the entire report, which is too long to send.
Regards
Michele

As on so many prior occasions in its two hundred year history, the Republic
of Haiti is once again beset by crisis. The easy explanation is to
attribute the crisis to an individual. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide did
not live up to the expectations of most of the people who originally swept
him into office in a December 1990 landslide. Yet as demonstrated in a new
report (Democracy and Human rights in Haiti, available online in PDF
format: http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/carib/2004-Haiti.pdf),
Haiti’s crisis is far more the product of a dysfunctional society than of
the personal shortcomings of any individual.

Overshadowing all of Haitian history has been the legacy of a particularly
cruel form of slavery. Fearing revolt by a slave population that
outnumbered French colonists by more than ten to one, planters maintained
control by infliction of horrifying punishments, and by creation of a class
of freed slaves of lighter skin color, who were used to help keep the black
slave population in submission.

The successful slave revolt that established the second republic in the
hemisphere got rid of the white colonists, leaving behind a highly unstable
social structure. Continuous and often violent conflict between mulattos
and blacks has racked Haiti throughout its history, making sustained
economic development all but impossible. Though the country’s urban elites
present themselves to foreigners as committed democrats, they are in fact
very uncomfortable with the concept of universal suffrage. Given Haiti’s
demographics, the principle of “one person, one vote” is a recipe for black
populism.

Haiti’s great tragedy is that neither side has produced a Nelson Mandela or
Martin Luther King, Jr., capable of reaching across the divide. That
Aristide was once thought capable of the task has only increased the sense
of disappointment.

But the forcible removal of Aristide before the end of his term is unlikely
to bridge the divide. Like the earlier overthrow of Dumarsais Estimé, it
will further embitter the Haitian underclass, and inflame racial
antagonisms. Moreover, as on almost three dozen prior occasions in Haitian
history, it has already reinforced the message that the way to get change
is by force rather than ballots.

There can be no lasting solution to the Haitian crisis that does not
address its root causes. Those are the continuing tensions between mulattos
and blacks, and the appalling neglect of the most basic needs of the
country’s impoverished majority. Unlike South Africa, Haiti is not blessed
with the natural resources and wealth that could begin to address that
task. That is one of many reasons for the failed promise of Aristide.
Without substantial aid from abroad, no Haitian leader will be capable of
meeting the challenge.