29070: Potemaksonje (News) Justice for Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

> From Potemaksonje@yahoo.com


http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/01/justice_for_haiti.php


Justice for Haiti
By Anthony Phillips and Brian Concannon Jr.
September 01, 2006

Anthony Phillips works with the Institute for Justice
and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH). Human rights lawyer
Brian Concannon Jr. directs the IJDH, found at
www.ijdh.org.and is an analyst with the IRC Americas
Program.

A meeting of international diplomats and financiers in
Port-au-Prince this summer ended up with a commitment
of $750 million in foreign aid to Haiti over the
coming year. This generosity will build badly needed
roads, schools and hospitals, which will make a real
difference to ordinary Haitians?the poorest people in
the Americas?in the short-term. But what Haiti really
needs to permanently end centuries of misery is not
the world?s charity, but its justice.

The July donors? meeting refused to discuss the one
fair and lasting solution to Haiti?s grinding poverty:
restitution of the independence debt imposed by France
in 1825. The debt?calculated at $21 billion in current
dollars?dwarfs current aid commitments and its payment
would allow Haitians to develop their economy without
the attached strings that keep poor countries
dependant on international aid.

Haiti won its independence from France in 1804,
through a bloody 12-year war, becoming the second
independent country in the Americas and the only
nation in history born of a successful slave revolt.
But world powers forced Haiti to pay a second price
for entrance into the international community. They
refused to recognize Haiti?s independence, while
French warships remained off its coasts, threatening
to invade and reinstitute slavery.

After 21 years of resisting, Haiti capitulated to
France?s terms: in exchange for diplomatic
recognition, Haiti?s government agreed to compensate
French plantation owners for their loss of ?property,?
including the freed slaves; compensation to be paid
with a loan from a designated French bank. The debt
was ten times Haiti?s total 1825 revenue and twice
what the United States paid France in 1803 for the
Louisiana Purchase, which contained seventy-four times
more land.

The debt was a crushing burden on Haiti?s economy. The
government was forced to redirect all economic
activity to repay it. A huge percentage of government
revenues?80 percent in some years?went to debt
service, at the expense of investment in education,
healthcare and infrastructure. The tax code and other
laws channeled private and public enterprise to export
crops such as tropical hardwoods and sugar which
brought in foreign currency for the bank but left the
mountainsides barren, the soil depleted and the
population hungry.

Haiti did not pay off the independence debt until
1947. Over a century after the global slave trade was
eliminated as the evil it was, Haitians were still
paying their ancestors? masters for their freedom.
After the debt was paid, Haitians were left with a
chronically undeveloped economy, rampant poverty, and
a spent land?today relatively minor environmental
stresses like tropical storms cause catastrophic
damage in vulnerable Haiti.

Economic instability has engendered political
instability. Haitians have endured more than 30 coups
since 1825, and most of the resulting rulers have been
malignant dictatorships.

The independence debt was not only immoral and
onerous, it was also illegal. In 1825 aggression and
oppression did not violate international law, but the
reintroduction of slavery?the threat underlying the
debt agreement?did. It had been banned by three
treaties that France had signed by 1815.

Haiti has a new democratic government, and an
opportunity to make a clean break from the past. The
$750 million that the international community has
promised towards this transition is a lot of money,
but it is less than a year?s interest on the $21
billion dollars that France owes Haiti. Moreover, if
the past is any guide, not all of the promised money
will arrive, and much of it will come with strings
attached?loan repayments, import tariff reductions,
privatization of government services, etc.?that will
perpetuate Haiti?s dependence on international help.

If the international community really wants to help
Haiti, repayment of the independence debt will be at
the top of the agenda, not off the table. A just
repayment of the independence debt, by contrast, would
allow Haiti to develop the way today?s wealthy
countries did?based on national priorities set inside
the country. It would also right a historical wrong,
and set a strong example of good neighbor policies for
a global neighborhood.

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