Three Factoids

First: recently, Paul Collier (author of The Bottom Billion) wrote an article for The Globe suggesting that what Haiti needs is more sweatshops. ("Industrial zones"... y'know, the ones that pay no taxes, 'cause they're in special "free trade zones"). For my part, I agree more with Mohammad Yunis who asserts that low-wage factory jobs do not provide a way out of poverty.

Second, this tidbit from the CIA Factbook:

US economic engagement under the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement (HOPE) Act, passed in December 2006, has boosted apparel exports and investment by providing tariff-free access to the US. HOPE II, passed in October 2008, has further improved the export environment for the apparel sector by extending preferences to 2018; the apparel sector accounts for two-thirds of Haitian exports and nearly one-tenth of GDP. Remittances are the primary source of foreign exchange, equaling nearly a quarter of GDP and more than twice the earnings from exports.

I'm one of those people who believes that much of the last two decades of international policy toward Haiti has been primarily concerned with access to cheap labour, especially in the apparel sector. Anyone who does any reading about the 2004 coup, for example, will encounter these names: André Apaid, Apaid's company, Alpha Industries, and Canada's Gildan Activewear.

Gildan (which is currently running a series of billboard ads in Toronto) is the largest producer of blank T-shirts, was criticized in Honduras for unjustly firing workers with union sympathies, and laid off all its Quebec workers to move operations to the Caribbean and Latin America.

This section of Canada in Haiti seems topical:

Montreal-based Gildan Activewear announced plans to move part of its controversial Honduran El Progresso plant to Haiti to escape accountability for workers' rights violations. With a massive warehouse in North Carolina and as owner of 40 percent of the U.S. T-shirt market, Gildan would benefit from the [HOPE] act were it implemented. Gildan employs up to 5,000 people in Port-au-Prince's assembly sector, including work subcontracted to Andy Apaid, the leader of the [Group of 184, an opposition coalition in Haiti].

So what's Gildan's response to the Haitian earthquake?

TORONTO, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Gildan Activewear a Canadian T-shirt maker, said on Wednesday it would move some of its manufacturing operations to Central America after a powerful earthquake in Haiti damaged one of its subcontractor's factories.

The Montreal-based company, which manufactures T-shirts, socks and underwear, said one of three factories that sews fabric for Gildan in the small Caribbean country, suffered substantial damage during Tuesday's quake.

Gildan said it would shift production of the shirts, destined for the U.S. screenprint market to the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Nicaragua. The company said its U.S. retail customers were not affected.

Thanks, Gildan. Nice to know you're in it for the long haul.

More sad news

On our first day in Jakmel, we went downtown to see an art programme. ( studio )

While there, we met an American named Flo. I read Flo as some flavour of genderqueer, but not entirely sure of his identification. The artist programme had some relationships to Canadian funding, and I read brochures that mentioned names like Leah Gordon, who I've exchanged email with. Some of our members bought some paintings. The artists were extremely grateful for the business; they hadn't had many visitors. The sky opened up and it rained for half an hour or so, so we hung out and talked with different people there. From the upper floor windows of the studio, we could see the beach.

This announcement of Flo's death really caught me off guard.

Two thoughts

I find myself calling to mind two things I've read in the past. The first is this post about cognitive dissonance at the blog Respectful of Otters:

Cognitive dissonance gets particularly ugly when reality collides with the just world hypothesis, the belief that "the world is an orderly, predictable, and just place, where people get what they deserve." Faced with tragedy, victimization, or injustice, just world believers have four options to reduce the cognitive dissonance: they can act quickly to help relieve the victim's suffering (restoring the justice of the situation), minimize the harm done (making the tragedy a less severe blow to their beliefs), justify the suffering as somehow deserved (redefining the situation as just), or focus on a larger, more encompassing just outcome of the "poor people will receive their rewards in heaven" variety. The first response - the only actually helpful one - isn't always possible. Unfortunately, the latter three pretty much always are.

The other is this passage from Tracy Kidder's book, Mountains Beyond Mountains. In it, Kidder recounts a story when Paul Farmer was profoundly affected by passing an overturned tap tap. A market woman was killed in the accident.

Accidents happen. Sure. But not every bad thing that happens is an accident. There was nothing accidental about the wretchedness of the road down Morne Kabrit or the overloaded tap-tap, or the desperation of a peasant woman who had to get to the market and make a sale because otherwise her family would go hungry. These circumstances all had causes, and the nearest ones were the continuing misrule of the Duvaliers and the long-standing American habit of lavishing aid on dictators such as Baby Doc, who used money to keep himself and the Haitian elite in luxury and power and spent almost nothing on things like roads and transportation.

More Sopudep

The Sopudep school building is currently functioning as a makeshift hospital, as is Réa Dol's home. Apparently several students and teachers died in the earthquake.

It sounds as if a lot of aid effort is being focused on the central, downtown area of Pòtoprens; organizations seem to be afraid to go into neighbourhoods like Site Soley (which I hear is relatively intact) or Bel Air (which has suffered a great deal). Sopudep is up the mountain in Petyonvil, and supplies aren't getting up there at all.

Edit: I'll point out that the Sawatzky Family Foundation, which is an organization that helps fund Sopudep, is a registered charity in Canada, and an excellent place to donate in this crisis.

In non-Haiti-related news

I saw a play last night at Buddies -- called La Comunion. The play is about child soldiers working with FARC in Columbia, and it's based on stories that the director and members of the cast heard during theatre workshop in Columbia with former child combatants. I think it's a powerful show. Afterward, there was a panel about child soldiers: the director and cast joined representatives from a coupl'a groups -- War Child Canada and Fundacion Imaginacion.

I'm glad I saw it (wryly: I wanted something a little bit light in between all the news I've been reading about Haiti).

The road to hell

Even as rescuers are digging victims out of the rubble in Haiti, policymakers in Washington and around the world are grappling with how a destitute, corrupt and now ruined country might be transformed into a self-sustaining nation.

Development efforts have failed there, decade after decade, leaving Haitians with a dysfunctional government, high crime and incomes averaging a dollar a day. But the leveled capital of Port-au-Prince must be rebuilt, promising one of the largest economic development efforts ever undertaken in the hemisphere. And those who will help oversee it are thinking hard about how to use that money and attention to change the country forever.

"It's terrible to look at it this way, but out of crisis often comes real change," said Ross Anthony, the Rand Corporation's global health director. "The people and the institutions take on the crisis and bring forth things they weren't able to do in the past."

— From Haiti's ruins, a chance to rebuild a nation", Washington Post

It's not only a terrible way to look at it, but it's an ill-informed way to look at it. Haiti has been subjected to two decades of destabilization efforts. There are clear reasons why development efforts have failed: because they've been designed to fail.

The country has been destabilized by two coups -- backed, funded and planned by governments like Canada and the U.S. We allowed absolutely brutal regimes -- such as the Raoul Cédras and Gérard Latortue regimes -- to engage in horrific human rights abuses. Hell, we installed Latortue.

When the Haitian people get to elect their governments fairly, they consistently want to vote for people whose primary platforms include providing services to the poor. And when that happens, countries like Canada and the U.S. cut aid to Haiti, and start funnelling money into projects like funding the opposition parties. The latest trick is to rig the elections process so that the parties that the poor majority like aren't allowed to run.

The Post article does acknowledge that U.S. foreign policy toward Haiti has contributed to the problems, there. Especially with regards to policies on rice imports. But it's also careful to frame that dilemma with phrases like, "No one is expecting controversial trade policies to be taken up overnight."

Even since 2004, Haiti has seen three major disasters. The 2004 Hurricane that destroyed Gonayiv, the two hurricanes and two tropical storms that hit the island in September, 2008 (that, again, devastated Gonayiv, among other areas) and now the 2010 earthquake. You'd think that after the first two disasters, we'd make it a priority to help build up infrastructure: roads, hospitals, emergency response teams, etc. But no. Canada has focused an inordinate amount of "aid" on elections, political reform, police and soldiers. I've sat in both the Canadian and the U.S. embassy in Haiti and listened to officials tell me that security must be the first priority because security is a necessary prerequisite to encouraging business interests. If you wanted security, maybe you shouldn't have overthrown the government in the first place!

For my part, I don't think that real change is possible in Haiti unless we are willing to discuss what's really responsible for the failures, there. And, frankly, the failures have almost everything to do with the international community's "good intentions" for Haiti.

A mail-out from Partners in Health

Since Tuesday evening, PIH staff has been working around the clock to bring relief to the people of Haiti who are suffering immensely in the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake. You have seen the images on the news, read the updates on the web, and responded in a profoundly generous way to our calls for help - we are indebted to you for your quick mobilization and generous contributions.

Our team, because of our deep roots in Haiti, was able to be among the first to respond with emergency medical services. Since the first days, our staff has stepped up to take on the challenge of serving the most vulnerable in Port-au-Prince and of providing comprehensive care ranging from basic primary care to complicated surgical services at our sites in the Central Plateau and Artibonite Valley. Co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer wrote yesterday, "We find that years of investment in building a strong local partner organization mean that we are again in the position of responding effectively to a natural disaster. We are very proud of our team."

All of this work-our years of investment and our ability to respond is made possible because of people like you who do not become paralyzed in the face of suffering but rather stand up and help serve.

Yesterday, Dr. Farmer arrived in Port-au-Prince to check in with our team and to meet with Government and UN officials. Since his visit, we have already seen the tide begin to change - this morning, the PIH/Zanmi Lasante team was designated by the World Health Organization to serve as the coordinators of the public hospital, Hopital de l'Universite d'Etat d'Haiti (HUEH), where thousands are suffering in need of medicines and surgeries. In this new role, we will be supporting the administration and staff and recruiting other NGOs to help restore services, particularly triage, nursing, and surgical, at the city's central hospital. Our priority is to increase stock of medicines and supplies, ensure steadily functioning operating rooms, and guarantee sufficient medical staff is available, particularly for nursing care to help with post-op recovery, iv management, and other care that has had to be self managed over the past three days.

— Ophelia Dahl, Partners in Health

An anonymous Canadian's report on the rescue efforts

Is this going to be another emergency response mess?

Rescue efforts were stalled today in Port-au-Prince with foreign rescue workers overwhelmed and unprepared to deal with impoverished people. Crews arrived with neither vehicles, nor gas, nor translators, nor guides.

Thus far, the rescue teams cluster at the high profile and safer walled sites and were literally afraid to enter the barrios. They gravitated to the sites where they had secure compounds and big buildings. Meanwhile, the neighbourhoods where the damage appears to be much wider, and anywhere there were loose crowds, they avoided. In the large sites, and in the nice neighbourhoods, and where the press can be found, there would be teams from every country imaginable. Dogs and extraction units with more arriving, yet with 90% or more of them just sitting around; meanwhile, in the poor neighbourhoods, awash in rubble, there was not a foreigner is sight.

News crews are looking for the story of desperate Haitians that are in hysterics. When in reality it is more often the Haitians that are acting calmly while the international community, the elite and politicians have melted down over the issue, and none seem to have the remotest idea what is going on.

— Haiti rescue effort targets wealthy, ignores poor: unsettling report from PaP