[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 107 (Wednesday, July 31, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7731-S7733]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            CRISIS IN HAITI

  Mr. DODD. First, I commend my colleague from Hawaii for his fine 
leadership on the pending matter before the Senate dealing with the 
Defense appropriations bill.
  The matter that I wish to address regards the nation of Haiti, a 
tragedy that is unfolding a short distance from our own shores, 
literally only 90 or 100 miles away from the coast of the United 
States. As yesterday's New York Times article entitled ``Eight Years 
After Invasion, Haiti's Squalor Worsens,'' written by David Gonzalez, 
makes abundantly clear, the people of Haiti in that article, as we 
know, are on the verge of despair.
  I ask unanimous consent that the article written by David Gonzalez in 
the New York Times be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

          Eight Years After Invasion, Haiti's Squalor Worsens

       Sonia Jean-Pierre's life is one of apocalyptic misery. With 
     hardly any food or work, her only refuge is a concrete cell. 
     The searing sun is blotted out by cardboard pasted over the 
     windows. On the wall by her bed, she has scrawled, ``Jesus 
     Christ is coming soon,'' like a promise of salvation to greet 
     her every morning.
       Ms. Jean-Pierre and hundreds of neighbors live as squatters 
     inside the old Fort Dimanche Prison once the brutally 
     efficient killing chamber of the Duvalier dictatorships. A 
     prison no longer, it has been renamed, hopefully, Village 
     Democratie. The poor cram themselves into the dingy cells and 
     even inside the old sentry towers that look out over the 
     surrounding shanties, where 2,000 more souls live without 
     water, schools or electricity. Some are so desperate they eat 
     pancakelike disks of bouillon-flavored clay. Poverty is the 
     only jailer.
       ``We are free prisoners,'' said Ms. Jean-Pierre, who rested 
     one recent afternoon on the cool concrete floor. ``We are 
     still living like prisoners.''
       Nearly eight years after the United States led an invasion 
     of Haiti to oust a military junta and restore President Jean-
     Bertrand Aristide to power, Village Democratie is just one 
     measure of this country's despairing slide.
       Increasingly exasperated with Mr. Aristide's government, 
     which has yet to resolve a two-year-old deadlock with its 
     opposition, the United States and European countries have 
     blocked some $500 million in aid, hoping to encourage greater 
     democracy. Critics say the decision has merely eroded the 
     hopes and deepened the poverty of this country's seven 
     million or so people.
       For a nation as poor as Haiti, withholding the money has 
     become both carrot and stick. Haiti still lingers near the 
     bottom of the United Nations' annual survey of living 
     conditions. Life expectancy is less than 53 years. 
     Preventable diseases go untreated. The yearly income of the 
     average family is less than is needed to sustain a single 
     person.
       Mr. Aristide calls the withholding of the aid an 
     ``embargo.'' His American supporters, including the 
     Congressional Black Caucus and well-paid lobbyists, say it is 
     immoral to withhold the aid and punish the Haitian people, as 
     government agencies go without budgets, plans or projects to 
     provide water, health care and schools. Some $150 million 
     from the United States, they note, might not only improve 
     roads, water and health but also create jobs.
       Still, diplomats and aid officials say, Mr. Aristide's use 
     of the term ``embargo'' reflects calculated rhetoric more 
     than reality. Trade and travel continue, and relief, 
     including contributions from the United States, flows into 
     Haiti through nongovernmental groups.
       Solving Haiti's problems, they argue, will take more than 
     just an infusion of aid. Most important, they say Mr. 
     Aristide has yet to prove that his government has escaped the 
     corruption and destructive self-interest of governments past.
       Meanwhile, the political stalemate, which arose over a 
     disputed election, and the international response to it, have 
     stalled what little functioning government democracy might 
     have brought.
       ``The situation is getting worse for the majority of the 
     people,'' said the Rev. Jan Hanssens, a Roman Catholic priest 
     who sits on the Justice and Peace Commission of the Bishops' 
     Conference. ``There is certainly no hope unless there is a 
     drastic reassessment of Haitian society itself. If things 
     simply go on as now, there is no chance.''
       Along the streets of Village Democratie, faith in 
     politicians is as elusive as a decent job. Faded posters of 
     Mr. Aristide, wearing the presidential sash and with his arms 
     outstretched, are his only presence.
       Laughing young men crouched at the entrance to the former 
     prison and gambled a few wrinkled gourde notes, the country's 
     currency. Inside, past corridors whose crumbled walls reveal 
     a weed-choked courtyard, people walked home after church 
     clutching hymnals titled ``Songs of Hope.''
       Inside tiny rooms with cardboard walls, slim shafts of 
     sunlight cut through the haze of charcoal smoke from braziers 
     where pots of rice boiled. There are no sewers or running 
     water anywhere in the neighborhood, and when the rains come 
     they leave fetid puddles where malaria-carrying mosquitoes 
     breed.
       ``Artistide said here is the room of the people,'' said 
     Dorlis Ephesans. ``But he has never showed his face here.''
       Some of the residents had tried to leave Haiti during the 
     1991 coup that ousted Mr. Aristide. Some made it to Miami, 
     some died and others like Israel Arince, were caught at sea 
     and returned.
       The same America that sent him back to Haiti and restored 
     Mr. Aristide to power in 1994, Mr. Arince said, now make life 
     impossible.
       ``They have blocked the country from getting aid,'' he 
     said. ``We are human beings and we do not like to live like 
     this. Only animals should live here.''
       In La Saline sum, down a busy road near the prison that is 
     often choked with carts and traffic, pigs waded through 
     streams of human waste and poked their snouts into mountains 
     of garbage in a drainage canal. Young women dropped plastic 
     buckets into a sewer and hauled out a gray water they would 
     use to wash their floors. Potable water is too expensive.
       ``There is no way to be healthy here,'' said Elisena 
     Nicolas, who spends a third of her income on water. ``But you 
     have to keep the children clean.''
       As hard as it is to conceive, people come to La Saline to 
     escape rural misery. In the Central Plateau town of Cange, 
     doctors with the Zanmi Lasante clinic and children commonly 
     died from malaria or diarrhea, while tuberculosis and AIDS 
     killed their parents. Even polio, once thought to have been 
     eradicated, has resurfaced recently.
       Although the clinic receives no international aid, doctors 
     said they worked with many Haitian government clinics in 
     nearby villages where the frozen aid has left them unable to 
     cope. In recent years, their volunteer clinic's patient load 
     has tripled to 120,000, with patients sometimes walking five 
     hours for free care.
       Dr. Paul Farmer, an American who helped found the clinic in 
     the 1980's, said he could not prove that the blocked aid 
     resulted in more suffering, but the deteriorating conditions 
     were evident. International aid, provided on an emergency 
     basis to charitable groups, was no substitute for a working 
     government, he said.
       ``One of the world's most powerful countries is taking on 
     one of the most impoverished,'' he said of the United States 
     decision to withhold aid. ``I object to that on moral 
     grounds. Anybody who presides over this blockade needs to 
     know the impact here already.''
       But Haiti's record of official corruption and 
     mismanagement, regardless of who was in power, has given 
     pause to many international aid officials. A recent study by 
     the World Bank concluded that 15 years of aid

[[Page S7732]]

     through 2001 had had no discernible impact in reducing 
     poverty, since projects were carried out haphazardly and 
     government officials aid not sustain improvements.
       Today, for instance, a maze of rat-infested pipes is all 
     that is left of a potable water project after funds ran out 
     before the pipes could be connected to the water main.
       At the same time, political opponents and diplomats said, 
     the government has money to provide cars for legislators or 
     pay off neighborhood groups that are its foot soldiers and 
     that the opposition charges, have been used to intimidate 
     government opponents.
       As a result, diplomats and aid officials said Mr. Aristide 
     must not only resolve this political crisis, he must also 
     show that he will allow economic and administrative reforms 
     to guarantee that any forthcoming aid will be honestly spent.
       ``We are saying we want to help you,'' said a European 
     diplomat, who noted that the European Union was ready to 
     provide $350 million. ``But you must help us help you. You 
     comply, I'll comply.''
       Absent any aid or a political pact, people scrape by as 
     they have for years, sharing what little they have or 
     sacrificing themselves for their children. In the 
     neighborhood of Fort Sinclaire, a dilapidated maze of shacks, 
     indigent teenagers with tuberculosis sleep on sheets spread 
     out on hard concrete porches.
       A soft carpet of soggy wood chips blankets the entrance to 
     the neighborhood, as men carve wooden bowls to sell to 
     tourists who have yet to return to Haiti. Lionel Agustain, a 
     woodworker, sometimes earns two dollars a day, not enough to 
     prevent him from losing his home a few years ago.
       A friend lets him sleep on a rickety cot inside a gym where 
     the weights are improved for gears and other car parts. The 
     walls are tauntingly decorated with wrinkled posters of 
     bodybuilders with bulging chest and bicep Mr. Agustian is 
     thin, and he sometimes eats only a bowl of rice.
       ``We don't know when they are going to fix things,'' he 
     said. ``We suffer. And when you suffer enough, you die.''
  Mr. DODD. Madam President, I share with my colleagues briefly the 
situation in Haiti. This is one of the most desperate countries in the 
world, a few miles from our shore. There has been pending over the last 
2 years a $500 million request through the Inter-American Development 
Bank. The United States of America, and several of its allies, are 
holding up the disbursement of these funds to one of the poorest 
countries in the world. Seven million people in that country are 
suffering incredibly. It is being held up over a question of whether or 
not institutions in that nation are as strong as they ought to be, 
whether or not there is corruption, and whether or not the elections 
that occurred in 2000 were fair, open, and honest.
  I am not going to argue about any of that. There is corruption. The 
agencies, administration, and structures are very weak. The elections 
in 2000 had major flaws in them. I am not arguing about that, either. 
But for the strongest, wealthiest nation in the world, that stands 90 
to 100 miles away from one of the poorest nations in the world, and to 
have us deny Inter-American Development Bank funds, through our power 
and influence, to reach these desperately poor, dying people, where 
life expectancy is age 53, where there are problems with malaria, 
diarrhea, and tremendous hardship--polio has reemerged on this island--
I think is terribly wrong.
  This article, written by David Gonzalez, points out how desperate the 
situation is in Haiti. I will not read all of the article but he talks 
about shanties, he talks about the former prison at Fort Dimanche, a 
prison in Port-Au-Prince where now 2,000 people live without any water, 
schooling, or electricity. These are fellow human beings who are in 
great despair, living under the worst possible of circumstances.
  In rural areas as well, local clinics have shut down and one clinic, 
according to David Gonzalez's article, in the Central Plateau town of 
Cange, doctors with the Lasante Clinic dealt with 120,000 patients who 
came to them in recent years. The clinic's patients tripled to 120,000, 
patients sometimes walking 5 hours for care.
  As I mentioned, tuberculosis, malaria, and now even polio, once 
thought to be eradicated, is emerging. I am hopeful that the IDB, the 
Inter-American Development Bank, would listen to those who have been 
supportive of this Bank. I have been supportive, as many of my 
colleagues have, over the years. For the IDB to hold back on these 
funds any longer is wrong.
  Haiti is sinking deeper and deeper into irreversible poverty. The 
extent of the heartache now being endured by the Haitian people is 
simply unspeakable. Their suffering is devastating and it is far 
reaching. In some places there is no potable water, there are no 
sewers, there are no basic medicines on hand to treat disease, no 
medical infrastructure in place to ward off otherwise easily 
preventable diseases.
  Haiti ranks as one of the lowest on the U.N. survey of living 
conditions. As I mentioned, life expectancy is age 53. Of course, the 
despair and hopelessness which prey upon the victims of such suffering 
cannot be quantified.
  It is the people of Haiti, in my view, who should be our concern 
today, not the flaws of their political institutions. I am deeply 
saddened and incensed in many ways that we are planning electoral 
negotiations over the clear, tangible plight of a people.
  Ironically, it is the United States that has taken the lead in 
preventing Haiti from receiving assistance from the International 
Development Bank, the institution that is supposed to be the premier 
regional development agency. Proponents of withholding crucial IDB 
funding point to Haiti's weak institutions, to the need for drastic and 
timely economic and administrative reforms, as a prerequisite for 
restarting assistance.
  It is true, Haiti is an impoverished nation with weak institutions. 
It is true there is corruption at high levels. I do not deny that. And, 
yes, there is a serious need for reform in these areas. It is also very 
true that poor countries breed weak institutions and seek to strengthen 
themselves and help their people with the assistance of international 
humanitarian aid, but that is not the real reason that assistance is 
being withheld. The real reason funds are being withheld is political--
-- namely, as leverage in an ongoing Organization of American States 
negotiations to resolve issues related to the May 2000 elections of 
that country.

  The Secretary-General of the OAS has endeavored over the last 2 years 
to resolve the political stalemate in Haiti and the disputed 2000 
parliamentary elections. He has put on the negotiating table a balanced 
and credible proposal for resolving the election dispute and is working 
to ensure the security and other matters of concern to the Haitian 
society that are being seriously considered by the Haitian Government. 
I believe they are.
  That said, Haiti has flawed elections. Absolutely. We are talking 
about a country without a long historial tradition of democracy. While 
this worsens, and public faith in government is reduced to zero, what 
remains of the fragile democracy is eroded further. Even in the United 
States, with our proud history, peaceful transition of power, orderly 
elections, and representative governments, we have had significant 
troubles with our own elections. Merely look at what happened in the 
year 2000 in this country with our elections. No one is perfect.
  In one of the most desperately poor nations in the world, it should 
not be a great surprise that institutions and electoral processes are 
not what we would like them to be. By not providing basic help, by the 
United States blocking the assistance reaching the desperately poor 
people, we are not strengthening the institutions but making it worse 
and harder for the Nation to get back on its feet.
  I have always strongly opposed linkage between ongoing political 
dialog and the Haitian access to resources of the Inter-American 
Development Bank. These moneys have been held hostage for too long. The 
damage to the Haitian economy is devastating. The good-faith efforts of 
the Government in responding to the OAS initiative should be more than 
enough justification for beginning the process of loan disbursements 
from the Inter-American Development Bank. Although the state of despair 
in Haiti is all the justification that should be needed for an 
institution whose primary obligation, as the IDB, is to promote 
economic and social development in this hemisphere, and they are doing 
anything but that.
  Shame on the Inter-American Development Bank for being used in this 
manner. It does not speak well for an institution that for the most 
part has a good reputation. Shame on the Government of the United 
States for pressuring the IDB to do so. Seven million people are 
desperately in need of help. We have gone on now for years denying this 
basic assistance. It is time to put

[[Page S7733]]

a stop to playing politics with Haitian lives, and it is time to 
respond to the unfolding crisis in Haiti. I urge the administration to 
withhold, to lift the embargo, on the dollars.
  For those who have supported the IDB year in and year out, it has 
been terribly disappointing to me that they have continued to acquiesce 
in the demands of the Bush administration to deny the disbursements of 
these dollars. I hope they will take the action of saying they have 
waited long enough and they will provide the assistance needed to the 
Haitian people.
  We are about to leave for a month and the situation is growing worse. 
I ask my colleague to take a look at the David Gonzalez article in the 
New York Times yesterday. This is a snapshot of what is going on in the 
country and what desperately poor people are suffering as a result of 
the lack of support. They would suffer anyway. I am not suggesting this 
will solve all their problems. It is hard to believe we are holding up 
the funds--seeing how these people live, how these children are being 
raised, only a few miles off our shore, when we could make a little bit 
of a difference. We could also strengthen the very institutions we are 
complaining so strongly about if we provided that kind of help.

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