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Syndication
| Thursday, December 14, 2006 |
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Reflection on Haiti and World Aids Day
By Jan Schakowsky @ 9:43 PM |
I stepped onto the plane in Miami on November 29 and before I finished reading the paper, landed in Haiti, a country of 8 million people, the poorest country in our hemisphere. 54% of the Haitians live on $1 a day or less. The official unemployment is in the high sixty percent, but the reality is, there are no jobs for the vast majority of the adults.
Deforestation in Haiti is almost complete. 98% of its trees have been cut down. In Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth", he shows an aerial view of the island of Hispanola which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic. You can see the border between the two because the DR is green and Haiti is brown. I have connected the organization that plants trees in Israel, the Jewish United Fund, with Haitian leaders to see if such a partnership can be useful to address their critical problem.
This was my second trip to Haiti, the first being three years ago, when I went with Ethel Kennedy to present an award to an amazing clinic created and run by Dr. Paul Farmer, the famous young doctor who insisted that even the people of very poor and undeveloped countries could benefit from the most advanced HIV/AIDS drugs and treatments. I fell in love with Haiti on that trip and Paul Farmer became a lifelong friend.
This time I was with another famous man who is making a tremendous contribution to the people of Haiti - Wyclef Jean, the hip-hop artist who came out of the group the Fugees. (Admit it. I'm more hip than you thought!)
Wyclef, born in Haiti and still a Haitian citizen, has used his celebrity to bring help to the homeland he loves so much. He created "Yele Haiti", described as a "new non-political movement founded to help provide both resources and inspiration to help change the country. Projects are designed to make a difference through education, health, environment and community development. The power and reach of music, sports and the media are enlisted to increase the impact of these projects."
Wyclef is truly a national hero. Cheering people lined the streets of Jacmel when he arrived to do a free concert on the beautiful beach, and 50,000 of them came to see him perform for them. It was a sight to behold. Hope and pride were there in abundance.
Wyclef and I spoke at an International Aids Day event in Haiti, and I pledged to work closely with Haiti's government to provide more help. Wyclef was masterful in connecting with the crowd of young people and AIDS workers. He literally speaks their language - Creole - but beyond that, speaks so that they can really hear his message about condoms and testing and safe sex.
The United States has a long and complicated history with Haiti, but suffice it to say that our country has not simply been guilty of benign neglect toward our close neighbor, but in many ways has actively contributed to her suffering
I had a 45-minute meeting with President Preval, the former President who was once again elected last spring to head the country. As interested as he is in aid, he was more interested in trade and was promoting passage of the U.S. Haiti trade bill called the HOPE Act. (It did pass in the waning hours of the 109th Congress, but typical of the Republicans, they attached it to a much bigger bill full of things that I couldn't support.) We also discussed the Commission he established to propose changes to the Constitution, one in which my constituents are particularly interested - the ability of Haitian people with dual citizenship to seek public office in Haiti, which they are now prohibited from doing. President Preval, I am happy to report, is all in favor of that change.
I also met with Haitian Prime Minister Alexis and discussed many issues ranging from security to elections to U.S.-Haiti relations. He conveyed a sense of urgency, recognizing that the Haitian people want to see this democratic government deliver improvements and do it soon.
Along with our U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, Janet Sanderson, I was an official International Election Observer on Sunday, December 3. The people were choosing their local elected officials. As I often do on election day at home, I went to several precincts to watch the process. And I have to say, I was very, very impressed. They have polling "stations" for each precinct as we do, and polling centers with multiple stations. Each eligible voter has a picture ID, the first of any kind of ID in the country, and people seem to like it. At the polling station, there is a list of the names of all the voters for that station, and a photo of each, so you could just look for your picture. People vote on paper ballots in a cardboard voting booth. It was very orderly, especially considering there were 23 representatives from as many political parties at each polling station serving as poll watchers, not counting our group and some government observers. When the polls closed, the election workers carefully counted the unused ballots in front of all the observers, and then counted the votes, holding up each ballot for everyone to see. The next day I went to the tabulation center and watched the 150 people, most of whom sat at computers, tabulating the results and triple-checking the count. Of course, some results will be challenged, but there is an excellent paper trail. Some people from Florida could learn a thing or two from the Haitians!
I spent a good deal of time with the UN mission in Haiti called MINUSTA. They are there to help with security, training police and building a judicial system. They ran the election and assist in development. Everyone seemed very committed to taking advantage of a relatively stable government to help build the physical and political infrastructure that is necessary to make Haiti the jewel of the Caribbean that it can be.
I told everyone I spoke to that the Congressional elections were good news for Haiti. I have spoken to my colleagues who will now be in charge of our international programs, and all of them are enthusiastic about helping Haiti. Every hour of every day, $12 million taxpayer dollars are being spent in Iraq, and what good is that doing? Our security, not to mention the health and prosperity of people around the globe, including Haiti in our own hemisphere, would be much greater if that money were directed toward lifting people, rather than invading them. Peace is much less expensive than war.
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