Haiti is ranked the most food-insecure country in the
Western Hemisphere. Haiti now relies on food imports for 60 per cent of food
consumption, including as much as 80 percent of all rice. Decades of farmland
being used for mass export mono-crops like sugar, mangos and coffee leave less
land for smaller scale self-sustenance farming.
In the wake of the 2010 earthquake that claimed the lives of up to
300,000 people, more than $10 billion was pledged by the international
community. Of that, only about $4 billion has been allocated, but not all of it
spent. And of the money that was allocated toward economic development, it
tends to benefit the giver more than the receiver.
"The best way to help
someone is to listen to what they want," Prof. Yasmine Shamsie of Wilfrid
Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., says. "In Haiti, a little less help
would be useful."
Caracol Industrial Park is a prime example. In 2012, then
U.S. secretary of State Hillary Clinton — along with Bill Clinton, who was the
UN special envoy to Haiti — oversaw the official opening of Caracol. The
industrial park was financed by $224 million US in subsidies from mostly
American partners. The biggest employer at the park is Sae-A, a Korean clothing
manufacturer that supplies major U.S. retailers like Walmart, the Gap and Old
Navy. But to get the industrial park open, 450 farmers who relied on the land
for subsistence had to be removed from their fertile plots. Some were only
given five days' notice before the bulldozers moved in to clear the land.
Sae-A currently employs just over 5,000 factory workers —
mostly women under age 30 — at minimum wage, which is roughly $5 US per day.
Chérestal says a living wage that would provide three square meals a day in
Haiti would be at least double that. "People take these jobs because there
are no other options," says Chérestal, who points out that many employees
don't last more than a year or two. Some of the women she spoke to, took the
job out of desperation. "This is not a job to lift themselves out of
poverty. It's just a job that is allowing them to survive right now."
The entire Caracol Industrial Park currently employs 5,500
people — far short of the original goal (the factory zone was estimated to
provide upward of 60,000 jobs.)
PhD graduate Marylynn Steckley spent nearly six years with
her young family living in Haiti, both as an aid worker and as a researcher. "I'm
now struggling to see what the good ways of helping are," Steckley says.
"Wealthy nations continue to cause disaster, poverty in Haiti. And the
path to understanding is looking at how we contribute to that
destruction." She explains "Caracol is a prime example of bad help. The
interests of the market, the interest of foreigners are prioritized over the
majority of people who are impoverished in Haiti. The idea is that Haitian
employees continue to make very minimum wages that barely provide for their
subsistence while foreign companies extract the profits from their
labour."
Haitian activist Harry Nicolas, who for decades has promoted
local food production in the country as a solution to food insecurity. "We
need to resolve our own problems," Nicolas says. "I would one day
like to see a Haitian give aid to a foreigner." There is a domino effect
triggered by import-dependence, Nicolas says. "Haiti is a small country
that doesn't have a responsible state that can control what comes in. So we are
all exposed to whatever comes in, and its foreigners making money. And imported
food discourages Haitians from planting."
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