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Haiti
Women's
voices from and on Haiti
Haiti's Occupation
by Amy Wilentz
"American
occupation of Haiti has begun again, now that Jean-Bertrand Aristide
has been neatly pushed out. Again, there are 3,000 foreign troops on
Haitian soil. Again, the Haitian premier has been handpicked by outsiders.
And again, the Haitian people have been excluded from their own governance..."
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040419&s=wilentz
Also by Amy Wilentz:
comment | Posted March 4, 2004
Coup in Haiti by Amy Wilentz
"For those
who know Haitian history, this has been a time of eerie, unhappy déjà
vu. Part of the pain is to see the elected president coerced out of
office by heavy-handed pressure from the United States and France, accompanied
by a show of force and the threat of a blood bath. But to also hear
that he's been spirited off to a secret location is to be bluntly reminded
of the fate of the fabled leader of Haiti's revolution, former slave
and stable boy Toussaint L'Ouverture, who was entrapped by the French,
bound, and hustled away from Haiti on a ship, to die in solitary confinement
in a fortress prison in the Jura mountains in France..."
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040322&s=wilentz
Some
Statistics on Haiti · The richest 1% of the population controls
nearly half of all of Haiti’s wealth. · Haiti has long ranked as the
poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and is the fourth poorest
country in the world. · Haiti ranks 146 out of 173 on the Human Development
Index.* · Life expectancy is 52 years for women and 48 for men*. · Adult
literacy is about 50%.* · Unemployment is about 70%.* · 85% of Haitians
live on less than $1 US per day.* · Haiti ranks 38 out of 195 for under-five
mortality rate.* *Source: “Investigating the Effects of Withheld Humanitarian
Aid,” a report of the Haiti Reborn/Quixote Center.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) returned from Haiti on February
10, 2004. She held a press conference the next day in which she made
the following statement, excerpted in the American Friends Service Committee's
Peacework
Magazine:
http://www.afsc.org/pwork/0403/040306.htm
Insurrection in the Making: A MADRE Backgrounder on the Crisis in Haiti
by Yifat Susskind, Associate Director, February 2004
" A political crisis that has been brewing in Haiti since 2000
exploded during the second week of February 2004. Members of an armed
movement seeking to overthrow Haiti’s President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
went on a rampage in a dozen Haitian towns, killing more than 60 people.
The towns remain under siege by criminal gangs led by former paramilitary
members..."
http://www.madre.org/country_haiti_crisis.html
WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY RESOURCES: HAITI
Civil Society and NGO Reports, Papers and Statements | UN Documents
| Government Statements and Reports | Books, Journals and Articles
http://www.peacewomen.org/resources/Haiti/haitiindex.html
A listing of women's
groups in Haiti is at the Peacewoman site:
http://www.peacewomen.org/contacts/americas/haiti/hai_index.html
The United Nation's
UNIFEM website does not have updated information as of mid-April 2004,
but there is much good background on the situation of women in Haiti:
"...Haiti ranks
the lowest on UNDP’s Gender Development Index (GDI) outside of Sub-Saharan
Africa and has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the hemisphere...
Chronic unrest and violence have had a severe impact on women’s ability
to improve their political and economic security, especially as previous
regimes targeted women and women leaders as a means of terrorizing the
populace. Nonetheless, Haitian women have actively protested the unrest
that has inhibited development on their Island. Furthermore, Haitian
diaspora women remain active in the struggle for the realization of
Haitian women’s human rights. However, the situation in Haiti has improved
little over the years. Ironically, bicentennial celebrations were hampered
by ongoing protests against the current regime..."
http://womenwarpeace.org/haiti/haiti.htm
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