Ban Ki Moon hawks Apaid-like sweatshop jobs as panacea

here UN's Ban Ki Moon hawks Apaid-like sweatshop jobs as panacea for
famine-stricken Haiti's "development":


HLLN reminds Clinton, CGI and Ban Ki Moon: For Haiti, Assembly Jobs Aren't the
Whole Answer, Haiti needs MORE food sovereignty and environment rehabilitation
*


The assembly industry has not and will not help build Haiti's national economy,
which should most naturally be agriculture. Ban Ki Moon's neo-liberal economic
political plan for Haiti is as exploitative as his UN occupationbrought on by
sweatshop kingpin Andre Apaid for just this very purpose. Why would Haitians
collaborate with UN's Ban Ki Moon in their own exploitation?


HLLN reminds Pres. Clinton, CGI and Ban Ki Moon: For Haiti, Assembly Jobs
Aren't the Whole Answer, Haiti needs food sovereignty and environment
rehabilitation

Ezili Dantò's Note:
Some of us were ENCOURAGED to hear President Clinton in addition to Wyclef, Ban
Ki Moon, et al. would visit Haiti. But, but, then we notice the emphasis is the
same ol' same ol' - Export that leaves NO CAPITAL investments in Haiti and that
have failed in the past to help authentic Haitian overhaul progress and, in
fact, led to slums like Site Soley when the foreign assembly plants pack up!
Haiti needs more - as below detailed by Mcguire and in HLLN policy statement to
the Obama Team.

See BBC article entitled "Ban and Clinton throw spotlight on Haiti" By Laura
Trevelyan dated, Port-au-Prince, March 10, 2009
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7934136.stm), stating that President
Clinton and Ban Ki Moon are relying on foreign economist Paul Collier's policy
paper on Haiti, promoting low-low wage assembly plant (Sweatshop) jobs in Haiti
where the Haitian workers (mostly Haitian women) would assemble US clothes,
tariff free to the investors exporting said clothes into the US textile market
. According to credible reports, it seems this is their VISION of the best way
to "help" Haiti if Haiti's electricity is cheaper and Haiti's port are put
under better management!

If this is the totality of the Obama Team's and President Clinton's VISION for
"TRANSFORMING" Haiti, we Haitians and our members at HLLN remind President
Clinton that this sort of US "partnership" hasn't worked in 30-years.

President Obama, President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative,
ought to be looking more closely at HLLN policy statement, instead of this
Dewine/Collier same old, same old. Haiti needs a new US-Partnership where
transnational U.S. corporations in Haiti - ie. Sweatshops - abide by Haitian
labor, human rights, minimum wage and environmental laws. Haiti needs cash
crops, food and energy immediately.

Comprehensive long term solutions means fair trade with Haiti, trade that
doesn't further degrade the environment, repress workers rights or contain
Haiti in poverty, ignore Haiti's most essential domestic needs for food
production. It means Haiti needs assistance in domestic agriculture, a stop to
deforestation, investment in infrastructure, construction of flood-resistant
bridges, roads and investment in such renewable energy as biofuels, wind
turbines, solar, water and micro-hydro.

Most of all - Haiti needs food sovereignty. That means, Haiti most critical
needs are environmental rehabilitation and increased food production and that
means, as Robert Maguire wrote, in a September 12, 2008 Washington Post
commentary, For Haiti, Assembly Jobs Aren't the Whole Answer.

Haiti needs a US trade, aid and investment culture that is committed to
integrating all levels of corporate responsibility - economic, social and
environmental - in their entire range of operations; and, where U.S.
corporations are also patronizing the informal sector of local service
providers and generally not exporting all profits and capital but committing to
paying equitable custom duties, not dumping assembly goods for export, or
dumping subsidized US foods, but investing in mutually beneficial trade, aid
and investment, with reasonable percentage of their Haiti profits put back into
Haiti. (See, Economic proposals that make sense for the reality of Haiti).

Ezili's HLLN urges that U.S. investment in Haiti focus on supporting local
people-centered, self-sustaining projects to rebuild the flood-devastated
former bread basket areas of Haiti in the Artibonite valley and Plaine du Sud.
According to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations, (FAO), the rice bowl areas in Haiti alone, are capable of producing
food to feed 10 million people. Haiti has a population of 8.5 people and thus,
Haiti has the capacity to feed itself. The U.S. should eschew old failed USAID
and State Department policies, including voiding the the CBI, OPIC, SEZ
agreements, assembly plants, et al...and support this capacity for food
sovereignty. For, these unfair, unbalanced and over-reaching US agreements and
policies with Haiti are extremely one-sided, take morally repugnant advantage
of Haiti's weak governments, lack of strong allies and have only proven to
promote famine, hunger, endless debt and political instability as evidenced by
the April 2008 food riots that forced the resignation of the Alexis government
in Haiti. (Go to: What Haitian Americans Ask of the New US Congress and
President ).

Ezili Danto/HLLN, March 10, 2009