HAITI: PROGRESSIVE CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS SHUT OUT OF RECONSTRUCTION PLANNING.

The statement says that this sidelining of the progressive civil society organizations representing the poor majority in Haiti means that the post-earthquake (see NotiSur, 2010-01-21) reconstruction plan "fails to address sustainable development needs" and "focuses on restoring old development plans."  
  
Haitian progressives see the post-earthquake period as an opportunity to break with the failed economic and political systems of the past. They say it is time to "begin an alternative process aimed at defining a new national project, including strategies to overcome exclusion, political and economic dependency, and poverty."  
  
Repeating a failed strategy  
  
One of the most contentious aspects of the PDNA is the clear intent to press ahead with the pre-earthquake proposal to base Haiti's economic development on establishing new free trade zones for garment assembly factories.  
  
International planners have long pushed for Haiti to take advantage of its vast pool of unemployed, and therefore cheap, workers and to focus on garment assembly operations to serve the North American market. Such an approach would, according to according to these planners, permit Haiti to become the 'Taiwan of the Caribbean.'  
  
Under the dictatorship of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier (1971-1986), in the 1970s as many as 100,000 workers were employed in the assembly operations sector, but since then the sector has declined in the face of deteriorating infrastructure, an increasingly unreliable energy supply, and competition from China.  
  
A major initiative to revitalize the garment assembly sector began several years ago when the US Congress passed a law giving garments assembled in Haiti duty-free access to the US market. Supporters of the 2006 HOPE (Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement) Act said it would create conditions for a rapid expansion of the garment assembly sector and provide work for tens of thousands of workers.  
  
Expectations that the legislation would make a quick impact in Haiti were not realized, but in early 2009 the initiative was given a major boost by the UN. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's economic advisor, Paul Collier, and UN special envoy to Haiti, former President Bill Clinton, made export processing the centerpiece of their recommendations to revive the Haitian economy.  
  
Collier was explicit about the importance of garment assembly for Haiti. In a specially commissioned UN report on the Haitian economy, Collier wrote, "In garments the largest single component of costs is labor. Due to its poverty and relatively unregulated labor market, Haiti has labor costs that are fully competitive with China, which is the global benchmark."  
  
For his part, Clinton enthusiastically championed the cause of the garment assembly factory owners in Haiti and has frequently called on foreign investors to put their money into garment-assembly operations in Haiti.  
  
Now the PDNA is taking up the cause, with repeated mentions of the need to fund "infrastructure for production (industrial zones, free-trade zones, etc.)." In one of the only sections dealing with longer-term economic proposals, the PDNA declares that the Haitian state will implement policies "to favor the establishment of manufacturing industries, free zones, industrial parks, and zones of tourist development."  
  
Need for input from grassroots organizations  
  
Progressive organizations in Haiti, however, are staunchly opposed to prioritizing the garment assembly sector, saying that it fails to stimulate any significant activity in the wider economy. As none of the materials assembled in the factories originate in Haiti--everything is imported--and, as none of the end products assembled in the factories are sold in Haiti--everything is exported--the linkages with other parts of the economy are almost non-existent.  
  
Since most of the building materials used to construct the factories are imported, as are the machines inside the factories, the garment assembly sector's only contributions to the Haitian economy are the profits made by the factory owners and the wages paid to the factory workers.  
  
Haiti's private sector is dominated by a coterie of business leaders who are notorious for their unwillingness to reinvest their profits in Haiti and for their preference to spend money on imported goods, holidays outside the country, and sending their children abroad to study.  
  
As for factory workers, the wages that they earn are so low--US$3 to US$4 a day--there is little impact on spending power. To make matters worse, the average workers spend the majority of their wages on food and transport to and from work. More than half the food the nation consumes is imported, as is all the fuel for transport.  
  
In a country where most people are underemployed and many have no work at all, proponents of the garment assembly sector insist that even low-paid jobs are better than nothing.  
  
Activists working to help organize workers so that they can stand up for their rights have a different angle. For example, Camille Chalmers of the progressive coalition Plateforme Haitienne de Plaidoyer pour un Developpement Alternatif (Alternative Development Advocacy Platform, PAPDA) reports that many workers at the newest free trade zone in Ouanaminthe, in northeast Haiti, find the working conditions intolerable for more than a few months.  
  
"Lots of workers we talk to say that, although they had higher wages, they decided to stop working at the factory because of exploitation, because their individual lives were totally ruined, because there was no way to have a family life, and because of their indignation about the way women are [sexually] exploited."  
  
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