JUST LAND GOVERNANCE IN HAITI

The governance of land and other natural resources vital to life is a global problem with a history starting before history was written.  The abuse of land and real property rights is a problem in the both developed counties and in the least developed countries.  I have struggled with the governance of land in my own career as a "dirt" lawyer serving urban community development organizations. When my attention was turned to Haiti a few years ago, that country's historic land governance problems were at the top of the list of things I began to study.  I found that land governance problems in Haiti and in poor Cleveland neighborhoods have some interesting similarities.

Take food security, for instance.  In both rural Haiti and urban neighborhoods there are "food deserts."  Recently, people in those places have started to grow good food for themselves within a few miles of where it is consumed.   Forest Hill Church in Cleveland Heights, for instance, uses a bit of its land now to grow food crops to supplement the diets of people in their neighborhood who suffer from food insecurity part of every month.  Urban gardening programs abound in this region and operate on a commercial scale in some instances.

In our visits to Haiti in the past two years, we saw post-secondary school agronomy education, agricultural experimental and demonstration farming, and the development of small villages committed to self-sustaining food production.  Haitian agronomists are leading a renaissance of sustainable, small-scale farming in order to achieve a safe and secure food supply with high nutrition value for more of its people.  The country cannot depend on the goodness of foreign powers to be trading partners in food products.

I would like to introduce readers to an excellent article on this topic written by Kysseline Cherestal, an attorney and senior policy analyst at ActionAid USA, an international agency advocating for the land rights of poor and marginalized people around the world.  (She is the daughter of Dr. Kyss and Nicole Jean-Mary and Ralph Jean-Mary's sister.)  Read her article.

Kysseline Cherestal

We dare not avoid the part of her article, and her subsequently published report for the anniversary of the earthquake, describing the misguided "help" from the US in grabbing land from subsistence farmers without fair compensation in order to score a quick and highly visible success in putting up an industrial park.  US policy is complicit it the exploitation of landholders whose capacity to defend their rights and interests are miniscule compared to the power of politically dominant foreign companies looking for cheap production.  It is also complicit in the use of agricultural policies that favor large corporate farms to the detriment of the internal food chain in Haiti and other poor countries.  We need to pay more attention to our country's responsibility for injustice in land governance resulting from our policies even while we are acting in merciful generosity to provide earthquake relief.

A good start for anyone interested in this issue would be Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure in Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Scarcity.  This report issued in 2012 by the UN is the work product of an international study and an attempt to generate discussion of this issue because it is so largely ignored at this time.

The Haiti Law Property Group published its Haiti Land Transaction Manual in 2012 to assist post-earthquake reconstruction programs deal with the difficult land tenure and transfer processes that held stopped many important building projects because it was impossible to get a clear title to the land.  In an article earlier this month, Elizabeth Blake, a leading force in the Haiti Law Property Group and Senior Vice President of Habitat for Humanity, reported on the current success in construction in Port au Prince aided by the use of the Manual.  She also said a second manual will be published in collaboration with the Haitian government later this year.  This manual will focus on securing land rights, addressing ownership, leasehold, rent-to-own and other rights on public and private land.  This is encouraging news.

Prime Minister, Laurent Lamothe, officially launched land reform in Haiti in 2012.  The news report of this program outlined a monumental task of both technical and legislative work taking a decade to accomplish.  Without this kind of reform, though, development and agricultural improvements will proceed at a very slow pace, if at all.  Let's pray that the government can sustain its necessary leadership on this vital march toward more just land governance in Haiti.

 I have corresponded with Kysseline about this blog posting and she  urges North Americans to do three things: (1) call on the US Congress to pass the Assessing Progress in Haiti Act of 2013;   (You can send a letter from this website to Senate Majority Leader, Reid, with a copy to Senator Sherrod Brown.  http://cqrcengage.com/actionaid/app/sign-petition?2&engagementId=38938.)  (2) We should also call on the US government to respect the commitments it made by endorsing the Voluntary Guidelines in 2012;    (3) Finally, we should urge support of a Haitian community-led process for the implementation of the Guidelines in Haiti.  The Government of Haiti also endorsed the Guidelines as a member of the Committee on World Food Security.

These initiatives are now are among the best tools to uphold the land rights and food security in Haiti.  

--kjl

JUSTICE FOR GARMENT WORKERS IN HAITI

On January 11, 2010 the NPR News Hour ran this story (click on the link) describing a new hope for economic development of Haiti's garment industry.  Political and social violence had been quelled, governmental stability was returning, and closed factories were opening and retooling for a new beginning.  The Haitian garment industry was at the pinnacle of this hope and a major attraction for new investment from the US and other countries.  Haiti had expectations of large-scale investment for its economy as well as for just wages and working conditions for its garment workers.  It had the attention and leadership of US ex-President, Bill Clinton.  As the Prime Minister said, Haiti was ready to move from misery to poverty.  Better conditions were just around the corner.  What could go wrong?

On January 12, the very next day after this optimistic report was aired, the earthquake hit.  It was as if the nation's whole economy had a stroke.  Jobs and the promise of jobs died in an instant.  Haitians had no money to put into the broken economic system.  The emergency distribution of relief further damaged the broken system for delivering food, goods and services.

Now, four years later, what has happened to the hopes and promises for development of a thriving and fair garment industry in that country?

As 2013 came to a close, a spate of reports on the conditions of Haiti's garment industry made for grim reading.  Multiple watchdog agencies reported on illegal conditions -- wage theft, sexual harassment,  and poor safety and sanitation standards that violated not only Haiti's laws but also the promises of manufacturing companies supplying big retailers in the US and other countries where Haiti-made apparel is sold.  Brands like Gap, Gildan, Hanes, Kohl’s, Levi’s, Russell, Target, VF, and Walmart are buyers of garments from Haiti and they are well-aware of this law-breaking.  Yet they continue with business as usual, profiting from the lower prices that they can obtain from factories that abuse and cheat Haiti's workers of legally owed wages.

One of the situations described with particular dismay is the new garment factory built after the earthquake in a new $224 million industrial park in Caracol, at place located in the northern part of Haiti far away from Port au Prince.  This venture was controversial from the beginning because it took productive farming land away from subsistence farmers to put up a huge factory in a place with no social or civic structure to provide for health, safety, security or education for thousands of workers transplanted there.  The industrial park was heralded as the centerpiece of US earthquake recovery efforts brought about under the leadership of President Bill Clinton.  It turns out to be a leading practitioner of wage cheating and it fell short of other promises, such as the numbers to be employed and living conditions to be provided for workers.

The usual battalions of corporate public relations suits all responded promptly to the barrage of damning reports and corrections have been promised.  (See the Fruit of the Loom statement below.) Indeed, the most promising thing for improvement of Haitian garment workers is the perseverance of those watchdog agencies who will surely keep the glare of public attention on the Haitian garment industry and its assurances.  The fight for better working conditions and fair wages is very incremental and requires both persistence and resilience.  Justice will not come like a bolt of lightening; it will take years.

Refusing to buy clothing made by exploited Haitian workers is not a solution that helps the workers.  Haiti, after all, is not the only country whose garment workers are exploited for bigger profits and a few boycotts will not help poor Haitians.  For most of them, being exploited at work is better than no job at all when there are malnourished children to feed, no other legal means of employment and 70% unemployment.

I will not presume to advise fellow consumers on how to behave.  But we consumers do at least need to be aware of the unjust and broken system of which we are a critical part.  We must support honest watchdog agencies in the role they play.  We must encourage corporate giants to reduce their inhumanity, support government policies that protect the weak and wage-dependent from predatory business practices.  We must consume with mindfulness of the role foreign factory workers have in the garment industry when we make purchases.  We must humbly recognize ourselves as both part of the problem and part of the solution in this matter.

Notes:

    1.  Thanks to Diana Woodbridge for inspiring the research for this entry.

    2.  Workers Rights Consortium, Stealing From The Poor: Wage Theft In The Haitian Apparel Industry.  [WRC is a group representing nearly 200 universities that monitors factories making college logo apparel.]

   3.  Better Work Haiti, Garment Industry 7th Biannual Report Under The Hope II Legislation.
[Better Work Haiti is an innovative partnership of the International Labour Organization and the International Finance Corporation that aims to improve working conditions and promote competitiveness in global supply chains.  The US Congress passed the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement (HOPE and HOPE II) Acts, which allowed for duty-free treatment for textiles, apparel and other goods from Haiti to the US.  Better Work Haiti provides technical assistance for compliance by both the government of Haiti and the US with the provisions of the legislation, including protection of workers' rights to fair wages and safe, clean working conditions.]

   4.  Statement of Fruit of the Loom in response to reports that its suppliers in Haiti were violating the rights of Haitian garment workers.

We are greatly concerned about the recent report from the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) regarding the issue of minimum wage compliance in the Haitian garment industry.  It is our view that the clear intent of Haiti's minimum wage law is for production rates to be set in such a manner as to allow workers to earn at least 300 gourdes ($7.07 USD) for 8 hours of work in a day.  Based on our independent investigation, we concur with the WRC that the garment industry in Haiti generally falls short of that standard.

Fruit of the Loom’s Code of Conduct requires, at minimum, strict compliance with applicable laws. With respect to the Haiti minimum wage regulations, we are committed to ensuring that our Haitian suppliers come into compliance with the law of Haiti. For purposes of measuring wage compliance, we will utilize the standard that has been employed by the ILO/IFC Better Work Haiti program. We plan to engage with the WRC and other relevant stakeholders, including worker representatives in Haiti, to address this issue. We recognize that remedies for past violations will be a topic of this discussion.
For further information, please contact Stan Blankenship, Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility, at 270-781-6400.

--kjl

THE GREAT DEBATE: PATRON OR PARTNER

Some members of the FHC Haiti 2013 team have published significant personal memories about the trip and its impact on their lives.  Those can be seen in this previous post of videos.  Here now is mine.

It was November 1, a national holiday in Haiti, and that morning as I was standing on the road in front of the headquarters of Haiti Outreach in Pignon waiting for my ride, a young man approached and introduced himself.  We chatted briefly in Kreyol until he suggested we move under the shade of a tree and switch to English.  He had something serious to talk about.

My new friend said he and his father, a minister, ran a school for poor children in their church.  He showed me pictures of youngsters and of his family.  He then proposed that I assist their work with money for food for the children at the school.  His presentation was excellent, gracious and direct, qualities I could appreciate as a professional grant supplicant.  I was also humbled by the fact that he was asking for my help in my language while I could not conduct a substantive conversation in either of the two languages he commanded.

I responded to his request that I had neither institutional nor personal resources at my disposal to provide for more than a meal or two for a group of children.  Then I took the occasion to ask what the school could do to enable the children to be fed with resources of their own making, a more permanent solution.  After all, I asked, is it not better to acquire the skill of fishing than to depend on the charity of others to get one's fish day by day?

His reply to me was quick and sure.  It is not possible, he said, for starving people to learn how to fish or learn anything.  One must survive first before one can develop capacities for future benefit. The children he was pleading for needed to be fed now or they would starve.  This was indeed a strong response to my question.  Of course, in the circumstances I had no way to verify how close the children were to starving; but in rural Haiti one can see malnourishment on all sides, even in the countryside where food is grown and sold.  Since I had no intention of giving him money, asking for verification of the need and assurances of his management and accountability was impudent.

I sought instead to ask this eloquent and capable supplicant what kind of help would benefit Haiti the most, charity which satisfied the need of a moment or partnership in developing permanent capacity for healthy living within Haiti.  Haiti, I suggested, would remain poor and dependent on outsiders until it developed the capacity to meet its most critical health and safety needs.  I pointed to the nearby Haiti Outreach offices with its trucks and equipment, and asked if helping villages obtain and manage their own safe drinking water was not making permanent improvements in the lives of people.

My young friend's response was disheartening.  He asserted that developing community owned and managed clean water sources was a hustle that only helped those who were on the organization's payroll. Americans who sent their money for this work were not helping Haiti's most needy, he said, but were instead enriching and enhancing only those who installed wells.  This view was surely not that of the people across Haiti who are now getting clean water daily from a community owned and managed well or those community leaders I saw while I was there working to build their skills and capacities for managing a well of their own.  I read the reports and saw for myself what community development for living water means in Haiti where half the population does not have it.

We had come to a point in our debate where we could only make variations on our respective themes.  He was seeking an immediate grant of cash and my trust that it would be managed and used responsibly for the intended beneficiaries.  I was advocating an investment in personal and community capacity building so that all those who benefited would take responsibility for sustaining and renewing what was used.  We did not resolve our differences before we parted.  I could not and would not accept the role of patron of one or two feasts for his kids and he could not and would not accept the idea of a partnership aimed at reducing the dependence of Haitians on foreign resources.

It is possible that neither of our positions in this debate provide a practical solution for chronic national poverty. He is not wrong to say that people have to eat to live and develop.  I, on the other hand, don't see how people depending on begging alone can count on surviving.  There needs to be a way to participate with communities in Haiti to advance their health, stability and wellbeing; participating not as patrons and beneficiaries, but collaborating as partners.  I can't say that I know yet what that means for me as an individual.  I am fairly sure that people in Haiti who would depend on me for money are in deep trouble.  But is there something else that I have to offer as a partner in community?  What resources can I offer?  Am I open to receiving help in this partnership?

The debate along the road in Pignon is not over for me.  For now, though, I am inclined to be a partner more than a patron.  I can seek for justice with Haitians who see so little of it; I can remember that mercy is something both to give and to seek; and I can trust that, whether I realize it or not, something good will eventually come of my efforts.   I'll need to keep my eyes open for a vision.

--kjl