Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 13 avril 2021

 Haiti wants to ‘change the narrative’ about the country. OK, start with COVID vaccines | Editorial

BY THE MIAMI HERALD EDITORIAL BOARD

APRIL 09, 2021 01:30 PM, UPDATED 2 HOURS 27 MINUTES AGO

Haiti is already plagued by enough issues. Deep political turmoil. Extreme poverty. Armed gangs terrorizing people. A wave of kidnappings for ransom.

And now, this: Not a single COVID vaccine has been administered in the country.

Five weeks after other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have started receiving vaccines through COVAX, a group backed by the World Health Organization, Haiti still hasn’t gotten any.

There are a few reasons, according to an April 9 Miami Herald story: the lack of a sufficient health infrastructure, not enough planning, logistical delays and concerns about the safety of AstraZeneca vaccines, which have faced setbacks in the United Kingdom and European Union after blood-clotting worries.

But the result is that a country of about 11 million people hasn’t even begun vaccinating its population.

So far, Haiti appears to have been lucky. The country allowed the three-day Carnival celebration to go on in February this year, even though the pre-Lenten celebration was barred in other countries across the region because of the pandemic. Many residents still do not wear masks.

Yet the country’s official COVID-19 numbers have been remarkably low.

Haiti’s foreign minister, Claude Joseph, told the Editorial Board there have been about 300 deaths. The number WHO cites is even lower: 252 confirmed deaths, with about 12,800 infections.

In a country with scarce medical facilities, those numbers are probably far from accurate, but, even so, it seems that Haiti has not been a hotspot of infection.

That is truly a blessing in a country that needs every blessing it can get.

And it’s going to need more than luck. If there is one thing we have learned in a year of pandemic, it’s that the virus isn’t easily defeated. It’s mutating, and some of those variants are more contagious and may cause more severe disease.

Cost isn’t a factor. Haiti is among 10 countries in the Americas that will receive vaccines free through COVAX.

The responsible thing for Haiti to do is get vaccines into as many arms as possible — quickly — so infections don’t suddenly blow up. Even in Florida, where 3.7 million people are now fully vaccinated, public-health experts are keeping a careful eye on the rising number of infections after spring break.

Joseph, the foreign minister, told the Board that Haiti wants to recast the prevailing narrative about the country, starting with free, fair and safe elections this year. President Jovenel Moïse has been ruling by decree for more than a year.

A peaceful and speedy transfer of power would certainly go a long way toward changing Haiti’s image.

But elections are still months off. Vaccines are available now. It’s time for the government to be open and honest about the reasons Haitians still don’t have access to them. It’s time to get vulnerable people vaccinated.

The Pan American Health Organization, or PAHO, the WHO’s Americas branch, told Herald Caribbean correspondent Jacqueline Charles that Haiti and the international community are working hard to get vaccines there as soon as possible. Good to hear.

We understand the Haitian government has many problems to solve. But a lack of vaccines doesn’t have to be one of them. If Haiti wants to change its narrative, it needs to tell its citizens — and the international community — why it hasn’t begun vaccinating its citizens against the terrible scourge of COVID-19.

Joseph said that “2021 is a crucial year for Haiti.” We couldn’t agree more. Getting vaccines to the people now is the perfect place to start — and it’s already overdue.

Gang attack in Haiti neighborhood leaves bodies, homes charred

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 April 02, 2021

They arrived unannounced, brandishing heavy artillery as they scaled the rooftops of houses, firing shots and setting homes ablaze.

While some residents managed to escape amid the billows of black smoke and tear gas, others became trapped and died inside their burning houses. The Thursday assault on residents inside the poor, pro-opposition neighborhood of Bel Air in Haiti’s capital was the third large attack in less than two years.

It occurred within walking distance of Haiti’s presidential palace and was perpetrated by gang members affiliated with Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, a fired policeman-turned-powerful gang chief who is wanted in several massacres, including the slaughter of dozens of men, women and children in a 2018 attack in Port-au-Prince’s La Saline slum.

Chérizier, who is also accused of being behind a November 2019 attack in Bel Air, called a press conference Friday where he assumed responsibility for the latest assault, casting it as a response to attacks committed against his powerful gang alliance known as G-9 and Family and Allies.

“Everyone knows that once there is an action, there will be a reaction,” said Chérizier, claiming that six of his members were killed during Thursday’s incident before rattling off their names.

In December, Chérizier and two former Haitian government officials were sanctioned by the United States for the La Saline massacre. Despite the sanction and his being wanted by the Haiti National Police, he continues to walk free.

On Friday, as the gunshots resumed and fleeing residents prepared to spend another night exposed to the elements on the sprawling Champ de Mars public plaza outside the presidential palace, it was still unclear how many had been killed or injured, and how many homes had been torched. 

“We know that there were a lot, a lot of people who were forced to abandon the area,” said Pierre Esperance, executive director of the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights, one of several groups investigating the bloody assault. “There are people who were injured, houses that were burned down, but it’s difficult right now to have a tally.”

Marie Yolene Gilles, who runs Fondasyon Je Klere, or Eyes Wide Open Foundation, said getting into the community remained impossible. Her initial investigation revealed that some residents had been burned while still inside their homes.

“It’s not prudent for people to go in there,” Gilles said, adding she could hear the shots all the way across the capital shortly after 6:30 p.m.

Gilles and Esperance, along with a community leader, said the attack had nothing to do with gang infighting. They all said it was to break the resistance of Bel Air, which is considered an opposition stronghold, and to prevent residents from taking to the streets in anti-government protests, which have increased in recent weeks.

“The attack in Bel Air is a repeat of a series of attacks by gangs close to the power in place that have been done against Bel Air. They want ... to take control of Bel Air and prevent those who are resisting the government from doing so,” Gilles said. 

The attack is also the result of the impunity that Chérizier and his fellow gang members have come to enjoy under the administration of President Jovenel Moïse, Gilles added. “They have never pursued them, they have never arrested them, they have never judged them for the crimes they have committed and they have never condemned them.”

During his press conference Chérizier defended himself against charges of human-rights abuses while also lashing out at journalists, members of Haiti’s opposition and the business sector, which he said was not interested in seeing change in Haiti. He said if one member of the alliance is attacked, then all are attacked.

Chérizier also pushed back against allegations that he and his federation of gangs wanted to take control of Bel Air for the Moïse government. He accused Haiti’s opposition of supplying guns and cash to Bel Air so residents could attack his alliance. Human rights groups have accused the government of doing the same with Chérizier and his alliance, which have been accused of being behind Haiti’s widening insecurity and alarming spike in kidnappings.

“We are not into fighting among us, we are not into kidnapping,” Chérizier said. “We made peace so that we could finish with the fighting in the ghettos. It’s because we made peace to end the fighting in the ghetto, it’s the reason why there are some... who to have political capital, are trying to destabilize G-9.

“What happened in Bel Air has nothing to do with fighting for territory, to take control of Bel Air and that’s why we attacked Bel Air,” he said, before fielding questions from journalists. 

Two residents who spoke to the Herald on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation said Thursday’s attack had been escalating for several days and came to a head when the armed men invaded the community. Both residents had their homes torched.

“They attacked us, they set houses on fire, it wasn’t just a little damage that was done in Bel Air,” said a mother of two. 

The woman said her sister was forced to run during the incident when a gang member grabbed her, threatened to rape her and the woman responded she’d rather be killed instead. “The gun got stuck and my sister ran,” said the woman, describing how the gang member tried to shoot her sister.

She refuted claims that Thursday’s assault was the result of an attack against the G-9 alliance.

“We are not involved in anything, we practically don’t go out, even to the protests,” she said. “Since the 31st of August, they started attacking us. I don’t know why.”’

A spokesperson for Haiti’s National Police did not respond to a Miami Herald request for comment. Last year, the United Nations issued a report focused on a three-day outbreak of gang violence in Bel Air on Nov. 4-6, 2019. U.N. investigators accused Haitian police of failing to protect residents from corrupt officers and gang leaders. 

At least three people died in the violence while six others were injured and 30 families were left homeless after their houses were set on fire, the U.N. said. Investigators also noted that the attacks also allegedly involved three active members of the Haiti National Police.

The U.N. accused Chérizier of being behind the attack, even though he denied involvement while offering to compensate victims who lost their homes.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article250400641.html

“Poor Rich Haiti”: How Imperialists and Local Oligarchy Have Sought to Destroy Haitian Agriculture

From Haiti, Lautaro Rivara unpacks the tired trope of “poor rich Haiti,” highlighting the role of foreign capital and local elites in the destruction of life in the countryside

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

Does the oft-repeated refrain that “Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere” explain anything? Is it a poor country or an impoverished country? Or perhaps it is unsuspectedly rich? Are its indifferent friends in the West really not interested in the country? Why then do the United States and European countries seem to be so zealous about the “Haitian thing”? In a series of notes and based on fieldwork carried out in four departments of the country, we will focus on understanding the “poor rich Haiti” and some of the initiatives of what has been called its “reconstruction” since 2010. We will discuss the economic interests of Western powers, expressed through initiatives such as industrial parks, mining operations, enclave tourism ventures, land grabbing and agricultural free zones.

Haiti’s borders are curious. The small country is bordered to the east by the Dominican Republic, dividing in two the territory of the island of Hispaniola. To the west it borders the Caribbean Sea and to the south, a forgotten maritime border with the Republic of Colombia. But what interests us here is a border that is not entirely imaginary: to the north and northeast, although the maps would like to indicate otherwise, Haiti borders the United States.

It is here, in this region, that most US economic interests – and also those of its smaller partners – are concentrated. This is the case of Canada, that peculiar North American colony that in turn colonizes others. But also those of France, Germany and other European nations. In this and the following notes, we will talk about industrial parks, mining and speculation, enclave tourism ventures, land grabbing and agricultural free trade zones. This does not include some unholy initiatives in other parts of the country, such as the seizure of entire islands, drug trafficking or tax havens where the money comes in dirty and goes out free of guilt and sin.

But it is in the northeast region of this “poor rich” country that the power enjoyed by the current de facto president, Jovenel Moïse, has been amassed. He has made this territory his personal fiefdom. His modus operandi has been land grabbing and the true foundation of his power, his economic alliances with transnational capital, both legal and extralegal.

For this, we will travel to the heart of the communities affected by what, after the devastating earthquake of 2010, has become known as the “Reconstruction of Haiti”. In this first note, we will talk – paraphrasing Eduardo Galeano – about the “Banana King” Jovenel Moïse and his numerous agricultural courtiers. But first, let’s take a look at the situation of the rural areas and the local peasantry.

Barefoot 

One out of every two inhabitants of the country lives in the countryside. But an even higher percentage of the population, around 66%, depends on and subsists in relation to rural areas and agricultural production. According to a study by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the urban population has only overtaken the rural population in the last five years, and the current difference is only about 100,000 people.

Land everywhere is finite and vital. But it is even more so in a territory covered by extensive mountain ranges, and where the agricultural frontier is receding with every meter gained by deforestation and desertification – today the country retains barely 2 percent of its original vegetation cover. It is not surprising, then, that a large part of the peasant population is poor: they are the so-called pyè atè, the “pata en tierra”, the barefoot.

For a long time, however, an unprecedentedly radical measure was at least able to guarantee Haitians a piece of land on which to produce and reproduce life. Since the revolutionary constitution of 1805, land ownership was denied to foreigners on the grounds of sovereignty and national dignity, becoming an obstacle to the full implementation of capitalism on the island. At least until the definitive abolition of this prohibition in 1915, under the mantle of the American occupation.

Today, there are around 600,000 farms in Haiti, organized in small plots – jaden – of between 0.5 and 1.8 hectares. Peasant agriculture is mostly family and traditional, but there are many different forms of land ownership, work and usage: family landowners, tenant farmers, tenant farmers, day laborers, sharecroppers, etc. The tools used are rustic, often no more than the traditional pickaxe and machete, usually without draft animals, without any kind of machinery, without chemical fertilizers, with native seeds, all under a rain-fed agricultural regime. Despite the enormous contribution of peasant agriculture to national wealth – around 25 percent of GDP – the state’s contributions to the sector are practically nonexistent.

On the other side of rural life, a select group of families, usually living abroad, as well as a handful of transnational corporations, still concentrate around half of the available land and in many cases, worse still, keep it unproductive.

A requiem for the free market

Eat what you don’t produce and don’t eat what you produce. This is the secret of the offshoring and financialized export agriculture that has been promoted in the country in recent decades. A fundamental milestone in its implementation was the policy of trade and financial liberalization imposed in the mid-1980s, with the help of the International Monetary Fund, the US State Department and the enthusiastic action of the ineffable Bill Clinton – a self-styled “friend of Haiti” whose friendship, however, nobody here wants to reciprocate.

In the mid-1990s, this policy deepened, with tariffs on rice imports falling from 35 percent to 3 percent under external pressure. In the same year, the US invested 60 billion dollars to subsidize its own rice production. So-called dumping resulted in Haiti’s production falling by over 50% from 130,000 to 60,000 tons. The selling prices of the peasantry, exposed to unfair competition with the hyper-subsidized American farmer, led to the ruin and exodus of thousands and thousands of peasants. A vicious circle of agricultural ruin, unemployment, hunger, foreign food aid, impossibility of competing with the “free” food sent to the country, and again more ruin, unemployment, hunger, etc., was generated.

As a result, Haiti went from being practically self-sufficient in the production of the staple grain of its national diet to importing it massively. Although the case of rice is the most dramatic, it is far from the only one.  The nation went from importing less than 20 percent of its food in the early 1980s to importing more than 55 percent from abroad today, mainly from the United States and the Dominican Republic.

This cycle resulted in the partial destruction of traditional peasant agriculture. Some may call it “subsistence”, but for the local peasant it was instead an agriculture of “abundance”, if we consider how trade liberalization has generalized the phenomenon of hunger today. On the other hand, the relationship between food assistance and hunger is direct, as was the case with the “Tikè Manje” program and others developed by USAID, through voucher systems that only allow the population to have access to North American products.

Agritrans S.A.: the flagship

In this scorched earth scenario, after the devastating earthquake of January 2010, the project of transnational, deterritorialized and financialized agriculture began to take shape. Transnational, due to the dominant influence of external capital, beyond the resounding publicity of certain local “entrepreneurs”. It is deterritorialized because the local space becomes a kind of non-place for the capitals that mold the territory in their image and likeness: bananas from Haiti or Guadeloupe, soya from Brazil or Paraguay, sugar cane from the Caribbean or European beet sugar, etc., are all the same. And it is financialized because what this agriculture tends to produce is not food, but foreign currency. In short, it is an agriculture that satisfies only the hunger for capital accumulation.

A cautious detour with a good local guide allowed us to enter the lands of Agritrans S.A., the company of de facto president Jovenel Moïse, which became famous for its involvement in one of the largest embezzlements of public funds in the country’s history, amounting to a quarter of the national GDP. This was confirmed by Senate investigations – before its closure in January 2020 – and by the Supreme Audit Court, before its reduction, by presidential decree, to nothing more than a mere consultative body.

The inhabitants of the Limonade and Terrier-Rouge area, in the North-East Department, are in awe of all things related to this fabled expanse of land. And for those who feel neither fear nor respect, there are armed guards to remind them. They told us to stop and threatened to shoot as soon as the motorbike we were traveling on around their perimeter on National Route 6 slowed down. Unable to film or photograph the accesses, we had to clandestinely enter the estate through some twisted wire fences on the side of a canal. Surprisingly, a barren plain then spread out before us. Whether because of the environmental damage resulting from intensive production without crop rotation, or perhaps because the tenure of these lands today serves more the assertion of local power than the process of real accumulation, we saw not even a trace of a cultivated field. Today, Agritrans S.A. is a huge, uncultivated estate, surrounded by crowds of peasants who cannot even get access to a “handkerchief of land”, as the locals eloquently put it.

The “Nourribio” project was set up here in 2013, on the land of the man who would later become the country’s president. The 1,000 hectares in front of us were donated for a project that envisaged the intensive production of bananas, mainly for export to Western countries. It also took the form of a free zone, exempt from taxes and other charges. The land for its establishment was expropriated from 3,000 peasants and granted in concession for a renewable term of 25 years. The aforementioned promises of employment fell far short of expectations: only 200 people were being employed, according to informationfrom 2014. And the people who lost land? The small amount of their compensation was spent on the basic necessities of everyday life. With no land to work or produce, their “beneficiaries” soon found themselves unemployed, expelled to the capital, expelled abroad, or reduced to starvation, if not a combination of all of the above.

According to the specialist Georges Eddy Lucien, in the face of the banana production crisis in the French overseas departments (Guadeloupe and Martinique), “the Northeast – of Haiti – appears in the eyes of investors and international institutions as an ideal alternative territory, where production costs (labor, available land) are much lower…”. The impoverishment of Haitian workers has meant that the wages of an agricultural worker can be 25 times lower – 25 times! Not to mention if we compare it with the average wages of a Frenchman or a North American.

History is a boomerang. The first shipment of Agritrans bananas arrived at the port of Antwerp in Belgium in 2015. The same port that flourished during the slave trade and during the reign of Leopold II. A century ago, thousands of kilos of ivory and rubber, the product of slave exploitation in the Belgian Congo, arrived there. Today, it is bananas from Haiti, produced by one of the most impoverished workforces on the planet.

Operation dispossession

However, at least the construction of Agritrans S.A. involved mechanisms that we will call quasi-legal – although not moral – through the expropriation and compensation of peasant properties, measures taken perhaps because of the international visibility of the project.

But the policy of land grabbing has deepened in recent years, according to the leaders of the main peasant organizations during a recent colloquium on the subject held in the central region. There, for example, the national government ceded by decree no less than 8,600 hectares of fertile land to the Apaid family, one of the richest in the country. Another agricultural free trade zone is supposed to be built there, but this time for the production and export of stevia for the multinational Coca-Cola

But back to the Northeast. After long walks along impassable rural roads, flooded by rain, mud and state neglect, we were able to visit several communities that have suffered and are today facing the dispossession of their lands by local landowners, foreign companies and armed gangs.

In Terrier Rouge, Irené Cinic Antoine of the “Small planters” movement told us that she has owned a large plot of 6,000 hectares of land since 1986. In 1995, under the progressive government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the process to legalize their tenure began. Since then, the common lands have been divided between agriculture, charcoal trees and livestock. Their ownership rights were even published in the official state newspaper, but the documents were later disappeared by anonymous hands.

We also talk to Christiane Fonrose and her husband, as they stoke the fire on the mountain of earth inside which burns the wood that will be turned into charcoal. It is one of the few remaining means of survival in the region, although its ecological costs are well known to all, particularly to the peasantry. From his unshakeable faith, Fonrose tells us: “The land is God’s thing, which God created for us. Before creating his children, God created the earth. (…) But then they took the earth out of our hands. Today we have nowhere to plant, nowhere to graze some small animals, the children cannot go to school (…) We are in a very difficult situation”.

We were also able to visit peasant organizations in Grand Basin who are currently resisting the permanent hostility of invisible actors who are trying to take over land that was ceded to them by the state, again during the Aristide era. After another long trek along the difficult rural roads, our interview had to be conducted in the pouring rain, as even the roofs and doors of the small house on the plot were stolen. Here, on the edge of mineral-rich mountains, 1,500 organized peasants have been able to work 148 kawo of land (about 200 hectares) to produce sugar cane, maize, manioc and even honey and kleren – a peasant sugar cane brandy – in a sovereign and agro-ecological way.

A little over a year ago, a heavily armed group broke in, disrupting their crops, stealing or killing their animals, destroying fences, buildings and their meager agricultural implements. Evidently these were neither neighbors nor amateurs, as the operation involved the deployment of expensive bulldozers.  Even today, the land that was taken remains unproductive, and the peasants are constantly threatened not to try to recover it. So far, no state body has given them any response. “Without the land, outside the land, we peasants are worthless. We voted for them ourselves, but it seems that they don’t need us anymore,” concludes Antoine.

Today there are barely 350 people left, including only a handful of young people: most of them have been forced to migrate to the capital Port-au-Prince or even abroad. In the long siege they have been suffering since then. The National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INARA) has hardly dared to take sides with them. Coincidentally, according to recent reports, the Moïse government is seeking to eliminate this body in the new constitution it is now preparing. According to Wilson Messidor, leader of MOPAG, the project to dispossess them of their land would be closely linked to the mining resources in the area, and to the construction of the so-called villages, semi-closed residential neighborhoods that USAID is building for the workers in the free trade zones.

USAID appears, in fact, as the de facto civil authority in these territories, and its projects are constantly growing and multiplying, as indicated by the numerous signs on the roadsides. According to an anonymous Cuban engineer, the US mega-cooperation organization operates through loans and projects, indebting the state and the communities, in order to guarantee control of strategic areas for their water and mineral resources.

It matters little, following Eduardo Galeano’s metaphor, whether the monarch is King Banana, Queen Stevia or King Manufacture. Haiti continues to be determined by the blessings of nature and the curses of those who dominate history. We will continue, in the next note, to unravel the mysteries of this “poor rich country” which, in the international division of labor, has been subjected to the task of exporting poverty and importing humanitarian aid. We will talk about the export processing zones and the bizarre project to turn Haiti into the “Taiwan of America”..

Lautaro Rivara is a sociologist, researcher and poet. As a trained journalist, he participated as an activist in different spaces of communications work, covering tasks of editing, writing, radio broadcasts, and photography. During his two years in the Jean-Jacques Dessalines Brigade in Haiti he was responsible for communications and carried out political education with Haitian people’s movements in this area. He writes regularly in people’s media projects of Argentina and the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean including Nodal, ALAI, Telesur, Resumen Latinoamericano, Pressenza, la RedH, Notas, Haití Liberte, Alcarajo, and more.

All images in this article are from the author

The original source of this article is Peoples Dispatch

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Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 6 avril 2021

 U.S. House Foreign Affairs chair opposes Haiti referendum

THE HAITIAN TIMES - Queens Congressman Gregory Meeks said that the current status quo in Haiti, including an increase in kidnapping and gang violence, is unsustainable. 

Meeks, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, made the comments during a Zoom meeting which was broadcast live on Facebook on Wednesday evening. Comments and shares on social media indicate that the event was viewed by more than 400 people, including members of the Haitian community.“I will continue to urge the Department of State to use their voice and vote within [international] institutions to ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are not spent in support of this referendum,” said Meeks, a Democrat and member of the Congressional Black Caucus, during the town hall. Meeks and several other members of Congress have been critical of Moise this year, going so far as to challenge the U.S. State Department’s position by calling for a transitional government. 

They were live on Facebook when an armed man stormed in and kidnapped them in Haiti

BY JACQUELINE CHARLES

                  For Haiti, it was a new low.

                  Four people, including a pastor and a well-known pianist, were kidnapped late Thursday night — and it all played out live on social media.

                  The group, members of the Seventh-day Adventist Gospel Kreyòl Ministry Church in Diquini on the outskirts of metropolitan Port-au-Prince, were performing live on Facebook and YouTube in a studio adjacent to their church when a heavily armed man walked up to the stage and abducted them. The incident was confirmed by Dr. Gregory M. Figaro, whose father, Greger Figaro, is the founder of the ministry.

“If this can happen, then anything is possible in the country because there is no respect for any institution, whether it’s a church or school,” Figaro told the Miami Herald. “They are even grabbing people from inside their home.”

Figaro said he was present during the incident, which many Haitians initially thought was an April Fools’ joke or poorly acted skit. He heard a knock on the door, then saw a man standing in the doorway with a gun. “At first I couldn’t believe it,” he said. Then after the man was hit by the door, Figaro said, he saw the armed men enter. Figaro and others immediately ran for a small hallway inside the studio to take cover.

There were 10 to 15 people present during the livestream, he said. The armed bandits, he said, numbered between eight and nine and came in two vehicles.

“It was only after I heard one of the women, the one on the video, crying in the hallway that I realized what had just happened,” Figaro said. “When we came out of the hallway, we saw that the guys had left.”

The kidnapped individuals included two technicians, Steven Jérôme and Francisco Dorival, along with pastor Audalus Estimé and musician Welmyr Jean-Pierre. Jean-Pierre is a well-known pianist who has performed alongside Beethova Obas, a famous Haitian musician and composer based in Europe. Two women who were also in the studio managed to get away, Figaro said.

Obas immediately took to Twitter after hearing the news, asking for Jean-Pierre’s freedom in Creole and English.

“Welmyr my little brother, I know your love for this country #LibereWelmyr#welmyrjeanpierre#FreeWelmyr.”

An unmasked heavily armed man wearing a dark shirt then appears on the screen motioning for them to come with him. The woman managed to get away when the man went back to grab Estimé.

There are no words for the level of impunity and complete lack of accountability in Haiti under Moïse. I will not be quiet. Let’s stop talking nonsense about legitimate elections being possible under these circumstances. We must work for change, right now.

— Rep. Andy Levin (@RepAndyLevin) April 2, 2021

The kidnapping unfolded on Holy Thursday, during what is traditionally a deeply religious week in Haiti, with revivals in Protestant churches and Mass and processions in Catholic churches. It has shaken not just the Adventist community but Haitians in and outside of the country, who fear that the country’s proliferating armed gangs are becoming increasingly emboldened as insecurity spreads.

“The situation is hard. We should not be talking about this. We are currently in Holy Week,” Obas told the Herald from Belgium. “It’s Holy Thursday and this guy enters a church and kidnaps people in front of a camera. It’s a sanctuary, you should have respect for this place.”

GANG ATTACK IN HAITI NEIGHBORHOOD LEAVES BODIES, HOMES CHARRED.

BY JACQUELINE CHARLES

They arrived unannounced, brandishing heavy artillery as they scaled the rooftops of houses, firing shots and setting homes ablaze.

While some residents managed to escape amid the billows of black smoke and tear gas, others became trapped and died inside their burning houses. The Thursday assault on residents inside the poor, pro-opposition neighborhood of Bel Air in Haiti’s capital was the third large attack in less than two years. It occurred within walking distance of Haiti’s presidential palace and was perpetrated by gang members affiliated with Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, a fired policeman-turned-powerful gang chief who is wanted in several massacres, including the slaughter of dozens of men, women and children in a 2018 attack in Port-au-Prince’s La Saline slum.

Chérizier, who is also accused of being behind a November 2019 attack in Bel Air, called a press conference Friday where he assumed responsibility for the latest assault, casting it as a response to attacks committed against his powerful gang alliance known as G-9 and Family and Allies.

“Everyone knows that once there is an action, there will be a reaction,” said Chérizier, claiming that six of his members were killed during Thursday’s incident before rattling off their names.

In December, Chérizier and two former Haitian government officials were sanctioned by the United States for the La Saline massacre. Despite the sanction and his being wanted by the Haiti National Police, he continues to walk free.

On Friday, as the gunshots resumed and fleeing residents prepared to spend another night exposed to the elements on the sprawling Champ de Mars public plaza outside the presidential palace, it was still unclear how many had been killed or injured, and how many homes had been torched.

“We know that there were a lot, a lot of people who were forced to abandon the area,” said Pierre Esperance, executive director of the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights, one of several groups investigating the bloody assault. “There are people who were injured, houses that were burned down, but it’s difficult right now to have a tally.”

Marie Yolene Gilles, who runs Fondasyon Je Klere, or Eyes Wide Open Foundation, said getting into the community remained impossible. Her initial investigation revealed that some residents had been burned while still inside their homes.

Raymond Joseph to Gregory Meeks

Lettre de l’Ambassadeur Raymond A. Joseph addressée à Nathaniel Hezekiah, Chef de cabinet adjoint au Bureau du Député Gregory Meeks, Président de la Commission des Affaires Etrangères de la Chambre des Représentants

-----------------

Dear Mr. Hezekiah!

I am sorry to disturb you on this special Friday, but a very disturbing event that occurred in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, last evening must be brought to the attention of Congressman Gregory Meeks, who has been instrumental in getting the nation to focus on what is happening in Haiti.

For me, it is the last drop that makes the vase to overflow. Thursday evening, heavily armed bandits entered a Seventh Day Adventist Church in Por-au-Prince and kidnapped the pastor, Audalus Estimé, along with three members of his church, while he was preaching, and disappeared with them.

While nothing is said about ransom, I believe this is a dire warning to the Protestants of Haiti for having organized peaceful mammoth anti-government demonstrations on February 28, March 28 and 29. That’s the response of the de facto President Jovenel Moïse, in effect saying that’s what is in store for all who oppose his dictatorship, especially the Protestants.

We’re asking that the Chairman of the House’s Foreign Affairs Committee consider this situation an emergency and  have him reach out to the State Department and the White House to take swift  appropriate measures, not only to have the victims released, but to send a strong message to the regime that this has to be its last action in the series of criminal acts that have been perpetrated by the illegal government.

Sincerely yours,

Raymond Alcide Joseph

Former ambassador of Haiti to the US, (2005-2010)

Co-Founder-publisher of the Haiti-Observateur weekly in NYC (1971-present)

Biden Should Create A Haiti Development Corps

The Haitian Times

The Conversation | By Garry Pierre-Pierre | Cette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots spammeurs. Vous devez activer le JavaScript pour la visualiser.

So far, the majority of Americans like the job that President Joe Biden is doing. He recently signed a $1.9 trillion package that saw most of us getting $1400 stimulus money and he is preparing a $3 trillion bill to tackle eroding infrastructure and the environment among other challenges. We’re feeling optimistic as the vaccine roll out is ahead of schedule. After four years under that previous guy, we welcome sane and steady leadership.

But Mr. President in the matter of Haiti, I need a little bit of your time. I know you’re busy, but this is urgent. Since its founding as a republic in 1804, Haiti has had a complicated relationship with the United States. We’ve vacillated from seeing America as our best friend one day and worse enemy the next day. 

America has helped create the richest diaspora and we are working on building a stronger and sophisticated Haitian community as we carve out our niche in our beloved America. Lately, it seems that a day doesn’t go by without some hideous or heinous incident taking place in Haiti. Just the other day, a bus carrying soccer players from Belize was stopped by a group of former police officers who have turned into a gang. And I can go on and on, but I won’t because this news site does that on a daily basis.

Over the years, as Haiti finds itself in yet another crisis, the United States has had good intentions and tried many different approaches. Unfortunately, the US has not been consistent and has abandoned Haiti at its worst moment, knowing that the mission had not been accomplished. I’m thinking when President Bill Clinton took a political gamble when he sent in 20,000 soldiers to restore democracy in Haiti in 1994.

Facing withering criticism from the Republican, Clinton pulled out of Haiti keenly aware that the job was not finished.  That created the mess that we’re living through today. I believe it is time that the U.S re-engages with Haiti in a novel way. Enlist the Haitian Americans to help rebuild their beloved homeland. 

At the rate it is going- increase insecurity, grinding poverty and a looming political showdown – Haiti will need another intervention. If or when things blow up, America needs to try a new approach to turn things around.

After the earthquake, the U.S. State Department created a pilot program sending Haitian American police officers from the New York City Police Department to help train the Haitian National Police officers. That program was going well and getting traction until Donald Trump cut the funding in his effort to gut that agency.  

The force that the Pentagon sent to Haiti in 1994, included scores of Haitian American soldiers some of whom I interviewed for a story for the New York Times. These soldiers were so proud to be in Haiti defending democracy in their birth land for their new country. It was heady stuff for them and one of the highlights of their life, if not their glory days.

The NYPD pilot project should be extended across all ministries in Haiti where you have highly competent Haitian Americans working with Haitian counterparts to help reform the administrative state so Haiti can create jobs and provide a better future for its citizens. 

I believe that even if the political situation ameliorates, the underlying issues remain unaddressed because the country doesn’t have the manpower to properly run the bureaucracy. 

That’s why I think that Washington has to make the creation of a Haiti Development Corps, the central tenet of its Haiti policy. 

Haiti has suffered from a chronic and consistent brain drain. The best and the brightest are whisked away to flourish in other lands that provide them with opportunity Haiti simply cannot.

The NYPD program and the Pentagon choice of soldiers show that American leaders know whom to turn to when they really want to address the issue of Haiti: Americans of Haitian ancestry. 

This Corps will consist of highly qualified, mostly Haitian professionals attached to a ministry to work alongside their Haitian counterparts. The selection process must be rigorous and highly selective. The successful applicants would have a proven track record in their field. 

The Corps should require a 2-year commitment and members’ salaries will be underwritten by the State Department and the applicant’s employer. This program should be disbanded after 25 years, enough time to stabilize the country and attract private investors and once and for all break this pernicious cycle of instability that has marred the country since its founding. 

Who would lead such a project? There is an abundance of Americans of Haitian ancestry that have defended U.S. interests in a variety of capacity across the world and it is time we give them a chance to change the conditions in Haiti. They have skin in their games. Many promised their fathers that they would leave Haiti a better place than they left it. 

Three people come to mind to head this herculean task, but any one of them is more than able to tackle this challenge and ensure the success of this program. 

In no particular order: One is Patrick Gaspard, a long-time political operative and former campaign manager for the first Obama run for the presidency. Gaspard later headed the Democratic National Committee before being nominated ambassador to South Africa. 

Another person that comes to mind is Jacques Jiha, an economist with private and public sector experience. Jiha has held various deputy positions as a state and city comptroller, travelling the world over to invest in the state’s pension funds. He was NYC Finance Commissioner before he was tapped by Mayor Bill de Blasio to be the city’s finance czar to steer the city’s economy as the pandemic flattened it.

. There is also ret. Marine Corps Col Mario Lapaix, who was the Pentagon’s top liaison in Haiti. Col Lapaix also worked for years in various high-level positions in NYC government, including assistant commissioner, at the Emergency Management Operations and Planning. Col Lapaix’s experience goes way beyond Haiti. He was the first chief of staff of Marine Forces Africa in support of AFRICOM in Djibouti. Col Lapaix During the U.S Operation “Iraqi Freedom in 2006/2007, he served as the 4^th Civil Affairs Group Commander and Director of all civil military operations in Al Anbar Province and played an integral part in the province’s recovery from local government failures and industrial challenges.

If we continue to approach Haiti in the same way it will be akin to washing your hands and wiping them on the floor to quote an old Haitian saying.  It’s time we try a bold and innovative approach.

haiti development corps haiti reform

“Poor Rich Haiti”: How Imperialists and Local Oligarchy Have Sought to Destroy Haitian Agriculture

From Haiti, Lautaro Rivara unpacks the tired trope of “poor rich Haiti,” highlighting the role of foreign capital and local elites in the destruction of life in the countryside

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

Does the oft-repeated refrain that “Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere” explain anything? Is it a poor country or an impoverished country? Or perhaps it is unsuspectedly rich? Are its indifferent friends in the West really not interested in the country? Why then do the United States and European countries seem to be so zealous about the “Haitian thing”? In a series of notes and based on fieldwork carried out in four departments of the country, we will focus on understanding the “poor rich Haiti” and some of the initiatives of what has been called its “reconstruction” since 2010. We will discuss the economic interests of Western powers, expressed through initiatives such as industrial parks, mining operations, enclave tourism ventures, land grabbing and agricultural free zones.

Haiti’s borders are curious. The small country is bordered to the east by the Dominican Republic, dividing in two the territory of the island of Hispaniola. To the west it borders the Caribbean Sea and to the south, a forgotten maritime border with the Republic of Colombia. But what interests us here is a border that is not entirely imaginary: to the north and northeast, although the maps would like to indicate otherwise, Haiti borders the United States.

It is here, in this region, that most US economic interests – and also those of its smaller partners – are concentrated. This is the case of Canada, that peculiar North American colony that in turn colonizes others. But also those of France, Germany and other European nations. In this and the following notes, we will talk about industrial parks, mining and speculation, enclave tourism ventures, land grabbing and agricultural free trade zones. This does not include some unholy initiatives in other parts of the country, such as the seizure of entire islands, drug trafficking or tax havens where the money comes in dirty and goes out free of guilt and sin.

But it is in the northeast region of this “poor rich” country that the power enjoyed by the current de facto president, Jovenel Moïse, has been amassed. He has made this territory his personal fiefdom. His modus operandi has been land grabbing and the true foundation of his power, his economic alliances with transnational capital, both legal and extralegal.

For this, we will travel to the heart of the communities affected by what, after the devastating earthquake of 2010, has become known as the “Reconstruction of Haiti”. In this first note, we will talk – paraphrasing Eduardo Galeano – about the “Banana King” Jovenel Moïse and his numerous agricultural courtiers. But first, let’s take a look at the situation of the rural areas and the local peasantry.

Barefoot 

One out of every two inhabitants of the country lives in the countryside. But an even higher percentage of the population, around 66%, depends on and subsists in relation to rural areas and agricultural production. According to a study by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the urban population has only overtaken the rural population in the last five years, and the current difference is only about 100,000 people.

Land everywhere is finite and vital. But it is even more so in a territory covered by extensive mountain ranges, and where the agricultural frontier is receding with every meter gained by deforestation and desertification – today the country retains barely 2 percent of its original vegetation cover. It is not surprising, then, that a large part of the peasant population is poor: they are the so-called pyè atè, the “pata en tierra”, the barefoot.

For a long time, however, an unprecedentedly radical measure was at least able to guarantee Haitians a piece of land on which to produce and reproduce life. Since the revolutionary constitution of 1805, land ownership was denied to foreigners on the grounds of sovereignty and national dignity, becoming an obstacle to the full implementation of capitalism on the island. At least until the definitive abolition of this prohibition in 1915, under the mantle of the American occupation.

Today, there are around 600,000 farms in Haiti, organized in small plots – jaden – of between 0.5 and 1.8 hectares. Peasant agriculture is mostly family and traditional, but there are many different forms of land ownership, work and usage: family landowners, tenant farmers, tenant farmers, day laborers, sharecroppers, etc. The tools used are rustic, often no more than the traditional pickaxe and machete, usually without draft animals, without any kind of machinery, without chemical fertilizers, with native seeds, all under a rain-fed agricultural regime. Despite the enormous contribution of peasant agriculture to national wealth – around 25 percent of GDP – the state’s contributions to the sector are practically nonexistent.

On the other side of rural life, a select group of families, usually living abroad, as well as a handful of transnational corporations, still concentrate around half of the available land and in many cases, worse still, keep it unproductive.

A requiem for the free market

Eat what you don’t produce and don’t eat what you produce. This is the secret of the offshoring and financialized export agriculture that has been promoted in the country in recent decades. A fundamental milestone in its implementation was the policy of trade and financial liberalization imposed in the mid-1980s, with the help of the International Monetary Fund, the US State Department and the enthusiastic action of the ineffable Bill Clinton – a self-styled “friend of Haiti” whose friendship, however, nobody here wants to reciprocate.

In the mid-1990s, this policy deepened, with tariffs on rice imports falling from 35 percent to 3 percent under external pressure. In the same year, the US invested 60 billion dollars to subsidize its own rice production. So-called dumping resulted in Haiti’s production falling by over 50% from 130,000 to 60,000 tons. The selling prices of the peasantry, exposed to unfair competition with the hyper-subsidized American farmer, led to the ruin and exodus of thousands and thousands of peasants. A vicious circle of agricultural ruin, unemployment, hunger, foreign food aid, impossibility of competing with the “free” food sent to the country, and again more ruin, unemployment, hunger, etc., was generated.

As a result, Haiti went from being practically self-sufficient in the production of the staple grain of its national diet to importing it massively. Although the case of rice is the most dramatic, it is far from the only one.  The nation went from importing less than 20 percent of its food in the early 1980s to importing more than 55 percent from abroad today, mainly from the United States and the Dominican Republic.

This cycle resulted in the partial destruction of traditional peasant agriculture. Some may call it “subsistence”, but for the local peasant it was instead an agriculture of “abundance”, if we consider how trade liberalization has generalized the phenomenon of hunger today. On the other hand, the relationship between food assistance and hunger is direct, as was the case with the “Tikè Manje” program and others developed by USAID, through voucher systems that only allow the population to have access to North American products.

Agritrans S.A.: the flagship

In this scorched earth scenario, after the devastating earthquake of January 2010, the project of transnational, deterritorialized and financialized agriculture began to take shape. Transnational, due to the dominant influence of external capital, beyond the resounding publicity of certain local “entrepreneurs”. It is deterritorialized because the local space becomes a kind of non-place for the capitals that mold the territory in their image and likeness: bananas from Haiti or Guadeloupe, soya from Brazil or Paraguay, sugar cane from the Caribbean or European beet sugar, etc., are all the same. And it is financialized because what this agriculture tends to produce is not food, but foreign currency. In short, it is an agriculture that satisfies only the hunger for capital accumulation.

A cautious detour with a good local guide allowed us to enter the lands of Agritrans S.A., the company of de facto president Jovenel Moïse, which became famous for its involvement in one of the largest embezzlements of public funds in the country’s history, amounting to a quarter of the national GDP. This was confirmed by Senate investigations – before its closure in January 2020 – and by the Supreme Audit Court, before its reduction, by presidential decree, to nothing more than a mere consultative body.

The inhabitants of the Limonade and Terrier-Rouge area, in the North-East Department, are in awe of all things related to this fabled expanse of land. And for those who feel neither fear nor respect, there are armed guards to remind them. They told us to stop and threatened to shoot as soon as the motorbike we were traveling on around their perimeter on National Route 6 slowed down. Unable to film or photograph the accesses, we had to clandestinely enter the estate through some twisted wire fences on the side of a canal. Surprisingly, a barren plain then spread out before us. Whether because of the environmental damage resulting from intensive production without crop rotation, or perhaps because the tenure of these lands today serves more the assertion of local power than the process of real accumulation, we saw not even a trace of a cultivated field. Today, Agritrans S.A. is a huge, uncultivated estate, surrounded by crowds of peasants who cannot even get access to a “handkerchief of land”, as the locals eloquently put it.

The “Nourribio” project was set up here in 2013, on the land of the man who would later become the country’s president. The 1,000 hectares in front of us were donated for a project that envisaged the intensive production of bananas, mainly for export to Western countries. It also took the form of a free zone, exempt from taxes and other charges. The land for its establishment was expropriated from 3,000 peasants and granted in concession for a renewable term of 25 years. The aforementioned promises of employment fell far short of expectations: only 200 people were being employed, according to informationfrom 2014. And the people who lost land? The small amount of their compensation was spent on the basic necessities of everyday life. With no land to work or produce, their “beneficiaries” soon found themselves unemployed, expelled to the capital, expelled abroad, or reduced to starvation, if not a combination of all of the above.

According to the specialist Georges Eddy Lucien, in the face of the banana production crisis in the French overseas departments (Guadeloupe and Martinique), “the Northeast – of Haiti – appears in the eyes of investors and international institutions as an ideal alternative territory, where production costs (labor, available land) are much lower…”. The impoverishment of Haitian workers has meant that the wages of an agricultural worker can be 25 times lower – 25 times! Not to mention if we compare it with the average wages of a Frenchman or a North American.

History is a boomerang. The first shipment of Agritrans bananas arrived at the port of Antwerp in Belgium in 2015. The same port that flourished during the slave trade and during the reign of Leopold II. A century ago, thousands of kilos of ivory and rubber, the product of slave exploitation in the Belgian Congo, arrived there. Today, it is bananas from Haiti, produced by one of the most impoverished workforces on the planet.

Operation dispossession

However, at least the construction of Agritrans S.A. involved mechanisms that we will call quasi-legal – although not moral – through the expropriation and compensation of peasant properties, measures taken perhaps because of the international visibility of the project.

But the policy of land grabbing has deepened in recent years, according to the leaders of the main peasant organizations during a recent colloquium on the subject held in the central region. There, for example, the national government ceded by decree no less than 8,600 hectares of fertile land to the Apaid family, one of the richest in the country. Another agricultural free trade zone is supposed to be built there, but this time for the production and export of stevia for the multinational Coca-Cola

But back to the Northeast. After long walks along impassable rural roads, flooded by rain, mud and state neglect, we were able to visit several communities that have suffered and are today facing the dispossession of their lands by local landowners, foreign companies and armed gangs.

In Terrier Rouge, Irené Cinic Antoine of the “Small planters” movement told us that she has owned a large plot of 6,000 hectares of land since 1986. In 1995, under the progressive government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the process to legalize their tenure began. Since then, the common lands have been divided between agriculture, charcoal trees and livestock. Their ownership rights were even published in the official state newspaper, but the documents were later disappeared by anonymous hands.

We also talk to Christiane Fonrose and her husband, as they stoke the fire on the mountain of earth inside which burns the wood that will be turned into charcoal. It is one of the few remaining means of survival in the region, although its ecological costs are well known to all, particularly to the peasantry. From his unshakeable faith, Fonrose tells us: “The land is God’s thing, which God created for us. Before creating his children, God created the earth. (…) But then they took the earth out of our hands. Today we have nowhere to plant, nowhere to graze some small animals, the children cannot go to school (…) We are in a very difficult situation”.

We were also able to visit peasant organizations in Grand Basin who are currently resisting the permanent hostility of invisible actors who are trying to take over land that was ceded to them by the state, again during the Aristide era. After another long trek along the difficult rural roads, our interview had to be conducted in the pouring rain, as even the roofs and doors of the small house on the plot were stolen. Here, on the edge of mineral-rich mountains, 1,500 organized peasants have been able to work 148 kawo of land (about 200 hectares) to produce sugar cane, maize, manioc and even honey and kleren – a peasant sugar cane brandy – in a sovereign and agro-ecological way.

A little over a year ago, a heavily armed group broke in, disrupting their crops, stealing or killing their animals, destroying fences, buildings and their meager agricultural implements. Evidently these were neither neighbors nor amateurs, as the operation involved the deployment of expensive bulldozers.  Even today, the land that was taken remains unproductive, and the peasants are constantly threatened not to try to recover it. So far, no state body has given them any response. “Without the land, outside the land, we peasants are worthless. We voted for them ourselves, but it seems that they don’t need us anymore,” concludes Antoine.

Today there are barely 350 people left, including only a handful of young people: most of them have been forced to migrate to the capital Port-au-Prince or even abroad. In the long siege they have been suffering since then. The National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INARA) has hardly dared to take sides with them. Coincidentally, according to recent reports, the Moïse government is seeking to eliminate this body in the new constitution it is now preparing. According to Wilson Messidor, leader of MOPAG, the project to dispossess them of their land would be closely linked to the mining resources in the area, and to the construction of the so-called villages, semi-closed residential neighborhoods that USAID is building for the workers in the free trade zones.

USAID appears, in fact, as the de facto civil authority in these territories, and its projects are constantly growing and multiplying, as indicated by the numerous signs on the roadsides. According to an anonymous Cuban engineer, the US mega-cooperation organization operates through loans and projects, indebting the state and the communities, in order to guarantee control of strategic areas for their water and mineral resources.

It matters little, following Eduardo Galeano’s metaphor, whether the monarch is King Banana, Queen Stevia or King Manufacture. Haiti continues to be determined by the blessings of nature and the curses of those who dominate history. We will continue, in the next note, to unravel the mysteries of this “poor rich country” which, in the international division of labor, has been subjected to the task of exporting poverty and importing humanitarian aid. We will talk about the export processing zones and the bizarre project to turn Haiti into the “Taiwan of America”..

Lautaro Rivara is a sociologist, researcher and poet. As a trained journalist, he participated as an activist in different spaces of communications work, covering tasks of editing, writing, radio broadcasts, and photography. During his two years in the Jean-Jacques Dessalines Brigade in Haiti he was responsible for communications and carried out political education with Haitian people’s movements in this area. He writes regularly in people’s media projects of Argentina and the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean including Nodal, ALAI, Telesur, Resumen Latinoamericano, Pressenza, la RedH, Notas, Haití Liberte, Alcarajo, and more.

All images in this article are from the author

The original source of this article is Peoples Dispatch

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Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 24 mars 2021

 POPE : I PRAY FOR YOUR COUNTRY

POPE FRANCIS RECEIVED THE CREDENTIAL OF HAITI’S NEW AMBASSADOR TO THE HOLY SEE, JEAN JUDE PIQUANT.

THE NEW DIPLOMAT IS A CATHOLIC, with an extensive educational background specialized in international human rights law.

Members of the diplomatic corps were also present at the reception. They asked the pope to bless some religious objects.

Francis gave rosaries to the rest of the delegation as well as Medal commemorating the eight anniversary of his pontificate.

He then invited them to pray together in French.

After the audience, Francis and the new ambassador met privately to discuss matters of common interest, in particular the current situation in Haiti. The Holy See has maintained diplomatic relations with the Caribbean nation since 1881

Daniel Diaz Vizzi

Rome Reports

CP/RES. 1168 (2315/21)
OAS VOTE ON THE SITUATION IN HAITI
(Adopted by the Permanent Council at its virtual regular meeting held on March 17, 2021)

THE PERMANENT COUNCIL OF THE ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES,

REAFFIRMING the principles enshrined in the Charter of the Organization of American States, specifically those principles aimed at ensuring representative democracy and the building of sustainable democratic institutions.

REAFFIRMING FURTHER the right of the peoples of the Americas to democracy and the obligation of their governments to promote and defend it, as reflected in Article 1 of the Inter- American Democratic Charter;

RECALLING that Haiti is a State Party to the American Convention on Human Rights;

CONSCIOUS that the Charter of Civil Society of the Caribbean Community requires that “States shall take all appropriate measures to promote and maintain an effectively functioning representational system, including the holding of regular public sessions of representatives of the people” and affirms that “States recognize and affirm that the rule of law, the effective administration of justice and the maintenance of the independence and impartiality of the judiciary are essential to good governance”;

CONSIDERING that the expiration of the terms of the majority of the members of the legislature on January 13, 2020, without elected officials to succeed them, led to the suspension of the legislature’s activities;

CONSIDERING FURTHER that the President of Haiti has been governing since January 13, 2020 by the use of executive decrees in the absence of a functioning legislature;

WELCOMING the President of Haiti’s commitment, at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on February 22, 2021, to make limited use of Presidential decrees;

…

RESOLVES:

1. To reaffirm its support for the people of Haiti and to encourage the President of Haiti to work with all stakeholders to engage in meaningful dialogue in the interest of addressing the country’s needs, among others, the need to hold free and fair legislative and presidential elections this year.

2. To express its strong concern about all acts of violence, human rights violations and abuses committed in Haiti, and to urge the President of Haiti to implement steps to identify and bring to justice those responsible through the appropriate legal procedures.

3. To recall that the humanitarian situation of Haiti has been aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

4. To welcome the invitation of the President of Haiti issued to the OAS to send an observation mission for the elections planned for this year, and to offer the good offices of the OAS under the authority of the Permanent Council to facilitate a dialogue that would lead to free and fair elections.

5. To request the Secretary General to advise the Government and other major stakeholders in Haiti, of the Permanent Council’s offer to undertake a good offices role and to invite the President of Haiti to consider inviting the Permanent Council to do so.

6. To remain apprised of the situation in Haiti on a regular basis. CP43654E01

Haiti needs vigilance by the international community 

By Sir Ronald Sanders

At a meeting of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) on March 17, I said that “no resolution is perfect, and no resolution satisfies every country, but we cannot sacrifice achieving good on the altar of desiring perfection”.

The resolution concerned the current constitutional, political and humanitarian situation in Haiti which is very grave and shows every sign of worsening. The delegation of Antigua and Barbuda was the architect of the original resolution which sought to cause the member states of the OAS to express concern about Haiti and to offer to facilitate a meaningful dialogue between president Jovenel Moïse and all other stakeholders.

It was a matter of regret that, despite the strong statement of CARICOM heads of government, concerning Haiti, on February 11, CARICOM delegations at the OAS were again divided. CARICOM heads were clear that they wanted “all parties in Haiti to engage in meaningful dialogue in the interest of peace and stability”. The heads also said that they looked forward “to the conduct of free and fair presidential elections in accordance with the Constitution of Haiti”. Eight CARICOM countries – Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Guyana, St Kitts-Nevis, Saint Lucia, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago backed Antigua and Barbuda’s draft resolution.

In the end, through a process of two weeks of negotiations, countries with important concerns about Haiti – Brazil, Canada, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and the United States joined the nine Caribbean countries in settling a draft resolution that was then negotiated with the Haitian delegation.

By the nature of negotiations, concessions had to be made. Hence, it was not a perfect resolution and not every paragraph of it satisfied every one. But it was enough to allow the Permanent Council of the OAS to adopt it by consensus.

Essentially, it offered “good offices of the OAS, under the authority of the Permanent Council, to facilitate a dialogue that would lead to free and fair elections” and asked the president of Haiti “to consider inviting the Permanent Council to do so”.

This was done against a background that since January 2020, there has been no legislature and no government in Haiti, and president Moïse has been ruling by decree. Further, marauding gangs have been raping women, including young girls, kidnapping people (rich and poor) and demanding huge ransoms. Violence has exploded in the country, particularly as hundreds of thousands of people have been protesting against president Moïse and deadly force has been used against them by a police force that is allegedly highly politicised.

The UN High Commission for Human Rights has stated its “concerns about judicial independence” which it says “has further eroded the separation of powers” in Haiti.

Time is fast running out to avoid further worsening of the situation in Haiti. The OAS resolution, offering to facilitate dialogue, has come only after deep polarization and distrust in the country. The OAS should have acted much earlier. If president Moïse does not respond positively and swiftly to the offer by the OAS, no dialogue between the stakeholders might be possible. A stand-off between them will occur with further confrontations. Many Haitians have already stated publicly that “no dialogue is possible with Moïse”, and he has not sought a meaningful dialogue either.

Instead, he is persisting with plans to hold a referendum in June on altering the Constitution. But there has been no consultation with major Haitian players who say he has no authority to hold such a referendum. What is clear is that, in 2015, Haiti had more than 6.5 million people registered to vote. Moïse has now issued new identity cards which his OAS ambassador says has been distributed to four million people. Human rights groups in Haiti dispute that figure, putting it closer to two million. Either way, more than 2.5 million persons are currently disenfranchised. No referendum or election held in these conditions would be credible or acceptable.

Still worse, the current Provisional Electoral Council, to manage a referendum and elections, comprises persons appointed solely by Moïse. They are known to have close links to him. Similarly, the draft Constitution has been written by persons he has hand-picked. None of this is “in accordance with the Constitution of Haiti”, and, for the opposition parties, are red rags to a bull.

On March 29, Haiti will mark the anniversary of its 1987 Constitution the very thing that the president is seeking to alter. Stakeholders are pledging to put more than two million people on the streets in its defence on March 28 and 29.

The Charter of the OAS strictly forbids interference in the internal affairs of States. And, while there have been various artifices by some OAS member states to circumvent that prohibition, the majority of countries adhere to that principle generally. Consequently, the OAS cannot insist that president Moïse accepts its offer to play a good offices role. It must await an invitation from him to do so.

In this context, member states of the Organization should work behind the scenes with Moïse and other stakeholders to urge them to talk and, in so doing, to take the idea of a referendum on the Constitution off anyone’s agenda; to ensure that independent election machinery is established by agreement of all parties and that presidential, legislative and local elections are held at the earliest possible date, and until then presidential decrees should be suspended on anything except that on which major players decide.

While this diplomatic work takes place – and CARICOM should be a part of it – the OAS should continue to be vigilant about developments in Haiti and ready to speak out against any further deterioration in the constitutional, political and humanitarian situation.

The people of Haiti need and deserve objective and constructive support in their collective interest, and not for the benefit of any political elite.

Joint Statement on Haiti-Dominican Republic Private Sector

Border Initiative

On March 17, the State Department met virtually with private sector representatives from Haiti and the Dominican Republic for a review of progress on joint initiatives which aim to contribute to a more prosperous future for both nations. The meeting was convened by Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Haiti, Canada, and the Caribbean Laura Lochman; U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Michele Sison;  and Charge d’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in the Dominican Republic Robert Thomas.  Amid the challenges of the past two years, this continuing dialogue has proved a useful mechanism to undertake collaborative discussions and realize tangible accomplishments.  Participants recommitted to a set of focused priorities to improve the business climate, formalize trade, promote rule of law, and spur development along the Dominican Republic-Haiti border. 

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 17 mars 2021

4 DEAD AND 8 WOUNDED

HAITI STANDARD

The Director General of the National Police of Haiti (PNH) reported on the police operation carried out during the day of March 12, in Village de Dieu, in Port-au-Prince. Four (4) dead and eight (8) wounded are recorded, this is the result of this operation that the security forces are not ready to forget.

During a press briefing, on Saturday, at the Information and Operations Centre (CRO), the head of the police institution reaffirmed the determination of the PNH to fight against insecurity, organized crime and kidnapping that prevent people from going about their business freely.

«The operation conducted in Village de Dieu, on March 12, was a decisive phase in the fight against the many cases of kidnapping recorded in Port-au-Prince»,” said the Commander-in-Chief of the Police.  

Of the eight wounded registered by the PNH, three of them have already been released from the hospital where they were admitted, said the police chief. He also expressed his sympathies to the parents of the police officers who were the victims of this operation, and promised to stand by them.

Russia Offers its Services to Haiti

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia in a short message published on Twiter said that Haiti has entered a new period of political instability and is experiencing the biggest social and economic crisis ever seen.

This Ministry has informed that Russia is ready to help Haitians restore political stability, maintain internal security and train staff.

IN HAITI‘S POLITICAL CRISIS, US SHOULD SUPPORT DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

By Pierre Esperance and Rosy Auguste Ducena

Two weeks before being sworn in as U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken tweeted that the United States “will always support democracy, human rights, and the security and prosperity of Haiti.” But these promising words now ring hollow as the State Department doubles down on its support of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, who is attempting to cling to power beyond the legal end of his term last month.

Haitian judges, lawyers, and civil society leaders—including the two of us, who lead one of Haiti’s premier human rights organizations—agree that Moïse’s term legally concluded on Feb. 7. Regrettably, as Haiti’s constitutional crisis unfolds, the United States has thrown its weight behind Moïse, saying he has one more year in office and should use it to organize elections. That position is based on Moïse’s argument that a rerun of the 2015 election after fraud allegations delayed his taking office by a year. Tragically, the State Department has chosen to stand on the side of a dictator, not on the side of democracy and human rights, betraying Blinken’s promise.

In a letter to Blinken, Gregory Meeks (D-NY), chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, and other committee members urged the secretary of state to “unambiguously reject” Moïse’s attempt to stay in power. Key U.S. senators also want to see the United States take a different approach. Senate President Pro Tempore Patrick Leahy (D-VT), for example, tweeted that Haiti is in “worse shape” now than when Moïse first took power, calling on the United States to support an “inclusive transition.”

Dismantling Democratic Institutions

Since taking office in 2017, Moïse has systematically dismantled key democratic institutions, including those charged with keeping him accountable, apparently with the goal of extending his authority and undermining the rule of law. For example, Moïse drastically weakened the Anti-Corruption Unit (ULCC) and the Central Financial Intelligence Unit (UCREF), which were leading investigations into corruption and money laundering, illicit drug trafficking and other serious offences, including cases that implicated Moïse, among others. Moïse even weakened the Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes (CSCCA), which is responsible for reviewing all expenditures and financial commitments made by the Haitian government.

When pro-democracy activists challenged Moïse’s refusal to step down from the presidency last month, he arrested them and charged them with planning a coup. At the same time, he forced “retirement” on three Supreme Court justices and replaced them with his supporters in order to “protect” the court’s “independence.” Most worrisome of all, he is planning a constitutional referendum in June, during which he is expected to further consolidate and expand the powers of the executive, including potential changes to presidential term limits.

Gang Massacres

Crucially, Moïse also has created a security crisis for the people of Haiti by failing to hold egregious human rights abusers accountable during his tenure. We see this all around us. We have documented the massacres by gangs who operate with Moïse’s blessing, if not his full support: 10 massacres in the past two years, in which 343 people were killed, 98 disappeared, and 32 women were gang raped. The violence left 251 children orphaned.

It is time for the Biden administration to align its policies with its principles. The United States needs to reverse its policy of standing by Moïse, consult with Haitian civil society to help inform its approach going forward, and take the powerful step of placing democracy and human rights at the center of its foreign policy towards Haiti.

World Bank Approves $75 Million Grant to Strengthen Social Protection in Haiti

WASHINGTON, March 9, 2021 – The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved today a US$75 million grant from the International Development Association (IDA) for the Adaptive Social Protection for Increased Resilience Project (ASPIRE). This project will support Haiti’s efforts to establish an adaptive safety net system to respond to shocks, including COVID-19, and to reduce vulnerability to food insecurity and future disasters.  

“Social protection systems have the potential to enhance human capital, reduce inequality, build resilience, and end cycles of poverty,” said Javier Suarez, World Bank Acting Country Manager for Haiti. “This project provides immediate resources to help the most vulnerable households, while also supporting Haiti to establish the foundations of a social protection program to build resilience and develop human capital in the medium term.”

An adaptive social protection system is one that helps vulnerable households build resilience by investing in their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks. The ASPIRE project will provide immediate support to poor and vulnerable households while increasing their resilience through regular unconditional cash transfers and measures to improve health, nutrition, and financial inclusion. The project is designed to enable the scale up of the cash transfer program in the case of emergencies, such as natural disasters or health crises. In addition, the project will help build the capacity of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MAST) to improve management and governance of social protection programs.

Unconditional cash transfers will be provided to an estimated 18,000 families (or 90,000 individuals), with a focus on families that are extremely poor, located in rural areas prone to natural disasters, and living with small children, pregnant women, or persons with disabilities. The project will initially focus on the Grande Anse department in Southern Haiti. The project will also establish the foundations to operationalize the National Social Protection and Promotion Policy and allow for an additional 200,000 households to be registered in the social registry of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor.

US EMBASSY UNDER ATTACK

« Good Evening Embassy Port au Prince,*

*It is with regret that RSO informs the Mission community of an attack on one of our LE Staff members which occurred earlier this afternoon, not far from the Embassy, on the road commonly referred to as the “Vivy Michele Shortcut”.  Most importantly, our colleague was unharmed during the altercation; the ability to quickly return to the safety of the Embassy may have saved this individual’s life.  The investigation into exactly what happened is ongoing; however, a timeline and summary of events is provided below for everyone’s situational awareness.  Thankfully this incident did not end in tragedy, but it is a stark reminder of the volatile and unpredictable nature of the security environment in Haiti, where any one of us may find ourselves in a similar situation, anywhere, at any time.*

*Shortly after 3:30 p.m. our colleague departed the Embassy in a CD-plated vehicle with dark tinted windows.  After making a right turn at the OAVTC office and continuing past the BLTS police station, our employee observed several motorcycles following the vehicle.  With no warning, the motorcycle riders blocked our employee’s path in the road, and dozens of other riders appeared, as if by pre-arranged signal.  Adopting a herd mentality, the riders began shouting encouragements to one another and the violence escalated, with numerous rocks thrown at the vehicle causing significant damage.  Seemingly in coordination with the motorcyclists, a car appeared, and one of the occupants brandished a pistol and fired several shots at our staff member’s vehicle; fortunately none connected.*

*Recognizing loss-of-life as a distinct possibility, our staff member was able to drive through the blockade of motorcycles and attempt to evade pursuit by continuing through Vivy Michele and ultimately into Delmas.  After realizing a return to the Embassy was likely the best course of action, our colleague encountered another roadblock on Blvd 15 Octobre, immediately adjacent to the OAVTC office.  The pursuing motorcycles again surrounded the vehicle and began throwing rocks, and it soon became evident that they would attempt to extract our staff member from the vehicle.  Again, by driving forcibly through the blockade, at shortly after 4:00 p.m. our colleague managed to reach the safety of the embassy, emotionally exhausted, but physically uninjured.*

*The incident reached its climax just before 5:00 p.m., right outside the Embassy, as the motorcyclists followed our employee until they saw the vehicle pull into the Embassy parking area.  After continuing past the Embassy for a short distance, the riders turned around, and numbering approximately 30-40, effectively blocked Blvd 15 Octobre between the Embassy Main CAC and our Consular entrance.  They remained in the middle of the road for several minutes, before the Haitian National Police arrived with approximately 50 officers and dispersed the crowd, in part by deploying tear gas.*

*While the reasons for this attack remain speculative at present, the possibility of tinted windows playing a role cannot be completely discounted.  Throughout Haiti there is an active and ongoing campaign to have window-tint removed from all vehicles, as darkened windows are frequently associated with vehicles used by kidnappers.  RSO cannot state categorically that this was the cause of today’s incident, but all employees driving vehicles with tinted windows are advised to exercise extreme caution over the next several days, as this issue appears to have generated significant interest among the local population.  RSO still believes the benefits of having tinted windows on your vehicle outweigh the risks, specifically by concealing the number and gender of occupants, which can play a role in a criminal’s target selection.  Alternatively, until the present focus on vehicles with tinted windows subsides, drivers in this category are assuming a higher-than-normal degree of risk.*

Family Action Network Movement (FANM) Applauds The Biden Administration’s Decision To Grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Venezuelans and Strongly Urges Redesignation of TPS For Haitians 

March 11, 2021

MIAMI, FL- On March 8, 2021, the Biden Administration announced it would designate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to eligible Venezuelans currently residing in the United States. This could allow over 320,000 Venezuelans to remain in the United States with legal standing. Eligible immigrants have 180 days to apply for TPS and must prove they entered the United States before March 8, 2021. Once granted, their TPS status would last for up to 18 months. FANM applauds this decision and stands ready to assist members with the application process.

Haitian immigrants in the U.S. are hoping for a redesignation of TPS for Haiti. TPS was granted to Haiti after Haiti's 2010 earthquake but protected only those otherwise-eligible Haitians in the U.S. by January 12, 2011. It has been ten years since TPS was redesignated for Haiti. A redesignation would benefit Haitians who came to the U.S. after the 2011 date. In recent months, Haitians have been the victims of violent killings, skyrocketing kidnappings, rape/gender-based violence, and heavy repression from state-aligned forces reminiscent of the Duvalier dictatorship. The Biden administration continues to support the Moise administration and since taking office, over 1,000 Haitian refugees/immigrants, including at least 270 children, have been deported on eighteen flights to Haiti since February 2021.

Marleine Bastien, Executive Director of Family Action Network Movement (FANM), stated, "We applaud and commend the Biden Administration's decision to designate TPS for Venezuela. While we are relieved for the Venezuelan community, a TPS redesignation is desperately needed for Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras, and others! The extraordinary conditions in Haiti warrant a TPS redesignation that covers Haitians living in the U.S. up to now. The Biden administration has the power to take action and, so far, has not articulated the same support for Haiti. They are fully aware of the harm the Haitian people face and yet continue to deport and expel non-violent/non-criminal immigrants! We urgently call upon the Biden Administration to stop these illegal deportations and to redesignate TPS for Haiti now!" 

Family Action Network Movement (FANM) formerly known as Fanm Ayisyen Nan Miyami, Inc)/ Haitian Women of Miami is a private not-for-profit organization dedicated to the social, economic, financial and political empowerment of low to moderate-income families.

Contact: Victoria Villamil

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US Stimulus Plan

Here's what's in the Senate stimulus plan

(CNN) — The Senate on Saturday passed its version of the Democrats' massive coronavirus relief package, after the House passed its package last week.

READ: Senate Democrats' Covid relief bill

Lawmakers made several changes throughout the legislation, but three were particularly notable -- narrowing eligibility for the stimulus checks, trimming the federal boost to unemployment benefits and nixing an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Much of the Senate legislation, however, largely mirrors the $1.9 trillion package approved by the House and laid out by President Joe Biden in January.

Senate Democratic leaders have faced more hurdles to advancing the legislation since the party can't afford to lose a single member thanks to the 50-50 split in the chamber. Plus, they must adhere to the strict rules of reconciliation, which they are using to approve the bill without any Republican support.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed Thursday to stay in session to finish the bill this week, though Republicans are trying to drag out the process. 

Once the chamber passes its version of the bill, it goes back to the House for a vote and then onto the White House for Biden's signature.

Time is of the essence. An estimated 11.4 million workers will lose their unemployment benefits between mid-March and mid-April unless Congress passes its next coronavirus relief package quickly, a recent study by The Century Foundation found.

Here's what's in the Senate bill:

Stimulus checks

The Senate bill amends the House bill on the $1,400-per-person stimulus payments to tighten eligibility.

Individuals earning less than $75,000 a year and married couples earning less than $150,000 will receive $1,400 per person, including children. That will get money to about 90% of households.

The checks will phase out faster than previous rounds, completely cutting off individuals who earn more than $80,000 a year and married couples earning more than $160,000 -- regardless of how many children they have.

The bill passed by the House set the income caps at $200,000 for couples and $100,000 for individuals. The Senate change leaves out about 7 million families, according to an estimate from the Penn Wharton Budget Model.

Unlike the previous two rounds, adult dependents -- including college students -- are expected to be eligible for the payments.

Unemployment assistance

Unlike the House bill, the Senate version calls for providing a $300 federal boost to weekly jobless payments and extending two key pandemic unemployment benefits programs through September 6, an arrangement hammered out after hours of negotiation on Friday.

The agreement would also make the first $10,200 worth of benefits payments tax-free for households with annual incomes less than $150,000.

This is a significant change from the House bill, which would provide a $400 weekly enhancement through August 29 and continue two pandemic programs for the same period. The House bill does not contain the tax provision.

The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program provides benefits to freelancers, gig workers, independent contractors and certain people affected by the pandemic, while the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program increases the duration of payments for those in the traditional state unemployment system.

The President's plan had called for providing a $400 boost and continuing the benefits through the end of September.

Out-of-work Americans will start running out of benefits in the two programs in mid-March, when provisions in December's $900 billion relief package begin phasing out. The $300 enhancement that was part of the December deal also ends in mid-March.

Minimum wage

The Senate bill will not include an increase in the federal minimum wage, which House Democrats proposed raising to $15 an hour.

The parliamentarian ruled in late February that increasing the hourly threshold does not meet a strict set of guidelines needed to move forward in the reconciliation process, which would allow Senate Democrats to pass the relief bill with a simple majority and no Republican votes.

The House legislation would increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 in stages. It would also guarantee that tipped workers, youth workers and workers with disabilities are paid the full federal minimum wage.

Aid to states and municipalities

The Senate and House differ on how much aid they would provide to counties and cities, but both chambers contain the same infusion of funding for states, tribes and territories.

The bills would provide states and the District of Columbia with $195.3 billion, but counties and cities would share $120 billion in aid in the Senate bill, $10 billion less than in the House version.

Tribes would get $20 billion and territories $4.5 billion under both bills.

The Senate version of the bill also slightly revises the formula to help states with smaller populations and boost the minimum they will receive. And it contains a $10 billion Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund for states, territories and tribes.

Overall, both bills would funnel a total of $350 billion to states and municipalities.

Additional assistance to states has been among the most controversial elements of the congressional rescue packages, with Democrats looking to add to the $150 billion in the March legislation and Republicans resisting such efforts. The December package ultimately dropped an initial call to include $160 billion.

Nutrition assistance

The Senate and House plans both extend the 15% increase in food stamp benefits through September, instead of having it expire at the end of June.

They also contain $880 million for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC, to help increase participation and temporarily improve benefits, among other measures. Biden called for investing $3 billion in the program.

And they would allow states to continue the Pandemic-EBT, which provides families whose children's schools are closed with funding to replace free- and reduced-price meals the kids would have received, through the summer.

Housing aid

Both bills would send roughly $20 billion to state and local governments to help low-income households cover back rent, rent assistance and utility bills.

About $10 billion would be authorized to help struggling homeowners pay their mortgages, utilities and property taxes.

The bills would provide $5 billion to help states and localities assist those at risk of experiencing homelessness and another $5 billion for emergency housing vouchers for those who are homeless.

Tax credits for families and workers

Both the House and Senate legislation beef up tax credits for families and certain low-income workers for 2021.

In an effort to combat poverty, lawmakers would expand the child tax credit to $3,600 for each child under 6 and $3,000 for each child under age 18. Currently, qualifying families can receive a credit of up to $2,000 per child under age 17.

The credit would also become fully refundable so more low-income parents could take advantage of it. Plus, families could receive payments monthly, rather than a lump sum once a year, which would make it easier for them to pay the bills.

The bills also enhance the earned income tax credit for workers without children by nearly tripling the maximum credit and extending eligibility to more people. The minimum age to claim the childless credit would be reduced to 19, from 25, and the upper age limit would be eliminated.

This would be the largest expansion to earned income tax credit since 2009.

Optional paid sick and family leave

Unlike Biden's initial proposal, neither bill would reinstate mandatory paid family and sick leave approved in a previous Covid relief package. But they continue to provide tax credits to employers who voluntarily choose to offer the benefit through October 1.

Last year, Congress guaranteed many workers two weeks pay if they contracted Covid or were quarantining. It also provided an additional 10 weeks of paid family leave to those who were staying home with kids whose schools were closed. Those benefits expired in December.

Education and child care

Both the Senate and House bills would provide nearly $130 billion to K-12 schools to help students return to the classroom. Schools would be allowed to use the money to update their ventilation systems, reduce class sizes to help implement social distancing, buy personal protective equipment and hire support staff. Both bills would require that schools use at least 20% of the money to address learning loss by providing extended days or summer school, for example.

While the money provided by the House bill would go to both public and private schools, based on the number of low-income students enrolled, the Senate bill specifically carves out about $2.75 billion for private schools.

The bills are in line with what Biden proposed, but call for more than six times the amount of funding for K-12 schools than a compromise plan offered by a small group of Republican senators.

The Senate and House plans both include nearly $40 billion for colleges.

Altogether, $170 billion would be authorized for K-12 schools and higher education. Last year, Congress approved a total of $112 billion between two relief packages that went to K-12 schools and colleges.

The bills would also provide about $39 billion to child care providers. The amount a provider receives would be based on operating expenses and is available to pay employees and rent, help families struggling to pay the cost, and purchase personal protective equipment and other supplies.

Health insurance subsidies and Medicaid

Both the Senate and House bills would make federal premium subsidies for Affordable Care Act policies more generous and would eliminate the maximum income cap for two years.

Enrollees would pay no more than 8.5% of their income towards coverage, down from nearly 10% now. Also, those earning more than the current cap of 400% of the federal poverty level -- about $51,000 for an individual and $104,800 for a family of four in 2021 -- would become eligible for help.

In addition, the bills would bolster subsidies for lower-income enrollees, eliminating their premiums completely, and would do the same for those collecting unemployment benefits in 2021.

But the Senate bill provides more assistance than the House version to those who were laid off but want to remain on their employer health insurance plans through COBRA. The Senate calls for picking up the full amount of the premium, while the House would only cover 85%, leaving the former employee to pay 15%.

Both chambers would extend these subsidies through September.

Also, the Senate retains the House provision that seeks to entice states that have yet to expand Medicaid to low-income adults to do so by boosting their federal Medicaid matching funds by 5 percentage points for two years.

More money for small businesses

Both bills would provide $15 billion to the Emergency Injury Disaster Loan program, which provides long-term, low-interest loans from the Small Business Administration. Severely impacted small businesses with fewer than 10 workers will be given priority for some of the money.

They also provide $25 billion for a new grant program specifically for bars and restaurants. Eligible businesses may receive up to $10 million and can use the money for a variety of expenses, including payroll, mortgage and rent, utilities and food and beverages.

The Paycheck Protection Program, which is currently taking applications for second-round loans, would get an additional $7 billion and the bills would make more non-profit organizations eligible.

Another $175 million would be used for outreach and promotion, creating a Community Navigator Program to help target eligible businesses.

Vaccines and testing

The Senate and House bills provide $14 billion to research, develop, distribute, administer and strengthen confidence in vaccines. They would also put $47.8 billion toward testing, contact tracing and mitigation, including investing in laboratory capacity, community-based testing sites and mobile testing units, particularly in medically underserved areas.

Both chambers would also allocate $7.7 billion to hire 100,000 public health workers to support coronavirus response.

The Senate and House legislation also provide $50 billion to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with some of the funds going toward expanding vaccination efforts.

The President's plan called for investing $20 billion in a national vaccination program.

Rural hospital assistance

The Senate bill allocates $8.5 billion to help struggling rural hospitals and health care providers.

The House bill did not provide any additional funding for hospitals or nursing homes, which received assistance in previous relief packages.

This story has been updated with passage of the Senate bill.

Senate passes Biden's $1.9 trillion Covid-relief plan

https://cnn.it/3qrfopk