Caribbean360: Aid flows for Haiti but food Crisis drags on

Aid flows for Haiti but food Crisis drags on
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Chris Hoyos on 07/08/2009 13:27:52
 
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, August 7, 2009 -Though beleaguered with their own
financial problems, donor countries say they are not planning to withdraw
financial support for cash-strapped Haiti.
When discussing the latest report by the Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Haiti
recently, UN delegates reaffirmed their respective nations' commitment to aiding
the Caribbean nation.
The commitment to help Haiti comes at a time when the global financial crisis
has forced most donors to renege on funding for AIDS research, climate change
research, and higher education programmes.
But as Jean Claude Fignole, the director of ActionAid Haiti, told IPS,
"International aid cooperation has actually not decreased to Haiti this year."
"In fact," he said, "a slight, marginal increase to 50 billion gourdes
(approximately US$1.25 billion) is projected" for the 2010 budget.
Fignole attributed the international attention largely to the recent naming of
former US President Bill Clinton as UN special envoy to Haiti. When Clinton
attended a donor conference for Haiti earlier this year, donor countries pledged
US$324 million over the next two years.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon also increased international awareness about
Haiti with his visit to the country in March. In its report, the Group commended
both Ban and Clinton for reinvigorating the "sense that Haiti deserved a high
level of support."
The Ad Hoc Advisory Group also called on the international community "to stay
the course and to consider increasing their support for Haiti".
Last April, riots erupted around the nation in response to rising costs of food
- specifically, rice, beans and fruit - and oil.
The country has been relatively calm since, but the Ad Hoc Advisory Group warned
that Haitians could easily "relapse into social unrest".
The food crisis, after all, still plagues Haitians. Though the government has
been subsidising food prices since the April riots, as Bettina Luescher of the
World Food Programme told IPS, "prices are still higher than the four-year
average".
Meanwhile, remittances from Haitians abroad - which account for 20 per cent of
Haiti's GDP - have slowed since last year due to the global financial crisis.
Aggravating Haiti's food problems, the 2008 hurricanes devastated more than 70
percent of Haiti's agriculture. Now, as the Group wrote in their report, over a
third of the Haitian population is food insecure, "with pockets of acute
malnutrition in remote areas where distribution of aid remains a challenge."
Charles Arthur, director of the Haiti Support Group, a British-based NGO,
believes the Haitian government should implement "a concerted programme to
assist local farmers to produce more food for the domestic market.
As he explained to IPS, the Platform to Advocate for Alternative Development
(PAPDA), a grassroots organisation in Haiti, recommends that Haiti first address
agrarian reform.
"The Haitian government can do a lot by itself if it relied more on the dynamism
and creativity of the poor majority and less on the advice and directives from
the international community and the reactionary private sector," Arthur said.
(IPS)