BETWEEN THE LINES Q&A with Kim Ives

Between the Lines Q&A

A weekly column featuring progressive viewpoints
on national and international issues
under-reported in mainstream media
for release Aug. 11, 2010

Six Months Later, Earthquake-Ravaged Haiti Receives
Only 10% of $5.3 Billion in Aid Pledged

RealAudio

MP3

Interview with Kim Ives,
editor and writer
with Haiti Liberte newspaper,
conducted by Scott Harris

haiti

Six months ago on Jan. 12, the nation of Haiti was devastated by the most deadly earthquake in its history. The hemisphere's poorest nation, battered by this magnitude 7.0 earthquake, saw an estimated 230,000 of its citizens killed under hundreds of thousands of collapsed homes and commercial buildings in the capital of Port-au-Prince and surrounding cities and towns. Another 300,000 people were injured and 1.5 million people were made homeless by the quake.

Despite a flood of international media attention and initial shipments of food, water and medical aid in January, many of the 3 million Haitians affected by the earthquake remain homeless and without the basics of life, such as adequate food, clean water, sanitation and medical care. People in Haiti's destroyed cities — still living in makeshift tents in more than 1,300 camps – are frustrated by the lack of coordination between the government and NGOs to deliver aid to those who need it most.

Despite pledges of $5.3 billion for reconstruction from around the world, only 10 percent has thus far been donated. A new commission led by former U.S president Bill Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has been established to supervise the rebuilding of Haiti's infrastructure and push donors to honor their commitments.

Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Kim Ives, an editor with the newspaper Haiti Liberte, who recently returned from a fact-finding visit to Haiti. He discusses the lack of progress in many areas of aid distribution and the determination of many Haitians to take action to improve their desperate situation.

KIM IVES:Well, we were looking to see what the mood was on the ground, which is one of complete disgruntlement and dissatisfaction. People are so angry at not just the Haitian government, but the NGO community, the international community. They hear about billions of dollars being promised and yet their situation is practically unchanged since six months ago. They are still living in tents, still living under tarps, and it's absolutely a result of the flaws, we could say, and problems of Haitian society and the world system.

On the one hand, you have these billions of dollars promised, only a fraction of which has been released, less than one percent, but that comes to several million dollars, but even this has not reached the people. What ends up happening is it gets lost in the bureaucracies of these NGOs and doesn't trickle down to the people in the camps. There are now 1,350 camps around the city, ranging in size from 20,000-30,000 to maybe several dozen, you see them everywhere, and the government has, with the NGO community, has made a couple of show-camps and the first day we got down there we went out to the camp called Corail. People may have heard of this; there was a little media coverage. It's in the middle of a desert, which, in the middle of the day it is a furnace. It must be 110 degrees! So this is what's happening in the improved camps.

A lot of the problem is fundamentally the question of land. The NGOs say, "well, yes, we have money, and we're ready to build shelters, but government isn't providing us land." Well, this is a half-truth, but fundamentally this is the big problem. Haiti now has land but needs land for the people, for the population. And the problem is that the best land, land that could be used to not just to build houses, but could be used for agriculture, could be used to grow food, to begin to redress the tremendous problems of Haiti, is in the hands of these big land owners who are letting it lie fallow, letting it appreciate, waiting to sell it for industrial parks or office buildings, or who knows what, and the government should be expropriating this land and using it. And they are not.

This earthquake has in a way opened the economic fault lines; the class fault lines it you will, of Haitian society. And what happens in the next couple of weeks will be very interesting, 'cause they've put in place an interim commission which is essentially composed of foreign bankers of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Inter-American development bank, and donor nations, that being the U.S., France, Canada, etc., the same people who carried out the 2004 coup d'etat, and 13 Haitians. Thirteen foreigners, 13 Haitians, and they've passed a state of emergency law which will allow this commission, this interim commission, to essentially have the powers of deciding what the new Haiti is going to look like. They're going to be the ones expropriating people and (laughs) I don't need to tell you it's not going to be the rich people, it's the poor and that's what they're doing; they’re going and kicking peasants off their land in some areas! And this is the real outrage of one of the real outrages that we see in Haiti today.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Kim, are there people organizing in the ground among the people who are displaced all over Haiti? Is there any agitation for a change in direction here and more coordination and more attention to the ongoing misery there?

KIM IVES:Oh, there is. Yeah, there is a very vibrant, it's growing in the camps, Scott, it's growing--women's groups, there's been a lot of rapes in the camps and women's groups are organizing with men to counter that. The groups are fighting the efforts of the Preval government, which has put in place a state of emergency for 18 months, essentially transferred power to this international commission, and are holding exclusionary elections, elections that are excluding the Lavalas Family Party. Everybody is up in arms about it; there's quite a groundswell of resistance and response at the grassroots to all the problems, and so despite all the difficulties we're going through, I think that the grass roots organizations may in fact have an opportunity to advance their agenda in the coming weeks and months.

Kim Ives is also a documentary filmmaker. Read Ives' articles online at www.haitiliberte.com

Related links:

MP3: Full-length Counterpoint interview with Kim Ives, conducted by Scott Harris, July 12, 2010 (23:43)
"U.S. Focus on Military Force Hinders Arrival of Haitian Quake Aid," Interview with Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, interview conducted by Scott Harris

Melinda Tuhus is a producer of Between The Lines, which can be heard on more than 50 radio stations and in RealAudio and MP3 on our website at http://www.btlonline.org. This interview excerpt was featured on the award-winning, syndicated weekly radio newsmagazine, Between The Lines for the week ending July 23, 2010. This Between The Lines Q&A was compiled by Melinda Tuhus and Anna Manzo.

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