PERSPECTIVE ON HAITI : Forcing a Deal With the Devil : International aid-givers push the same old top-down plans that help the rich and ensure continued poverty.

While the U.S. military occupies Haiti, a second, more powerful invasion force is close behind. Made up of economists, agriculturalists, lawyers and financiers, the stated mission of this army of so-called development experts is to restore economic viability and help alleviate poverty in Haiti. Yet their approach is likely to do little to address the root causes of poverty and instability in that country, if the plans presented by the international donors are any indication.

Three years of a military dictatorship have taken an extraordinary toll on the people of Haiti. Government services, never very effective, ceased to function soon after the coup. Road and irrigation systems are now a shambles. Productive inputs are unavailable to small farmers. Inflation is rampant and massive amounts of public funds have been stolen by the illegal government and its associates.

The targeted attacks by coup supporters on Haiti’s vibrant grass-roots development community have also undermined the rural economy, where more than 70% of Haitians make their living. The theft and destruction of credit-union funds, food-storage facilities, tree nurseries, tools, machinery and livestock--not to mention the negative impact of the embargo and the fact that tens of thousands of people have been in hiding for three years--have severely decapitalized both individual farms and social-change organizations that peasants painstakingly built to address the daunting economic and social challenges to their survival.

At an informal meeting on Haiti’s economic future held in Paris at the end of August, Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s constitutional government told international donors that it intended to include grass-roots cooperatives, women’s groups, peasant associations, labor unions, business organizations and other key groups in civil society in the design and implementation of economic programs and policies. However, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the World Bank, despite their rhetoric about the importance of democratizing development, are proceeding in typical top-down fashion and have yet to present any plans for including the Haitian people in determining what is best for their country.

The product of this top-down process, not surprisingly, is a $532-million development loan and assistance package that neglects the needs of the poor. For example, while small-farmers’ organizations and other groups have called for strengthening peasant agriculture, the U.S. government and international finance institutions are promoting the creation of a “macroeconomic framework” that would do just the opposite.

Permitting only meager tariff protection for a handful of local food crops, import-liberalization policies pushed by donors promise to undermine local small-scale production while freeing rich Haitians to use scarce foreign exchange to purchase luxury goods. Furthermore, it appears that the bulk of donor technical assistance, investment and credit funds will be directed toward export agriculture and assembly industries--most of the benefits of which accrue to only a handful of Haitians--rather than to peasants, who make up the majority of the population.

Another major issue is the sub-poverty-level wage paid to workers. Minimum wage in Haiti has decreased from $3 a day in the mid-1980s to its current level of less than $1. Despite this decline, donors are not encouraging any official increase in the minimum wage, to date recommending only that the private sector voluntarily adjust wages to reflect increased costs of living. This is cause for alarm, since the private sector in Haiti has consistently and vehemently opposed any attempts to establish a livable minimum wage.

As in so many other countries around the world, the international community is wielding development assistance like a sword in order to create social and economic structures that suit international, not local Haitian, interests. Donors cite the need for enforcing fiscal discipline as a rationale for their imposition. But, in the case of Haiti, this is unnecessary, as the Aristide government is already firmly committed to sound economic management, as it proved during its eight months in office in 1991.

The fact is that the Haitian government is being forced into a pact with the devil. To obtain critically needed financing, it has accepted conditions that run counter to majority interests and that will stand in the way of an equitable resolution of Haiti’s economic crisis.

To avoid further trauma and destabilization, the international community must stop imposing development strategies and economic frameworks. Rather, it should work with the constitutional government to put the Haitian people in the driver’s seat. After all, that is what real democracy is all about.