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By: Jo Jinho
Early Feb 2010
Despite the scarcity of food, water, shelter and electricity in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, the Export Processing Zones (EPZ) that provide cheap labour to North America’s apparel industry is quickly being refurbished.
EPZ play a key role in the global division of labour. They are small enclaves within a nation where lesser corporate taxes and tariffs apply. Poor countries designate EPZ to attract foreign direct investment for manufacturing centres hoping this will provide wage labour to its citizens.
Before the earthquake, purporting the need to spur development, Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-Moon and Bill Clinton, Director of the Special UN envoy to Haiti, made a joint recommendation to expand EPZ in Haiti. Yet despite the fact that circumstances and humanitarian priorities have drastically changed, the development strategy to create cheap wage labour jobs, the fruits of which are enjoyed outside the country, has not. In fact, following a trend of post-crisis development that Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine, 2007) has eloquently pointed out before, the current humanitarian crises is being used to entrench the role of Haiti as a source for cheap labour going forward – locking the island nation in the bottom rungs of the global hierarchy.
What is needed to curb the humanitarian plight in Haiti is well known. Interest free money (grants not loans), cash-for-work programs (Haitians are paid daily cash to work rebuilding the streets of Haiti like tidying debris or planting trees), and focus on creating a central government capacity to disburse funds (this is a tough one) is paramount if the well being of Haitians is really the world’s concern. The President of the World Bank acknowledges this (Zoellick, 2010). But the actual practice of the World Bank and those involved in supplying Haiti with development aid does not follow suit. That’s the rub.
Haiti is stifled by a staggering $1 Billion debt, and in a manner so ludicrous the interest accumulated on this debt can exceed the aid and donations that manage to come Haiti’s way. But creditors of the richest countries continue to line up to provide money at a cost to Haiti. Aid that does not align with western interests, from donors in the Latin American and Caribbean region, is being blocked from entry into the country by American military forces.
But what can Haiti do with the money that it does get? Haitians no longer have a parliament building let alone a functioning government body able to create and execute budgets. The history of government mayhem and international meddling that has obstructed democratic process in Haiti cannot be justly described here. But what can be said is that no amount of aid in the world can “reconstruct” Haiti without Haitians being given the policy space to create a country for themselves.
Aid, donations, and expertise can operationalize in a way that empowers Haitians. It is just not occurring. The top rungs of the global hierarchy, the G8 and G20, will be meeting in Muskoka and Toronto respectively in late June this year. Haiti will be a topic of discussion in one capacity or another, possibly working to keep Haiti in the grasp of poverty for good.
