Haiti: Neuer Bauernverband verlangt Taten gegen die Hungerkrise
New Peasant Alliance Demands Action on Food Crisis
Deutsche Zusammenfassung:
Inter Press Service verbreitete dieser Tage einen Artikel von Charles Arthur über die Situation der Landbevölkerung und der Ernährungslage in Haiti. Am 12. Dezember 2008 habe es eine Aufsehen erregende landesweite Demonstration in der Hauptstadt Porte-Au-Prince gegeben. Ein Zusammenschluss von 10 Bauernverbänden forderten die Regierung auf, der einheimischen landwirtschaftlichen Produktion eine Überlebensperspektive zu geben. Trotz andauernder Landflucht leben immer noch rund zwei Drittel der Bevölkerung auf dem Land oder vom Land.
Hintergrund des bäuerlichen Protestes sind die rapide sinkenden Erträge sowie die wachsende Bevölkerung, sodass das Land immer stärker auf Agrarimporte angewiesen ist. Die Gefahren dieser Import-Abhängigkeit hätten sich Anfang 2008 offenbart, als die Preise für Lebensmitteleinfuhren nach oben schnellten. Die Armutsbevölkerung in Haiti war nicht mehr in der Lage, Reis, Bohnen oder Speiseöl zu kaufen. Im April l.J. kam es zu ersten Hungerrevolten in einigen Städten des Landes, sodass sich Präsident Préval veranlasst sah, entgegen dem neoliberalen Dogma preisunterstützende Maßnahmen für Import-Reis für ein halbes Jahr anzuordnen. Schwere Unwetter im August und September (vier verheerende Tropenstürme und Hurrikane innerhalb weniger Wochen) zerstörten die Ernten, wuschen regelrecht fruchtbaren Boden weg und zerstörten Gebäude und Infrastruktur.
Dass Haiti besonders unter den tropischen Stürmen leidet, liegt an der weit verbreiteten Abholzung der Wälder und der Bodenerosion. Die Bauernaktivisten würden den Zusammenhang zwischen der Umweltzerstörung und der Verschlechterung der Bodenfruchtbarkeit deutlich sehen. So hätten sie bei der Demonstration im Dezember von der Regierung auch ein Umweltschutzprogramm gefordert.
Die Kritik der Bauern richtet sich auch gegen die Haushaltspolitik der Regierung. Deren mittelfristiger Wirtschaftsentwicklungsplan basiert auf den Vorgaben eines von der Weltbank geförderten sog. Strategiepapiers zur Armutsverringerung (Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper - PRSP). Dieses Papier sei lediglich mit wenigen Organisationen ausgehandelt, nicht aber mit der bäuerlichen Bevölkerung und ihren Basisbewegungen abgestimmt worden. Nötig sei demgegenüber eine neue Strategie zur Stärkung der lokalen landwirtschaftlichen Produktion und Konsumtion, eine wirkliche Agrarreform, die vor allem die Ernährungssicherheit des Landes garantieren solle.
Unterstützung erhalten die Bauernverbände auch von internationalen NGOs wie z.B. der spanischen Entwicklungsagentur Oxfam Intermon, aber auch von nationalen Organisationen der Zivilgesellschaft wie der Platform to Advocate for an Alternative Development (PAPDA).
Mit der neuen Bauernbewegung verbinden sich schließlich Hoffnungen, in den nächsten Monaten und Jahren eine so starke soziale Bewegung entwickeln zu können, dass auf die Senats- und Präsidentschaftswahlen 2011 Einfluss genommen werden kann.
Deutsche Zusammenfassung: Peter Strutynski
HAITI:
New Peasant Alliance Demands Action on Food Crisis
By Charles Arthur
January 14, 2009, Inter Press Service
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Haiti's peasant farmers are
organising and taking action to try and bring an end to
the country's dependence on food imports, and to avert
the prospect of looming famine.
In recent months, meetings and demonstrations held by
peasant farmer groups and supported by a number of non-
governmental organisations have been taking place
across Haiti. The mobilisation is part of a fledgling
political campaign to end the marginalisation of the
rural population and to revamp the nation's neglected
agricultural sector.
The new alliance is threatening to shake up the
political scene in Haiti, and may even put up
candidates for parliamentary elections scheduled for
April.
The movement flexed its political muscle on the
national stage for the first time on Dec. 12 when
thousands of peasant farmers descended on the capital,
Port-au-Prince, for a demonstration calling on the
government to intervene to help them revive national
agricultural production.
Prospéry Raymond, the Haiti country representative of
the British development NGO Christian Aid, told IPS
that the demonstration was "a very good way to show the
authorities that the peasant organisations must be
taken seriously".
Still, he doubts that the peasant alliance will put up
candidates for forthcoming elections. "Although some
peasant leaders have aspirations to elected office,
many of the organisations are determined to preserve
their autonomy and want to keep their distance from
party politics," Raymond said.
However, he believes that the newly united peasant
movement will be able to influence the elections by
representing a potentially decisive voting bloc that
the candidates will have to court in order to win
office.
Until recently largely self-sufficient in food
production, declining yields and a growing population
have left Haiti ever more dependent on imported food.
The dangers of this reliance were starkly revealed at
the beginning of 2008 when the country experienced
sharp price rises for food imports.
The poverty-stricken population suddenly found itself
unable to afford to buy food staples such as rice,
beans, or cooking oil. In April, anti-hunger riots
erupted in towns across the country, and the government
was forced out of office. In an effort to stem the
riots, President René Préval abandoned neo-liberal
policy dogma by intervening to subsidise the price of
imported rice for a six-month period.
Then, in August and September, the country was hit by
four tropical storms and hurricanes in the space of a
few weeks. Flooding and mudslides claimed hundreds of
lives, and houses and infrastructure were destroyed. In
all parts of the country, crops, livestock, and
agricultural land were washed away.
Haiti suffers more than other countries in the region
from the effects of seasonal hurricanes because of
large-scale deforestation and soil erosion.
Peasant organisers see the issues of environmental
degradation and lack of support for the agricultural
sector as closely linked. According to activists, the
two primary aims of the mid-December demonstration were
to get the state to prioritise environmental protection
as part of a national development plan, and to force
the government to take effective measures to re-launch
national agricultural production.
The demonstration was called by an alliance of 10
peasant organisations, including the national
movements, Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan and the Mouvman Peyizan
Nasyonal Kongre Papay (MPNKP), as well as regional
groups from the departments of the Grand'Anse, Nippes,
the Central Plateau, and the southeast.
Despite an enormous exodus of people from the
countryside to the towns in recent decades, some two-
thirds of the population still depends on agriculture
for a living. Yet no government has devoted any
significant funds to revitalising the agricultural
sector or restoring the environment.
A spokesperson for the peasant farmers' alliance, the
MPNKP's Edith Germain Remonvil, said that while the
high price of fuel and the knock-on costs of transport
was a factor contributing to the rising cost of living
in Haiti, the only way to definitively reduce the price
of food items was by increasing national production.
Remonvil pleaded with the new government, headed by
Prime Minister, Michèle Pierre-Louis, to prioritise
agriculture in the budget for the current year, 2008-9.
She criticised the government's existing medium-term
economic development plans, based on the World Bank-
sponsored, Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP).
"If the Pierre-Louis government continues to favour the
plans prepared in the context of the PRSP , it is clear
that nothing is really going to change," said Remonvil,
adding that the PRSP was concocted by local officials
working with a few organizations but without the
participation of grassroots organizations across the
country.
The peasant organisations' calls for a new development
strategy prioritizing local agricultural production for
local consumption have the backing of the National
Association of Haitian Agronomists (ANDAH). In a New
Year message, ANDAH implored the Pierre-Louis
government to allocate more funds to agriculture,
stating that "Only by increasing national agricultural
production can the authorities start to combat the
problems of a high cost of living and guarantee the
population's food security."
Recalling the many "beautiful promises' made in the
past about providing resources to benefit the poorest
sectors of society, and that "nothing ever came of
them", ANDAH called on Haitians to mobilize to build a
new society. Central to the agronomists' vision of a
new Haiti is an agrarian reform which, the association
says, "must be realized in the framework of an overall
policy capable of guaranteeing food security, as well
as public services, in the furthest-flung parts of the
country."
A number of non-governmental organizations - both local
and international - are supporting the peasant farmer
organizations' mobilization. One of them is the Spanish
development agency, Oxfam Intermon.
Maurepas Jeudy, Oxfam Intermon's director in Haiti,
blames neo-liberal policies for the country's current
food crisis. He says, "Since 1986 successive
governments have applied neo- liberal policies that
have caused considerable damage. Before 1986 local rice
production met 80% of national demand, but today more
than 80% of rice consumed is imported. It is the same
with maize, beans and chicken eggs."
Another civil society organisation working closely in
support of the peasant farmers' mobilisation is the
Haitian Platform to Advocate for an Alternative
Development (PAPDA). The umbrella grouping of various
NGOs has been helping bring different peasant groups
together to agree on demands and to organise a strategy
to realise them.
For example, on Dec. 23, in the central Artibonite town
of Petite Rivière de l'Artibonite, the PAPDA helped
convene members of local peasant organisations for a
public meeting and demonstration calling for agrarian
reform.
The PAPDA's Camille Chalmers says that the world
economic crisis will have a deadly impact on Haiti. He
believes that "If the economic policy that we have
today does not change, and if we continue on the same
track of neo-liberalism imposed by Washington and the
international financial institutions, we will
experience a continuous break-down and collapse. We
will experience even more serious levels of poverty."
While predicting that, in this context, a new wave of
social protest in Haiti is inevitable, Chalmers admits
that at present the country's social movement is ill-
prepared to take advantage of a popular rejection of
the status quo.
However, he sees the new peasant farmers' alliance as
an important step in the right direction.
"A collection of different peasant movements are trying
to build a common platform," he said. "Steps are being
taken to achieve a sufficiently strong social movement
to present different alternatives and to try to
influence the situation, both in changing what is done
in economic policy, as well as in the context of the
forthcoming senatorial elections and the presidential
elections in 2011."
* Charles Arthur is the author of "Haiti in Focus", and
editor of "Liberté, A Haiti Anthology".
Source: Inter Press Service, January 14, 2009, http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45406
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