Jan 30
Statement by the Coordinating Committee of Progressive Organisations, Port-au-Prince, 27th January 2010
For over a week now a group of organizations and platforms have been meeting regularly to address the new situation, setting up new strategies and methods of work. As representatives of the organizations and platforms who are signatories to this document, and as a result of a number of meetings to assess the new situation and define common strategies, we have adopted a position based on the following guidelines…
Jan 30
January 25, 2010
This statement reflects the position of an international community of adoptees of color who wish to pose a critical intervention in the discourse and actions affecting the child victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti. We are domestic and international adoptees with many years of research and both personal and professional experience in adoption studies and activism……
Jan 29
Duncan Green is Head of Research at Oxfam Great Britain and author of From Poverty to Power
The Haiti operation is moving rapidly from rescue to reconstruction . What major challenges can we expect to emerge? What sort of policies have delivered results after previous earthquakes? One of the best sources on this is Responding to Earthquakes 2008: Learning from earthquake relief and recovery operations, by the ALNAP network. Here are some highlights of that report, plus a few thoughts from me…
Jan 28
Haiti is a tragedy for us all. It is a tragedy for you and me. It is a tragedy for Africa, for the poor countries of Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. An earthquake can happen anywhere. ..so why then is it so destructive in its effects in the countries of the South? It is because of the failure of development….
Jan 27
Melanie Newton is from Barbados and is Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto. This article was published as a column in the Barbados NationNews 27 January 2010
Many who have followed Haiti’s recent political history have a strong sense that the aftershocks of the Haitian earthquake will not be felt in Haiti alone.What happens now in Haiti is a question of world historical significance…
Jan 27
Message received from the Rector Université Quisqueya, Port-au-Prince
It’s my first time on the Internet since Tuesday’s earthquake. My apologies to friends who may have been worried by my silence but I have been focused on rescue operations and assistance to families. I was bent on not ending rescue operations until getting confirmation that the persons we were searching for had indeed died. Here’s the situation…
Jan 26
Presentation at Panel Discussion on the Haitian Earthquake, Institute of International Relations, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad, January 26, 2010
Much of the discourse on Haiti since (and before) the earthquake of January 12 has been ahistorical and decontextualised. I cringe every time I hear that Haiti is “the poorest country in the Western hemisphere” that is “plagued with corrupt and tyrannical governments” and other stereotypes so beloved by the Western media; sometimes reproduced uncritically by our own media houses. These phrases, repeated ad nauseam are meant to instill and internalize a view in which the Haitian people are uniquely responsible for their own poverty and poor infrastructure. They carry a subliminal message which in turn is employed as a political weapon…
Jan 26
Presentation Of The Most Honourable Percival James Patterson, Representative Of The Member States Of Caricom, to the Preparatory Ministerial Conference On Haiti,
Montreal, Canada, 25 January 2010
I speak today as the representative of the fourteen governments of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) of which Haiti is a member. I wish first of all to express the deepest condolences and solidarity of the Governments and People of CARICOM to our Haitian brothers and sisters following this disastrous earthquake….
Jan 25
This not the first time we have watched the international community make pledges of cooperation and assistance to Haiti. We are concerned, as organizations and social movements and on the basis of permanent contact and consultation with our partners there, that the international response be coordinated on the basis of respect for their sovereignty and in full accordance with the needs and demands of the Haitian people…
Jan 25
Let’s face it, after over 200 years, Haiti is yet again bringing the world together. And it is doing so for two well known reasons that have never quite bounced against each other as they have since this recent earthquake… a combination of guilt and pride.
