Haiti Quake Updates

HAITI: U.S. Acts Quickly on Debt Relief Ahead of Preval Visit
By Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Mar 8, 2010 (IPS) - With U.S. President Barack Obama preparing to host Haitian President Rene Preval at the White House Wednesday, Congress is moving quickly to show support for far-reaching debt relief and additional aid for the earthquake-stricken Caribbean nation.

The Senate Friday approved a resolution urging the U.S. representative at major international lending institutions to push for the cancellation of all of Haiti's outstanding multilateral debt – about 700 million dollars – or about two-thirds of the country's total outstanding debt of some 1.2 billion dollars.

The resolution also calls for Washington and other donors to provide significant assistance to help the country recover and rebuild from the earthquake, in which more than 200,000 people are estimated to have died.

In early projections based on other recent natural catastrophes released last month, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) estimated that reconstruction costs in Haiti are likely to range from eight billion dollars to 14 billion dollars. The same study predicted that the earthquake "is likely to be the most destructive natural disaster in modern times, when viewed in relations to the size of Haiti's population and its economy."

"While Haitians need our immediate help, they must also be empowered to build their own future down the road – a sustainable physical, social, and economic foundation for a stronger and more stable society," said the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives is planning to vote on a similar resolution during Preval's visit here Wednesday morning, according to Congressional staff members.

The House's subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade approved the pending measure by voice vote last Thursday, and the House leadership has put it on a fast track for a floor vote, which is expected to be bipartisan.

"I have long been a proponent of debt relief for low-income countries to enable them to focus on providing health care, education, and other vital services to their citizens," said Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who sponsored the House resolution and had just returned from a trip to Haiti on the weekend.

"In Haiti's case, every available dollar is urgently needed for short-term recovery and long-term rebuilding and development. Extending complete debt cancellation to Haiti – as well as assistance in the form of grants – will give Haiti a strong chance to put the country on a sustained path to success. I commend my colleagues in the Senate for passing a debt cancellation bill, and look forward to the House acting this week," she told IPS.

Preval's visit, his first here since the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, comes as U.S. troops have accelerated their withdrawal from the country where they helped deliver humanitarian assistance and maintain security, along with some 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers who were already stationed in Haiti and will remain there.

At their peak in early February, more than 16,000 U.S. soldiers and sailors were deployed in and around Haiti. "Our mission is largely accomplished," said Gen. Douglas Fraser in a press call Monday. He said less than 8,000 troops will remain in the area – most of them off-shore – by the end of this week.

Wednesday's White House meeting is designed in major part to demonstrate continued U.S. interest in the recovery of what was already, before the quake, Latin America's poorest country.

"The President looks forward to welcoming President Preval to the White House to underscore his pledge to the Haitian people that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America," read a statement released by Obama's press office late Friday.

"They will discuss relief, recovery, and reconstruction efforts in Haiti, including the important contributions made by the United States and the international community," it noted.

The United States – both through the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development – has so far spent more than 700 million dollars in humanitarian aid and its delivery, according to the latest government figures released last week.

The administration is currently drafting a supplemental 2010 foreign aid bill that is likely to include hundreds of millions of dollars more for reconstruction assistance, but officials here said it was unlikely the precise request – which must still be submitted to Congress for approval – will be announced at or before Wednesday's meeting.

Such an announcement will likely be made in the coming two weeks and, in any case, before the United States will join Haiti's other major donors at a pledging conference for Haiti at the United Nations in New York City scheduled for Mar. 31, according to administration officials.

In addition to the 700-plus million dollars Washington estimates that it has spent so far on earthquake relief and recovery, private U.S. citizens and companies have donated more than one billion dollars to charities active in humanitarian relief in Haiti, according to the latest tally by the Centre on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

Most of those funds were donated in the weeks after the earthquake as its aftermath dominated the three major national network television news programmes, which draw an average of about 23 million viewers every evening.

The networks devoted about one-third of their total nightly news coverage after the quake to news from Haiti through the remainder of the month, according to the authoritative Tyndall Report.

Network coverage dropped off sharply in February, according to the Report, which found that the arrest of U.S. Baptist missionaries on suspicion of trafficking Haitian children for adoption in the United States actually received more attention from the major evening programmes than recovery efforts.

The Congressional resolutions on debt relief were welcomed by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which have been lobbying for the cancellation of all of Haiti's multilateral debt since even before the earthquake struck.

"It's a very important signal because the U.S. is such an important stakeholder," said Elizabeth Stuart of Oxfam International. "The fact that the U.S. is promoting debt relief is something that all of the other stakeholders will take note of and hopefully act on in the coming weeks."

The Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers, whose collective membership dominates the governing boards of the key financial multilateral agencies, agreed in principle to sweeping debt relief at an emergency meeting in Montreal at the end of January.

Among the major agencies, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) holds the most debt, at nearly 420 million dollars. It is followed by the International Monetary Fund (165 million dollars), and the World Bank (39 million dollars). Other multilateral agencies, including members of the U.N. system, are owed a total of about 55 million dollars, according to the latest Fund statistics.

Venezuela, which holds nearly 300 million dollars in bilateral debt, announced after the quake it intended to cancel it, while Taiwan, the other major bilateral creditor, has said it would consider forgiving the 95 million dollars it is owed.

Haiti received 1.2 billion dollars in multilateral debt relief last June after the Preval government completed a three-year IMF programme, but over half of that debt had been incurred by Haiti's dictatorships, notably the 1957-86 Duvalier dynasty.

The debt incurred by Haiti since 2004 – much of it to help it recover from devastating floods caused by hurricanes in 2008 - was not covered by that relief.

*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.

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Big news. The U.S. Treasury Department just announced their intent to work with partners around the world to forgive Haiti’s debt in full. They also voiced their support that aid to Haiti come in the form of grants, not loans.

As you know, ONE has repeatedly pushed for these principles, including a massive campaign that as of now has received over 200,000 signatures. We will continue to push world leaders to cancel Haiti’s debt, including a petition delivery at the G7 finance ministers meeting in Iqaluit, Canada tomorrow.

This morning’s announcement from the U.S. Treasury is a tremendous step forward to giving Haiti a real chance to recover from last month’s devastating earthquake. This momentum would not have been possible without ONE members. Thank you for all your hard work.

Here’s the U.S. Treasury Department’s statement in full:

SECRETARY GEITHNER VOICES SUPPORT FOR INTERNATIONAL DEBT RELIEF FOR HAITI, FINANCING OF RECOVERY THROUGH GRANTS

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today announced the United States will work with its partners around the world to relieve all debts owed by Haiti to international institutions and to ensure grant financing to support Haiti’s reconstruction and recovery from the devastating earthquake in January.

“The earthquake in Haiti was a catastrophic setback to the Haitian people who are now facing tremendous emergency humanitarian and reconstruction needs, and meeting Haiti’s financing needs will require a massive multilateral effort,” said Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. “Today, we are voicing our support for what Haiti needs and deserves – comprehensive multilateral debt relief.”

Secretary Geithner also welcomed International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s call to provide full relief for Haiti’s outstanding IMF debt, including the $102 million emergency loan approved on January 27, 2010.

“We are committed to working quickly and closely with these institutions in a way that provides immediate grant assistance to help the Haitian people recover and rebuild,” Secretary Geithner continued. “I very much welcome the initiative taken on this issue by leaders in Congress, the IMF, and the MDBs and look forward to working with them to provide the critical support Haiti needs for recovery as well as to discussing this issue with my G-7 colleagues this weekend.”

Treasury announced that the U.S. intends to seek a commitment with other donors for the relief of Haiti’s debt to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the International Development Association (IDA) in a manner that provides direct and immediate grant support to Haiti.

In September 2009, the U.S. concluded an agreement with Haiti that eliminated 100 percent of the Haitian Government’s outstanding debt to the U.S. This action was taken following Haiti’s successful completion of the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative process in June 2009.

HAITI: U.S. Lawmakers, NGOs Call for Debt Cancellation
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 4, 2010 (IPS) - Three weeks after Haiti's devastating earthquake, nearly 100 U.S. lawmakers joined with key civil society groups here Thursday to urge the Group of Seven (G7) leading western nations to commit to cancelling all of the Caribbean country's multilateral debt.

On the eve of Friday's meeting by G7 finance ministers in Iqaluit, Canada, 94 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that also called for "the provision of assistance to Haiti in the form of grants so that the country does not accumulate additional debts."

That call was echoed by a several non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including Oxfam, Jubilee USA, and Avaaz, which said they plan to deliver hundreds of thousands of individual signatures on petitions appealing for debt cancellation from across the world to this weekend's ministerial meeting.

"(While) the international community has acted rapidly and generously to provide for Haiti's immediate emergency needs," said Emma Seery, Oxfam's campaign manager, "the G7 must now also make sure that Haiti is not left saddled with crippling debts as it recovers and rebuilds."

"They must agree to all new financial support being in the form of grants, not loans, and commit to a clear plan to cancel what remains of Haiti's debt," she said.

The push on the G7, which, in addition to the U.S., includes Canada, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the European Union (EU), comes as Haiti struggles to clean up and begin recovering from the cataclysmic Jan. 12 earthquake that is estimated to have killed at least 150,000 people, and possibly tens of thousands more.

In addition to damaging much of the country's infrastructure, the quake, the most lethal in the Americas' recorded history, also rendered nearly one million of its nearly 10 million people homeless, creating unprecedented challenges for the government of President Rene Preval, humanitarian NGOs and foreign aid groups, and more than 10,000 U.S. troops and U.N. peacekeepers.

With the vast majority of the population living on less than two U.S. dollars a day before the earthquake, Haiti has long been the western hemisphere's poorest country. The quake was the latest in a series of natural disasters, including devastating hurricanes in 2008 and again in 2009.

Last June, 1.2 billion dollars in Haiti's external debt, including that owed to the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), was cancelled after the Preval government completed a three-year Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) programme.

Over half of that debt had been incurred by Haiti's dictatorships, notably the Duvalier dynasty that ruled the country from 1957 to 1986.

But the cancellation covered debt incurred by Haiti only through 2004. In the last five years, the country has received new loans – some of them to help it recover from the floods and other hurricane damage – totalling another 1.05 billion dollars.

Some two-thirds of that total is owed to multilateral agencies, including some 447 million dollars to the IDB, 39 million dollars to the World Bank, and some 165 million dollars to the IMF.

The remainder is bilateral debt, most of it owed to Taiwan (92 million dollars) and Venezuela (167 million dollars). Haiti also owes the Rome-based International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) another 58 million dollars.

While the terms of the multilateral loans are concessional – most of them carry only nominal interest rates and can be repaid over as much as 50 years - servicing of the IMF and IDB loans by themselves alone would normally require Haiti to pay more than 100 million dollars over the next decade, a sum that it can ill afford in the wake of last month's earthquake, according to the NGOs.

Oxfam and the Jubilee USA Network, veterans in the campaign to gain debt relief for the world's poorest countries, began calling for comprehensive debt cancellation immediately after the earthquake.

In the days following the earthquake, officials at the IMF, the World Bank, and the IDB - whose governing boards are dominated by the G7 countries - said they were sympathetic to that appeal.

On Jan. 21, the World Bank announced a waiver of Haiti's pending debt payment for five years and said it would explore ways that the remaining debt could be cancelled. The IDB has said it is engaged in a similar effort and will present alternatives for reducing or cancelling the debt to its board of governors.

On Jan. 27, the IMF, which lacks the authority to provide outright grants, announced that it would give Haiti a 102 million-dollar loan at zero-percent interest and that would not be subject to any of the Fund's usual performance conditions.

Last week, all three countries reported to an emergency donors' conference in Montreal on debt relief for Haiti, but no further announcements were forthcoming.

In their letter, the lawmakers, who were led by California Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters and Florida Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, called on Geithner to push hard on his colleagues.

"We welcome recent statements from officials at the multilateral financial institutions of their intentions to consider cancellation of Haiti's remaining debts," the letter stated.

"We urge you to use the voice and vote of the United States on the Executive Boards of these institutions to secure cancellation of all of Haiti's remaining multilateral debts. While arrangements are worked out for cancellation, we urge you to support a moratorium on debt service payments from Haiti to these institutions, without the accrual of interest."

Melinda St. Louis, Jubilee's deputy director, said action was urgent.

"This weekend the G7 finance ministers must respond to the mounting global consensus to drop Haiti's debt," she said. "It's time our leaders announced their commitment to cancel Haiti's debts once and for all, including the new IMF loan. Debt cancellation is a critical step in the long road to Haiti's recovery."

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Join the call to action http://bit.ly/cancelhaitidebt

Source: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)

Date: 28 Jan 2010

Full_Report (pdf* format - 2.2 Mbytes)

Rebuilding the Haitian economy will require massive international investment, along with local ownership of the policy and reform agendas to ensure the revival of State capacities. Given the scale of destruction, and Haiti's precarious financial position even before the earthquake, international support for reconstruction must begin with a moratorium on debt servicing, followed quickly by its cancellation, UNCTAD argues in this policy brief. Without such action - and without development assistance in the form of grants, and not loans - a new debt crisis is all but assured.

Original article: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/MUMA-82682H?OpenDocument&rc=...

Canceling Haiti’s Debt Is A Global Moral Obligation

By Gilbert Mercier NEWS JUNKIEPOST Jan 25, 2010 at 7:36 am  Print This Post

Today, Foreign Ministers are meeting in Montreal to discuss Haiti’s outstanding $890 million international debt. The repayment of this debt burden would undermine any possibility of long term recovery for Haitians, which were already already affected by a food crisis before the earthquake that has left Haiti dependent on imports for almost 50 percent of its food.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that “it will work to cancel the debt”, and this needs to happen now. So far the IMF response to the earthquake was to offer a $100 million loan. This loan would increase Haiti’s debt burden and cripple  Haiti’s long term recovery in a time of extreme crisis. Haiti’s scarce resources and funds must be used to help people rebuild their lives not payback loans from the international community.

The head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has said that he was working on a way to turn the $100 million loan already announced into a grant. The NGO Oxfam is taking the lead to put pressure on the IMF and the international community to promote a comprehensive plan to help Haitians rebuild their devastated country.

Strauss-Kahn has called for a multilateral aid plan to rebuild the shattered island on a scale similar to the Marshall Plan.

“My belief is that Haiti, which has been incredibly hit by different things-the food and fuel crisis, the hurricanes, than the earthquake- needs something that is big. Not only a piecemeal approach, but something which is much bigger to deal with the reconstruction of the country: Some kind of Marshall Plan that we need now to implement for Haiti,” said IMF’s Strauss-Kahn.

Meanwhile Oxfam is keeping the pressure up on the IMF and rich countries.

“Expecting Haiti to repay billions of dollars as the country struggles to overcome one of the worst natural disasters in recent memory would be both cruel and unnecessary. Immediate cancellation of foreign debt must be accompanied by urgent action to support farmers and prevent a man-made food crisis exacerbating the hardship faced by the people of Haiti. Haiti is a divided and highly unequal society so there is a real risk that, in the weeks and months after the earthquake, politically influential and richer Haitians will secure reconstruction resources at the expense of Port-au-Prince poorest,” said Oxfam International executive director Jeremy Hobbs.

Hobbs also recommends that the leadership of the relief effort, which has shown some serious lack of coordination, must remain clearly under the control of the United Nations and the Haitian government, and not foreign authorities.

• 

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2 Responses for “Canceling Haiti’s Debt Is A Global Moral Obligation”

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   uberVU - social comments says:

   January 25, 2010 at 8:01 am

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Ole Ole Olson says:

January 25, 2010 at 9:55 pm

It is going to take a generation of concentrated effort to revive Haiti, not only from this recent disaster, but from the economic plundering that took place under the Papa Doc regime. Serious investment in education, sanitation, institution building, and jobs programs for infrastructure development. Canceling the Haiti debt is a step towards starting this.

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Oxfam has urged foreign ministers to cancel Haiti's debts, saying insisting on repayment would be "cruel and unnecessary".

Take Action: Join the call to drop Haiti's debt.

Help Haiti today and tomorrow: Cancel the debt

Our biggest concern right now is dealing with the immediate aftermath of the humanitarian disaster caused by the devastating earthquake. But in our concern to help those suffering, let’s not forget the long term.
Take the action now

The world’s attention is focused on Haiti. Leaders are pledging to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people and help them to build a brighter future out of the rubble. The debts that Haiti owes will hamper efforts to rebuild the country and lock them in poverty for years to come.

Leaders are meeting in Montreal on Monday to decide on the amount of aid that they will give. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that it will work to cancel the debt, and this now needs to happen.

Email the head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn to demand that when leaders meet on Monday, they cancel Haiti’s debts immediately.

Why is debt cancellation so important?

Haiti still owes hundreds of millions of dollars in debt - a legacy of loans from global financial institutions and donor nations to unelected governments of years past. It is one of the poorest countries in the world and yet the IMF response to the earthquake was to offer a $100 million loan. This loan would increase Haiti’s debt burden at this time of crisis.

Oxfam join, ONE.org, Avaaz, and others to demand that Haiti's debt be dropped/