The New Dark Age

11 January, 2010 — Haiti Report

The Haiti Report is a compilation and summary of events as described in Haiti and international media prepared by Konbit Pou Ayiti/KONPAY. It does not reflect the opinions of any individual or organization. This service is intended to create a better understanding of the situation in Haiti by presenting the reader with reports that provide a variety of perspectives on the situation. Please visit our website to learn more about KONPAY and Haiti: www.konpay.org

To make a donation to support this service, visit our site or mail personal checks to: Konbit Pou Ayiti, 7 Wall Street, Gloucester, MA, 01930.

IN THIS REPORT:
– UN Peacekeeping Mission Helping Prepare for Upcoming Elections
– Latin American Solidarity Coalition Delegation in Haiti Releases Statement
– UN Representative Says Elections are Key to Preserving Progress
– UN Secretary General says UN will Provide Security and Logistical Support for Elections
– President Preval Promises Fair Legislative Elections, Emphasizes Importance of Stability for Development
– Choice Hotels Opening a Comfort Inn in Jacmel this May
– Ghetto Biennale, Art on Grand Rue
– Protest, and a Hunger Strike, Over Haitian Immigrant Deported 24 Years Later
– Zynga Games Raise over $1 million for School Children in Haiti
– Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith Raise Funds for World Food Programme in Haiti
– SOIL Promoting Composting Toilets

UN Peacekeeping Mission Helping Prepare for Upcoming Elections:
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) is helping the impoverished Caribbean country prepare for upcoming legislative elections, providing secondary support in logistics, security and raising public awareness while leaving the primary organizing role to the national authorities, UN officials said here on Tuesday. ”It is the responsibility of the Haitian authorities to organize good elections,” Marco Donati, the senior UN official in the southern region, told a recent meeting in Les Cayes to encourage the local youth to participate in the polls. “MINUSTAH is merely playing a secondary role in the elections.” The mission is also helping the authorities to maintain a stable political atmosphere conducive to electing the country’s legislators, he added. MINUSTAH has been on the ground in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, since mid-2004. Currently there are more than 9,000 military and police personnel deployed and nearly 2,000 civilian staff. The mission plays a multi-faceted role, ranging from helping tore-establish security in conjunction with the national police force to humanitarian aid and improvement of infrastructure such as roads and bridges. (Xinhua, 1/5)

Latin American Solidarity Coalition Delegation in Haiti Releases Statement:
Demands: 1. No financial support for February legislative elections.
2. No recognition of elections that exclude major political parties, including Haiti’s largest party Fanmi Lavalas.
3. No election monitoring because it would legitimize an undemocratic process
4. Stop election interference by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute (NDI), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the U.S. Embassy.

Background: Legislative elections constitutionally scheduled for November 2009 have been arbitrarily postponed until February 28, 2010 by the government of President Rene Preval. President Preval hand-picked the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP). Haiti’s Constitution mandates a Permanent Electoral Council. Within Haiti, Preval’s CEP is widely seen as favoring Preval’s own political party InitÈ (Unity).

Preval’s CEP used a technicality to exclude Haiti’s largest political party Fanmi Lavalas from the election; the CEP used a similar tactic to exclude Lavalas from a partial Senate election for about a third of the Senate seats in April 2009. Fanmi Lavalas is the party of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was ousted in a US-sponsored coup February 29th, 2004. Preval’s hand-picked CEP also awarded his Unity Party the top ballot position while assigning all other ballot positions randomly, thus giving a huge advantage to the Unity Party. A delegation organized by the Latin American Solidarity Coalition, a coalition of U.S. grassroots solidarity organizations is currently in Haiti to investigate human rights abuses. The delegation is especially concerned with abuses committed by the UN military and police force (MINUSTAH). The UN Security Council authorized the MINUSTAH mission following the 2004 coup. Our delegation gathered testimony from victims of UN human rights abuses that include injuries and deaths from gunfire, beatings, rapes, and sexual abuse. During this process, we heard dozens of appeals from Haitians and Haitian organizations asking us to use our influence on our government to prevent the February election.

Many Haitians expressed fear of a social explosion that would result in violent repression by MINUSTAH and Haitian police if the election is allowed to proceed without the inclusion of Fanmi Lavalas. An election which excludes Lavalas would be tantamount to a U.S. Congressional election in which the Democratic or Republican Party were excluded from the ballot. (Latin America Solidarity Coalition, 1/5)

UN Representative Says Elections are Key to Preserving Progress:
Haiti’s democratic and economic development hinge on a pair of legislative and presidential elections planned for this year, the top U.N. representative to the Caribbean nation said Thursday. In a year-opening speech, peacekeeping chief Hedi Annabi said Haiti’s security and economy improved in 2009 as the country avoided political deadlock despite the ouster of yet another prime minister. But Annabi warned that relative progress depends on successfully holding two elections in a country where casting ballots and counting votes has often led to bloodshed and turmoil. ’’Success would allow the country to enter a virtuous circle where stability and development are mutually reinforcing,’’ Annabi said of the elections. ‘’Their failure will exacerbate distrust and suspicion and could jeopardize the progress achieved during the last four years.’’ The first test comes Feb. 28, when voting is scheduled for seats in both legislative chambers.

Presidentially appointed officials have disqualified about 15 political groups from fielding candidates ahead of the vote. Opposition groups are threatening to disrupt the vote, saying the council is clearing the way for President Rene Preval’s newly formed Unity party to win seats in parliament, amend the constitution and increase executive power. Preval used his Jan. 1 Independence Day speech to pledge that elections would be fair, but did not address the disqualifications.

Annabi called on all elements of Haitian society to contribute to the upcoming vote and presidential elections expected later in the year, and said the 9,000 U.N. soldiers and police under his supervision would provide security and help with logistics. ’’The success of the elections depends not only on the (electoral council), which must of course honorably discharge the important responsibilities that were assigned. It also requires the full commitment of all political actors of civil society and all citizens,’’ Annabi said. In response to a reporter’s question about local media reports that international partners have not provided $15 million needed for an estimated $25 million election, he simply said peacekeepers were confident the money would arrive. Peacekeepers will also focus this year on border security, justice sector and prison reform, and training Haiti’s rapidly expanding national police force, he said. (AP, 1/7)

UN Secretary General says UN will Provide Security and Logistical Support for Elections:
Presidential and legislative elections are the major challenge facing Haiti in 2010 and the United Nations will provide the necessary security and logistical support to further their success, the world body’s top official in the crisis-prone country told his first news conference of the new year. “We will assure the entire logistical needs, which is a very heavy undertaking,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative Hédi Annabi said yesterday, noting that the UN will help distribute electoral material to the more than 11,500 polling stations across the impoverished Caribbean nation as well as collect the ballots afterwards and bring them to Port-au-Prince, the capital, for tabulation. It is now up to the Haitians, and only the Haitians, to transform this hope into reality by working together in the greater interests of their country. “And we will assure security, so we will deploy police and military personnel throughout the country,” he added of the 11,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which was set up in mid-2004 after then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide went into exile amid violent unrest. “We cannot physically be present everywhere all the time, but we will try to be as present as possible with the personnel we have at our disposal to create an environment in which the people can go to vote freely and make their choice. And, of course, the deployed personnel will be authorized to intervene every time anybody tries to disrupt the electoral process.”

The elections are of capital importance for the future of democracy and the consolidation of stability in the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, Mr. Annabi stressed. “Their success will enable the country to enter a virtuous circle where stability and development mutually reinforce each other; their failure would contribute to further exacerbating distrust and suspicion and could undermine the progress made in the past four years,” he warned. Reviewing the past year, Mr. Annabi noted that, despite the difficult national and international economic and social situation, Haiti managed to avoid the recession that hit so many other countries, with its gross domestic product (GDP) growing 2.5 per cent and, according to some predictions, on track to reach a 3.5 to 4 per cent growth in 2010. Agricultural production also increased substantially in 2009. He cited MINUSTAH’s collaboration with local police in combating crime, leading to a reduction particularly in kidnappings, and pledged continuing UN technical and operational support in developing and reinforcing the national police force to enable it to assume alone the responsibility of maintaining order throughout the country. “This new decade therefore starts on a note of hope that could translate into a new surge for the Haitian economy with all its concomitant benefits for basic social services and reducing the suffering of the least privileged,” he said. “Haiti is today at a turning point in its history. We saw the hope of a new departure emerge on the horizon in 2009. It is now up to the Haitians, and only the Haitians, to transform this hope into reality by working together in the greater interests of their country.” (UN News Centre, 1/8)

The head of the United Nations mission in Haiti promised logistical support for the country’s national elections this year. In a news conference Friday, Hedi Annabi, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s special representative, said the United Nations will handle the distribution of ballots and other electoral material to Haiti’s 11,500 polling places and collect the ballots and transport them to Port-au-Prince. Haitians will vote for members of both of the Caribbean island nation’s legislative bodies Feb. 28. ”And we will assure security, so we will deploy police and military personnel throughout the country,” he added. “We cannot physically be present everywhere all the time, but we will try to be as present as possible with the personnel we have at our disposal to create an environment in which the people can go to vote freely and make their choice. And, of course, the deployed personnel will be authorized to intervene every time anybody tries to disrupt the electoral process.” The United Nations has deployed 11,000 peacekeepers in Haiti since former President Jean-Bertrande Aristide went into exile in 2004. In his first news conference of the new year, Annabi said Haiti ended the year and decade on a hopeful note. The economy grew 2.5 percent in 2009 in spite of the global recession and is expected to grow even faster in the next few years. (UPI, 1/9)

President Preval Promises Fair Legislative Elections, Emphasizes Importance of Stability for Development:
Haitian President Rene Preval has used his Independence Day speech to pledge that upcoming legislative elections will be fair. But the Friday speech did not address the disqualification of 15 political groups that has prompted international criticism and opposition threats to try to disrupt the Feb. 28 vote. The opposition accuses the presidentially appointed electoral council of favoring Preval’s new Unity party. Preval’s speech also promises to focus the last of his five-year term on restoring agriculture, electricity and roads in the impoverished Caribbean country. The annual address in Gonaives marks Haiti’s Jan. 1, 1804, independence from France after a slave revolt. (AP, 1/1)

Parliamentary elections scheduled for February and March next year are the eyes of President René Préval an important test to confirm “the country’s ability to maintain stability” and thereby revive the confidence of the international community and the Haitian people. Preval spoke during his speech on 1 January 2010 to Gonaives (North) to mark the 206th anniversary of the independence of Haiti. Préval pleads for stability and “continuity” for the development of Haiti. “Stability and continuity are the keys that can open the way for the development of the country,” says he, taking samples for evidence of delayed or advanced in some sectors such as roads, energy, the Agriculture and job creation. Préval said that many roadworks have been completed without the weakening of the state caused by political instability, a “poison.” As examples, he mentions in particular the road between Port-au-Prince to Cap Haitien (North) through the Central Plateau (East) whose work dragged on for eight years and the road from Les Cayes to Jeremie (South) .

Earlier this year, however this situation will change, promises Preval. From that January starts on construction of the road-Mirebalais Hinche (East), which will be extended to Cap Haitien allowing the link between the capital and second largest city. Roads St Marc-Gonaives (North), Cayes and Jérémie will be finalized this year, “he promised. The President recalled the other hand, Buffett has the negative consequences of climate policy for years 2001-2006 on agriculture. The agrarian reform which outlined steps shy during his first five years (1996-2001) was stopped in 2001, he recalls. But since coming to power in 2006, further efforts have allowed an increase of 25% of the food supply, says he. This increase has been possible thanks to investments in the sector, including a stamp of 55 million employed in the irrigation of 91 thousand hectares of land. 13 million agricultural tools, 3 million tons of seed and more than 200 tractors were purchased by the government for nearly 12 million dollars. Energy is another sector where Préval says he scored. Of 83 megawatts in 2006, the capacity of the Electricity of Haiti (EDH) has now reached 182 megawatts and is expected to grow to 210 megawatts in 2011, welcomed the Head of State. Also in 2004 the number of jobs in the outsourcing has dropped to 12 miles. Valued at 26 miles this year, that number could increase to 50 000 in 2010 and 100 000 in 2011 “hopefully”. (Alterpresse, 1/5)

Choice Hotels Opening a Comfort Inn in Jacmel this May:
A decade after Haiti’s only U.S. hotel franchise removed its marquee off a downtown Port-au-Prince building, the Caribbean nation is preparing to welcome its first international hotel brand. Choice Hotels International, owners of the Comfort Inn, is franchising its brand to two hotels in touristy Jacmel, a quaint seaside town in southeast Haiti known for its spellbinding carnival and viewed as Haiti’s arts capital. Later this month, construction is expected to begin on a 120-room boutique hotel, the Belle Rive, that will become part of Choice Hotels’ Ascend Collection. In May, the Cap Lamandou, a 32-room hotel sitting on a cliff overlooking the Caribbean sea, will become a Comfort Inn. Both hotels are owned by a group of Haitian-American investors, whose 60 shareholders range from doctors to lawyers to engineers living in New York, Chicago and Miami. ”It’s an opportunity for Choice to be on the front end of what our franchisee calls the Haiti renaissance,” Brian Parker, vice president of emerging markets and new business developments for Choice Hotels International told McClatchy Newspapers. “We know their tourism industry is going to turn for the better and we want to be a part of that.”

The investment by both Choice Hotels and the Haitian-American investors, known by the acronym SIMACT, comes as investment-hungry Haiti experiences a wave of optimism being led by its hotel industry. After years of instability and political infighting, the country is experiencing relative calm that is leading to tens of millions of dollars in investments in new hotels, expansions and renovations. In addition to Choice Hotels, the Best Western is bringing its upscale brand to a project in Port-au-Prince, and the Hilton has had boots on the ground as a group of local hoteliers attempt to woo it to two new hotel projects taking shape. All are happening as Haiti’s tourism ministry and international supporters push to make it a tourism destination. The international airport in Port-au-Prince was recently upgraded to include jetways and escalators, lawmakers approved a loan to expand a second international airport in the city of Cap-Haitien, and Royal Caribbean anchored the world’s largest cruise ship off its northern coast in Labadee.

“Choice opens up the world for us,” said Jean-Marie Wolff, chief financial officer for SIMACT, which consists mostly of doctors, lawyers and engineers. Whereas investors previously were targeting the Haitian-American diaspora, Wolff says the Choice brand means that they can now “afford to think of a larger audience.” Wolff said the Belle Rive is part of a $47-million mixed-use development project on 23 acres featuring a marina, tennis courts, 150-seat movie theater and townhouse-style condos priced between $150,000 and $350,000 — all located inside a gated community overlooking the Bay of Jacmel. Since its founding in 1996, SIMACT — Societe Immobiliere d’Agriculture, de Commerce, et de Tourisme — has grown from six to about 60 shareholders. Based in New York, it has expanded its portfolio from real estate development to mining. ”I’m excited about the potentially in terms of what Haiti is going to be in a few years from now,” Parker said. Parker who first visited Haiti earlier this year, and stayed at the newly opened Karibe Hotel and Convention Center in Port-au-Prince and later attended the grand opening of the Oasis, a newly opened restaurant and soon-to-be boutique hotel, said he was impressed with what Haiti’s independent hoteliers have done. Still, there is nothing like a brand to attract new visitors, and access to Choice Hotels International’s reservation systems and $175-million marketing budget, Parker said, “creates opportunity for the majority of these independent hotels to … help drive occupancy.” (Miami Herald, 1/8)

Ghetto Biennale, Art on Grand Rue:
On the Boulevard Jean Jacques Dessalines stands an enormous sculpture of Papa Legba, the vodou spirit guardian of entryways and crossroads. Some 25 feet high, it has been welded together from an abandoned truck chassis, with its head a battered oil drum. The rusty giant is an incongruous sight among the bustling street vendors and small businesses crowding this busy street in Haiti’s capital. Behind Papa Legba are more sculptures, an uncountable tangle assembled from chunks of carved wood, ironing boards, car parts, lengths of scrap fabric, even human skulls. This army of gargoyles, most representations of the pantheon of African lwa still so present in the spiritual life of this country, are the work of the sculptors of the Grand Rue, a loose collective of artists born and raised in the dense slums here.

Their work is a spectacular combination of recycling and imagination. Although drawn from the same deep well of Afro-Caribbean culture as traditionally exported examples of Haitian art, it looks nothing like them. “When we first started going around the neighborhood and collecting stuff in order to work, people said we were crazy,’’ says Céleur Jean Herard. “They said, ‘Look at all these useless metal parts they are taking.’ Really, it was a struggle not to be discouraged.’’ Herard and André Eugene, the Papa Legba sculptor, pioneered the Grand Rue phenomenon. Both once worked within the traditional economy of this neighborhood of artisans, carving wooden ashtrays, candy bowls and statuettes. Such tourist trinkets are still mass produced here for export to more popular Caribbean vacation destinations. The slum’s narrow cinderblock alleys are filled with the sound of hammering and the scent of varnish.

This shared past spent struggling on the handicraft production line may be one reason why the sculptors of the Grand Rue are adamant that their work be taken as fine art, not compartmentalized as “ethnic’’ or “outsider.’’ Behind his sculpture garden, André Eugene lives in what he calls the E. Pluri Bus Unum Museum, three small rooms crowded with neighborhood art. Eugene says that after traveling to galleries and museums around the world, he was struck that only the wealthy seemed to build arts institutions and determine what should hang in them. In Haiti the exhibition and selling of art has generally been dominated by the tiny upper-class *boujwazi*. “I had the idea of making a museum here in my own area, with my own hands, because the artists you see here never had their own thing. They always let the Big Man exploit them,’’ Eugene says.

With similar intentions, the Grand Rue sculptors spent three weeks in November and December hosting the first Ghetto Biennale. Assisted by two outside curators, they used the Internet to solicit project proposals from international artists and selected 35 from more than 100 applications. But instead of bringing completed artworks, as at a traditional biennial, the chosen artists were asked to create work in the Grand Rue environment. For many, the harsh realities of life in a Caribbean slum meant completely reformulating their ideas. London-based Jesse Darling had wanted to build “a trash church,’’ a sacred space made of found materials. “When I got to Grand Rue, the first thought was, ‘Well, what is waste here?’ ‘’ Darling says. “Every little fan grate, every little nothing has been reincorporated into the structure of someone’s home, the structure of somebody’s life, reused, made to work again.’’ Forced to reconsider her materials, she ultimately used hundreds of the tiny, discarded plastic sachets in which small servings of fresh water are sold on the streets.

Hugo Moro, a Cuban-born artist based in Miami, says that despite a familiar Caribbean feeling he recognized from trips to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, Haiti was a shock. “It was a kind of terror,’’ he says. “The Grand Rue was definitely a mind-blowing, unexpected level of poverty.’’ Moro quickly realized that even the modest materials he had brought along were inappropriate for the environment. He describes his project, *7,000 Trees for Haiti*, as a version of the famous *7,000 Oaks* project by Joseph Beuys, the late pioneer of social-environmental artworks. “I see it like somebody going to the Louvre 100 years ago and copying the masters.’’ Moro says. “I’m taking Joseph Beuys and attempting to recreate his piece for the Antilles.’’ Haiti, he says, “is the most obvious place to do a reforestation-based piece of work.’’ Moro sees the time he spent in Port-au-Prince as the beginning of a long-term relationship. To continue it he is collaborating with the Lambi Fund of Haiti, a grass-roots not-for-profit dedicated, among other things, to environmental causes.

Building long-term links with artists outside of Haiti was undoubtedly one of the goals of this unique take on an art expo, even though Eugene, Herard and other Grand Rue artists have now traveled to show their work in Paris and London and, notably, at Florida International University’s Frost Art Museum. Whether those connections will sustain is a question that may have to wait two years, until the next Ghetto Biennale. But especially after the recent influx of visiting artists from around the globe, nobody in the neighborhood calls the Grand Rue artists crazy anymore. (Miami Herald, 1/4)

Protest, and a Hunger Strike, Over Haitian Immigrant Deported 24 Years Later:
In 1989, three years after arriving in the U.S. from Haiti, Jean Montrevil was arrested. He was 19. Convicted of selling cocaine, he served ten years in prison — then completed probation and kept out of trouble. In the years he’s been out of prison, friends say he started a van service, worked as an immigrants’ rights activist with the New Sanctuary Coalition and Families for Freedom, married an American-born woman, and became a devoted father of four (the eldest from his wife’s previous marriage). But 24 years later, Montrevil, now 41, is about to be sent back to Haiti. Under retroactive immigration laws enacted in 1996, any immigrant convicted of a felony faces deportation. Montrevil is currently sitting in a Pennsylvania jail. Supporters say he is on a hunger strike, refusing food until the immigration service reconsiders the deportation practice that he says “destroys families.” Yesterday, friends and supporters rallied outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in lower Manhattan, demanding his release — and in some cases, being arrested.

Montrevil himself was arrested, by ICE, last Wednesday, when he made his regular check-in — as he’s done every month since being freed from prison, as part of a supervised release program for deportable immigrants. His wife and lawyer said they don’t know why he was arrested this one time, and ICE won’t say. He joins 30,000 other immigrants who are kept in prisonlike detention until they are deported. “When you are young you do stupid things,” said Gina Montrevil, Jean’s sister, who came to yesterday’s frigid rally with six children. “It’s not supposed to follow you around forever. He’s a good man.” Montrevil’s wife, Jani, spoke to a crowd of 50 shivering supporters: “This makes no sense. The government doesn’t want me on public assistance, but how can they take away our family’s breadwinner? How can they judge him on something he’s already been punished for?” Jani said her husband is a good-natured and thoughtful dad, that she was initially attracted to him precisely because he was so dedicated to family. “I keep telling the kids, ‘Daddy’s coming back.’ But they ask when,” she said. (Hear more from Jani in this Democracy Now interview.)

Carrying placards that said “Stop tearing families apart,” protesters called for deportation cases to be reviewed with an eye toward the well-being of American children the detainees help care for. Eight friends and supporters blocked traffic on West Houston Street, hoping to prevent ICE from bringing any more detainees to the facility. They were arrested. Reverend Donna Schaper, pastor of Judson Memorial Church, said she was blocking traffic — aware that she would be arrested — because all the appeals and procedures on Montrevil’s behalf had failed, and because Montrevil is a close friend and warm leader. “I am being arrested because it is a moral outrage that our government would do this to such a great man and father. These immigration laws that destroy families contradict the values we should uphold as a society. They need to change now,” she said as she was standing, arms linked with others, in the street.

Montrevil’s cause is supported by U.S. Representative Jose Serrano (D-Bronx), who sent a staffer to the rally; Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan and Brooklyn), who called ICE to advocate for Montrevil after his arrest; and State Senator Tom Duane, who spoke at the event. Serrano and Nadler are co-sponsors of federal legislation that would give immigration judges discretion to consider family welfare in deportation cases. ICE spokesman Michael Gilhooly said the agency was prepared to enforce the deportation order: “Jean Murat Montrevil is an aggravated felon with a significant criminal record who has a final order of removal from an immigration judge.” (New York Magazine, 1/6)

Zynga Games Raise over $1 million for School Children in Haiti:
Today, backstage at the Crunchies, Zynga’s Mark Pincus revealed a pretty impressive number the Zynga.org wing of the social gaming company, Zynga: They’ve raised over $1 million dollars just from virtual goods for school children in Haiti. Anyway you slice it, it’s a pretty impressive number. But it’s even more impressive when you consider that this million dollars came just from the sale of one virtual good within Farmville: Sweet seeds. Zynga has sold over $2 million worth of these seeds (back in October, the number was just over $800,000) with a full 50% of the sales going to the charity. Pincus tells us that they decided on the 50% number because they wanted people to realize they were serious about giving money to a charity while at the same time keeping this a meaningful business. And it’s a model that works because these sweet seeds have value for the users in Farmville as well. In fact, Pincus envisions a future where this type of charitable virtual good market is worth a billion dollars. And to get there, he actually hopes his competitors use the idea as well. (TechCrunch.com, 1/8)

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith Raise Funds for World Food Programme in Haiti:
Hollywood actor Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett-Smith are raising funds to help the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) tackle hunger in Haiti by auctioning a special artwork signed by music artists who performed at the Nobel Peace Prize concert they co-hosted in Oslo last month. All proceeds will go towards providing nutritious meals to school children in Haiti, where WFP already provides food to more than 500,000 school children. The artwork, which WFP and the Will & Jada Smith Family Foundation will sell on eBay starting today, is based on a map of world hunger. It is decorated with personalized silhouettes drawn by Will, his family and the artists who performed at the concert. The actor underlined the link between hunger and peace with the words he wrote on his silhouette on the map: “There can be no true peace in the world while there is hunger.”

Other artists who contributed to the artwork include Wyclef Jean, Natasha Bedingfield, Toby Keith, Westlife, Esperanza Spalding, Alexander Rybak, Amadou & Mariam, Donna Summer, Lang Lang and Luis Fonsi. The Hollywood couple co-hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert on 2 December in honour of the 2009 Laureate, United States President Barack Obama. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UN Special Envoy for Haiti Bill Clinton traveled to Haiti in 2009 to raise awareness of efforts to help the Caribbean nation’s people and Government bolster their economic security. While there, the Secretary-General noted the need to strengthen the country’s food security. He toured a health clinic, a nutrition centre and a vocational training scheme for women – social services supported by WFP and other UN agencies. (UN News Centre, 1/8)

SOIL Promoting Composting Toilets:
It’s not often you get away with staking out an ex-president to give him a bag of your, ahem, personal waste. Generally, the Secret Service would get involved. But Sasha Kramer and Sarah Brownell’s pursuit of Bill Clinton in Milot, Haiti, in October serves as testament to the young women’s moxie. Their organization aims to improve agriculture and sanitation in Haiti via “composting toilets,” and it couldn’t hurt if the former president took notice, they thought. ”I waited by the palace gates, and Sarah went to the soccer field where it was rumored the helicopter would land,” Kramer said, explaining that Brownell saw Paul Farmer, Clinton’s deputy U.N. special envoy to Haiti, and gave him a bag filled with “beautiful compost from our household sanitation/composting system.” ”Sarah asked Paul to pass it on to [Clinton] and mentioned that we had ‘contributed’ to it,” Kramer said. Kramer, 33, and Brownell, 34, founders of Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods, are not shy about discussing bodily functions. They can’t afford to be squeamish when their plan to improve Haitian life relies so heavily on the comings and goings of human digestion.

Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the western hemisphere. Plagued with “political violence for most of its history,” according to the CIA, the Caribbean island nation has suffered from colonialism, coups and corruption since becoming the first black republic in 1804. More than half of the country lives in “abject poverty.” The nation imports more than four times the goods it exports and about two-thirds of the labor force lacks “formal jobs,” the CIA reports. SOIL’s founders are not dissuaded by the figures because they believe many ills in the nation of 9 million can be traced to public sanitation and the dirt’s lack of nutrients.

Disease is rampant, and it’s still common for children to die from fecal contamination in the water. UNICEF estimates that 70 percent of Haitians do not have access to “safe drinking water and adequate sanitation.” Meanwhile, the International Conference on Reforestation and Environmental Regeneration of Haiti states the nation once enjoyed 60 percent forest cover but now possesses less than 1 percent of its trees. ”With the forest cover gone, floods ravage the country at each rainfall. Topsoil washes into the sea. And since the only hope of Haitians for feeding their families is the soil and small-scale farming, it is a terrible humanitarian disaster,” the conference wrote in 2007.

The solutions are as interconnected as the problems in Kramer’s and Brownell’s minds. The ecologist and the engineer have arranged the construction of scores of special toilets in villages across northern Haiti. ”You get the poop out of the water and get it into the food again,” Kramer explained. Granted, it sounds gross, but Kramer and Brownell operate their own “dry toilet” at their home in Cap-Haitien. The fertilizer for their personal garden comes from the composting pit on their roof — the same pit that produced the sample for Clinton. Watch Kramer, Brownell show how their toilet works There are variations on the toilets, but the general idea is to separate the liquid and solid wastes. The “liquid gold” is diluted and used on fruit trees, Kramer said. Handfuls of sugarcane bagasse are added to the solid waste to expedite the composting process and to ward off flies and odors. The solid waste is stored until it can be collected (some toilets store up to 600 gallons) and transported to a composting site where it will sit for a year until it’s free of organisms. Kramer said SOIL hopes to sell its first load of fertilizer within weeks.

Education is important as well, Kramer said, noting that when she asks Haitian farmers what they use as fertilizer, they reply, “God waters our gardens with rain, and that’s all we’ve got for fertilizer.” SOIL also has to convince villagers to tear down unsanitary toilets. Such was the case recently in Shada, where villagers had constructed toilets over an estuary. ”We were forced to go to the bathroom in the estuary or in the open with everyone watching,” Shada resident Bos Tony said in Creole with Kramer translating. “Now we have a cleaner place to go to the bathroom. We feel more comfortable now.” Brownell, who has an environmental engineering master’s from the University of California-Berkeley, first went to Haiti in 1998 to install solar panels at a health clinic in Le Borgne. The panels didn’t arrive for two months. ”I was hanging around with not really any project to do, and I really felt like the community took me in, took care of me, even though I didn’t really have much to offer them at that point,” Kramer said.

She studied Creole and practiced crocheting, cooking and washing clothes by hand. The Haitians made fun of her ineptitude at the latter task, Brownell said, so she spent time “trying to perfect my skills” as her instructor’s 2-year-old son, Jeffrey, toddled around the washbasin. Brownell eventually finished the solar panel project and returned to school at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. When she went back to Haiti two years later, she learned that Jeffrey had died of diarrhea and dehydration — a death Brownell calls “totally preventable” if Jeffrey had simply had access to clean water and safe place to use the bathroom. “This was something that really touched my heart as a way for me to use engineering to make that connection with the social aspect of helping people to live their lives better,” Brownell said.

Kramer, who studied “nitrogen cycles” while earning her doctorate at Stanford University, is a human rights observer first drawn to Haiti’s political movements. She met Brownell at a Mexican restaurant in Berkeley in 2005 and quickly found common threads in their interests. ”Even with the all of these acute human rights violations that were happening in Haiti at the time,” explained Kramer, “the most prevalent human rights abuse is really poverty and the fact that people didn’t have access to their basic needs like food, sanitation and water.” They founded SOIL in 2006 and wrote the bylaws while driving from upstate New York, from where they both hail, to Miami, Florida, in a truck donated to SOIL by Kramer’s parents. Toilets are one example of SOIL’s outreach. The group also holds contests urging children to recycle garbage into something useful and Brownell’s husband, Kevin Foos, spearheads a photo empowerment project called “Looking Through Their Eyes,” which allows children to capture what they love and hate about their communities on film.

SOIL also supports special centers in Shada, Milot and Le Borgne where Haitians can present and test technologies for improving their health, environment and economic independence. Villagers warmly welcome Kramer and Brownell, and SOIL’s efforts have caught the attention of Haitian musicians BélO and Rosemond Jolissaint. The founders hope to draw more attention to their endeavors because budget woes are a frequent concern — hence their pursuit of Clinton. Kramer said she doesn’t know if Clinton’s deputy delivered SOIL’s gift, but given her weighty ambitions, her optimism is not surprising. ”We chased the delegation on motorcycle from the palace to the soccer field,” she said. “Rumor has it that someone saw [Clinton] getting off the helicopter in Labadi with the bag over his arm.” (CNN.com, 1/4)

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