wfn.org | WCC FEATURE: Haiti: Reconstruction must be based on justice

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World Council of Churches - Feature

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For immediate release - 25/01/2010 11:05:45

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF HAITI MUST BE BASED ON JUSTICE

As churches and church related organizations mobilize resources
to bring immediate relief to the people of Port-au-Prince, they
are also advocating for the international community to waive
Haiti's foreign debt while building a more sustainable future for
the country. 

Two weeks after the country's worst earthquake in two centuries
struck on 12 January, the plight of the victims has prompted a
worldwide mobilization of churches' resources.

Pledges of funds, delivery of emergency aid items and appeals
for donations are reported from every corner of the globe, while
messages of solidarity, prayers and even hymns to express the
sorrow flow in from near and far. 

The situation of Haiti's devastated capital justifies such a
level of mobilization and much more, according to church
witnesses there. "Thousands of houses are flattened", reported
soon after the earthquake the president of the Protestant
Federation of Haiti, the Rev. Sylvain Exantus, in an email
calling for international solidarity. 

"Thousands of houses are flattened, as well as schools,
ministries' buildings, the national government headquarters, the
Justice Palace, churches, the Cathedral, the Parliament, the
Ministry of Education, hospitals", said Exantus, who survived the
quake but was blocked downtown and could only reach his home a
day later, where he found his family alive. "It is chaos in
Port-au-Prince."

The city and the surrounding urban area are home to between 2.5
and 3 million people. At least 150,000 people were killed, a
figure that could rise to 200,000. 

"The disaster in Haiti has brought to the fore the heavy burden
its people have been carrying over long decades because of
political instability and poverty", said World Council of
Churches (WCC) general secretary the Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit. 

As the country's foreign debt crucially contributes to its
impoverishment, the WCC and ecumenical partners are advocating
for an immediate and unconditional debt cancellation as a way to
make certain Haiti can rebuild itself in the long term. 

>Facing total devastation

The damage to a city "already beleaguered with staggering
poverty" is massive, said a report issued by ACT Alliance, a
global ecumenical grouping of churches and related agencies
working on emergency relief and development and a partner
organization of the WCC. 

"An estimated 60 to 80 percent of buildings in Port-au-Prince
were destroyed. More than one million people are without adequate
shelter and no immediate prospect of accommodation in camps",
added the report. To make things worse, looting and violence were
reported during the first days as people competed for limited
food and water supplies. 

The devastation has not spared the churches. The Roman Catholic
archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Joseph Serge Miot, is among the
dead, as is the Rev. Bienne L'Amerique, vice-president of the
Protestant Federation of Haiti. Many other members of the clergy
are reported dead, missing or wounded. Church buildings,
facilities and schools are shattered. 

"A lot of church members are now homeless. They spend the night
in the streets. They are starving", reported the Rev. Gedeon
Eugene, vice-president of the Haitian Baptist Convention, a WCC
member church, in an email two days after the earthquake. "They
cannot cook, they are thirsty, they are injured", he added. 

The convention sent a team of pastors to Port-au-Prince from
Cap-Haïtien, a city in the Northern coast of the island, in order
to bring first aid items and assess the situation. "They are
visiting some survivors, brothers and sisters from our churches,
encouraging those whose parents, children, husbands, wives died
in the disaster, giving a hopeful word to the homeless", said
Eugene. 

"From the first day, people gathered to pray and sing together",
said Sylvia Raulo, who is the representative in Haiti of the
Lutheran World Federation's Department of World Service and was
in the city during the earthquake. "There are no answers for a
tragedy like this, but churches share in people's suffering and
help them to express their pain, playing a role of
accompaniment." 

"Many people are leaving Port-au-Prince for the countryside",
said in an online conversation the general secretary of the
Protestant Federation of Haiti, the Rev. Romulus Fritz-Gérald. He
survived the quake as did his family. His wife is a nurse who is
working "20 hours per day" at the hospital. 

As quake survivors become internally displaced people in their
thousands, they pose an additional challenge to the relief
agencies, which have already faced huge obstacles in getting
supplies into the country due to the collapse of infrastructure
such as roads and bridges. 

However, ACT Alliance members are providing tons of food, tents,
hygiene, health and baby care kits, blankets, water purifiers,
and portable hospitals. The alliance is preparing to step up its
work with psychosocial support, shelter/site planning, as well as
water and sanitation. 

As time passes and people gradually realize what has happened,
they will need immense courage to face the consequences of total
devastation, said Raulo. "While humanitarian aid is coming in –
and huge amounts of development aid will be needed in the long
term to rebuild the public infrastructure – spiritual support
is equally important right now and will continue to be so in the
coming months." 

>Grants, not loans

For the WCC general secretary, "the time has come for the
international community – politicians, business and civil
society organizations – to focus on how Haiti can become
sustainable". This is the message Tveit intends to bring to the
meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which
he is attending this week. The forum has set aside a time to
discuss the situation in Haiti. 

According to Tveit, "authentic development for Haiti will take
some bold steps by the international community in addition to the
current emergency efforts". First among them is "the immediate
and unconditional cancellation of the country's foreign debt. It
would be morally untenable to do otherwise at this time of
extraordinary hardship and destruction". 

Despite having had 1.2 billion US dollars of debt written off
last June by the international financial institutions, Haiti's
debt amounts to some 640 million dollars, with annual payments of
about 50 million dollars just to service the interest on the
debt. 

For Tveit and the WCC, debt cancellation would be an important
step in the right direction, although not a solution per se. 

The international community needs to show moral leadership and
make sure that "any financial assistance to rebuild the country
comes as grants rather than loans", said Tveit. "And those grants
cannot be tied to the detrimental conditions that international
financial organizations tend to impose on poor countries", he
added. 

"This is not just about helping Haiti", said Tveit, "but about
empowering and working with its people towards a sustainable
society, one that is based on justice". 

>[1,100 words]

More information about the ACT Alliance response
http://www.act-intl.org

WCC condolences and solidarity with the people of Haiti 
http://www.oikoumene.org/en/news/news-management/eng/a/article/1634/churches-mobilize-support.html

>WCC member churches in Haiti
>http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=4691

>Protestant Federation of Haiti
>http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=5194

>Caribbean Conference of Churches
>http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=4619

Opinions expressed in WCC Features do not necessarily reflect
WCC policy. This material may be reprinted freely, providing
credit is given to the author. 

Additional information: Juan Michel +41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507
6363 media@wcc-coe.org

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith,
witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical
fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings
together 349 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches
representing more than 560 million Christians in over 110
countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic
Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit,
from the [Lutheran] Church of Norway. Headquarters: Geneva,
Switzerland.