Local NS Activists On Clinton's Apology To Haiti For Failed Trade Policies

http://www.thecoast.ca/RealityBites/archives/2010/03/30/local-
activists-surprised-as-clinton-apologizes-to-haiti

Local activists surprised by Clinton apology to Haiti
Former US president admits trade policies were "a mistake"
Posted by Bruce Wark*  on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 5:09 PM

PHOTO: Clinton arrives in Haiti to survey earthquake damage

Nova Scotia activists are expressing surprise that former US
president Bill Clinton has apologized for flooding Haiti with cheap
American rice beginning in the mid 1990s. During testimony before a
US Senate committee three weeks ago, Clinton admitted that requiring Haiti
to lower its tariffs on rice imports made it impossible for Haitian
farmers to compete. The trade policy forced farmers off the land and
undercut Haiti's ability to feed itself.

"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not
worked. It was a mistake," Clinton - now a UN special envoy to Haiti -
told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10. "I had to live
everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice
crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."

"I would like to believe that Clinton has had a change of heart,"
says an e-mail from Heidi Verheul of the Halifax Peace Coalition.
"But he actually needs to do something to challenge the free market
shock doctrine economic policies that are being designed to further
subjugate and impoverish Haiti," she added. "The policies of aid and
development in Haiti have continuously served to undermine democracy,
local economies, and have driven tens of thousands of people from their
land, enslaved them in sweatshops, makeshift homes, and absolute grinding,
miserable poverty."

Clinton´s apology attracted scant media attention in the US and none in
Canada. It was included as part of an Associated Press news agency report
that was published by the Washington Post on March 20. The AP report from
Haiti´s earthquake-ravaged capital, Port au Prince, suggests world leaders
are reconsidering trade and aid policies that make poor countries
dependent on rich ones. It quotes UN aid official John Holmes as saying
that poor countries, like Haiti, need to become more self-sufficient by
rebuilding their own food production. "A combination of food aid, but also
cheap imports have...resulted in a lack of investment in Haitian farming,
and that has to be reversed," Holmes told AP. "That's a global phenomenon,
but Haiti´s a prime example. I think this is where we should start."

PHOTO: Clinton meets Haitian President Aristide in the Oval Office,
Oct. 1994

Neo-liberal policies forced on Haiti

The Clinton administration forced Jean Bertrand Aristide to agree to cut
rice tariffs drastically when the US restored the Haitian president to
power in October 1994. Aristide, Haiti´s first democratically elected
president, had been overthrown by a US-backed military coup in 1991. In
return for $770 million in international loans and aid, Aristide was
required to agree to a business-friendly "structural adjustment" program
that aside from cutting food tariffs, also included freezing the minimum
wage, cutting the size of the civil service and privatizing public
utilities. (Aristide annoyed the US by being slow to implement such
policies making Bill Clinton´s apology this month all the more
surprising.)

Janet Eaton, trade and environment campaigner for Sierra Club Canada, says
members of the global democracy movement have long known about the
failures of the globalized food system and Clinton´s apology to Haitians
only reinforces what many activists have talked and written about for
years.

"When high-profile leaders admit that economic globalization isn´t
working, then it´s time for governments to get on board and look at
alternatives." Eaton adds. "It is time to admit that these failures
exist and put an end to the aggressive free trade frenzy that is now
occurring in Canada, the US and Europe as they vie for foreign markets,
raw materials and unfettered free trade."

Eaton points to one alternative underway in Nova Scotia - a Food
Policy Council that will be formally established at a meeting in
Truro on April 19. Council members will include farmers, consumers,
academics, policy analysts and government representatives. Eaton says the
Council will promote food security for all Nova Scotians by focusing on
ways to grow more of our own food. She contends that growing more local
food would help curtail climate change, reduce dependence on increasingly
expensive fossil fuels and alleviate global poverty.

"Haiti should be seen as a metaphor for what can happen on a
planetary level if we fail to recognize the crisis we face," Eaton
adds.

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* Bruce Wark is  a retired journalism ethics professor  who taught
for 15 years at Kings College University in Halifax,  a columnist for
Halifax's alternative weekly The Coast and is one of 25 sustainers of the
Halifax media co-op.