Press release by KAIROS Canada:

by Ziyan Hossain (Oohlala Mobile)

Over 100,000 Quebec students walked out on their classes in a protest against the government’s planned 75 per cent tuition fee hike (of $1,600 over five years). They came together on March 22nd  to hit the streets in what media outlets have described as a “monster protest”.

Words cannot do it justice, but time lapse video can.

Montreal Tuition Protests

We were on the scene for the entire thing and here’s some of what we saw…

Press Release

Migrante Canada is deeply saddened by the death of four Filipino migrant workers caused by tragic vehicular mishap in Innisfail, Alberta.

The migrant workers were on-board a van late Sunday night, March 4, when an SUV travelling in the opposite direction hit the van head-on, killing driver Anthony Castillon, 35, and three passengers – Joey Mangonon, 35, Josefina Velarde, 52, and still-unnamed 39-year-old Filipina.

Another female victim, a 28-year-old Josephine Tamondong who suffered serious injuries, was brought to a local hospital, and is now reportedly out of danger.

The SUV driver, Tyler James Stevens, 29, of Cochrane, Alberta, was unhurt, and is now facing multiple charges including four counts of impaired driving causing death.

“We extend our sincerest condolences to the families of the victims. We know how sad it is to lose someone in the family. Our thoughts are with you during this difficult time,” said Migrante Canada Secretary General Christopher Sorio. 

Many Filipino migrant workers in Alberta are employed under the Government of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program [TFWP]. According to reports, Castillon, Mangonon, Velarde, and Tamondong had worked at Coast Edmonton Plaza Hotel in downtown Edmonton, Alberta. The unnamed victim had worked in a local cleaning agency. 

“We call on the Philippine Embassy and Consulate officials in Canada to provide all necessary support to the victims’ families in the Philippines, including repatriation of the bodies and administering what’s due to them under the provisions of Overseas Workers Welfare Administration [OWWA] and the Magna Carta for Overseas Filipino Workers [OFWs],” said Sorio. 

“It’s the responsibility of the Philippine government to provide full support to all Filipino nationals particularly in this kind of circumstances.” 

Reference:

Christopher Sorio

Phone: 416-828-0441

Email: [email protected] 

The Philippines’ natural resources have made it one of the top mining destinations in the world. Major portion of metals such as copper, nickel, zinc, chrome, zinc, gold and silver, lay in areas of rich biodiversity and ancestral domains of indigenous peoples from North to South.

The Philippine government saw this as a huge economic potential to the country. Hence, to pay for the billions of debt to the IMF-World Bank, the Mining Act of 1995 was enacted. In spite of the act’s violation of the Philippine Constitution on ownership of mineral resources, the then President Ramos believed that this would create employment opportunities, promote industrialization and enhance national growth. To entice foreign mining transnational corporations, this act has allowed them full rights to 100% ownership, repatriation of profits,  tax holidays, leaving nothing to the peasants, indigenous peoples and poor Filipinos.

Mining in the Philippines mostly consists of open pit mining to extract copper and gold, strip-mining for nickel but both involve forest denudation, which triggers flash floods, creates craters and million metric tons of tailings discharged in nearby shallow bays. This has resulted in a very poor environmental record and numerous natural disasters. According to United Nations Environmental Program, the country holds the worst record for tailing dam failures such as Canada’s Marcopper, LaFayette tailings dam spill and Lepanto Mining Company collapse.

According to Innnabuyog women’s organization, the villages at the receiving end of the mine-tailings are threatened with serious health hazards ranging from skin diseases, respiratory diseases including tuberculosis, silicosis, asbestosis, gastro-intestinal diseases, cancers, mental fatigue and problems in reproductive health such as spontaneous abortion, malformed babies.

The presence of the Armed Forces Philippines augmented by the hiring of armed security guards has perpetrated militarization answer people’s resistance to mining. They continue to harass protesters and leaders of local communities and from 2001-2007, Human rights Watch has recorded 130 cases of indigenous extrajudicial killings. Indigenous women and children have been raped, sexually harassed and been victims of other forms of violence.

Despite local and national protests along with international pressure, Tampakan Copper project in South Cotabato and Canada’s Toronto Ventures Inc. still operate on indigenous sacred grounds in southern part of the Philippines. The sellout of the country’s natural resources has allowed the violation of indigenous peoples’ rights to land and self-determination. This has resulted to massive displacement of peoples, destruction of indigenous values and culture and high incidences of crimes such as domestic violence against women. Sustainable communities have been eroded by cash economy which has marginalized the traditional role of women as food producers, gatherer and nurturer. Even with the increase of mining companies in the country, unemployment and underemployment has intensified while labour rights and community welfare has deteriorated. The lack of livelihood had the locals migrating to other cities and even abroad to sustain their families.

Women Against Mining
Despite the government’s collaborative effort to protect the interest of the mining companies, indigenous women have been at the forefront of the struggle against large and destructive mining. They have chosen to build organizations at the local, national and international level such as the recently formed International Women’s Alliance. Education and awareness-raising has been key to their organizing effort and they have conducted research and documentation of violations. They have chosen to assert their land rights and self-determination as indigenous peoples. They have initiated and joined mobilizations to prevent expansion of open-pit mines, formed human barricades with their husband and children and in some cases, opted for mass arrest if some of them were arrested.

From the local level to the congress, progressive party lists such as Gabriela Women’s Party, Bayan Muna and Anakpawis have  filed a resolution to review the implementation of the Indigenous People’s Rights Act (IPRA) and recommended measures to ensure the genuine promotion and protection of indigenous people’s rights, including their right to ancestral domain.

International pressure has also played a big role to support their struggle. In January 2-12 2012, a mining mission comprised of Canadian church members has visited the Cordillera region to expose the unjust practices of Canadian Mining Companies in the Philippines. The mission included members of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP), the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), The Cordillera Peoples’ Alliance (CPA), the Cordillera Human Rights Alliance (CHRA), the Regional Ecumenical Council of the Cordillera (Reccord) and the United Church of Canada (UCC).

One of their objectives is to present their findings to the standing committees on Justice and Human Rights and Foreign Affairs and International Developments of the House of Commons the Canadian Parliament.

One of the members of the mission, Connie Sorio of KAIROS Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives and Brigitte Dang-ay of the Binnadang group which is a community of Cordillera indigenous peoples in Toronto will be speaking at this year’s International Women’s Day celebration on March 10th organized by the Migrant Women’s Coordinating Body. For more information, we can be contacted at [email protected].

by Steve da Silva – Issue #28 (March/April 2012)

In the moral universe of Vic Toews, “you either stand with us or with the child pornographers” when it comes to Bill C-30, the so-called ‘Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act’.

Bill C-30, a.k.a. the Lawful Access bill, would give the police unwarranted access to our online data and would force Internet service providers to comply with their requests. But if the police have a case to be made against suspected criminal activity, they can easily get a warrant from a judge. So why the excess?

A hint at what this bill is really all about was given five days before the ‘Lawful Access’ Bill was tabled, when Vic Toews released Canada’s first comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy document. ‘Building Resilience Against Terrorism’ plays on all the old trumped-up terrorist bogeys to justify Canada’s approach to counter-terrorism.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Hezbollah, Al Shabaab in Somalia – like their ideologies of these groups or not their struggles are caught up with the inalienable right to national liberation, which is not simply terrorism.

The guide calls for a “proportionate and measured response to terrorism”.  Prime Minister Stephen Harper used these precise words at the beginning of his first term in support of Israel’s merciless bombing of Lebanon in 2006.

The primary instance of “homegrown terrorism” cited by the guide is the case of the Toronto 18, failing to recall that at the center of that Sunni terrorist plot was a CSIS agent.

All the terrorist threats listed in the guide are dubious, and I would argue are not even the main target of the Canadian government. Rather, the most revealing passages in the report, getting at the heart of both the counter-terrorism strategy and the government’s move towards warrantless spying, is arguably the following: “Low-level violence by domestic-based groups remains a reality in Canada… revolving around the promotion of various causes such as animal rights, white supremacy, environmentalism, and anti-capitalism.”

And what exactly does “low-level violence” mean? The guide also tells us that any act intended to compromise Canada’s “economic security” is also a terrorist act. That could mean a road blockade or a direct action protest.

So if pounding scores of skulls into the pavement at the G20 Summit in Toronto is “law and order” and unbridled warrantless access to the internet records of Canadians is “lawful access”, and if the people carry out just a little “low-level violence” against a government that most likely committed electoral fraud to tip the last election is called “terrorism”, well…  It’s really not about “you’re with us, or you’re with the pedophiles.” I think George Bush was more to the point when he told us “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.”  So be it Vic Toews, Stephen Harper:  by you’re definition, many of us are with the “terrorists”.

by Carlos Bucio Borja

Last January, Salvadorans all over the world commemorated the twentieth anniversary of the Peace Accords that ended the Civil War of 1980 – 1992.

El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America, and one of the smallest in the Western Hemisphere. As all the rest of Latin America it has endured a history of colonialism —Spanish and US—, dramatic episodes of social and state violence, of resistance and oppression during the twentieth century, being the two most significant ones the indigenous insurrection against the state and the coffee oligarchy in the Western part of the country in 1932, and the Civil War in the 1980s.

Last January marked the twentieth anniversary of the Chapultepec (Mexico) Peace Accords that led to the end of the long civil war between the FMLN and the Salvadoran state during the 1980s. While all of Latin America were governed by oligarchic regime based on peripheric political economies, protected in most of the cases by proxy authoritarian armed forces, with the exceptions of Cuba and Nicaragua, where in the second part of the century anti-oligarchic and anti-imperialistic revolutions rose to power; and in Costa Rica, as a result of a brief civil war and revolution, the army was abolished in 1948.

In the early 1930s, as a result of the fall of the international coffee prices in the context of Great Depression of 1930, but also as part of the racist attitudes towards indigenous peasants, and despite the democratic election of a progressive president, Arturo Araujo, the Salvadoran coffee oligarchy harshened the working conditions of the rural workers. In 1931, throughout the country protests by workers from different sectors of the economy erupted. These protests were met with repression, but it became fierce when at the end of that year a military, General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, took power after a Coup d’état. A widespread rebellion was organized by indigenous and peasants in the Western side of the country in January 1932, which was accompanied by the militants of the Communist Party of El salvador, some 2000, which had beeen organized some two years earlier. Reluctantly, the International Red Assistance (an international Communist organization) and a divided Communist Party of El Salvador, mainly under the influence of Agustín Farabundo Martí, who was a revolutionary veteran in the struggle against US occupation in neighboring Nicaragua a few years before, decided to accompany the rebellion in the form of a political-armed vanguard. However, the rebellion was cut short of its objectives when Farabundo Martí and two of his assistants were arrested during underground activities and later executed by Hernández Martínez’ forces. Despite this setback, ill-armed insurgents, mostly with machetes and a few pistols and rifles, organized in columns took over several towns for several hours in the Western side of El Salvador, killing in the process about a dozen of oligarchs and government officials. The US and British governments, who for several months had dispatched agents in the Central American nation, became extremely nervous, to the point of that two Canadian warships were decked in the port of Acajutla to protect British interests. Within hours after the insurrection, government troops took control of all the towns sized by the insurgents and the slaughter of between 10 and 30 thousand peasants and workers, mainly indigenous persons, and that lasted throughout the year, started. “white guards”, conformed by young male landowners contributed tho the slaughter of thousands of indigenous peoples in the name of “anti Communism”.

The next decades, a series of military governments, coup d’état after coup d’état, took their turns in defending the interests of the Salvadoran oligarchy and the United States. Throughout this period, however, an underground communist and democratic resistance was kept alive. In October 10, 1980, after several stolen elections through the 1970s, acts of repression that again took the lives of thousands of civilians, including several catholic priests, among them Archbishop Romero, the FMLN a coalition of five guerrilla forces —FPL, ERP, RN, PC-FAL and PRTC— with organic bonds with the social movement organized what would become in the next twelve years a portentous guerrilla army. The armed-conflict was a long and prolonged one. Throughout this period, both the FMLN and the government changed their strategies and tactics, depending on the objective conditions on the ground and geopolitically. Early in the conflict, with the rise of Ronal Reagan to power in the US, the government forces became a proxy army defending US imperial and national oligarchic interests, killing in the process over seventy thousand civilians and disappearing some thirty thousand between 1980 until the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords in January 1992.

While the 1992 Peace Accords ended up with a military draw between the conflicting parties, they included fundamental reforms that enabled a more inclusive and civic democratic process, which in spite its disfunctionabilities has allowed for a substantial share of power for the left in El Salvador, something inconceivable through most of the twentieth century. Moreover, in the years after the Peace Accords, and despite some internal and programmatic re-configurations, the FMLN has steadily gained quotas of power in the National Assembly and the Executive, without leaving aside in its political programme aspirations for a socialist future.

With a third of the Salvadoran population living abroad, and the economy depending on remittances and the informal sector, increasing social violence and an increasing activity of drug cartels, the big challenges at hand and in the medium term lie in the correct interpretation of the current political economy, both nationally and regionally, as well as the people’s aspirations within these new dynamics.

Supplementary documentaries by FMLN veteran Santiago Carlos Henríquez Consalvi and historian Jeffrey Gould:

http://www.facebook.com/l/aAQHnPoCTAQGnxp1IuRmKtRUxoRCoK0zGeMByvgkW2cjOAA/m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%252F&gl=CA%23%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DmLZTTxddCZg

http://www.facebook.com/l/sAQGmSn0vAQG7_ME8HSAgJEuIdqND0eNs6txO1WJPexm_8A/museo.com.sv/2011/09/2351/

by Manena D.

In 1989, an all-party House of Commons resolution to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000 was passed. I joined Campaign 2000 in 1991. Campaign 2000 emerged out of concern about the lack of government progress in addressing child poverty.  Fast track to 2011 and the statistics point to an increased number of families living way below the poverty line and a greater percentage of children suffering the impact of poverty.
Canada has received steady “C”s since the 1980s for its child poverty rate. A clear link has been made between joblessness and poverty.  Non-employed families are the most economically disadvantaged, which means job creations strategies are an integral part of tackling poverty.

In the 2011 report card on child and family poverty in Canada, Campaign 2000 states, “The economy has more than doubled in size, yet the incomes of families in the lowest deciles have virtually stagnated. The gap between rich and poor families has continued to widen, leaving average-income families also struggling to keep up. With considerable evidence from academic, community-based and government research and from extensive testimony from people with lived experience of poverty, we probably know more about how to eradicate poverty in Canada than we did twenty years ago. Yet, structural barriers hinder significant progress on eradicating poverty.”

Alizeh Hussain, Ontario Campaign 2000 Coordinator notes, “Far too many children live in poverty and with the forthcoming cuts in the public sector many more may end up being worse off. Unless positive changes are made to current public programs – changes that look to help people rather than cut costs, the rate of child poverty will rise, making life worse for those who are most vulnerable.”

Why is this so important?

Child care is a critical support component for working parents. Recently the community in Toronto organized under the banner of Toronto Stop the Cuts to challenge the austerity agenda proposed by a small group of councillors lead by millionaire Mayor Ford.
While the media has reported that Ford backed off on sweeping cuts to Child Care, this is not the case.

At the Executive Committee on September 19th, Ford and his allies formally asked the City Manager to consider the following:

Whether quality assessments of child care are required;
Review option for reducing child care funding and subsidies;
Consider transferring the city-operated child care centres to community or private operators;
Consider reducing the maximum subsidized per diem rates the City will support for subsidized spaces.

So in essence, the major cuts to child care have simply been deferred.

At the City Council meeting on September 26/27, 2011, City Council did not reject cuts to child care (as they did with some other services), so this remains on the table. Instead, City Council voted to call on the provincial and federal governments to work with the City to develop “a strategy to expand the number of child care spaces in Toronto over the next two years.”

Without additional funding, there is no commitment to save (much less expand) child care spaces.

While a collapse of the child care sector would be bad for children and families, it would be disastrous for our economy. As laid out in Early Years Study 3 and based on the work of economist Robert Fairholm, child care is a tax generator, the biggest job creator, and a strong economic stimulant.

The Ontario Coalition for Better Childcare in its response to the Drummond report states: “We are aware of the tough fiscal environment the province is facing. That reality is one of the best arguments in favour of investing in child care now. We need child care to enable Ontario parents to work, lift families out of poverty, and increase tax revenues to the government. In addition, the long-term benefits to our economy and local communities are unquestionable.”

The fight on the austerity agendas proposed by the neo-liberal provincial and municipal governments has just started. Neo-liberalism is the new capitalism.  Families are under attack.  The banking crisis that began in 2007 and that became the global financial crisis of 2008 was the consequence of the process of the creation of massive fictitious financial wealth.  Millionaire Ford tried to lie to Toronto’s residents by telling us the sky was falling.
It is time to fight back and to say NO to the austerity agenda. Families are being called to sacrifice hard earned social gains to support an unsustainable capitalist economy. While corporations continue to receive tax breaks and banks are being bailed out, the poor are asked to give up the little dignity they have.

Join the fight against the austerity agenda to stop widening the gap between the rich and the poor.

The Toronto Police Service has really started the year off with a bang. Several to be exact.

On January 6th in the Crossroads Power Plaza at Weston Rd. & Hwy 401 police responded to a call about a man with a knife just after Noon. A dozen police cars surrounded him, officers armed with both handguns and shotguns shouting demands and pointing their weapons. Civilian responses vary some saying that he would occasionally produce a knife from his jacket and wave it around, clearly mentally off, others who don’t remember seeing any weapon, “his hands were at his sides.” However the man, who witnesses also all agree looked homeless, was confirmed to have not harmed or attacked anyone. And yet, after apparently refusing to drop his weapon, he was shot at least three times. The victim managed to recover from life threatening injuries in hospital, has not had his identity published as of yet, and the SIU is investigating. However owners and customers in the plaza at the time of the violence note they were told by police to leave immediately afterwards, instead of waiting to be questioned as witnesses, or asked to fill out reports by the SIU.

Then on February 3rd at 10:15 am, as the inquest into the police beating-death of Junior Manon was taking place at the coroner’s court at Yonge and Grovsner, Toronto Police officers summarily executed another young black man in chilling circumstances. Clad only in a hospital gown and socks Michael Eligon, 29 year-old father of one, was shot several times on Milverton Blvd. near Coxwell and Danforth only a few minutes after he had fled Toronto East General, (where he was being held over four days for observation, for an undisclosed mental condition). His foster-sister was on her way to pick him up, having spoken to Michael on the phone just two hours prior, when she ran into a web of police tape and the tragic news of Eligon’s death. He left the hospital around 10AM holding a pair of scissors, and soon stumbled into a Convenience Store with a blank expression. The clerk who tried to shoo him away was nicked by the scissors and proceeded to call police. A renovator called cops again when Eligon made his way into a backyard, but is now ashamed and disgusted of his role in what he saw happen next. “More than anything he was afraid…he looked scared…he seemed like he wanted to hide.” Soon, according to the renovator, Eligon was surrounded by dozens of cops on foot and in vehicles, cutting off the intersection and drawing their weapons. Rather than calm the victim down the witness recalls officers shouting and rushing Michael, causing him to panic further. And when he didn’t drop his scissors, and either made a move to flee or was pushed from behind, an officer shot him three times in the chest and shoulder. Several other officers proceeded to stomp, kick and pin his dying body to the ground.

“You guys just took a life, and now I feel crap because I was the one who called you over to help me so we can kind of sedate him somehow. That wasn’t the kind of sedate that I expected… They were kicking him, stomping him. There was no need for that.”

And then February 20th, less than three weeks later near Dupont and Lansdowne, 48-year old Frank Anthony Berry met his end at the end of a cop’s barrel. He was supposedly masked, trying to break into a car and holding a knife- but also attempting to flee officers into neighbouring backyards when he was shot (initial reports confirm multiple gunshots, TPS won’t say how many).

As municipal workers face a butchering of their jobs and benefits….as another round of cuts is forced down our throats by the province…we get another view of what austerity will mean for the poorest people in this city: The state’s security force, bolstered by higher salaries, increased funding, and a draconian Crime Bill- That’s decided to go on a killing spree.

by Kevin Edmonds

It has been more than two years since Haiti was struck by a catastrophic earthquake in January 2010, and the failed reconstruction of the country has led many good intentioned observers to ask how this could happen. With billions of dollars promised to “build Haiti back better”, why hasn’t it happened? The sad reality is that while the earthquake may have destroyed a significant part of Haiti, it did not destroy the predatory and exploitative imperialist system which has historically impoverished Haiti – it unfortunately intensified it.

More than two years later the reconstruction process has shown to be a very lucrative undertaking for many private organizations. Haiti remains in ruins, with non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) benefiting from the extreme privatization of the Haitian state, resulting in a patchwork system of services which are unaccountable to the Haitian people. While many articles appearing around the anniversary discussed and compiled the statistics about the faces of the failure, a deeper discussion needs to occur on why depending on NGO’s and charities as a development model is dangerous, hypocritical and totally unsustainable.

A big problem in discussing NGO’s in Haiti – and elsewhere, is that their presence is systematically portrayed as an apolitical phenomenon. The presence of the Red Cross in a country is often portrayed as a symbol of transnational humanity in action, that NGO’s automatically results in good work being done. The reality in Haiti two years later reveals that it is much more complicated and much more self serving enterprise. Having so many organizations in the country is presented as a symbol of the fundamental failure of the Haitian people and its culture. Corruption is highlighted again and again as the reason why the Haitian government cannot be given any reconstruction funding.

This pattern of discarding the Haitian government in favour of mostly foreign NGO’s became a template for “development” in Haiti over the course of several decades, as the government was regarded as too corrupt and inefficient to be trusted with foreign funding. In particular, the massive amounts of funding would go to these foreign organizations with no accountability to the Haitian people, and unlike the conditions imposed via structural adjustment on the Haitian government – there is no need to follow any procedures of transparency to show where or how the money is being spent. In regards to the international community leading by example in Haiti, it was a classic case of do as we say, not as we do.

After the earthquake, the funding breakdown for the relief efforts reflected the extent to which the Haitian government had been sidelined. The Associated Press reported in early 2010 that of every aid dollar committed to Haiti for relief, only 1 cent would be directed to the Haitian government to help with the provision of services – with 75 cents going to USAID and the US military. Despite this reconstruction plan becoming public knowledge, there was no outcry from the international community or major organizations working on the ground in Haiti, as this was not considered outrageous by any means, but simply a continuation of the status quo.

The hypocrisy of the international community on the issue of “helping build Haiti back better” did lead several high level figures to publically criticize the entire reconstruction plan, and the myth of reckless Haitian corruption. Ricardo Seitenfus was dismissed from his position in late 2010 as the Organization of American States Special Representative to Haiti for telling the truth about corruption and NGOs.

In an interview with BBC Brazil shortly before his dismissal he stated that “The charges of corruption are part of an ideological discussion. There is no corruption, there is the perception of corruption. Haiti has no way of being corrupt because the state has no resources. What can be questioned is how the resources that the NGOs collect, without accounting for them to anyone, are being administered. That is indeed the big question. I make an exception of the work that was done in the emergency, but there cannot be a permanent policy of substituting the NGOs for the state. Haiti is Haiti, it is not [Haiti-NGO]. No country would accept what the Haitians are forced to accept.”

The candid interview by Seitenfus, highlighting the hypocritical and self serving policies being enacted in Haiti was widely ignored by the international media, but went on to earn him the Knight of the Republic Honours, bestowed by the Haitian government. The issues of hypocrisy, the construction of corruption and Haitian incompetence are endless fuel for the presence and justification of self serving, undemocratic NGO’s in Haiti.

Talking about the structural ineffectiveness of charities and NGO’s is difficult for the most part because criticism of charity creates the problematic misconception that an individual is against easing the suffering of others, or the good intention to make the world a better place. This is not true. The problem is the wider framework within which charity occurs. In 2003 for example, Haiti’s debt service was $57 million, whereas the combined government spending for education, healthcare, environment, and transportation was $39 million – for a country of 9 million people. This continued the trend whereby Haiti’s poverty has historically produced a tremendous amount of wealth through debt and interest repayments, and now as a lucrative laboratory of NGO’s.

In order to bring about a development model which can really help reconstruct Haiti, NGOs should all work towards making themselves irrelevant. With the emergency phase of relief over, this means that they should not simply import foreign professionals to do the jobs that locals are capable of, or could be trained to do. Importing teams of Canadian nurses down to Haiti is a tremendous waste of resources considering airfare, accommodation, food, security – when Haitian nurses are sitting unemployed in tent camps because the state hospitals were doubly destroyed by structural adjustment and the earthquake.

The debate regarding the depoliticizing of such a deeply political issue is something which needs to be discussed, as we must develop a system which allows us to move beyond the mere uttering of good intentions. The current shift to and promotion of philanthropy led development further justifies and naturalizes the system which allows an individual to become a multi-billionaire in a world where 80 percent of the world lives on US$10 a day. The focus is on the wrong end of the spectrum. We should not be congratulating the system which created a Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, but rather condemn the system which created the 5 billion desperately poor people.

The reconstruction effort in Haiti has revealed that charity and goodwill has become a commodity. The process of helping to alleviate poverty and destruction has been turned into a business – a business which is predominately accountable to their donors, not the people there are entrusted to help.

From my perspective, the lack of progress in Haiti should not come as a surprise, as the portrayal of a socially conscious and politically neutral NGO led development model in Haiti is a perfect Trojan horse for the entrenchment of the most extreme neoliberal economic restructuring documented to date. The goals, vision and business model of the transnational NGO’s are of increased dependency in Haiti, which is directly opposed to goals of the Haitian people who demand a development model which brings about both self sufficiency and allows for self determination.

The role of NGOs in providing nearly all of the basic services in Haiti is an extreme example of neoliberalism in action – and it is failing the Haitian people miserably. The continued expansion of NGOs on the ground signals that for some, these are indeed boom times. Without a serious discussion about the nature of the development industry and NGOs, we can only unfortunately expect the situation in Haiti to happen again elsewhere.

Without changing the wider structure in which these NGO’s operate, it is impossible to expect real, sustainable results. Haiti’s failed reconstruction is a beacon that NGOs cannot replace the state, and that any attempt to do otherwise is destructive and dangerous. The NGOs in Haiti have increased the dependency of the Haitian people through undemocratic and non-transparent projects which serve to entrench the neoliberal ideals of privatized governance, a reduced role for the state, and free mobility of both foreign capital and people – while Haitians stay trapped in the camps. Vast amounts of aid money which could go to support Haitian grassroots organizations, or the Cuban medical missions are spent on frivolous and superficial expenses for temporary, foreign NGO staffers.

The discussion about whether or not charity can exist within such an inhuman an exploitative capitalist system must be pushed to the forefront. While unpopular, it does force people to look into the true nature and motivations of charity in our current system. A simple donation to an NGO does not erase the crimes of history which has created the divide between the rich and the poor. Haiti has become a microcosm of the problematic power relations between the first and third world. The causes are structural. The causes are deep. The first step should be to work with the Haitian people, listen to their demands and give them control over the reconstruction of their own country. Anything less should be considered another form of colonialism. The public demands for the implementation of basic public health and educational systems are not excessive by any means, but are discussed in donor circles as unreasonable programs. It is because such systems would marginalize the NGO’s area of operations. The Haitian people deserve better, yet their oppression has historically generated profits for the rich, either through slavery, cheap labour, debt bondage, or now as a laboratory for NGO led neoliberal development.