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Questions answered on history, current conditions of Haitian children |
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Tuesday, 13 February 2007 |
 | | Tom Plaut |
By JIM GENARO
After discussing the impact of Haiti’s poverty on its children at UNC Asheville’s Humanities Lecture Hall Feb. 6, retired Mars Hill College sociology professor Tom Plaut answered questions from the audience about the challenges facing the country, as well as his activities working with children’s health there.
The forum was sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Western North Carolina as part of its Great Decisions 2007 lecture series.
“How do you account for the big difference between Haiti and the Dominican Republic,” which shares the same island? a woman asked. “Is it the government or is it the military interventions” by the U.S.?
“I think it’s a little bit of both,” Plaut replied.
He
noted that in recent years, the U.S. was particularly opposed to the
administration of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s former populist
president, who was elected first in 1991 and later in 2001. Aristide
was removed from power in 2004 by a military coup, in which the U.S.
backed his opponents and flew him out of the country to South Africa —
by force, according to him.
A Roman Catholic
priest, Aristide campaigned on a platform based in Liberation Theology
— a school of thought that advocates social justice as a central
Christian value, Plaut noted.
Furthermore, he
had argued that France should repay the $150 million it demanded of
Haiti in exchange for independence in1804 — the equivalent of $2
billion today.
This position
brought him into conflict with both the Reagan administration and,
later, the current Bush administration, Plaut said.
“Aristide was
targeted because of his liberation theology and his stance on the
debt,” Plaut told the audience. “Unfortunately, in some remarks in the
late ’80s, he sort of sunk his ship in Washington.”
“Would you comment on family planning?” a woman asked.
Plaut replied
that he worked almost exclusively with children in Haiti, so he was not
really qualified to discuss family planning.
However, he
added, “there’s a lot of work that needs to be done in family planning
and also with the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.”
A man asked how
relief workers distribute AK1000, a soup mix comprised of grains and
beans that has been instrumental in combating malnutrition in Haiti.
The supplement
is made locally, Plaut said, from ingredients bought from Haitian
farmers. It is then milled there in 400-pound batches, which is broken
down into family-sized packages.
This has been
remarkably helpful in preventing diseases related to hunger, he said —
so much so that relief organizations are starting to see it as a
central strategy in their campaign to promote health.
“Instead of building a fancy clinic, we’re talking about a smaller clinic with a distributing room” for AK 1000, Plaut noted.
A woman asked about the water situation in Haiti.
All of the 12 water streams that feed Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital, are now polluted, Plaut answered.
“Digging wells is really important,” he said. “When you drive through towns, you will often see a single water pump.”
Children often
must carry five-gallon buckets of water on their heads from a central
well up steep mountains to the villages where they live, Plaut told the
audience.
“That’s an amazing sight,” he added.
“If it’s up to
you, what would be the role of the NGO’s (non-governmental
organizations) and the government” in fixing Haiti’s problems? a man
asked.
The governments
of France and the U.S. should rebuild Haiti’s infrastructure, Plaut
answered, because of the damaging impact they have had on the country.
The U.N., he said, is doing well at providing security in Haiti. But the role of NGO’s is critical, Plaut added.
“NGO’s can do a whole lot with building hospitals, improving education.”
Furthermore, he
added, if France were to repay the money it extracted from Haiti, many
of the country’s problems could be addressed.
“I think
Aristide — though he said it offensively — has a good point. The U.S.
and France squeezed Haiti to death. We owe it to them” to help rebuild,
he added.
A man asked whether this should be the duty of the U.S. government or of private groups.
Plaut replied
that the U.S. government does have a responsibility to Haiti. However,
this is often obscured by a lack of information about the country.
“One of the major crimes is that the press doesn’t tell us what’s going on there,” he said.
Particularly
troubling is “the dissing of Aristide — who may not be an angel, but
he’s not a crazy drug dealer,” as some U.S. officials have charged,
Plaut said.
Rather, Aristide is “a Catholic priest who went into the slums and came out very angry about what he saw there,” Plaut added.
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