foundation of peace

¶ … Peace

Freedom is the Foundation of Peace. Without freedom, there is no peace. America, by nature, stands for freedom, and we must always remember, we benefit when it expands. So we must stand by those nations moving toward freedom. We must stand up to those nations who deny freedom and threaten our neighbors or our vital interests. We must assert emphatically that the future will belong to the free. Today's world is different from the one we faced just several years ago. We are no longer divided into armed camps, locked in a careful balance of terror. Yet, freedom still has enemies. Our present dangers are less concentrated and more varied. They come from rogue nations, from terrorism, from missiles that threaten our forces, our friends, our allies and our homeland.

Since the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick between the kingdoms of Spain and France in 1697, the island of Hispaniola has played host to two separate and distinct societies that we now know as the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. At first encounter, and without the benefit of historical background and context, most observers find it incongruous that two such disparate nations - one speaking French and Creole, the other Spanish - should coexist within such limited confines. When viewed in light of the bitter struggle among European colonial powers for wealth and influence both on the continent and in the New World, however, the phenomenon becomes less puzzling.

By the late seventeenth century, Spain was a declining power. Although that country would maintain its vast holdings in mainland North America and South America, Spain found itself hard pressed by British, Dutch, and French forces in the Caribbean. The Treaty of Ryswick was one result of this competition, as the British eventually took Jamaica and established a foothold in Central America. The French eventually proved the value of Caribbean colonization, in an economic as well as a maritime and strategic sense, by developing modern-day Haiti, then known as Saint-Domingue, into the most productive colony in the Western Hemisphere, if not the world. Haiti, today, is a country situated on the western third of the island of Hispaniola and the smaller islands of La Gonave, La Tortue (Tortuga), Grande Caye, and Ile a Vache in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba. Its total land area is 10,714 square miles and its capital is Port-au-Prince on the main island of Hispaniola.

The Hispaniola's indigenous Arawak population suffered near-extinction in the decades after Christopher Columbus's arrival in 1492. The island was eventually repopulated by the late 17th century with African slaves to work the sugar plantations. In 1697 Spain ceded the western third of the Hispaniola, which was then called Saint-Domingue, to France. It became one of the richest colonies in the 18th century French empire. On August 22, 1791, the slave population revolted, which led to a war of attrition against the French. They defeated an army sent by Napoleon Bonaparte and declared independence on January 1, 1804, establishing the world's first Black republic.

Haiti embarked on a path to end slavery in the Caribbean, and to help Venezuela, Peru and Colombia to achieve independence under the revolutionary leadership of Bolivar and Miranda. Toussaint L'Ouverture soon abolished slavery in the neighboring Dominican Republic. Threatened by this attack on slavery and colonialism, the United States and Europe initiated sanctions. In addition to this economic blow, in 1825 France demanded that Haiti pay the French government 150 million gold francs to compensate French plantation slave-owners for their financial losses, and in exchange for France's recognition of Haiti's independence. Years later, the amount was reduced to 90 million gold francs. The Haitian elite who had gained control of the country following independence, caved in to the pressure, seeing this ransom as an inevitable and necessary financial obligation if the country were to be allowed to live in peace and freedom, and resume trade with its former colonizers. It took Haiti close to 100 years to pay off this debt and the debt was paid, not out of the money made by the elite through the export of raw goods, but rather on the backs of the Haitian people who continued to work the land. All the public schools in Haiti were closed in order to make the first payment, the first example of the imposition of a structural adjustment program. Haiti continued to make payments to France until the 1950s.

Today, the people of Haiti have joined with their democratically elected government to demand that France return to the Haitian people this debt - $21.7 billion in today's currency. On behalf of the people of Haiti, President Jean Bertrand Artistide made an official request to France, which has formally recognized slavery to be a crime against humanity. French legislators have verbally recognized the legitimacy Haiti's request for restitution. Although several international lawyers are working on the case for restitution, the hope is that France will act according to its stated principle and pay its debt to the Haitian people without the recourse of international law. Unfortunately, in an echo of the ugly "1825" past, the French government has reacted to this request by placing Haiti on a list of "undesirable" countries not to be visited. "Some analysts believe that France's refusal to support the deployment of an international peacekeeping force to Haiti until after the president's departure was linked to Aristide's unpopular - in Paris - demand for reparations."

Many people, particularly in France and Haiti, are protesting this vindictive response.

American President Woodrow Wilson sent sailors and marines to Port-au-Prince on July 28, 1915, and within six weeks, representatives from the United States (U.S.) controlled Haitian customs houses and administrative institutions. For the next nineteen years, the its U.S. neighbor guided and governed the country. During this period the legal government of Haiti was, both technically and effectively, the U.S. Marine Corps. The specific order from the Navy to the invasion commander, Admiral William Deville Bundy, was to "protect American and foreign" interests.

Representatives from the U.S. wielded veto power over all governmental decisions in Haiti, and Marine Corps commanders served as administrators in the provinces. Local institutions, however, continued to be run by Haitians, as was required under policies put in place during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson.

Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave, the mulatto president of the Senate, agreed to accept the presidency of Haiti after several other candidates had refused on principle. With a figurehead installed in the National Palace and other institutions maintained in form if not in function, Admiral Caperton declared martial law, a condition that persisted until 1929.

In 1917 President Dartiguenave dissolved the legislature after its members refused to approve a constitution written by U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, a referendum subsequently approved the new constitution (by a vote of 98,225 to 768), in 1918. One of the controversial provisions of the constitution allowed foreigners to purchase land. Dessalines had forbidden land ownership by foreigners, and since 1804 most Haitians had viewed foreign ownership as anathema.

The occupation by the United States had several effects on Haiti. An early period of unrest culminated in a 1918 rebellion by up to 40,000 people. The scale of the uprising overwhelmed the Gendarmerie, but marine reinforcements helped put down the revolt at the estimated cost of 2,000 Haitian lives. Thereafter, order prevailed to a degree that most Haitians had never witnessed. The order, however, was imposed largely by white foreigners with deep-seated racial prejudices and a disdain for the notion of self-determination by inhabitants of less-developed nations. These attitudes particularly dismayed the mulatto elite, who had heretofore believed in their innate superiority over the black masses. The whites from North America, however, did not distinguish among Haitians, regardless of their skin tone, level of education, or sophistication. This intolerance caused indignation, resentment, and eventually a racial pride that was reflected in the work of a new generation of Haitian historians, ethnologists, writers, artists, and others, many of whom later became active in politics and government. Still, as Haitians united in their reaction to the racism of the occupying forces, the mulatto elite managed to dominate the country's bureaucracy and to strengthen its role in national affairs.

The occupation greatly improved some of Haiti's infrastructure. Roads were improved and expanded through the use of forced-labor gangs. This violent form of "corvee labor," with chain gangs and armed guards permitted to shoot anyone who fled compulsory service, was widely regarded as tantamount to slavery. The education system was re-designed from the ground up. This involved the destruction of the pre-existing system of "Liberal Arts" education inherited from the French. Due to its emphasis on vocational training, the American system that replaced the French was despised by the elite. Thus, between the two major programs carried out by the government of occupation, the use of forced labor enraged the lower classes of rural Haiti, and the educational reform enraged the urban elite.

In 1922 Louis Borno replaced Dartiguenave, who was forced out of office for temporizing over the approval of a debt consolidation loan. Borno ruled without the benefit of a legislature, which had been dissolved in 1917 under Dartiguenave, until elections were again permitted in 1930. The legislature, after several ballots, elected mulatto Stenio Vincent to the presidency.

The occupation of Haiti continued after World War I, despite the embarrassment that it caused Woodrow Wilson at the Paris peace conference in 1919, and the scrutiny of a congressional inquiry in 1922. By 1930, President Herbert Hoover had become concerned about the effects of the occupation, particularly after a December 1929 incident in Les Cayes in which marines killed at least ten Haitian peasants during a march to protest local economic conditions. Hoover appointed two commissions to study the situation. A former governor general of the Philippines, W. Cameron Forbes, headed the more prominent of the two. The Forbes Commission praised the material improvements that the United States administration had wrought, but it criticized the exclusion of Haitians from positions of real authority in the government and the constabulary, which had come to be known as the Garde d'Haiti. In more general terms, the commission further asserted that "the social forces that created [instability] still remain - poverty, ignorance, and the lack of a tradition or desire for orderly free government."

For any number of reasons, some still rooted in the experience of French colonialism, which left the island with two radically different societies that literally didn't even speak the same language, Haiti has never been well governed and is ripe with mutual distrust. In the 20th century the United States made three major efforts to change the island's political and economic culture, each of which has failed and left resentment and bitterness in its wake.

The Hoover administration did not implement fully the recommendations of the Forbes Commission, but United States withdrawal was under way by 1932, when Hoover lost the presidency to Roosevelt. On a visit to Cap Haitien in July 1934, Roosevelt reaffirmed an August 1933 disengagement agreement. The last contingent of marines departed in mid-August, after a formal transfer of authority to the Garde. As in other countries occupied by the United States in the early twentieth century, the local, U.S.-trained, military was often the only cohesive and effective institution left in the wake of withdrawal. This sowed the seeds for a sequence of military-backed dictatorships, all attached to American patronage, which would define the next 50 years of Haiti's history.

A black, medical doctor, Francois Duvalier was not allowed to establish his own practice due to racist customs in Haiti. After securing employment with an American medical project that was fighting widespread tuberculosis, Duvalier had the opportunity to see the poverty that existed in the countryside. This fueled his interest in politics, and despite the fact that the Haitian government was predominantly mulatto, Duvalier was able to gain a following and joined forces with powerful union leader Daniel Fignole. Together they formed the popular Mouvement Ouvriers Paysans (MOP) party, and continued to gain public support, waiting for their moment to seize power. Both men wanted to take the top job of President, therefore the party was split, and in 1957 Fignole became president of Haiti. His position lasted only 18 days, however, because Duvalier was able to overthrow him and began what was to become a 29-year dynasty.

Duvalier, also known as "Papa Doc," became president in 1957 and dictator in 1964. He was known for his army of sunglasses-clad volunteers, the Tonton Macoute. In 1967 proposals were made to construct a freeport on the Haitian island of Tortuga by a consortium formed in the United States by Don Pierson of Eastland, Texas. These plans reached maturity in 1971 when a 99-year contract was entered into by Francois Duvalier on behalf of the Haitian government. Although construction of infrastructure and a new international airport was commenced, two other events brought about the sudden demise of the whole venture. When Francois Duvalier suddenly died in 1971 his son Jean-Claude Duvalier ("Baby Doc") took over at the age of 19. In 1974 it became known that the freeport had entered into a multimillion-dollar contract with Gulf Oil corporation to advance development on the island. This news prompted "Baby Doc" to expropriate the venture for himself, which in turn caused its sudden collapse. When Jean-Claude Duvalier was deposed in 1986, the entire country remained in poverty, primarily due to a lack of international commercial development.

Over three decades of dictatorship were followed by military rule, which ended in 1990 when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president. Aristide's inauguration on February 7, 1991, was a gala event, befitting its historic nature. As expected, the new president delivered a spellbinding inaugural address. In it, he renounced his $10,000 a month salary as a scandal in a country where people went hungry. Although the address was short on specifics of policy, its tone was one of gratitude and support for the poverty-afflicted constituency that had provided such a striking electoral mandate. The address was also conciliatory with regard to the military. Aristide described a "a marriage between the army and civilians," and hinted that the army would henceforth function as a public security force in order to lessen the threat emanating from right-wing forces such as those directed by Lafontant. Beyond his rhetorical outreach to the rank and file, Aristide moved quickly to shore up his rule in the face of possible opposition from within the officer corps of the Fad'H. Most of his term was usurped by a military coup d'etat, but he was able to return to office in 1994 and oversee the installation of a close associate to the presidency in 1996.

In May 2000, Haiti held legislative and local government elections. The Family Lavalas Party won over 50% of the vote, but a dispute arose about the method used to tabulate the percentages for the Senate elections. The OAS and the international community condemned the results for the Senate elections as fraudulent. The Haitian government refused to re-calculate the percentages. In response, most of the opposition parties refused to acknowledge the results or take part in second-round run-offs, and in the months leading up to the Presidential election at the end of the year, numerous negotiations failed to produce a settlement. As a result, most opposition groups boycotted the Presidential election. Aristide easily won, but because of the earlier dispute, the opposition parties never accepted his victory as legitimate.

Arisitide took office on February 7, 2001, but his presidency was mired in controversy, and his government was undermined by the political impasse and international reluctance to release foreign assistance. By 2003, the country was deeply divided between pro- and anti-Aristide camps. This finally led to an armed conflict which increased in intensity on February 5, 2004, 200 years after the Haitian Revolution, when an armed rebel group calling itself the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front took control of the Gonaives police station. This rebellion spread throughout the central Artibonite province by February 17th and was joined by opponents of the government who had been in exile in the Dominican Republic.

At 5:30 AM on February 29, 2004, President Aristide left Haiti on a white U.S. jet with an American flag on the tail wing. He alleges he was kidnapped from Haiti by a group of Haitians, 20 U.S. soldiers, and 19 American employees of a private American security company called the Steele Foundation. There were also wives and a one-year-old baby on board. The U.S. government, including Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, and Colin Powell, have consistently maintained that Aristide left Haiti willingly, but in an interview that Amy Goodman of Pacifica Radio conducted with Aristide's bodyguard, Franz Gabriel, the bodyguard contradicted the U.S. version of events, stating that he thought it was in fact a kidnapping. According to Gabriel, he and Aristide were mislead on the morning of Sunday, the twenty-ninth by Luis Moreno, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince into believing that they were going to a press conference at the U.S. embassy. Instead the convoy turned into the airport rather than continuing onto the embassy. Once at the airport he said they witnessed the white jet land, and amidst a group of battle-ready U.S. soldiers they were whisked onto the plane. At no time, according to Gabriel, were they told the destination of their flight. Gabriel also recalled that the soldiers quickly changed into civilian clothes once on board the plane, and during the flight neither Aristide nor Gabriel consulted with or spoken to about what was happening. After making an unannounced stop in Antigua the plane landed in the Central African Republic (CAR), seemingly a strange choice given the diplomatic and political isolation of CAR. Pursuant to Haiti's constitution, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Boniface Alexandre, took over as interim president.

Using the pretext that Aristide had freely left his own country, a delegation of Aristide's friends and supporters, among them Congresswoman Maxine Waters and TransAfrica founder Randal Robinson, as well as the journalist Amy Goodman, flew to CAR to return him to the Caribbean. Leaving CAR did not prove easy for Aristide, and his departure from CAR was at first opposed by the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, James Foley, who said that Aristide and his wife Mildred should not be allowed to return within 150 miles of Haiti, but the delegation did prevail, and Aristide was flown to Kingston, Jamaica, 130 miles away. Aristide and his family now live in exile in South Africa, and he maintains that he is the President of Haiti, and that he will return to Haiti some day.

While in exile Aristide has granted few interviews, but in a rare interview Aristide granted to the Afro-French journalist Claude Ribbe, marking the anniversary of his removal from power, Aristide revealed that he was pressured by two French emissaries to leave the country or risk being killed. "How closely the reparations issue influenced French actions in the days leading up to Aristide's departure from Haiti is debatable."

Aristide went on in the interview to identify the emissaries as Veronique de Villepin, sister of the French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, and Regis Debray, the French Foreign Minister's appointee.

Haiti is one of the original members of the United Nations and several of its specialized and related agencies, as well as a member of the Organization of American States (OAS). It maintains diplomatic relations with 37 countries, including the Republic of China (Taiwan) instead of the People's Republic of China.

The international community rallied to Haiti's defense during the 1991-94 period of illegal military rule. Thirty-one countries participated in the U.S.-led Multinational Force (MNF) which, acting under UN auspices, intervened in September 1994 to help restore the legitimate government and create a secure and stable environment in Haiti. At its peak, the MNF included roughly 21,000 troops, mostly Americans, and more than 1,000 international police monitors. Within six months, the troop level was gradually reduced as the MNF transitioned to a 6,000 strong peacekeeping force, the UN Mission in Haiti (UNMIH). UNMIH was charged with maintaining the secure environment, which the MNF had helped establish, as well as nurturing Haiti's new police force through the presence of 900 police advisors. A total of 38 countries participated in UNMIH.

In the four-year period between Aristide's ouster and his return, Haiti's GDP dropped perhaps another third, while its population continued to grow, and its arable land diminished. Foreign investors had fled to safer climes, like the Dominican Republic next door. As a result, Haiti's unemployment rate shot up to astronomical proportions. Encouraging even more corruption in Haiti may not have been the intention of those who wanted to do something about Haiti, but the effect of the sanctions on corruption was real enough. Illegal foreign trade and smuggling further enriched Haitian officials already well versed in the arts of international commerce not approved of by the World Trade Organization. Even more destructively, inflation, especially steep increases in the price of basic commodities like food, imposed an additional harsh burden on Haiti's already impoverished population. The misery of the private sector was mirrored in the public sector, where basic tax-based services, like elementary school education and the provision of clean water, simply collapsed.

In order to spur Haiti's social and economic recovery from three years of de facto military rule and decades of misrule before that, international development banks and donor agencies pledged in 1994 to provide over $2 billion in assistance by 1999. Disbursements were largely conditioned on progress in economic reform. Parliamentary inaction, principally as a result of the political struggles and gridlock that plagued Haiti since 1996, resulted in the blockage of much of this assistance, as disbursement conditions were not met. The electoral crisis that has brewed in the aftermath of the May 21, 2000 local and parliamentary elections has resulted in the blockage of most multilateral and bilateral assistance. Major donors are led by the United States, with the largest bilateral assistance program, and also include Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and Taiwan. Multilateral aid is coordinated through an informal grouping of major donors under the auspices of the World Bank which, in addition to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the European Union, is also a major source of Haitian development assistance.

The 2000 parliamentary elections were an administrative disaster. Independent observers were turned away from polling places and armed men stole ballot boxes. At least 15 people were killed and hundreds more were threatened with violence. Two members of the Provisional Electoral Council were forced to resign after grenade attacks on their headquarters, and one fled to the United States for fear of his life. Aristide was returned to power, and it is possible he got a majority of the votes, but there were so many irregularities and threats that he had no real legitimacy.

Haiti's foreign relations are focused mainly on United States, the country's leading trade partner and major source of foreign aid, and neighboring Dominican Republic. International condemnation of Duvalier regime isolated the country during 1960s and 1970s. Jean-Claude's economic policies, calculated to attract foreign investment and tourism, relieved this isolation to some extent. Relations with other Latin American and Caribbean countries have been limited by linguistic and cultural disparities.

Throughout Haiti's history, foreign trade has played a major economic role. Trade provided crucial foreign exchange for Haiti, but the structure of trade and government policies resulted in falling incomes and poorly distributed wealth. In the mid-1980s, about twenty families dominated the importation of basic consumer items. Traditionally, government import-licensing schemes and tariff policies supported import monopolies, a major cause of prevailing high consumer prices. This same structure also permitted the plentiful importation of luxury items at relatively low tariffs. A small group of businessmen also controlled exports, particularly coffee, and its members generally favored commerce over more productive investment. The effects of major trade reforms enacted in 1986 remained to be seen in the late 1980s.

Exports generally increased during the 1980s, but political instability started to weaken export performance toward the end of the decade. The structure of exports changed dramatically as the result of the long decline in agriculture, the termination of bauxite mining, and the implementation of the CBI. In 1987 manufacturing contributed 53% of total exports, followed by coffee (18%), handicrafts (14%), essential oils (2%), cocoa (2%), and other goods (11%). Agriculture, which accounted for 52% of exports in 1980, contributed only 24% by 1987; exports of traditional commodities, such as sugar, sisal, and meat, either declined to insignificant levels or ceased altogether. Haiti exported goods mostly to the United States, the destination of 84% of the country's overseas sales in 1987. France and Italy, the main purchasers of Haiti's coffee, accounted for 3% and 4%, respectively, of 1987 exports. The balance of exports went to the Dominican Republic (2%) and other West European and Latin American countries (7%).

Throughout its history, Haiti's relative isolation has constrained its foreign relations. Haiti achieved some prominence as a result of its successful revolution, but the governments of slaveholding countries either ignored or decried the country during the first half of the nineteenth century. In the United States, the question of recognizing Haiti provoked sharp debate between abolitionists, who favored recognition, and slaveholders, who vehemently opposed such an action. The advent of the Civil War, however, allowed President Abraham Lincoln to recognize Haiti without controversy. Haiti became a focus of interest for the great powers in the early twentieth century mainly because of the country's strategic location. Competition among the United States, Germany, France, and Britain resulted in the breaching of Haiti's sovereignty and the nineteen-year occupation by United States forces. Subsequent isolation stemmed from Haiti's cultural and linguistic uniqueness, its economic underdevelopment, and from international condemnation of the repressive Duvalier regimes.

Haiti has maintained a long-standing relationship with the United States. Haitians have perceived economic ties to the United States as vital. The United States was Haiti's primary trading partner for both exports and imports, its most important source of foreign assistance, and the primary target of Haitian emigration. A large number of private voluntary agencies (NGOs) from the United States functioned in Haiti. The assembly industry of Port-au-Prince was closely tied to the United States economy. In short, the economic and the political influence of the United States in Haiti was more powerful than the influence of any other country.

Still, contemporary American diplomatic interest in Haiti has been minimal. Washington's interest in Haiti arose chiefly because of the country's proximity to the Panama Canal and Central America. Haiti also controls the Windward Passage, a narrow body of water that could be easily closed, disrupting maritime traffic. In the nineteenth century, the United States considered establishing a naval base in Haiti. At about the time of World War I, the United States occupied Haiti along with a number of other countries in the Caribbean and Central America. Since the 1960s, Washington has viewed Haiti as an anticommunist bulwark, partly because of the country's proximity to Cuba. Francois Duvalier, exploiting United States' hostility toward the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro, and U.S. fears of communist expansion in the Caribbean, was able to avoid having the United States government exert excessive pressure against his own dictatorship.

In the 1980s, the United States expressed a special interest in curbing illegal Haitian immigration. Washington also attempted to curtail shipments of illegal drugs to and from Haiti.

From the 1970s until 1987, United States assistance to Haiti grew. After the violently disrupted elections of November 1987, however, United States president Ronald Reagan suspended all aid to Haiti. In August 1989, President George Bush restored $10 million in food aid because the Avril government had made progress toward holding free elections and had agreed to cooperate in efforts to control international drug trafficking.

The Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), enacted by the United States Congress in 1982-83, represented one of the major United States foreign economic policies toward Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1980s. Mainly a trade promotion program, the Initiative provided duty-free access to the United States market for about 3,000 products, it expanded bilateral economic assistance, and it allowed some limited tax breaks for new United States investors in the region. A number of United States agencies contributed to the formulation and implementation of the policy. As a result of the early failure of the CBI to stimulate exports from many of the countries involved, legislators attempted to amplify the program, and by 1990 Congress and the White House were expected to approve an expanded version. Whereas the CBI had improved the region's prosperity only slightly, by 1989 it had served nonetheless as a catalyst toward economic diversification in a number of Caribbean Basin countries.

The Dominican Republic was the second most important country to Haiti because the two nations shared a border, but the two countries have been ambivalent toward each other. Haiti supplied cheap labor to the Dominican Republic, mostly to help harvest sugarcane. Under the Duvaliers, this arrangement involved an annual intergovernmental exchange of funds for the supply of cane cutters.

For generations Haitians had informally crossed the Dominican Republic's border in search of work. An estimated 250,000 people of Haitian parentage lived in the Dominican Republic. This perceived "blackening" of the Dominican population motivated dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina to carry out a notorious massacre of Haitians in 1937. The border has been an issue of contention in other respects as well. The Haitian economy has proven to be a desirable market for Dominican products, effectively undercutting Haitian production of certain commodities and reducing the domestic market for some Haitian goods. Also, exiled Haitian politicians have readily sought refuge in the Dominican Republic and have gained allies there in efforts to bring down Haitian governments.

Ties with other Caribbean nations were limited. Historically, Britain and France strove to limit contacts between their dependencies and Haiti, in order to discourage independence movements. Haiti's cultural and linguistic distinctiveness also prevented close relations in the Caribbean. As of mid-1989, Haiti did not belong to the Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom), and it had not been included in the Lome Convention, although there had been some discussion with Caricom officials on both points. Haiti also maintained few productive relationships in Latin America. Haiti's memberships in international and multilateral organizations include the United Nations and its associated organizations, the Organization of American States, the InterAmerican Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Other countries important to Haiti included the primary donor countries for foreign assistance, especially France, Canada, and the Federal Republic of Germany. Haiti maintained special cultural ties to France, even though the two countries were not major trading partners. Haiti also enjoyed a supportive relationship with the Canadian province of Quebec, one of the few linguistically compatible entities in the Western Hemisphere. Most Haitian emigres in Canada lived in Quebec, and the majority of administrators of Canadian aid projects came from Quebec. "Over the years, relations have been further cemented by the presence in Canada of a substantial Haitian community and the presence in Haiti of a large number of Canadian development workers, including hundreds of missionaries working primarily in the health and education sectors."

In July 2004, Aileen Carroll, Minister for International Cooperation, and Bill Graham, Minister of Foreign Affairs, announced Canada was contributing over $180 million in aid to Haiti during the next two years. "Canada is proud to be part of this international effort,' said Minister Carroll. 'Effective coordination between multilateral institutions, bilateral donors, Haitian civil society, and the transitional government is crucial to ensuring success in reconstructing Haiti and laying the foundation for long-term sustainable development.'"

Some however, are critical of Canada's efforts. "Canadians, and most others, see Canada as an international do-gooder motivated by principles of human rights and international law. In the case of Haiti, Canada's recent inaction and action is more about appeasing the United States than about the human rights of the Haitians."

In many ways, Haitians were proud of their history, particularly the accomplishments of such revolutionary figures as Dessalines and Toussaint. However, the nation has suffered both from its uniqueness and from its similarity to other less developed nations. Largely isolated in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti nonetheless has experienced political instability, repression, and impoverishment equal to, or exceeding that of, other Latin American states. As the 1990s approached, Haiti still could not count itself among the democratic nations of the hemisphere, despite the sincere desire of its people for some form of representative government.

Haiti is preparing for its first poll since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in an uprising last year. Some 6,700 UN peacekeepers were sent there, in a force led by Brazil. A UN Security Council delegation visiting Haiti has raised concerns about the country's security conditions in the run-up to elections in October. The team recommended urgent changes to the justice system, which it says allows hundreds of prisoners to remain in jail for months without charge. The UN is also recommending an extension of the mission beyond the planned departure in June. Brazil's UN ambassador Ronaldo Mota Sardenberg, who heads it, has referred to the current climate as dire. But the peacekeepers have come in for criticism from some quarters for failing to curtail the level of violence. It is estimated that at least 600 people have been killed in slum fighting in the past six months.