IJDH---20 Sept. 2006---The International Monetary Fund (IMF) gave
much needed debt relief for Haiti
a green light yesterday, but the road ahead is still dangerous for Haiti’s
poor. The IMF’s Executive Board announced
that Haiti
qualifies for its Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) program that
also applies to World Bank debt. This is a step in the right direction, but Haiti
faces at least two more years of delay before it reaches completion point and
is eligible for 100% cancellation. Several U.S.-based organizations working on
poverty and human rights in Haiti
are concerned that the IMF and World Bank debt relief program will require
painful economic measures that will make Haitians, the poorest people in the Americas,
even more vulnerable to death and disease. In the meantime, the Haitian government
will be forced to make $60 million a year in debt payments, money that would be
better spent tackling Haiti’s
dire health and education problems.
Haiti’s per capita gross domestic product
(GDP) has shrunk 40% since 1980. Most Haitians struggle to survive on less than
$1 per day. Life expectancy is only 53 years and nearly a quarter of children
under 5 years old are chronically malnourished. Less than half of primary
school-aged children attend school. Most people do not have access to clean
water.
“Children will die of
preventable water-borne diseases today, tomorrow and every day for months and
years to come because of past restrictions imposed by the IMF and other lending
institutions. Children in desperate need
cannot wait three years for the IMF’s process to be completed,” said Nicole
Lee, Operations Director of TransAfrica Forum. “Immediate debt relief would
save lives immediately.”
Before Haiti receives
full debt cancellation under HIPC, the IMF mandates that it undertake “further
macroeconomic, structural and social reforms.” Past IMF “reforms” imposed on Haiti – including curtailing support for
agricultural production and cutting social spending – have worsened Haiti’s
chronic poverty.
“We are worried that the
IMF’s medicine may be worse than the disease,” said Neil Watkins, National
Coordinator of the Jubilee USA Network.
“The HIPC conditionalities
will aggravate the very problems that debt cancellation is supposed to tackle. Haiti needs
immediate debt cancellation now.”
Almost half of Haiti’s
$1.3 billion external debt is for loans made to the corrupt and brutal
dictatorships of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier. “The
banks let the Duvaliers use loans for private armies and Manhattan shopping trips. Now Haiti’s hungry poor must tighten their belts to
pay the bill.” said Brian Concannon Jr. Director of the Institute for Justice
and Democracy in Haiti. “Haiti’s debt is onerous, but it is
also odious.”
Over half of Haiti’s
public external debt is owed to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which
participates in HIPC but has not yet followed the lead of the G-8, the IMF, and
the World Bank to provide 100% debt stock cancellation. Monika Kalra Varma,
Acting Director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center
for Human Rights, notes that “the IDB has been considering a program that would
fully cancel Haiti’s
debt to it, but it needs to move from consideration into action, now.”
HR 888, a resolution introduced in the U.S. House of
Representatives by Rep. Maxine Waters of California
has 60 co-sponsors and would commit the U.S. Government to immediate and
complete debt cancellation for Haiti.
Brian Concannon, Institute for Justice &
Democracy in Haiti:
541-263-0029
Nicole Lee, TransAfrica Forum: 202-223-1960
x134
Monika Kalra Varma, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial
Center for Human Rights,
202-463-7575, x228
Neil Watkins, Jubilee USA Network: 202-783-0129