THIS IMPRESSIVE RECORD SPEAKS FOR ITSELF:
What follows is a brief summary highlighting some of the most
important Lavalas achievements.
Each was a step towards breaking down
the rigid caste structure that has marginalized Haiti�s poor, keeping
them unseen and unheard.
Each accomplishment moved Haiti towards the
full participation of its poor majority in the life of the nation.
The February 29 coup was aimed at reversing this process.
Aristide
was overthrown not because he failed to change Haiti, but precisely
because profound transformation was at hand.
- Lavalas Achievements -
EDUCATION/LITERACY:
� Under the Aristide government, Haiti�for the first time in its
history�began implementing a Universal Schooling Program aimed at
giving every child an education.
In 2001, Aristide mandated that 20%
of the national budget be dedicated to education.
om 2001�2004,
school enrollment rates rose from 67.8% to 72%.
� Under Lavalas administrations, more schools were built in Haiti
between 1994�2000 than between 1804�1994.
Lavalas built 195 new
primary schools and 104 new public high schools, including a
brand-new high school in Cit� Soleil.
Many of these schools were
built in rural areas where no schools existed previously.
Despite this construction effort, there are still not nearly enough
public schools for all of Haiti�s children.
The Lavalas government
Literacy Campaign provided hundreds of thousands of scholarships for
children to attend private schools.
� The Lavalas government granted a 70% government subsidy for
schoolbooks and uniforms.
School lunch programs expanded to serve
700,000 hot meals a day and Haiti�s first school bus program began.
� In the summer of 2001, the Haitian government launched a national
literacy campaign.
The Secretary of State for Literacy printed two
million literacy manuals, and trained thousands of college and high
school students as literacy workers.
Working with church and Voudou
groups, popular organizations and thousands of women�s groups across
the country, the government opened 20,000 adult literacy centers.
Many of these centers were resto-alphas, combining a literacy center
and a community kitchen to provide low-cost meals to communities in
need.
Between 2001�2003, this program taught 100,000 people to read.
The majority of these were women who had no previous access to
education.
Over the last seven years, these literacy campaigns
reduced the illiteracy rate from 85% to 55%.
HEALTH CARE:
� The Aristide government devoted a greater percentage of the
national budget (13.7% for 2001�2006) to health care than had any
previous government in Haitian history.
� The Aristide administration inaugurated a cutting-edge AIDS
treatment and prevention program, which was lauded by international
experts.
The program was spearheaded by First Lady Mildred Aristide
and included twenty new testing centers, an AIDS vaccine trial, and
anti-retroviral treatment for some patients.
Haiti�s government
worked in collaboration with non-governmental organizations,
including Partners in Health in Haiti�s central plateau.
A caravan of
artists and speakers traveled throughout the country promoting AIDS
prevention.
Between 2000�2003, the prevalence of HIV dropped from
6.1% to 5% and the mother-to-child HIV transmission rate decreased
from 30% to 9%.
� In a bilateral Haitian-Cuban project, 800 Cuban health care workers
came to Haiti to work in rural areas.
With government support, an
additional 325 Haitian medical students went to Cuba for medical
training.
In return, they committed to work in public health on their
return to Haiti.
� President Aristide created a new medical school in Tabarre, which
provided free medical education to 247 students from all parts of the
country, each of whom committed to serve in their own community upon
completion of their education.
A school for nursing had been slated
to open in fall of 2004.
After the coup the U.S. and Brazilian
militaries appropriated the land and building.
The school remains
closed.
� Lavalas governments renovated and constructed 40 health clinics,
hospitals and dispensaries.
In 2002, the School of Midwifery was
renovated, as were the maternity wards of eight public hospitals.
A
second state hospital in Port-au-Prince was inaugurated on February
6, 2004.
On February 7, the first babies were already being delivered
there.
� In a country with fewer than 2000 doctors for a population of 8.5
million, the striking increase in health workers and improvements in
facilities led to significant improvement in health care.
Under the
Lavalas administrations, infant mortality declined from 125 deaths
per 1000 to 110. The percentage of underweight newborns dropped from
28% to 19%.
ECONOMIC JUSTICE:
� Upon Aristide�s return to Haiti in 1994, the U.S. called for him to
privatize the telephone company, electrical company, airport, port,
three banks, a cement factory and a flourmill.
Despite this pressure,
Lavalas governments sold only the flourmill and the cement plant.
� President Aristide was preparing to raise the minimum wage in
September of 1991 at the time of the first coup.
Upon his return to
Haiti he raised the minimum wage in 1995.
On February 7, 2003, he
doubled the minimum wage from 36 to 70 gourdes a day. This wage hike
affected more than 20,000 people who work in Port-au-Prince assembly
factories, most of which are owned and operated by the Haitian elite.
� An extensive land reform program distributed 2.47 acres of land to
each of 1,500 peasant families in the fertile Artibonite River
Valley-Peligre Lake was restocked with fish.
After the 2004 coup,
absentee landlords, backed by the coup government, returned to
reclaim their control over this land.
� The government provided tools, credit, technical assistance,
fertilizers and heavy equip�ment to farmers.
Repairs to irrigation
systems brought water to the lands of 7,000 farmers in the Artibonite
Valley.
Rice yields rose from 2.7 tons per hectare to between 3�5.5
tons.
� The government reintroduced the Creole pig to Haiti, distributing
tens of thousands of pigs to Haitian farmers.
(In the 1980s, USAID
exterminated Haiti�s Creole pig population on the pretext that the
pigs were sick and would spread African Swine fever to North America.
The monetary loss to Haitian farmers, the vast majority of whom were
never compensated, was placed at $600 million.)
� The Aristide administration launched an aggressive campaign to
collect unpaid tax and utility bills owed to the government by the
wealthy elite.
It publicized the names of rich business owners who
had failed to pay their taxes.
This generated new revenues, which
were applied towards health care and education.
The campaign earned
Aristide the enmity of the elite, who had gone for years without
paying taxes.
CHILDREN�S RIGHTS:
� The Aristide government launched a major campaign in defense of
�restaveks" (an estimated 400,000 children, mostly girls, in unpaid
domestic service).
First Lady Mildred Aristide authored a book on the
subject pointing out that the restavek system was rooted in the
historical underdevelopment, poverty and lack of schools in rural
areas�which in turn pressured rural parents to send their children to
the cities.
� The government offered scholarships to children in domestic service
and President Aristide appealed to families to send all children
living in their homes to school.
� For the first time in Haitian history,juvenile courts were set up.
A special child protection unit was created within the National
Police force.
� In October 2001, Haiti passed legislation banning all forms of
corporal punishment against children.
� In May 2003, Haiti repealed a provision of the labor code that
sanctioned child domestic service and passed legislation prohibiting
all trafficking in persons.
� Despite these significant advances, in its �2003 Trafficking in
Persons Report,� the U.S. State Department threatened Haiti with
further economic sanctions for not making significant efforts in this
area.
This report ignored the educational and legislative initiatives
enacted by Haiti against child domestic service while it credited
other countries for identical initiatives.
When Haiti protested, its
status was up-graded and the threat of further sanctions withdrawn.
STATUS OF WOMEN:
� A record number of women won elected office, including one third of
the seats in the Haitian Senate.
For the first time in history, women
held the posts of Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Minister of Finance and Chief of Police.
� In 1995, President Aristide created a Ministry of Women�s Affairs�a
cabinet level position dedicated to women�s welfare.
� When Aristide was reelected president in 2000, his government gave
material assistance to women�s groups such as Coordination des Femmes
Victimes d�Haiti (COFEVIH) for organizing and commercial projects.
Victims of rape during the 1991�1994 coup were able, for the first
time, to speak out without shame about their experiences.
� Lavalas programs gave primacy to women�s concerns.
Women were the
central organizers and beneficiaries of the literacy campaign.
Programs for restaveks (outlined above) served young girls.
Women
heads of household largely patronized the new community stores and
restaurants.
Health care programs focused on maternal and pre-natal
health care.
The government�s HIV/AIDS testing and prevention program
envisioned women as the primary agents of change and education.
The
vast majority of workers in the assembly sector are women; the
minimum wage hike directly impacted them.
INFRASTRUCTURE:
� During the Preval and Aristide administrations, Lavalas made major
investments in agriculture, public transportation and infrastructure.
The government undertook smaller road projects linking the
countryside to the city with 400 kilometers of new roads, enabling
farmers to get their food to market.
� Haiti�s open-air markets are a vibrant part of every town.
Lavalas
renovated and constructed dozens of markets including in Les Cayes,
Gonaives and Tabarre.
Croix Bossals, Port-au-Prince�s main downtown
market, was renovated with a $5 million sanitation program.
� Thousands of miles of drainage canals were constructed, repaired or
dredged.
� The international airport in Port-au-Prince and the provincial
airport of Les Cayes were renovated.
� In Jacmel a new power plant provided twenty-four hour a day
electricity.
The port and wharf were reno�vated, and the road to the
beach was paved.
� The government inaugurated the nation�s first public beach with
full amenities.
Until this time, only the rich had access to such a
beach.
�The National Stadium was renovated.
JUSTICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS :
� In 1995, President Aristide�with strong support from the Haitian
people�disman-tled the Haitian military.
The military had been
responsible for 32 coups d�etat, and more than 5,000 deaths during
the 1991� 1994 coup period.
Eliminating the prime historic instrument
of state repression allowed the Haitian people to enjoy a level of
freedom of speech and assembly unprecedented in Haitian history.
These freedoms have now been all but eliminated.
� In 1995, Aristide created the National Commission for Truth and
Justice, which investigated the crimes of the1991�1994 coup period.
Testimony was taken from 10,000 Haitians.
The commission released its
report and recommendations in 1996.
� In 2000, the Haitian justice system convicted 16 former soldiers
and paramilitaries for the 1994 massacre of residents in the Raboteau
neighborhood of Gonaives.
This trial was the most significant
prosecution of human rights violators from the 1991�1994 coup period,
and a blow against the traditional impunity for violators of human
rights throughout the hemisphere.
� At the time of the 2004 coup, government lawyers were working on a
case against the former military for the use of rape as a political
weapon during 1991�1994.
� In 1995, the Haitian government opened a school for magistrates,
which graduated 100 new judges and prosecutors between 1996�2003.
Courthouses and police stations were constructed and refurbished
throughout the country.
� In December 2003, a few short months before the coup, a magistrate
issued an Ordinance (which in Haitian law constitutes the final
pretrial document, stating the charges against the accused) in
relation to the 1990 Piatre massacre.
On March 12, 1990, agents of
local landlords and Haitian soldiers had attacked the village of
Piatre, killing eleven people, razing 375 houses, destroying
cultivated fields and killing farm animals.
The attack aimed to
thwart the Piatre farmers� attempts to reclaim, through the courts,
land that had been expropriated by wealthy landlords.
The Piatre
ordinance�s publication was a historic achievement for the
Haitianjustice system, which had struggled with the case for over
thirteen years.
Suspects in custody included General Prosper Avril,
the former dictator accused of masterminding the massacre.
He was
released from prison as a result of the February 2004 coup
d�etat�along with 3,000 other criminals who were in prison at the
time of the coup.
� For the first time in Haiti�s history, the rights of the accused
were respected.
Warrants were issued in French and Creole, and those
arrested were generally brought before a judge for a formal hearing
within 48 hours.
Court proceedings were conducted in Creole, the
language understood by all Haitians.
Contrast this with the situation
since the coup:
hundreds of Haitians have been locked up in prison
for months without being charged with any crime or being brought to
trial.
� By almost any measure, the period 1994�2004 was a marked advance
for human rights and peaceful resolution of conflict in Haiti.
Pre-coup international media reports referred vaguely to human rights
violations by the Aristide government.
These reports were based on an
extremely small number of human rights cases.
There was no evidence
of systematic state-sponsored support for political violence.
Contrast this with the estimated 50,000 people killed by Duvalier,
5,000 deaths at the hands of the military during the 1991�1994 coup
period, and the thousands of Lavalas supporters who have been killed
or disap�peared since February 2004.
The same media which so eagerly
condemned the Aristide government last year remains largely silent in
the face of spiraling violence and human rights violations committed
by the coup regime.
POLITICAL DEMOCRACY :
� In 1996, President Aristide, the first democratically elected head
of state, peacefully transferred power to the next democratically
elected head of state.
Ren� Preval then became the first
democratically elected president to serve his full term in office.
� In November of 2000, Aristide was overwhelmingly re-elected.
Local
and international observers put voter turnout at 65%.
Gallup polls
conducted in Haiti before and after the elections confirmed both the
voter turnout and the numbers who voted for Aristide.
Power was once
again peacefully transferred.
� The country�s independent electoral commission oversaw these two
presidential elections as well as three sets of parliamentary and
local elections.
In May 2000, a total of 29,500 candidates ran for
7,500 posts.
Four million Haitians registered for this election and
more than 60% of them voted.
Traditionally excluded groups gained
political office and occupied important posts.
In addition to the
record number of women who won elected office, several peasant
leaders were elected to the House of Deputies and formed a caucus,
which pushed from within Parliament for improvements in the lives of
rural farmers.
� Aristide�s administration did away with the discriminatory practice
of identifying people born in rural areas as �peasants� on their
birth certificate.
� The Haitian people enjoyed unprecedented freedom to organize,
debate, associate, and express themselves.
The number of radio and TV
stations expanded to 44 radio stations in Port-au-Prince, and another
100 outside the capital.
Sixteen TV stations were registered in the
capital, with 35 more nationwide.
� The Haitian Constitution of 1987 was printed in Creole, and was
widely distributed, making Haitians aware of their rights.
FREEDOM OF RELIGION:
� In May of 2003, President Aristide issued a decree fully
recognizing Voudou as a religion.
Voudou, a religious tradition with
roots in Africa, is widely practiced in Haiti but has been attacked
as the religion of the poor and uneducated.
With Aristide�s decree,
Haiti recognized baptisms, marriages and funerals performed by Voudou
officials.
This was a significant step in guaranteeing religious
freedom and a step towards breaking down Haiti�s social caste system.
COMBATING DRUG TRAFFICKING AND CORRUPTION:
� Despite U.S. claims to the contrary, Lavalas authorities took
strong action against drug trafficking.
Under both Preval and
Aristide, Haiti cooperated with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency,
participated in regional operations to interdict drugs, and deported
drug dealers wanted by U.S. authorities for prosecution.
� The National Committee Against Money Laundering was created, as was
the National Commission to Combat Drug Trafficking and Substance
Abuse.
In addition, a Financial Intelligence Unit was created within
the Ministry of Justice to combat money laundering.
� On February 15, 2001, the Comprehensive Anti-Money Laundering Law
was passed.
It specifically provided that Haiti cooperate with other
nations in fighting money laundering and facilitate extraditions and
asset seizures of drug traffickers.
� During the year 2001, Haiti�s Anti-Narcotics Unit (BLTS) seized
420.97 kilos of cocaine, 1,852 kilos of marijuana, and destroyed two
marijuana fields.
� Haiti�s Inspector General arrested police accused of involvement in
drug trafficking, including the police chief of the Southeastern
Department, for failure to properly cooperate with an investigation
into the disappearance of a large quantity of cocaine.
� On June 19, 2001, Parliament passed legislation that established a
comprehensive framework for the prosecution and punishment of drug
related crimes.
� The legislature also ratified the 1997 Maritime Counter Narcotics
Agreement with the U.S., thereby allowing U.S. access to Haitian
waters for anti-drug operations.
� In May 2002, President Aristide appealed to the citizens of Haiti
to report wrongdoing, and called on government administrators to take
action against corrupt practices.
He attributed the corruption in the
public administration to a system left over from years of
dictatorships that created, �a mentality of charging money for
services.�
� The government intensified its campaign against corruption in
public administration.
President Aristide made spot visits to various
government offices.
The government produced anti-corruption public
service announcements.
Public offices instituted new procedures to
prevent and address corruption.
Tax and customs officials initiated
proceedings against those who failed to comply with required
licensing and fees.
The former director of Haiti�s electricity
company was arrested and an investigation ordered for possible
wrongdoing.
Several government employees were fired and elected
officials unseated as a result of investigations into improprieties.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS :
� Haiti became the first non-English speaking country admitted to the
Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
� President Aristide re-established relations with Cuba�relations
severed by Duvalier in the1960s.
� Haiti doubled the number of countries with which it had diplomatic
relations.
� Haiti signed on to the treaty creating the International Criminal
Court�something the United States still refuses to do.
COMMEMORATING THE BICENTENNIAL:
The year 2004 marked 200 years of Haitian independence.
In 1791,
400,000 Africans enslaved in Haiti rose up against French colonial
rule and won independence for the first black republic of modern
times.
General Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared Haiti a free nation
in 1804, culminating the world�s only successful revolution of
enslaved people.
The Aristide administration commemorated this
historic achievement while building a campaign to redress inequities
suffered by Haiti over the past two hundred years.
� Lavalas built 54 public parks and playgrounds, many in the poorest
areas of Port-au-Prince, where people live in one-room shacks and
have no public recreational spaces.
These parks were packed every day
and evening with children and families.
Students who had no
electricity at home gathered to study under the streetlights.
Three
weeks before the coup, Aristide inaugurated the first public space in
Cit� Soleil.
One million people gathered to celebrate and stand in
defense of their embattled government.
� The historic town of Archaie was renovated.
Its streets were paved,
and electricity provided to the town�s entire population.
� The Jean-Jacques Dessalines High School was opened in Croix des
Bouquets.
� Churches in Leogane and Marchand Dessalines were renovated and
repaired in recognition of the important community services they
offer.
� In Marchand Dessalines, the birthplace of Jean-Jacques Dessalines,
the downtown area was paved for the first time and electricity and
telephone lines expanded.
� Historians and professors organized seminars and conferences (some
in the new open air public spaces) to educate youth on Haiti�s
history.
These events were televised.
� In 2003, on behalf of the Haitian people, President Aristide
requested that France restitute to Haiti $21.7 billion�the amount, in
today�s currency, which France extorted from Haiti as �compensation�
to French plantation owners after Haiti�s independence.
It took Haiti
more than 100 years to pay off this debt.
Haiti was unable to fund
schools, health care, or infrastructure and the logging of its
tropical forests was accelerated, setting the stage for the current
deforestation crisis.
As Haiti prepared for its bicentennial
celebration in 2004, this demand symbolized the willingness of the
Aristide government to challenge the global elite.
Many commentators
cite the call for restitution as a major factor in French support for
the coup.
In the summer of 2003, French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac
threatened, �I cannot stress enough to the authorities of Haiti the
need to be vigilant about�how shall I put it�the nature of their
actions and their regime.� On February 25, 2004�four days before the
coup� the French foreign minister issued a formal call for Aristide�s
resignation.
Conclusion
The people of Haiti have not forgotten these achievements.
