CIDA Funds Controversial Haitian Women's Organizations
Upstream Journal, September 2008
Since former President Jean Bertrand Aristide’s fall from power in 2004, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has been working to increase political participation among Haitian citizens. One of its top priorities has been the empowerment of women.
There has been progress. An unprecedented number of women voted in the 2006 election, 100 female candidates ran for office, and five bills were passed in government to support women’s rights, including the criminalisation of rape.
But critics question whether the groups Canada is funding deserve the money.
Rights and Democracy, a Canadian government international human rights body, coordinates the funding CIDA provides to two main women’s groups in Haiti, the National Coordination for Action on Women’s Rights (CONAP) and the Organisation Féministe de Promotion et de Défense des Droits des Femmes (ENFOFANM). They are headed by Danielle Magloire, a woman who Yves Engler, a critic of Canadian policy in Haiti, says is “basically a neofacist, not the type of person you would want to put in charge of building civil society.”
The CONAP-ENFOFANM controversy extends back to the 2000 election of Aristide. He and his party, Fanmi Lavalas, swept through the elections on support from working class votes. 60% of registered voters cast ballots and Aristide won 92% of the vote.
There is not a consensus on the legitimacy of the election. While the International Coalition of Independent Observers declared the vote fair, non-Lavalas supporters, including CONAP and ENFOFANM described the election as “severely flawed and rigged.” All major opposition parties boycotted the vote.
Marie Villefranche, a spokesperson for Montreal NGO Maison d’Haiti, believes the election results were valid. “It was fair, it was democratic and it represented the people,” she said.
There is also a difference of opinion on Aristide’s record once in power. In press releases, CONAP and ENFOFANM called in an “illegitimate and outlaw regime, actively engaged in corruption and human rights violations” that “institutionalized corruption and dilapidation of the public treasury, aided and abetted drug trafficking, perverted the national police and further consolidated its power through arming gangs of street children and delinquents.”
They campaigned against Aristide, and have been accused of collaborating, along with the international groups that fund them, in his 2004 overthrow.
Engler disagrees with their portrayal of Aristide’s regime, saying that it was the best Haiti had seen thus far. Engler also points to Aristide’s successful dismantling of the Haitian army, which he argues proved that Aristide’s intentions were good.
CONAP and ENFOFANM considered their support of the coup justified, arguing that the overthrow of Aristide “was and is a democratic demand. All elected officials, even those who have a deficit of legitimacy, must be held accountable for their actions.”
After the 2004 coup, conditions in the country worsened. A study published by the Lancet medical journal showed that 22 months after the coup, 35 000 women had been raped in the capital of Port-au-Prince, and 1 in 7 of those rapes was committed by a member of the Haitian police force (which also receives funding from CIDA).
“Why don’t CONAP or ENFOFANM ever speak out about rape being used as a political tool?” Engler wonders.
CONAP and ENFOFANM agreed that conditions worsened, but said that Lavalas partisans committed the violence and destruction. Others disagree, believing instead that Lavalas partisans were the victims of violence, not the perpetrators.
Villefrnche says that although there was initial increase in violence, it subsided. “Ultimately it is the economy that suffered the most from the coup. Violence diminished but the economic problems have multiplied.”
In the 2006 elections, CONAP and ENFOFANM called for the Lavals candidates to be barred from running and for media giving them a voice to be shut down.
“These are intellectually elite groups, representing the Haitian middle class, which is about 1% of the population but which owns most of the country,” Engler says, but Willefranch supports CONAP and ENFOFANM and their work. “I don’t believe they have connections to the government,” she said. “They are working for the good of Haitian women.”
And if CIDA wants to support female participation in Haitian government, there aren’t many options. “The other organizations don’t have the same reach as CONAP and ENFOFANM,” Engler concedes. “Getting $100 a month would be a lot for them but CIDA only funds groups that are anti-Lavalas, or at least passive toward it.”
Rights and Democracy declined to comment.
Quick facts on Haiti
-Jean Bertrand Aristide was first elected as President of Haiti in 1991, when he served for seven months
-He was reelected for two more years in 1994, and again in 2000
-In 2004, after threats of armed protest and mounting international pressure, Aristide went into exile. He left the country via a U.S. plane and it is unclear whether the Americans forced him to leave or were providing him a safe mode of exit
-Boniface Alexandre, head of the Supreme Court of Appeal, became acting President until the 2006 elections, when another Lavalas leader, René Préval, was elected
