By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Libya’s gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 108 percent in 2012. By contrast, the growths of Japan and other developed countries, as measured by their GDP, have stagnated at values below three percent and sometimes negative. If you are shaking your head, thinking there must be a mistake in the World Bank’s computations, think again.
Continue reading →By Staff (WJL), HPN | Staff, Nouvel Observateur via RadioTV Caraibes | Translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Residents from the Jalousie neighborhood of Petion-Ville took to the streets Thursday, July 12, 2012 to call for a halt to the measures from Haiti’s Ministry of the Environment to demolish thousands of their homes. “It’s not right that a person should be offered only $465 after his house is demolished,” said a protestor. (English | French)
Continue reading →By Islam Zayed, Daily News Egypt. Delegates from Egypt’s financial and international cooperation ministries have negotiated a loan with the IMF and are preparing to negotiate others with the World Bank and the African Development Bank. The recently dissolved parliament had opposed some of IMF loan’s terms.
Continue reading →Report, Interamerican Development Bank via Relief Web | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti chery. Land tenure informality has been an obstacle to grabbing Haitian lands for use by big agricultural, mining, and power companies. Cambodia has undergone a process of mapping of land ownership similar to one proposed for Haiti. The land grabs and killings have begun in Cambodia. (English | French)
Continue reading →By Nocles Debreus, Le Matin | Translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Haiti’s agricultural sector creates 50 percent of the country’s employment overall and 80 percent in rural areas. Agronomist Phito Blémur believes that policies toward development and poverty reduction must take into account the vital role this sector played immediately after Independence when it accounted for 95 percent of the GDP, instead of the current 26 percent. (English | French)
Continue reading →By Richard Raznikov, The Rag Blog | Democracy Center | Haiti Chery. About 20 years ago, it dawned on the bankers and some major corporations that if oil was a lucrative commodity, water would be even more so…. The trick was how to take it away from the people and sell it back to them.
Continue reading →By Meredith McCarthy, Food & Water Watch. An international alliance coordinated by The World Bank and called The Global Partnership for Oceans proposes a global expansion of a program called “catch share” that allocates percentage quota of fish per year to coastal areas and arranges for these quota to be leased, bought, and sold.
Continue reading →Data from USAID | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. A policy of tied aid has until now required that USAID funds be spent on goods and services exclusively from U.S. companies. A new policy will allow USAID to buy many goods and services from developing countries, but not food, motor vehicles, or U.S.-patented pharmaceuticals.
Continue reading →Bill Quigley and Amber Ramanauskas, Courrier Internationale | San Francisco Bay View | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery | Live from Haiti, Video. Emergency aid funds for Haiti were used by the U.S. mostly to pay itself. Another way to think about this story is to consider that earthquake-ravaged Haiti has become the world’s biggest aid donor per capita. (English | French)
Continue reading →By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Long before the word sustainable became fashionable, before Henry David Thoreau noted that “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone,” there was Haiti.
Continue reading →By Staff, Haiti Grassroots Watch. Part 4 of 7. ”You get some factories and some salaries, and everything else is imported…. People need to know what FTZs are, what has happened in Mexico, or Honduras, so they don’t think these things will ‘save’ us.” – Camille Chalmers, Economist. (English | French)
By Staff, Haiti Grassroots Watch. Part 3 of 7. Haiti is the only country that guarantees the U.S. market duty-free and quota-free access. With every free-trade zone that gets built on prime agricultural land, more farmers are put out of work. Thus Haitians import more food as real wages drop to rock bottom in the sweatshops, where there are now plans to legalize 3 x 8 hours work shifts. In Haiti, we sometimes talk figuratively about being eaten up. This comes pretty close to the real thing. DC (English | French)
Continue reading →By Staff, Haiti Grassroots Watch. Part 1 of 7. In Haiti, the minimum wage went from $3.00 per day in 1982, to 200 gourdes today, which is about $1.61 PER DAY in 1982 dollars. This represents a 46 percent drop in real salary compared to 1982 wages. (English | French)
Continue reading →By Philipp Hedemann, IPS | Street News Service. Since 2008 there has been an unprecedented rush to secure farmland in Africa, South America and Asia. The main commodities include sugar cane, maize, rice, wheat, soy, sorghum, sesame, oil seeds, and child labour.
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