Founded in 1995, PAPDA is a coalition of nine Haitian organizations working together to promote the emergence of a new Haiti, to challenge unfair trade deals that devastate Haiti’s farmers, and to promote public policies based in the common good. PAPDA works on diverse thematic areas, including external debt, alternative integration, food sovereignty, participatory democracy and decentralization, climate justice and international solidarity.
Its work focuses on developing unique and effective solutions to hunger, while at the same time pressing for structural changes in the nation’s food and agricultural policies. PAPDA’s work to build movements for local control of food systems (food sovereignty) challenges the more traditional ‘food security’ strategy that has relied largely on imported food aid and has eroded local production and consumption of locally-produced grains and legumes.
PAPDA has acquired an international reputation as a Haitian NGO that has both a well-researched and documented critique of structural adjustment policies and a concrete set of alternatives to these policies. Through research and documentation of economic problems, consultation and strategizing, public education and communications, lobbying officials, and international networking, PAPDA promotes justice-centered alternatives for Haiti.
PAPDA works directly with cooperatives and peasants organizations, dynamically working with them to address needs for land, create effective systems to produce and market products, fight back against land grabs, and create a national struggle for land reform.
In Elegua’s last article, they wrote about the living legacy of Haiti’s struggle for independence and freedom. For Part Two, Elegua looks at Haiti’s ongoing struggle against imperialism.
In the days since a devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake rocked southern Haiti on August 14, we have been in close communication with our Haitian partners. Their reports convey immeasurable loss, sharp political analysis, and an extraordinary combination of pragmatism and vision regarding the way forward.
