Two weeks ago, Haitian President Michel Martelly toured Caracol Industrial Park in the Northeast Department with stops at the Park’s power plant and future employee housing site. He also used his visit as an opportunity to urge the project’s construction workers to “give the best of themselves in building this new Haiti.”
For Haitian peasants July 23, 1986, will always be remembered with sadness and renewed conviction. On that day at least 139 peasants were killed in Jean-Rabel, located in the Northwest of the country, by Tonton Macoutes following orders from local landowners. Most of the peasants killed were advocating for land reform by contesting local landowners’ claims to State-owned land. The massacre took place at a turbulent time in Haitian history, a mere few months after a popular struggle led to Jean-Claude Duvalier’s ouster, which in turn led to a power vacuum immediately filled by a bloody military junta. The junta remained in place until the democratic election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991.
The Palestinian situation is complex, but underlying that complexity is a basic struggle for land and water. No one knows that more intimately than Palestinian farmers and the people who work with them. In a recent interview while attending Rio...
The Palestinian situation is complex, but underlying that complexity is a basic struggle for land and water. No one knows that more intimately than Palestinian farmers and the people who work with them. In a recent interview while attending Rio...
The Separation Wall is now 10 years old. The Israeli government has not reversed course despite protests, a UN General Assembly resolution (ES-10/13), an International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion, and almost unanimous international condemnation.
In anticipation of World Environment Day today, June 5, 2012, Haiti’s Minister of Environment, Joseph Ronald Toussaint, and the Martelly government proclaimed June Environment Month in Haiti. The theme for this year’s month-long celebration is, “A Green Economy for an Environmentally Viable, Sustainable, and Just Haitian Society.” As part of Environment Month, a member of the ministry’s cabinet indicated that the ministry would like to hold a general State of the Environment Conference with stakeholders on June 7-8, 2012.
Haiti is not as devoid of resources as you have been led to believe.
Khaldeya Soboh first learned about the urban garden project in Gaza when she saw her neighbor’s garden filled with vegetables. Although she had a bit of land near her home for years, it sat idle. That’s when she began peppering them with questions, “Who runs the project? Where can I enroll? Is there training?”
Israeli military forces conducted an early morning raid of the Ramallah office of Stop the Wall, a civil society coalition organizing in opposition to the construction of the Separation Wall that Israel continues to build in the West Bank, and a Grassroots International partner.
Two years following the earthquake, community-based organizations in Haiti are still advocating for the same changes and considerations as they did last year, namely land and housing rights, respect for national sovereignty in the reconstruction process and aid accountability.
Since returning from exile last year, former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier has been treated like an old friend by Haitian President Michel Martelly, rather than a brutal dictator responsible for the deaths, torture and disappearances of thousands of Haitian citizens. Duvalier’s excesses as commander-in-chief of Haiti’s notorious “Tonton Makouts” have been denounced internationally as crimes against humanity.
Haitians, whether in Haiti or the diaspora, will always remember where they were on January 12, 2010, when tragedy shook us to our core. Devastating images emerged from Port-au-Prince after the earthquake that brought to mind cinematic depictions of the aftermath of a blitzkrieg. I had to constantly remind myself that an earthquake did this, not indiscriminate bombing. In the days that followed my heart wanted a seat on the next airplane to Haiti, but my mind grounded me on a simple fact: I had no medical training and my presence could not give the kind of help that was immediately needed. But I wanted to do something…
Three years ago today, on December 27, 2008, the Israeli Defense Force launched Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. The offensive left a trail of death and destruction in its wake, including hundreds dead, thousands displaced, and nearly the entire 1.5 million-person population traumatized and hungry. In the years since the bombing stopped and tanks rolled through agricultural fields, recovery has been slow.
On December 10, 2011, the Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organizations (POHDH) will celebrate 20 years of human rights promotion and defense in Haiti. A partner of Grassroots International, POHDH is a non-partisan association of eight non-profit, non-governmental Haitian rights organizations bound by shared beliefs in human rights (individual and collective), democracy, and public education around the issues of social, political, and cultural rights.
