Peggy Antrobus co-founded Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), serving as General Coordinator 1990-1996, and co-founded the Caribbean Association of Feminist Action and Research (CAFRA). She currently serves on the Board of Directors of The Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI). Born in Grenada and a citizen of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, she resides in Barbados. For more on Peggy, see SIGI People.

Reflections on Haiti
by Peggy Antrobus

The UN said that the earthquake was worse than the tsunami because the government had been decapitated and unable to help the people. The devastation is unbelievable: the UN estimates that the quake destroyed at least 30 percent of the capital and leveled half of the buildings in some neighborhoods, and impacted over 3 million men, women and children. It leaves you speechless. The images we see on the TV since the earthquake draw attention to the desperate situation, but no one can imagine what it must be like for children and the elderly, and the women who must take care of them while sustaining their own unimaginable suffering.

At a personal level, we’ve heard of the deaths of colleagues, including the representative of our chief regional women’s network, CAFRA (Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action), Myriam Merlet, and another well-known activist, Anne-Marie Coriolon. Thankfully, our friends and colleagues with the UNIFEM programme have survived.

The response has been enormous. In the region, CAFRA members living outside in the earthquake zones along with their sisters from the Dominican Republic under the leadership of CAFRA representative, Sergia Galvan, have established a small camp on the border with the DR, from which to launch their relief effort. The international Global Women’s Strike, an organization that works with grassroots women around the world, has also launched an appeal on behalf of Haiti. Hundreds of organizations are doing this.

But Haiti will need more than this outpouring of goodwill and relief if it is to survive. Above all it will need an ending of the exploitation and domination that has marked its history since its glorious victories of the late 19th century: the first country to abolish slavery, defeat the French colonizers and establish its independence (for a brief history of Haiti see Sir Hilary Beckles’ The Hate and the Quake).

The USA, having been helped by the Haitians in its own war of independence, also invaded several times, finding diverse ways to dominate and exploit the Haitian people, including the most recent ‘coup’, the kidnapping of Haiti’s democratically elected President Aristide and his exile in South Africa.

Today, in the context of the relief efforts, we see the way in which the US has taken control of the country, symbolized by its control of the air and sea ports, and its refusal to allow access to flights bringing relief supplies from certain sources – notably Haiti’s Caribbean partners and Doctors without Borders, among others. The signs are not good.

The world sees Haiti as one of the poorest countries in the world and blames this on corruption and mismanagement. Hopefully, this disaster may lead to a new understanding of the forces that have prevented the Haitian people from realizing the promise of their independence, and to a new path to development. Sir Hilary Beckles speaks of organizing a conference on the theme of Rethinking and Rebuilding Haiti. After the relief efforts that are urgently needed, this is the kind of thing that might help place Haiti on a new path to recovery from its past.