I lived in Haiti until I was about 2.5 years old but have spent the remainder of my life living in the US. I am returning to Haiti after the recent earthquake. I think it is an exciting time to be working in Haiti given the public attention to the country's development and the upcoming elections. It seems that this is a real time for change.
I will be working for a non-profit called "The Lamp for Haiti" http://www.lampforhaiti.org/~lampforh/ .
I will be starting off by spending some time researching various organizations and trying to find out as much as a possibly can about the law.
The LAMP has a very well established clinic and we are looking to build out our legal "arm" as much as the clinic presence.
Unpublished Op-Ed — Closer But No Cigar
This is an op-ed that I wrote following the run-off elections that I never got published nor quite polished off.
Closer, But No Cigar
March 29, 2011
Despite the protests from the Haitian people, electoral candidates, and human rights observers, last week Haiti held run-off elections between the top two candidates from the presidential, senatorial and deputy races from the November 28, 2010 national elections.
What many marked as one of the most important elections in Haiti’s democratic history has collapsed and been forgotten like the so many buildings and earthquake victims living in tent cities since last year. Like the many aid organizations “rescuing” Haiti post-quake, the international community is on a failing missing to “rescue” a fledgling democracy by forcing a flawed election to work.
Toting a 29 million dollar price tag, the first-round November elections were fraught with discrepancies including reports of ballot box stuffing, intimidation and massive irregularities in the vote counting process. The elections were mostly pushed and backed by international nations, including the United States but virtually unwanted by the Haitian people that suffered too huge loss on January 12, 2010.
By the evening of the November election day 12 of the 18 presidential candidates, including the two run-off presidential candidates Michelle Martelly and Madame Manigat, endorsed a joint statement and conducted a press conference denouncing the first round vote. The voter turnout was only 22.8%, one of the lowest in the Western Hemisphere in the last 70 years. Following the elections people protested the illegitimacy of the elections.
The aftermath of the November elections even further undermined the democratic process. Even despite the grave number of irregularities from the November elections and the Haitian people’s call to annul them, CEP (Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council in charge of the elections) succumbed to international pressures and announced a second tour run-off date. Even more alarming, using the same tabulated votes from the November elections, CEP announced different results for the presidential run-off; a second tour presidential round with Michelle Martelly rather than Jude Celestin. Further complicating matters, according to CEP member Ginette Chérubin, the run-off elections date was scheduled with only four of the CEP’s eight members’ approval. CEP’s bylaws require that decisions be made by a majority of its members.
The run-off elections two Sundays ago had marginal improvements from November. Electoral lists that are supposed to contain the names of every person registered to vote were more complete, allowing more registered voters to cast ballots. The item checklists for every “Haiti Elections Kit” — stocked with supplies to set up voting stations in every polling place — were written in the language spoken by poll workers rather than English only. Cite Soleil, a place notorious for violence on elections day, started calmly with voting proceeding normally.
However, a number of irregularities marred the run-offs. Polling places scheduled to open at 6:00 AM did not open until well after 9:00AM. Moderators tasked with setting up and monitoring voting booths were sleeping and had not yet received all of the necessary polling supplies. The special ink required to mark the back of the fingernails to prevent double voting was missing in many locations.
We as CEP approved international observers were illegally denied access to a polling place located in rural Croix-Des-Bouquets that closed over an hour early. CEP approved observers are allowed into a voting place prior to opening and after closing during ballot tabulation.
The people have not ignored the illegitimacy of these elections. Preliminary results are scheduled to come out this Thursday and conflicting predictions from various news sources already are causing a stir and setting the country up for another disastrous blow-out. It is now more important than ever to support the Haitian people in this very important transition. We in the international community should continue to encourage the use of our taxes to fund free, fair, and inclusive elections rather than a disorganized waste.
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Typhoid Fever – Sunday, April 03, 2011
Every time I say Typhoid Fever the song Jungle Fever comes into my head, except Jungle is replaced by Typhoid. Last Friday, I finally got a diagnosis for the crazy ailments I’ve had in the past 2.5 weeks. From extremely high temperatures to overwhelming fatigue.
When I heard the diagnosis of Typhoid Fever my heart skipped a beat and immediately I remember that case we read in Torts class about Typhoid Mary who spread Typhoid like it was Christmas day cheer. After a much needed chill pill, I learned more about Typhoid. Although Typhoid routinely kills people in Haiti, it really is very curable. I am on simple antibiotics for 7 days. When I first got the fever it lasted less than two hours and broke on its own. It made me really realize the state of some people’s immune systems in developing countries. I don’t consider myself a model athlete or a nutrition freak.
I am of average health and weight. I don’t smoke but I do drink and exercise rarely. Despite not being of optimal fitness nor diet, I took care of the major ailments of Typhoid Fever with just my immune system. I had it for two weeks without ever treating it because constantly my body made me bounce back. Fever broke on its own, diarrhea stopped on its own, I finally went to the doctor when I had a headache for 5 days straight. I thought the headache was stress related, but it was my bodily finally going into different stages of Typhoid.
I am not sure if I could have cured Typhoid without antibiotics, but the simple round of treatments should take care of what my body couldn’t finish off. The full round of pills costs less than 7 US dollars. So for 7 US dollars and a not so fantastic health and fitness regime you can fight off Typhoid with only missing 2 days of work. Just goes to show you how much work really is left before the world is even close to fair.
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Run-Offs – Sunday March 20, 2011
Today I spent the day monitoring the run-off elections. Unlike in the United States, here in Haiti a candidate can only win with over 50% of the votes. The top two candidates from the first round go head to head to see who will be victorious.
Junior and I (the Elections Observation Team) went all over Department L’Ouest. From Delmas, Petionville all the way to Leogane.
We saw improvements in the elections, but mostly we saw the fruits of poor planning and a failure to respect the people’s right to vote.
Please see our elections observation report:
http://www.lampforhaiti.org/~lampforh/?q=content/lamps-observations-march-20th-run-elections
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Another Delegation – Saturday, March 19, 2011
Yesterday I said goodbye to our second successful delegation. Thank you, Dean Brooks, Adan, Lydia, Giselle, Ted, Megan, Yuan, Ruthzee and Claudia for all of your hard work!
This delegation was a group of brilliant law students from Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. They worked to extend our “Right to Housing” branch of our work while with the greatest of ease surviving Regine’s tough love boot camp.
Lamp’s Right to Housing branch focuses its work on the constitutionally and international treaty guaranteed rights of Haitians to have adequate housing. We focus our Right to Housing work mainly in Cité Soleil, the slum where the Lamp campus is located, and the internally displaced persons (IDP) camps housing approximately 800,000 earthquake survivors. The delegation is part of the Haiti Justice Project at Drexel. The delegation conducted a week long comparative study between the creation of Cité Soleil and the IDP camps. Since its inceptions in the 1950s, Cité Soleil grew into the depository of displaced persons, many following massive disasters such as fires. The government and international aid organizations intervened by creating homes and transitional plans for the area. Similarly, the IDP Camps were created following a massive natural disaster; international and domestic parties intervened to create transitional housing and put in place transitional plans. To determine lessons learned from the creation of a slum with little to no access to water, food, education or sanitation, the students conducted interviews with several residents of Cité Soleil from several decades starting in the 1950s. To create a point of comparison with current plans the students met with some of the biggest Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) players in transitional housing provision in Haiti, e.g. World Vision and IOM.
Of course as with all of our visitors, the students got a heavy dose of Haitian culture. We hiked to a newly discovered fort built by Dessalines on top of a remote mountain.The students enjoyed a home cooked Haitian dinner and saw the inside of a voodoo practitioner’s home.
They also developed a new love of Haitian treats, corn ice cream and amazing fruit. To top it all off the returned to their homes with beautiful pieces of artwork to memorialize their time in Haiti. Please check back soon for the student’s report.
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The Realities of Policing Cite Soleil – PNH vs. MINUSTAH – Tuesday, March 7, 2011
Recently we started establishing a relationship with the chief of police of Cite Soleil. His name is Inspector Rosemon. We met with him and he explained to us the very sad reality of being a police officer in Cite Soleil. Rosemon is unlike many other police officers that have come through Cite Soleil. Typically, the resident gang members don’t fear the police and believe they can walk all over whomever they want with little repercussions. Rosemon is feared in Cite Soleil and citing his name puts people in their places.
Rosemon said the most prevalent unforgiveable crime in Cite Soleil is rape. He explained the frustrations of the system; he has 72 police officers for 500,000 people, the majority under the age of 30. The largest population of people is young unemployed men. These men are the population most likely to become members in gangs. While Rosemon has a staff of 72, places like Delmas and Petionville (nicer suburban communes) with populations of under 300,000 have over 300 police officers on staff.
When I heard this, I immediately started to ask questions about MINUSTAH (UN Peacekeeping mission militia) and how helpful they could be to PNH (national Haitian police). He explained to me the relationship of MINUSTAH to the police, MINUSTAH acts largely as a military presence but doesn’t train PNH officers nor act as police. With a $60,000,000 per month budget, it seems that MINUSTAH could allocate some of its resources to working to create a police force that would be better than the one that they found when they got to Haiti. See the attached letter written by our friends over at MCC with an analysis about MINUSTAH’s presence in Haiti. (COMING SOON, LOOKING FOR THE LINK)
Struggling Between the Rule of Law and the Reality of the Criminal Justice System– Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Recently I was explaining to someone how the court system works in Haiti and how freedom usually lies in bribing an underpaid judge to let you go free. In response I was asked a very poignant question, “If you knew your client wasn’t guilty and otherwise would rot in jail would you facilitate a bribe between your client and the judge?” I answered back very quickly “no.” I absolutely believe that the rule of law far outweighs one individual case, bribing judges allows the status quo to remain. Its sort of like when I recycle knowing that no one else does. But it got me thinking about the utility of a criminal justice system generally and what happens to that utility when the criminal justice system is the way Haiti’s is.
I constantly argue that the prison conditions are subhuman, unacceptable, and lead to no level of rehabilitation. But at the same time, I realize based on my personal experiences that prison serves a very important function in society, not everyone should be free. It does however beg the question, in a clustered, skin-to-skin cistern of filth that is the prison system in Haiti, where people’s human rights are violated and will rot in prison for years before seeing a judge, is it worth sending someone to jail? These tensions were put to the test this past week.
Being a lawyer in a slum is never dull. We have a new resident in the area that is the new local troublemaker. This past week he has written graffiti, threw rocks on the roof of the law office and generally tried to pressure Lamp staff. Although not particularly scary, his presence is annoying and disrespectful of the staff. In response to his behavior we had the Chief of Police of Cite Soleil come to visit our site. The actions of the rock thrower would normally get him some very short jail time but in Haiti where his paperwork would be lost under a pile of whatever, he could stay there for years. So then the real question is, what do you do with people that really deserve to go to jail? It seems inhumane to put them next to people that don’t deserve to be there. But at the same time there is no mechanism in place to make the rock thrower understand that his actions have consequences.
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Anba Decomb — Wednesday, February 16, 2011
What is Abna Decomb you ask? In Creole it means under the debris, a saying made very popular by a contemporary Haitian Compas song. Essentially the song talks about everything that is under the debris from the earthquake.
Although the song is catchy, it’s not exactly what you want to hear during the provision of your legal services. I have a new client in Cite Soleil, he was arrested in September of 2009 and escaped during the earthquake.
**HAITIAN LAW 101: After being arrested an accused is usually brought to the precinct, where he will spend no more than 72 hours. After that time period he should be transferred over to Parquet where he is presented to a judge and from there transferred to prison. In theory, this should take less than a week.
My client was arrested in September of 2009 and then transferred to Parquet were he spent approximately 4 months, at which point the earthquake set him free. Anyone familiar with the court system in Haiti knowing people spend years without being charged would too take the natural disaster as a miraculous way out of prison.
My client was rearrested about 3 days before I left for Boston, upon my return I immediately went to speak with the judge on the case to receive the client’s record. This is where I heard the catchy phrase when I asked the Gerref, sort of like a clerk, for my client’s documents. To which he responded they were “anba decomb.” ?????? He further explained he had no idea what I could do about seeing the charge before the judge. I then asked to speak to the Judge, he told me the judge wasn’t in yet and he wasn’t sure what time he would arrive. I look at my watch and see that it is 9:23 AM on a Tuesday. I ask if it’s a special occasion, to which he responded, “no the judge gets here when he wants.”
Now starts the test of patients, going to see the judge every day until I find him.
Happy Valentine’s Day to the Only Man for Me: Haiti – Monday, February 14, 2011
This Valentine’s day it seems fitting that I send my love to the only man for me, the man I spend over 60 hours a week working on, Mr. Haiti Theodat (of course my husband would take my last name), this song and valentine is for you.
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Today I arrived back in Haiti after 9 days out in Boston doing a number of speaking engagements and working on building our Haitian Diaspora network. Thank you to everyone who made it, wonderful discussions and now I feel reinvigorated about my work. Special thanks to the hosters, Physicians for Haiti; Harvard University’s: Caribbean Law Association, Haiti Caucus, Immigration and Refugee Clinic; Kennedy School of Government, Law School, School of Public Health; Harvard for Haiti, and Unity Ayiti.
Also as part of the trip, we (Junior and I) did some outreach to the Haitian Diaspora in Boston. Although from Boston, my network in the Haitian community is very weak. Junior works with me and this was his first time off the island. We met with various Diaspora members. It really was amazing to meet with so many Diaspora who love and care about Haiti. Together we can make a difference.
Now on to all the exciting and wonderful things that happened while I was gone including a raid by police near Cite Soleil complete with a few beatings of people who didn’t stylistically conform to proper dress standards. I will let everyone know when I find the article in the Constitution that forbids shaving a design into your hair. I hope I don’t have to look too far.
Back to work!
NGOs are Everywhere, and So is Suffering →
Some Lamp Coverage
NGOs are Everywhere, and So is Suffering
By Susan Phillips, WHYY Philadelphia
The Presidential Palace in downtown Port-au-Prince serves as a daily reminder of the earthquake’s destruction to anyone who walks by. One year later, guarded by armed men, surrounded by green lawns and barbed wire fencing, its chalk-white central dome just lists to the side. It’s a large, hulking, crippling sight. Outside the fence, Haitians crowd the sidewalks and honking cars clog the streets. A tent city across the road remains. About one million Haitians continue to live in tents a year after the earthquake. One of them is a ten-year-old budding rapper named Sperlief who is lucky enough to go to school. His mother sells vegetables, his father is one of the hundreds of thousands of unemployed. Sperlief has a charming smile, appears healthy and is well dressed, despite his tent city life.
But life in the tents may not be as bad as in the slums of Cite Soleil where Sperlief was born. Here, shacks are constructed from plywood, cinderblocks and tin. The alleyways are wide enough for one person to walk down, and they are teeming with children who skip over open sewers. A hole with a tire placed on top serves as a latrine. The lingering smoke of burnt trash sometimes competes with the smell of human waste.
The Mayor of Cite Soleil outlines his plan for transforming the slums. He says non-governmental organizations fund projects, but he has not gotten any direct funds for earthquake relief. Today, the mayor is talking to Regine Theodat, a human rights lawyer who works for Lamp of Haiti, one of the few NGOs working in Cite Soleil. Louis tells Theodat that he has built new homes for the slum dwellers. We travel about a mile down the road to an area where brightly painted brand new houses, stand next to a new school buzzing with uniformed children and run by an NGO. Each brightly painted two-bedroom house looks like a tiny suburban tract home with electricity, and a rooftop water supply. There’s no rubble here.
But except for an Israeli aid worker helping out at the school, the houses stand empty. She says they were designed by Cubans, and funded by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Not far from the empty tract homes, stood another neighborhood with homes built by the government of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrande Aristide. Residents of that area said their houses withstood the earthquake well. When asked whether the poor of Cite Soleil would soon become their neighbors, they shook their heads. These houses are expensive, they said. They couldn’t afford them.
Then they pointed to several other nearby housing developments — “the Germans built that one, the Brazilians, over there.”
One wonders what would happen to Haiti if suddenly, the thousands of NGO’s working here were to pull out. But one thing is clear, locals say one year after the earthquake, there’s more aid workers, and missionaries then there ever were.
It’s a country of Balkanized NGOs accountable to no one but their western donors. A nation born on a slave rebellion, reduced to standing in line for hand-outs of clean water and food.
Tomorrow, we’ll take a trip to the countryside where one group has developed a program to address the mental healthcare issues in post-earthquake Haiti.
Letters: The people of Haiti need more than compassion →
Letter to the Editor by Thomas Griffin, Esq., Legal Director for Lamp for Haiti, aka my boss. A plea from the UN requested more money in addition to their $60,000,000 per month budget to assist women in Haiti.
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