Let´s work together to help Haiti

The earthquake that struck Haiti’s capital on 12 January 2010 may have been the worst earthquake in modern history, both in terms of loss of human life and material destruction. Some estimates have put the death toll as high as 230 000. The casualty figure is incomprehensible, but it tells us that more people died in the city of  Port-au-Prince as a result of the earth-quake than the combined death-toll in all the countries, that were touched by the tsunami in South East Asia in December 2007.  Port-au-Prince has all  of a sudden lost approximately  10% of its population. It is as if Stockholm would lose 150 000 of its inhabitants in one blow, or  if 700 000 Londoners would suddenly die in one single catastrohpe.

The outside world has responded in a way that we have never seen before. Search and rescue teams, earthmoving equipment and field hospitals were flown in only hours after the earthquake struck. And in almost every country around the world, people and governments are active in collecting money to provide food and medicine to the survivors. The reaction of the international community has been impressive. But it is obvious that the needs for outside assistance will go far beyond what is presently being done to provide food, shelter and medicine.

A capital and a government has been completely destroyed. Almost all government buildings in the Port-au-Prince area have collapsed. Thousands of government employees at all levels have died. As far as the legal sector is concerned, the building of ministry of justice is destroyed, but the ministry has still managed, only a few weeks after the catastrophe, to resume its activities, with a very small staff, from a container in the backyard of the collapsed ministry building. The main court building in Port-au-Prince , the Palace of Justice, collapsed in an instant, while many courts sessions were going on inside, killing scores of judges, court staff and lawyers. The headquarters of UN in Haiti was also destroyed and more than 100 staff were killed, including both the Special Representative of the Secretary General and his deputy.

Outside help is absolutely essential to limit chaos and further human suffering. As a first step, as far as the judicial sector is concerned, Haiti is in urgent need of assistance to assess the damage, e.g. how many judges in Port-au-Prince and surrounding towns are still alive, what positions within the Ministry of Justice need to be filled, how many court houses and prisons are still standing.

Furthermore, the massive loss of human lives and the material destruction will greatly increase the need for legal assistance to those who have survived. Both authorities and legal aid clinics will have to deal with an increasing number of civil legal issues, such as insurance claims, inheritance disputes and requests for death certificates. It is estimated that around 600 000 persons have left the city in the aftermath of the earth-quake, to go back to the towns or regions, from which they have originated. This huge population influx in the rural areas will create a sharp increase in the demand for all kinds of legal and administrative services in those areas. To meet this demand requires further considerable assistance from the international community.

ILAC has been active in Haiti since 2005. ILAC ́s activities in Haiti have consisted of legal reform assistance to the government (reform of the penal code and the code of criminal procedure  as well as a compilation of international best practices in the field of anti- discrimination legislation), support to the bar in forming a national bar association, and support to civil society in the form of the establishment of a nation-wide legal aid program.

The legal aid program, which goes under the official name of SYNAL (Système nationale d ́assistance legale) consists of a network of legal aid offices (Bureaux d ́assistance legale; BAL) around the country. At the beginning of 2010, there were eleven BALs in operation. The goal is to have one BAL in each of the 18 provinces. The SYNAL program is coordinated by a national office in Port-au-Prince which employs four persons. At the beginning of 2010, ILAC employed a total of 130 persons in Haiti, all of whom are Haitian nationals, with the exception of ILAC ́s Resident Representative.

In 2008 the SYNAL program was publicly endorsed by the government of Haiti, and the present Prime Minister Max Bellerive has as recently as 23 December 2009 pledged his government ́s support for the ILAC legal aid program. The government has declared that it intends to gradually integrate the SYNAL program into  the state budget, with the objective of having totally covered by the year 2014.

For decades, Haiti has been plagued by poverty, violence, corruption and natural disasters. Despite being independent since 1804, it has not been spared from exploitation by the big powers. It was occupied by the USA from 1915 to 1934. And already back in 1825,  Haiti was forced by France, under the threat of invasion, to accept a debt of 21 billion US dollars in modern currency, the so called independence debt, as compensation for the slaves and other property that France had lost when Haiti gained its independence 21 years earlier. The last annual installment on the independence debt was made as late as 1947. It goes without saying that such an extra-ordinary handicap for a developing nation has had very negative consequences for development and economic growth in Haiti.

However, during the five years that ILAC has been active in Haiti, it has been possible to see a slow and modest positive development, albeit from a low level. The election of President René Préval in 2006 was a milestone in this regard.  While many still complain about the inefficiency of the government, the honesty and the good faith of the present cabinet does not seem to be in question. One of the important accomplishments of the Preval government has been the restoration of a degree of law and order to large areas of Port-au-Prince. With the help of UN forces, the Preval government in 2007 managed to flush out the criminal gangs that for many years had ruled the large Cité Soleil slum of Port-au-Prince, having turned it into a lawless free-zone, where both the police and the UN forces refused to go in.

In February 2008, ILAC, UN and the US-based National Center for State Courts managed  to open the first legal aid office in Cité Soleil in cooperation with the local bar association. The new legal aid office immediately attracted long lines of clients, eager to begin exercising their civil rights and formalizing family relations after years of total lawlessness. The day before the inauguration of the office, members of the criminal gangs, which had been controlling the area, tried to burn down the office, but the attempt failed and a group of young men were arrested. With no other legal assistance available, the suspected arsonists turned to the new office for legal representation.

During my last visit before the earthquake, in November 2009, there was a certain optimism in the air. President Preval had only a few weeks earlier reshuffled his cabinet. The new prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive impressed us with a solid professional and academic background and an an obvious grasp also of  more technical judicial issues.  We also had inspiring conversations with the the new minister of justice and President Preval´s chief legal advisor about new projects of legal reform. Security had returned to the streets and the economy was growing at an annual rate of 4%.

The earthquake on 12 January changed all that. My return to Haiti in February was a heart-breaking experience. How do you begin to describe a city, where more than 200 000 persons have died, and most buildings are reduced to rubble, with many of the dead still inside? But where somehow the survivors are still able to go on with their lives. Amid the destruction, new restaurants  and stores  are opening up to replace the ones that have been destroyed.  Street vendors take detours around the collapsed buildings, that are blocking the roads, but still somehow seem to find customers and go on with their trade.  Considering the almost total disappearance of the state, people´s discipline and dignity are truly remarkable. There have been cases of looting and violence, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, but this is not what you see today when you move around in down-town Port-au-Prince. You see poverty and misery, but people are still friendly and I never experienced any threat to my security. I left Port-au-Prince a Saturday morning before dawn in my rental car for the eight-hour drive to the capital of the Domincan Republic with the strong conviction that ILAC´s  presence and support are now more important than ever.

Until now only a couple of ILAC´s 44 member organisations have been engaged in our program in Haiti. So,  it is encouraging that in the aftermath of the catastrophe a growing number of ILAC member organisations are expressing their determination to get involved in the rebuilding of the judicial system of Haiti, as parts of a coordinated ILAC program.

ILAC was formed with the main objective of coordinating and facilitating technical legal assistance activities, provided and implemented by its members, to countries in transition or recovering from conflict. Natural disasters of the scale that have now hit Haiti were not in our imagination when we wrote the ILAC By-laws some ten years ago. But  it is hard to imagine a country in greater need of such assistance than Haiti.  With ILAC´s history in Haiti comes a responsibility, to do what we can to assist in rebuilding the Haitian justice system. To live up to that responsibility, ILAC needs the involvement and active support of its members.