Haiti to Int'l Community: It's Time to Follow Through

Officials representing more than 55 countries and 35 international organizations gathered in the Dominican Republic Wednesday to discuss international reconstruction efforts in Haiti following last January’s devastating earthquake. The meetings, dubbed the World Summit for the Future of Haiti, sought to not only address the short-term needs of the country but also outline a plan for Haiti’s “long-term economic growth,” according to summit organizers.

Haitian president René Preval urged those gathered in the DR to follow through with their respective aid promises made at the international donor’s conference in New York last March. He also called on the international community to support Haitian democracy. “Haiti needs a systematic anti-seismic defense. It's called democracy,'” Préval said Wednesday. “Without political stability, without democracy, our project is doomed to fail.”

Of the 5 billion that was pledged to Haitian reconstruction efforts over the next two years in New York, very little has actually reached Haiti. Interestingly, according to both Al-Jazeera and the Miami Herald, only Brazil has followed through with its entire aid pledge thus far, having delivered $55 million to the country. Aid experts say that the country will need at least $11.5 billion in aid over the next ten years to meet recovery goals.

UN Special Envoy Bill Clinton, meanwhile, said the unanimous support for Haiti’s reconstruction that exists within the international community must translate into real actions. The goal, said Clinton, is a “self-sustaining” Haiti. In a line a number of reports are highlighting today, Clinton also added that Haiti is possibly the only subject on which the US, Venezuela, and Cuba are in complete agreement.

Below the headline today:

· A new study co-conducted by several US and Mexican government agencies says more than half of the money smuggled back into Mexico by drug cartels each year is cash which never passes through any bank account. As such, it’s “nearly invisible to law enforcement,” according to the AP. “Drug moguls can buy real estate, cars, airline tickets and just about everything else in cash, allowing their powerful businesses to easily launder the estimated $19 billion to $29 billion they earn each year selling cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana in the U.S.” Nearly 75 percent of transactions are done in cash in Mexico. That’s in contrast to just 20% in the US. And according to the study, a key element in disrupting cartel activity must be the “targeting” of cartel treasurers in Mexico who “supervise the movement of the cash as it's carried from street dealers in U.S. cities to safe houses in Mexico.”

· That study accompanies results from a new Economic Commission for Latin America report on regional inequality published last week – and reported on in Mexico’s Crónica (h/t Two Weeks Notice). According to ECLA, the amount of money collected each year in taxes has steadily declined over the last two decades in Mexico, countering regional trends. As a percent of its GDP, Mexico collected just 9.4% in taxes in 2008, down from 11.4% in 1990. Those numbers put the country in last place in the region, on par with Haiti which collected 9.5% of its GDP in taxes in 2008. [As a point of comparison, Latin America as a region averaged a tax collection rate of 18.4% of GDP in 2008, with the two largest economies in the region, Brazil and Argentina, collecting 35.5% and 30.6% of GDP in taxes, respectively].

· And finally on Mexico, the AP writes this morning that the US-Mexico border may not be as dangerous some would have us believe – at least on the US side. Using government data, the AP says the four major cities with the lowest crime rates in the country –San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso, and Austin – are all near the US-Mexico border. Further, an in-house Customs and Border Protection report indicates that Border Patrol agents “face far less danger than street cops in most U.S. cities.” According to immigrant advocate Isabel Garcia of the Tucson-based Derechos Humanos, “The warnings about violence are just an excuse to crack down on migrants who want to work and be with their families.”

· On Jamaica, the New York Times reports this morning on accusations of extrajudicial killings committed by Jamaican security forces at the peak of last week’s violence in the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood of West Kingston. On the matter, the Times writes the following:

“Several of the accusations emerging from Tivoli Gardens center on the conduct of officers in the Jamaica Constabulary Force, which has faced criticism in the past by human rights groups like Amnesty International for the relatively high number of people killed by police officers every year. In recent years, Amnesty found, 12 percent of killings were committed by police officers.”

· In Bolivia, US Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela spent time Tuesday meeting with Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca. According to a summary of the meetings at Just the Facts, the trip sought to restart discussions regarding a “bilateral framework agreement” that could lead to the re-establishment of full diplomatic ties between the two countries in the coming months. Such ties were cut in September 2008 after Bolivia expelled then-US ambassador Philip Goldberg. But speaking after the meeting, Valenzuela was decidedly optimistic, telling reporters he was “excited to say that we have advanced more than 99 percent toward signing this new framework agreement of mutual respect.” More from Bolivia’s La Razón.

· EFE reports today that eradication of coca has declined in Bolivia since Evo Morales took office in 2006. But seizures of cocaine have doubled in that same time period.

· Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) is in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru this week, along with Sen. Chris Dodd. The focus of their trip: learning about the region’s efforts to curb the drug trade, renewable energy, and trade.

· Meanwhile, in Washington, Venezuela was once again placed on the State Department’s list of nations who are “uncooperative” with anti-terrorist efforts. The blacklisting means the sale of defense materials, as well as the issuance of licenses for the export of weapons and technology” to Venezuela will continue to be banned.

· BBC Mundo reports on Ecuador’s efforts to sign an alternative trade deal with the European Union, distinct from the sort of free trade agreements the EU has recently signed with Colombia and Peru. President Correa, who hopes to begin negotiations with the EU this month, is calling his framework, which seeks to protect Ecuadorean producers, a “trade agreement for development.”

· More on Latin America’s call for increased South-South cooperation at the Economic Commission for Latin America’s annual meetings in Brasilia, from IPS. Also this week, Mexico assumed the rotating presidency of a very busy UN Security Council.

· El Faro has a good piece looking at Mauricio Funes’s first year in office in El Salvador.

· Finally, some opinions. Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue and Andres Oppenheimer, both in the Miami Herald, on Colombian elections. An editorial in the Washington Post rails against US cotton subsidies – a point of major friction between the US and Brazil. The US recently agreed to pay Brazil $147.3 million per year to settle the trade dispute. In the Post’s opinion, the case “laid bare” the fact that cotton subsidies are not only a “wasteful sop to special interests,” but “also an obstacle to free and fair trade that needlessly complicates U.S. relations with the rest of the world.” And in an LTE, Colombia’s ambassador to the US, Carolina Barco, criticizes the Post for publishing Juan Forero’s piece on Alvaro Uribe’s brother and his potential paramilitary ties.