Efter de senaste upploppen på Haiti orsakade av matbristen ställer sig Bill Quigley frågan: -För trettio år sedan producerade Haiti allt ris man behövde, vad hände?
Efter 1986 då befolkningen sparkat ut diktatorn Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier så blev man lovad lån av Internationella valutafonden. Men det fanns en hake:
But, in order to get the IMF loan, Haiti was required to reduce tariff protections for their Haitian rice and other agricultural products and some industries to open up the country’s markets to competition from outside countries. The U.S. has by far the largest voice in decisions of the IMF.
Doctor Paul Farmer was in Haiti then and saw what happened. “Within less than two years, it became impossible for Haitian farmers to compete with what they called ‘Miami rice.’ The whole local rice market in Haiti fell apart as cheap, U.S. subsidized rice, some of it in the form of ‘food aid,’ flooded the market. There was violence, ‘rice wars,’ and lives were lost.”
“American rice invaded the country,” recalled Charles Suffrard, a leading rice grower in Haiti in an interview with the Washington Post in 2000. By 1987 and 1988, there was so much rice coming into the country that many stopped working the land.
Det samma hände med Haitis sockerproduktion som tvingades lägga ner när billigt socker från USA konkurrerade ut all inhemsk produktion. Vad kan man då göra? Brasiliens president Lula gav ett svar. Ett i mina öron självklart svar, som knappast har rapporterats om i västerländska medier.
The President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who visited Haiti last week, said “Rich countries need to reduce farms subsidies and trade barriers to allow poor countries to generate income with food exports. Either the world solves the unfair trade system, or every time there's unrest like in Haiti, we adopt emergency measures and send a little bit of food to temporarily ease hunger."
Bloggar om: Haiti, hungersnöd, USA, fattigdomsbekämpning
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