The IDB, the world s largest regional development bank, works in Latin America and the Caribbean purportedly to “contribute to the acceleration of economic and social development. Its actions in Haiti, however, have severely undermined those goals.
Roughly $54 million in IDB loans for water infrastructure in Haiti, home to literally the world’s worst water, offered a proven path to preventing deadly water-borne diseases. Designed to assist in fulfilling the right to water in the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere, these loans and the lives they could have saved instead have become pawns in a deliberate political power play.
In 2001, US officials threatened to use their influence to stop previously approved IDB funding unless Haiti’s majority political party submitted to political demands to accept a particular apportionment of seats in a Haitian electoral oversight body. Soon after, at the behest of the US, instead of disbursing the loans as planned, the IDB and its members took the unprecedented step of implicitly adding conditions to require political action by Haiti before the funds would be released. These actions violated the IDB’s own charter, which strictly prohibits the Bank and its members from interfering in the internal political affairs of member states.
Internal emails reveal that a US legal counselor inside the IDB proposed to the US Treasury Department that, though the loans faced no legitimate technical obstacles, the US could effectively block them by “slowing the process. Indeed, by requesting further review of the loans, Haiti would have to make scheduled payments before the funds were even disbursed. “While this is not a ‘bullet-proof’ way to stop IDB disbursements, the counsellor wrote, “it certainly will put a few more large rocks in the road.
In 2001, then-US Ambassador to Haiti Dean Curran publicly and explicitly linked the withholding of IDB loans to the demand that Haiti’s political parties reach a compromise that America wanted.
These tactics worked. Deprived of funds that had already been committed and expected, Haiti fell into arrears on money owed for loan repayment, triggering IDB policies that prevented the Bank from releasing loans. In subsequent years, the US employed additional delaying tactics, working with the IDB to move the goal posts whenever Haiti appeared to be meeting their demands.
The results have been devastating. The town of Port-de-Paix, slotted ten years ago by the IDB as the first project site due to its particularly deplorable water situation, has yet to see the implementation of any water projects. A study conducted by Zanmi Lasante, Partners In Health, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, and New York University’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice found no functioning public water sources in the city.
Researchers found three-quarters of water sources in the city contained high levels of coliform bacteria, a key indicator of contamination with fecal matter. A frightening 15% of households reported symptoms likely related to typhoid.
If the US and other member states join the IDB and take on the responsibility to improve conditions in the Americas, they cannot then use their membership to undermine the basic rights of the people they claim to serve simply to advance their own political agenda.
The IDB and the US government must take responsibility for their actions and implement the necessary transparency mechanisms to ensure that such abuses do not recur. Congressional inquiries and annual reviews of the Treasury Department by the Government Accountability Office could provide the oversight necessary to prevent future political misuse of the IDB and its funds. The people of Haiti, as well as US taxpayers, deserve a system that makes public the status of IDB loans and projects in Haiti in order to ensure that the US and IDB member states uphold their commitments to development and human rights.
Loune Viaudis Operations Director at Zanmi Lasante in Haiti and recipient of the 2002 RFK Human Rights Award.Monika Kalra Varmais Director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights. This commentary is published by DAILY NEWS EGYPT in collaboration with Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).
