The Strength of a Community: Haitian Farmers Begin Receiving Compensation, Demanding Swift Progress

For the farmers of Tè Chabè who were displaced to make way for the Caracol Industrial Park, their small plots of land were their life boats. They used their land to grow a diverse, bountiful, and healthy diet for their entire extended families, which often numbered 10 or more people. This included crops such as beans, okra, cassava, plantains, mango, pumpkin, peanuts, and rice among others. Their land not only provided food on the table, it was their main source of income and savings. Extra crops were grown and sold in the market to pay for their children to attend school, for vital medicines and medical care, and for any other emergencies the family might encounter. In short, their land was their entire livelihood, and when that was taken away, entire families’ lives significantly deteriorated and became much more precarious.

Given the importance of land to this community of farmers, this aspect of the agreement holds the most significance to them. After being forced from their land, many did not want to return to agricultural work, but about half of displaced families wanted to receive replacement land for what they had lost. In the end, compromises were made, and it was agreed that 100 of the most vulnerable displaced families would receive this benefit.

Three years after signing the Agreement, the Kolektif in November 2021 celebrated 13 families receiving land as compensation — a huge milestone in a country where land rights are often incredibly fraught with often informal, inconsistent, and confusing land titling and registration processes.

But 87 families identified as the most vulnerable among the displaced farmers are still waiting for land. Importantly, the 13 families who received land received it in the form of public land owned by the Haitian State. These families are obtaining exclusive and significant rights to use the land for farming. Many of the families still waiting for land are expecting the Haitian government to follow through on its commitment to also provide access to private land.

Conditions in Haiti have deteriorated significantly since the signing of the agreement, making an already precarious situation worse for these families. The most critical challenges facing this process now are: (1) delays in the government’s bureaucratic process to review documents and communicate decisions to the beneficiaries; (2) the high standard of documentation being required, which is meant to follow all legal requirements, but is far greater than the local custom and practice; and (3) fuel shortages preventing travel to land plots for surveying.

What is needed now is urgency. The IDB and the Haitian government have important roles to play in supporting people to obtain the higher standard of documentation demanded by this process and for shepherding those documents through the bureaucratic review as swiftly as possible. These families were displaced in 2011 — 10 years ago. Justice delayed is justice denied, and with every year and every day that goes by, these families experience not only the denial of their just compensation but also an ever-spiraling downturn towards hunger and greater insecurity.

Some farmers who were displaced, managed to find other land they could farm to continue their livelihoods. Many in this group have stated that the alternative land they found has not been as productive as the land from which they were displaced. The land from which they were displaced was known as the most fertile in the area, irrigated by the Trou du Nord river which now bisects the Park. As part of the Agreement, people with access to land could elect to receive specialized farming equipment and technical support to improve the productivity of their land. Everyone who chose Equipment also chose to have a motorized pump installed on their land, which included the digging of a well from which the pump would extract water as well as pipes to distribute the water.

In August of 2020, the Haitian government distributed motor pumps to 64 out of 90 people who had signed up for this option. They arranged for wells to be dug for 63 of those people. More than a year later, one person is still waiting for their well to be dug, and 13 people who complained about problems with the way their well was dug have still not had their wells repaired. Moreover, 26 and possibly more people are still waiting to have their wells dug and to receive their motor pumps.

This benefit has made a meaningful difference for those who have been fortunate to receive their equipment in working order. If the government could deliver this benefit successfully to 50 families, there is no excuse for taking more than a year to deliver this same benefit to the remaining 40 families.

The IDB and the Haitian government must urgently work towards finishing what they started. In an area prone to drought and weather exacerbated by climate change, these wells and motorized pumps are proving to be a vital tool to help farmers sustain their livelihoods. Beneficiaries have waited long enough and should receive these benefits as soon as possible before having to forego greater productivity on another planting season.

Those without access to land were offered training and support to start a small business as an alternative livelihood to farming. All participants in this category receive training, health insurance, start-up assets, and access to microcredit in the form of a zero-interest lending circles.

This program met with a lot of community resistance at the outset of implementation, particularly as currency exchange volatility and year over year double digit inflation eroded the value of the program and many believed that this program was not as valuable as the equipment program.

After extensive community consultation the Kolektif, the IDB, the Haitian government, and the local implementer of the program Sonje Ayiti, were able to reach an agreement to adapt Sonje Ayiti’s methodology to address important changes in economic conditions that were not foreseen at the time the agreement was signed. This proved to be an important lesson that implementation of an agreement to restore livelihoods can encounter significant delays impacting the value of the agreement. In this situation, all the Parties demonstrated flexibility and a willingness to listen in order to maintain the community’s trust in the process and ensure people received the same value they expected when the agreement was signed.

The program is currently underway with 189 participants. Participants have received weekly mentoring and four training sessions on entrepreneurship, veterinary care, savings and credit, and building confidence. Sonje Ayiti also helped create eight Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) or lending circles, which beneficiaries and the wider community can join. Additionally, many participants were able to access healthcare from a medical center, some for the first time. Initial feedback for the program has been positive. Many in the program expressed gratitude for being provided access to health insurance for the first time, and for being able to engage in economic activities generating income for their families.

The final option for restoring livelihoods involved receipt of a scholarship for one year at a qualified technical training institution to study a trade. This was a difficult option for most people to access because attending school for a year meant possibly incurring more costs (for example in transportation) while delaying the ability to generate income for an entire year.

Only three people chose this option, and they are all currently enrolled in or completed their program of study. One young mother has not been able to pay the transportation fee to attend classes because the cost of fuel has increased significantly since the agreement was signed. One person needs additional tuition support to ensure they finish the full program and can benefit from their degree. One person graduated from their program in December 2021 and expressed optimism about his studies translating into a job providing more economic security.

The Caracol Industrial Park that displaced farmers was meant to create jobs that would allow additional members of families to contribute to household income outside of agriculture. The agreement promised that in addition to the main livelihood supports (land, equipment, small business training, vocational scholarships), one member from each affected family would be eligible for employment at the Park after receiving preparatory technical training. The majority of the jobs would be in sewing, with 30 being in more technical roles.

This benefit was meant to be implemented immediately so that households would have quick access to additional income while the main livelihoods support got underway. However, companies at the Park opted not to contribute to providing preparatory technical training before engaging in hiring, and out of 315 applications only hired 45 individuals (14% hiring rate).

As with the graduation program, circumstances had changed, which meant the value of the agreement had changed. While it was not the fault of any of the Parties that the companies were no longer contributing to training at the Park, it did mean that people were having a much more difficult time accessing jobs. Eventually, the UTE and IDB agreed to guarantee access to training at the Park’s newly established training center to help ensure access to employment at the Park. Approximately 68 people were provided with training through the training center, leading to 25 people being hired (37% hiring rate). Unfortunately, this happened right as the COVID pandemic hit and the program has not been continued since then. The training program was received positively by the community, and we hope that this program will continue to provide opportunities to the families who have not yet been able to benefit from it.

One of the most difficult trade-offs that families had to make when they lost their land and their livelihoods is whether they had enough to meet their basic needs and pay for the fees and costs needed for their children to attend school. In Haiti, schools charge a fee for attendance and often require that students pay for other costs such as books, supplies, and uniforms.

The agreement intended to provide some measure of support to families to lessen the burden of school costs by giving each family two school kits, which included notebooks, backpacks, pencils, pens, and geometry sets. This was the first benefit people received, and many families expressed dissatisfaction when their backpacks tore within days of receiving them.

This proved to be the first test the Parties would face in terms of how they would deal with challenges presented during implementation. The Komite conducted a survey within the community to assess the size of the issue and presented the results of their survey and physical evidence that indicated the problem affected about 90% of all distributed backpacks and therefore all backpacks should be replaced. The IDB and UTE accepted these results, consulted the Komite on a new backpack to distribute, and then made these new backpacks available to all the families.

This moment provided an important lesson for the Komite, as they realized that it was important to check the quality of items before they were distributed to try to catch these issues earlier in the process when they were easier to address. They have since insisted on seeing items such as water pumps, and agricultural tools, before they are distributed to assess their quality.

Farmers who were displaced by the Park also complained about the lack of information and consultation related to the environmental and social impacts of the Park. They continue to worry about the Park’s impact on vital water resources such as pollution of the Trou-du-Nord River and contamination of local groundwater. For years the local community has complained about the immense trash piles where solid waste from the Park was disposed, and which caught on fire in 2020 contributing to harmful air pollution for all those living next to the trash piles.

The IDB in the 2018 Agreement committed to continuing to improve in the areas of solid waste, wastewater treatment, stakeholder engagement (inside and outside of the CIP), emergency response and implementation of the EHS system. These issues have yet to be fully addressed, even though the IDB’s policies require mitigation and remediation.

As the Bank recently committed an additional $65 million investment in the Park, all eyes will be on the UTE and IDB to see if they will hold to their promise to resolve these issues before more money is disbursed to a project that is not able to meet its minimum obligations to prevent and mitigate social and environmental harm.

The Kolektif urges the Bank and the Haitian government to follow through on their Environmental & Social commitments in the Agreement, which include:

• Improving in the area of: solid waste, wastewater treatment, stakeholder engagement (inside and outside of the CIP), emergency response and implementation of the EHS system;
• Strengthening the grievance mechanism inside and outside the CIP. This will include seeking a place to receive requests for information and/or written grievances in a confidential manner;
• Engaging a laboratory to perform independent water analyses to be shared with the Kolektif and published online; and,
• Providing detailed updates to the Kolektif on environmental and social issues during meetings of the Monitoring Committee, which will be included in the annual public monitoring report produced by MICI.