Hunger in Haiti
increasing rapidly
By
Marc Lacey
International Herald Tribune
Published: April 17, 2008
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti: Hunger bashed in the front gate of Haiti's presidential palace. Hunger
poured onto the streets, burning tires and taking on soldiers and police.
Hunger sent the country's prime minister packing.
Haiti's hunger, that burns in the belly that so many here
feel, has become fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral
out of reach, spiking as much as 45 percent since the end of 2006 and turning
Haitian staples such as beans, corn and rice into closely guarded treasures.
Saint Louis Meriska's children ate two
spoonfuls of rice apiece as their only meal two days ago and then went without
any food the following day. His eyes downcast, his own stomach empty, the
unemployed father said forlornly, "They look at me and say, 'Papa, I'm
hungry,' and I have to look away. It's humiliating and it makes you
angry." (Generally these
reporters do not give any food or offer any help to those they interview.)
That anger
is palpable across the globe. The
food crisis not only is being felt among the poor, but also is eroding the
gains of the working and middle classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent
and putting new pressures on fragile governments.
In Cairo, (Egypt) the military is being
put to work baking bread as rising food prices threaten to become the spark that
ignites wider anger at a repressive government. In Burkina Faso and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, food riots are breaking out like never before.
And in reasonably prosperous Malaysia,
the ruling coalition was nearly ousted by disgruntled voters who cited food and
fuel hikes as their primary concerns.
"It's the worst crisis of its kind in
more than 30 years," said Jeffrey Sachs, the economist and special adviser
to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki Moon. "It's a big deal, and it's obviously threatening a lot
of governments. There are a number of governments on the ropes and I think
there's more political fallout to come."
Indeed, as it roils developing nations, the
spike in commodity prices - the biggest since the administration of Richard
Nixon - has pitted the globe's poorer south against
the relatively wealthy north, adding to demands for reform of rich nations'
farm and environmental policies.
But experts say there are few quick fixes to a
crisis tied to so many factors, such as strong demand for food from emerging
economies like China's;
rising oil prices; and the diversion of food resources to make biofuels.
There are no scripts on how to handle the
crisis, either. In Asia,
governments are putting in place measures to limit hoarding of rice after some
shoppers panicked at price rises and bought up everything they could.
Even in Thailand, which
produces 10 million more tons of rice than it consumes and is the world's
largest rice exporter, supermarkets have placed signs
limiting the amount of rice shoppers are allowed to buy.
"This is a perfect storm," President
Elias Antonio Saca of El
Salvador said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum on
Latin America in Cancún,
Mexico.
"How long can we withstand the situation? We have to
feed our people and commodities are becoming scarce. This scandalous storm
might become a hurricane that could upset not only our economies, but also the
stability of our countries."
In Asia, if Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi of Malaysia
steps down, which is looking increasingly likely amid post-election turmoil
within his party, he may be that region's first high-profile political victim
of fuel and food price inflation.
In Indonesia,
fearing protests, the government recently revised its 2008 budget, increasing
the amount it will spend on food subsidies by 2.7 trillion rupiah,
or about $280 million.
"The
biggest concern is food riots," said H.S. Dillon, a former adviser to the
Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture. Referring to small but widespread protests
sparked by a rise in soybean prices in January, he said, "It has happened
in the past and can happen again."
Last month
in Senegal, one of Africa's oldest and most stable democracies, police
officers in riot gear beat and used tear gas against people protesting high
food prices and later raided a television station that broadcast images of the
event.
Many
Senegalese have expressed anger at the government of President Abdoulaye Wade for spending lavishly on roads and five-star
hotels for an Islamic summit that took place last month while many people are
unable to afford rice, fish and cooking oil.
"Why are these riots happening?"
asked Arif Husain, senior food security analyst at
the World Food Program, which has issued urgent appeals for donations to help
the Haitis
of the world. "The human instinct is to survive and people are going to do
no matter what to survive. And if you're hungry you get angry quicker. We see
that around the world."
Leaders who ignore the rage do so at their own
risk. President René Préval of Haiti appeared
to taunt the populace as the chorus of complaints grew. He said if Haitians
could afford cellphones, which many do carry, they
should be able to feed their families. Then, later, he offered this zinger:
"If there is a protest against the rising prices, come get me at the
palace and I will demonstrate with you."
When they came, though, thousands of them full
of rage and hunger, he huddled inside and his presidential guards, together
with United Nations peacekeeping troops, rebuffed them.
Within days, opposition lawmakers had voted
out Préval's prime minister,
Jacques-Édouard Alexis, forcing him to reconstitute
his government. Fragile in even the best of times, Haiti now walks on the edge, its
population and politics both simmering.
"Why were we surprised?" asked
Patrick Élie, a Haitian political activist who
followed the food riots in Africa earlier in the year and feared they might
come to Haiti.
"When something is coming your way all the way from Burkina Faso
you should see it coming. What we had was like a can of gasoline that the
government left for someone to light a match to it."
The rising prices are altering menus, and not
for the better. In India,
people are scrimping on milk for their children, and cutting back on luxuries
like mutton for Sunday supper. Daily bowls of dal are
getting thinner as each bag of lentils is stretched across a few more meals.
Maninder Chand,
an auto-rickshaw driver in New Delhi,
said his family had given up eating meat altogether for the last several weeks,
forgoing the mutton curry they used to treat themselves to on Sundays.
Another
rickshaw driver, Ravinder Kumar Gupta, said his wife
had stopped seasoning their daily lentils with the usual onion and spices
because the price of cooking oil was now out of reach. As vegetarians, the Guptas' chief source of protein is lentils, and these days,
Gupta said, they simply eat bowls of watery, tasteless dal,
seasoned only with salt.
On Hafziyah Street in central Cairo, peddlers selling
food from behind wood carts bark out their prices. But few customers can afford
to buy their fish or chicken, which baked in the hot sun, because of the inflation
that has changed how they live and eat. Food prices have doubled in two months.
Ahmed Abul Gheit, 25, sat on a cheap, stained wooden chair by his own
pile of rotting tomatoes. "We can't even find food in this son-of-a-bitch
country anymore," he said, looking over at his friend Sobhy
Abdullah, 50. Then raising his hands toward the sky, as if in prayer, he said,
"May God take the guy I have in mind."
Abdullah nodded, knowing full well that the
"guy" was President Hosni Mubarak.
The government's ability to address the crisis
is limited, however. Egypt
already spends more on subsidies, including gasoline and bread, than on
education and health combined. As it struggles to keep up the subsidies, rising
prices have eaten deeper into its budgets, and the pocket of average people.
"If all the people rise, then the
government will resolve this," said Raisa Fikry, 50, whose husband receives a pension equal to about
$83 a month, as she shopped for vegetables. "But everyone has to rise
together. People get scared. But will all have to rise together."
That is the kind of talk that has promoted the
government to treat its economic woes as a security threat, dispatching riot
forces with a strict warning that anyone who takes to the streets will be dealt
with harshly.
Niger does not need to be
reminded that hungry citizens overthrow governments. The country's first
post-colonial president, Hamani Diori,
was toppled amid allegations of rampant corruption in 1974 as millions starved
during a devastating drought.
More recently, in 2005, it was mass protests
in Niamey, the capital of Niger, that made the government sit up and take notice of that
year's food crisis, which was caused by a complex mix of poor rains, locust
infestation and market manipulation by
traders.
"As a result of that experience the
government created a cabinet level ministry to deal with the high cost of
living," said Moustapha Kadi,
an activist who helped organize marches in 2005. "So when prices went up
this year the government acted quickly to remove tariffs on rice, which
everyone eats. That quick action has kept people from taking to the streets."
In Haiti,
where three-quarters of the population earns less than $2 a day and one in five
children is chronically malnourished, the one
business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil
and sugar, typically only consumed by the most destitute.
"It's
salty and it has butter, and you don't know you're eating dirt," said Olwich Louis Jeune, 24, who has
taken to eating them more often in recent months. "It makes your stomach
quiet down."
But the quiet does not last long. And the
grumbling in Haiti
these days is no longer confined to the stomach. It is now spray painted on
walls across the capital and shouted by demonstrators.
The outrage
has been manipulated by Haiti's
political spoilers, those who profit from the country's chaos. In recent days, Préval has patched together a response, using international
aid money and price reductions by importers to cut the price of a sack of sugar
by about 15 percent and trimming the salaries of some top officials. But those
are considered temporary measures.
The real solutions will take years. Haiti, its
agriculture industry in shambles, needs to better feed itself. Haitians need
jobs other than pushing wheelbarrows or scrounging scrap metal for pennies.
Outside investment is the key, although that requires stability and not the
sort of widespread looting and violence that the Haitian foot riots have
fostered.
Most of
the poorest of the poor suffer silently, too weak for activism or too busy raising the next generation of hungry. In the sprawling slum
of Haiti's
Cité Soleil, Placide
Simone, 29, offered one of her five offspring to a stranger. "Take
one," she said, cradling a listless baby and motioning toward four
rail-thin toddlers, none of whom had eaten that day. "You pick. Just feed
them." (Heart breaking, If just
if those who are multi-multi millionaires, who have exploited the poor and
elderly and the sick in the US and plundered them would open their coffers and
pour out to the poor and starving here in Haiti without lifting up their names
or glorifying their ministries, these might find forgiveness and favor in the
site of God, For two dollars a day why does not any US companies build a plant
down in Haiti instead of Mexico where wages are so much higher? Haitians are
the most despised and forgotten people in the western hemisphere. God help the Haitians,
God bring these people to the feet of Jesus Christ, God bring true conversions
to the people in Haiti.)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/17/news/Haiti.php