African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
23 p., The January 2010 earthquake devastated Haiti. The risk of rape and other forms of gender-based violence in Haiti's camps has increased dramatically in the past year. This report highlights the protection needs of women and girls in camps against the background of research undertaken by Amnesty International and other organizations on violence against women and girls after the earthquake.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
10 p., In this submission, prepared for the Universal Periodic Review of Haiti in October 2011, Amnesty International raises concerns that key institutions for implementing reform of the judicial system have still not been established. The state has failed to provide security forces with adequate training and supervision in relation to the use of force. Haitian law does not provide a protective framework for children's rights. Hundreds of thousands of people have been left homeless by the earthquake; and at the end of 2010, nearly a million people were still living in appalling conditions in camps.
This paper utilizes both narrative analysis and statistical techniques in an investigation of the principle of cumulative causation to explain underdevelopment, relative poverty and spatial disparities on Hispaniola. The events that explain this process in the underdevelopment of Hispaniola have resulted in a tragically downward spiral in Haiti, placing its future in great peril. The Dominican Republic is relatively better off than its neighbor; however, the shortage of basic services, poverty and malnutrition are quite prevalent in the Dominican Republic.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
160 p., Chronicles the history of slavery in Haiti through a recitation of the brutality of the colonisers and the often mundane and trivial ways in which they attempted to dehumanize Haitians. It seeks to illustrate how Haitians' 300-year journey to freedom was illuminated by the African philosophy of Ubuntu, a world view that embodies human solidarity, respect, dignity, justice, liberty, and love. In this philosophy, Africans found an unmatched strength to resist slavery.
Portuguese and Spanish slavers supplied the Americas with "los Negros," the Blacks. Only those young and strong, impervious to European disease and able to withstand months of torturous living packed in the cruel quarters of slave shipholds survived the middle passage. Those who arrived, stunned and malnourished, lost in a foreign land, were easy prey to the slavers. Removed from a world that had nourished them, left to the mercy of those whose own lack of humanity prevented the recognition of theirs, they were utterly dependent and at the mercy of their captors. Vestiges of racism threaten to dismantle further progress in South America, as they do here. The prophecies of Willie Lynch, a slave owner who created a divisive plan to keep Blacks separate by fostering dissent among them, are coming true. Lynch outlined the differences in physical characteristics among the slaves-skin shade, hair texture, height, etc. By playing up these differences, Lynch promised, "The Black slave, after receiving this indoctrination, shall carry on and will become self-refueling and self-generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands." Throughout North and South America, Lynch's plan lives on. Color lines rule, with the predominantly European strains remaining in power, and those of darker skin and crisper hair texture continue to be oppressed. It is a chilling reality that echoes down from the brutal suppression of the native peoples of Chiapas to the continued repression of Mexicans here and in their own country, to the harsh discrimination shown the Blacks of Brazil and America.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
20 p., Cholera is both a preventable and easily cured disease, yet in July-nine months after it was inadvertently introduced into Haiti by UN troops-a Haitian was infected almost every minute, and 375 had died over the course of the month.
