Complicity With Torture
by Liz Gibbons
The drama that was Haiti after the coup that ousted President Aristide included UN sanctioned embargos on the military and their supporters but at the same time imposed even more stringent repercussions on the health and welfare of the population, especially the more vulnerable groups. A first time UNICEF Representative, Elizabeth Gibbons was appointed to the post in Haiti in 1992 and served there until 1996. Here she relates her moral dilemma in having to adhere to politically motivated UN embargos while at the same time having to uphold the UNICEF principles of support to disadvantaged children. She later published a book analyzing her mission to Haiti but here gives us a brief resume of the situation and its dire consequences...a most sobering experience.
As an all staff meeting was breaking up in Labouisse Hall in spring 1992, Marco Vianello Chiodo asked me: “Liz! We can’t find anyone to go to Haiti! Would you be interested?” Despite the distinctly unflattering invitation, the fact was that I had actually been thinking of applying for the vacant Representative post, as I saw serving in Haiti to be a particularly interesting challenge. As the result of a military coup against the country’s first democratically elected president the year before, the OAS and the UN Security Council had imposed sanctions against the military to force a return to the ‘application of the national constitution and the full respect for human rights.’ These sanctions meant that UN agencies, including UNICEF, could not collaborate with the military government or any organs of state, but instead had to implement their programmes through partnerships with NGOs and other non-state actors. Developing new strategies for programme implementation was intriguing to me. So I told Marco “Yes!” A few weeks later I was on mission in Nigeria when I was summoned to the Rep’s office; Fouad Kronfol was as on the phone “Congratulations! You’ve been appointed UNICEF Representative to Haiti! I think you are going to enjoy being in charge of your own office.”
I arrived in Port-au-Prince, a first-time Representative, to confront an immediate and unexpected problem. My predecessor had very publicly consorted with members of the military government, so UNICEF was a “pro-putchist” pariah among the democratic forces and UN agencies. Several months were spent rebuilding trust with partners and indeed with the UNICEF staff. At the same time, I was exploring options for delivering humanitarian assistance through a network of NGOs, elected mayors, community groups and religious organizations. Ultimately, UNICEF partnered with close to 100 non-state partners to deliver $12 million in humanitarian assistance.
However, it became clear very early on that the UN’s humanitarian assistance could in no way offset the economic and social damage wreaked by the sanctions and accompanying trade embargo. The irony was that the UN, whose charter calls for respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, was, through the instrument of sanctions, violating economic and social rights for the sake of advancing civil and political rights. By the end of the three years which Haiti suffered under sanctions, unemployment increased from 50% to 75%, agricultural output declined 20%, the price of basic foodstuffs increased 100% and per capita income declined by 30%. This unsurprisingly led to a doubling in rates of child malnutrition, and the death of thousands in a measles epidemic, resulting in a 10% increase in U5MR. School enrolments dropped by one third due to economic hardship among teachers and families, while the number of street children doubled [1].
Having to publicly support the UN sanctions, while witnessing the devastation they inflicted on children and the poor created a moral crisis for me. Xavier Leus, the WHO Representative at the time, expressed it best when he likened delivery of humanitarian assistance to offset the impact of sanctions to being a doctor, forced to provide just enough care to ensure the survival of a victim during a torture session. I felt personally party to the collective punishment of the innocent Haitian population, and even the little damage UNICEF’s humanitarian assistance was able to offset was, in the highly politicized context of the time, criticised by those who championed the cause of human rights as a Trojan Horse, which gave solace to the military and weakened the impact of the embargo. At the same time as bearing witness to the devastation, I had to deny any knowledge of it in interviews with the national and international press, further exacerbating my sense of complicity in the torture of children. I actively considered resignation [2].
Just at that time, Gregorio Monasta, Chief of the Americas, arrived on mission to Port-au-Prince; never has someone appeared at such a crucial time in my adult life. He pointed out that while resigning and breaking my silence about sanctions’ impact would assuage my personal pain, it would do nothing to help the children of Haiti. On the contrary, resigning could make things worse by justifying the military’s propaganda and by sending UNICEF’s humanitarian donors fleeing. The calm logic of this advice gave me great comfort, and strengthened my sense of purpose, for which I remain grateful to Gregorio to this day.
UNICEF HQ further helped by authorizing me to commission, together with UNFPA in Haiti, the Harvard School of Public Health to prepare a study exploring the impact of sanctions on children. Richard Jolly considered it best that this be seen as an HQ initiative, to better protect our operations and reputation in Haiti. When the study found evidence that sanctions were among a complex set of factors contributing to a rise in child mortality, the New York Times blared an intemperate headline which read “Study says sanctions kill up to 1000 children a month.” The study’s author was summoned to the White House and the report’s credibility attacked as using ‘a questionable methodology’; yet UNICEF HQ defended the report even as in Haiti UNICEF and UNFPA were attacked as tools of the military. Despite the inevitable political fall-out, the report resulted in a significant increase in US humanitarian assistance, and in the creation of the vital humanitarian fuel programme.
Generally, UNICEF-HQ was extremely supportive to me, but given the fraught UN and Haitian politics, often my request for advice was answered with “just use your best judgement”. The one person who checked on whether my judgement was indeed the best was Marc Powe, OPSCEN’s chief of security. There was of course considerable military, political and social violence in Haiti during those years, and living with nightly gun battles one naturally become inured to the potential impact of violence on oneself or one’s staff. Hence the periodic calls from Marc were an invaluable reality check. He’d always start off with queries about my well-being and that of the team, but then inevitably proceed with “Um, Liz, I heard about such and such event; have you thought about the security implications?” Quite often, I hadn’t, or at least not adequately, so I was very grateful to Marc for keeping UNICEF-Port-au-Prince safe during tumultuous times.
Ultimately, the democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was reinstated as a result of a 1994 US military invasion, not of sanctions; these, in the end, served as a political ‘feel good’ action whose only impact was on Haiti’s children and vulnerable populations. The sanctions undermined the country’s already fragile economy and state institutions, from which, it can be argued, Haiti has yet to recover. Today the country is once again in a state of violent political, social and economic chaos, having failed to rebuild all that was damaged 30 years before, and further setback by the devastating earthquake of 2010.
For years, I carried the guilt of my complicity in the violation of Haitian children’s rights, and of my failure to protect my own UNICEF staff from the consequences of carrying out our mandate in the highly politicized context of sanctions. I was fortunate that in 1997, UNICEF granted me a study leave so I could process the trauma of my experience by writing about it. Yet even during my turbulent years coping with sanctions, I was acutely aware that my UNICEF peers elsewhere in the world were confronting far more dire moral situations: the genocide in Rwanda, the murder of staff in Somalia, the slaughter of boys in Bosnia….. In the decades since, UNICEF Representatives have had to cope with even more tragic event and contexts. My experience of Haiti-and those of my peers convinced me that we would all benefit from having a moral philosopher at our side, and that, although UNICEF’s mandate calls for us to improve the lives of children, sometimes we just have to accept, and take solace in knowing, that children would have suffered even more had UNICEF not done its best.
Endnotes:
[1] See Elizabeth D Gibbons: "Sanctions in Haiti: Human Rights and Democracy under Assault” (Praeger Publishers with the Center for Strategic and International Studies: Westport, 1999) for a complete analysis of sanctions humanitarian and political impact inside Haiti.
[2] For a fuller account of the moral dilemmas endured during this assignment, see Elizabeth D Gibbons “Complicity with Torture: Managing Humanitarian Assistance under Economic Sanctions.” In Yael Danieli: Sharing the Frontline and the Back Hills (Baywood Publishing: Amityville, NY: 2002)
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