December 4, 2003

Dear Minister:

We appreciate your decision to use collective European Union (EU) strength to facilitate improvements in the human rights situation in Haiti. However your sanctions under the ACP-EU Partnership (Cotonou) Agreement are misplaced, not sufficiently tailored and have failed to create benchmarks to measure the impact your sanctions have on the economic and social rights of the Haitian people.

We write to you today to request that you end these sanctions in order conform to your countryís own human rights obligations. Should you decide to continue your sanctions, we insist that you immediately put in place necessary benchmarks to monitor the impact of your sanctions on the Haitian peopleís human rights in accordance with your obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Failure to do so leaves human rights activists no choice but to take legal actions against your country to end its contribution to violations of the Haitian peopleís economic rights.

Further, your present sanctions against the Haitian government are based in politics as opposed to founded in law. It is our contention that the suspension of aid in this case was not an ìappropriate measureî within the meaning of Article 96 of the Cotonou Agreement. In particular, the suspension of aid to promote social and economic rights in such a poor country appears disproportional to the violation of election laws by the Haitian government, which were the premise for this suspension. The conditions for suspending aid under Cotonou Agreement were not fully met by the EU in the period leading up to original decision to institute sanctions on 29 January 2001. Article 96 of the Cotonou Agreement provides for ìappropriate measuresî to be taken if ìconsultations do not lead to a solution.î Suspension of aid is envisaged as ìa measure of last resort.î Yet only one formal meeting was held between Haiti and the EU before sanctions were imposed. As the ACP General Secretariat noted, ìthe discussions the EU representatives are said to have held in Haiti without any notification to the Haiti side which was therefore not prepared to explain, cannot be considered as being within the framework of the consultations enshrinedî in Article 96 (Press Release, February 5, 2001).

Upon imposing sanctions, states have obligations to effectively monitor the impact of the sanctions on economic, social and cultural rights (E/C. 12/1997/8, CESCR General Comment 8 (1997) para. 13). In this instance, the EU has not implemented any safeguards or monitoring systems in place and the negative health indicators in the country are a clear example of the impact this has had.

Given that the Haitian governmentís water and sanitations projects have been negatively impacted or discontinued for lack of planned EU support your rhetoric in the EU Water Initiative and declarations made on behalf of the EU at multilateral meetings such as the World Summit on Sustainable Development stand in stark contrast to your present actions. Most importantly, these ìappropriate measuresî are in violation of your own human rights obligations under the ICESCR as the Committee has recently asserted that:

ëTo comply with their international obligations in relation to the right to water, States parties have to respect the enjoyment of the right in other countries. International cooperation requires States parties to refrain from actions that interfere, directly or indirectly, with the enjoyment of the right to water in other countries. . . States parties should refrain at all times from imposing embargoes or similar measures, that prevent the supply of water . . . Water should never be used as an instrument of political and economic pressureí. (E/C.12/2002/11, CESCR General Comment 15 (2002) paras. 31-32)

In response to our letter last year, many states responded that they were sending humanitarian aid via non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This does not satisfy the EU Member Statesí obligations under Article 2, paragraph 1 of the ICESCR. In order to build a citizen-state complaint culture, the Government of Haiti must have the capacity to respond to its citizensí assertion of human rights. Funneling aid through NGOs undercuts this ability and undermines human rights development.

At a minimum, the EU should insure that all NGOs receiving EU money use a human rights approach. Specifically, the human rights approach requires NGOs to work with their served community to articulate its rights and in turn work with the government to build its capacity to respond to its citizens rights. This public/private partnership would then become part of the human rights solution as opposed to a human rights problem in Haiti.

On the eve of Haitiís 200th anniversary of independence, the EUís interactions with Haiti should be rethought and radically changed to insure coherence of the EUís rhetoric and human rights obligations.

Sincerely,

Todd Howland, Director
Center for Human Rights