Haiti: Final Statement of the National Youth Camp on Food Sovereignty

Haiti – Papaye August 6, 2022

We 233 delegates of young people (girls and boys) who have come from the 10 geographical departments of the country, have gathered at the National Training Center of Peasant Cadres “LAKAY” at the headquarters of MPP / Papaye to participate in the XVII National Camp of Food Sovereignty that MPP coordinates every year. We, as members of the peasant organizations within CLOC- Via Campesina in Haiti (MPP, MPNKP, TK) and other trade union, workers, students, popular and peasant organizations face dangers crossing the national roads where bandits and kidnappers kill and mistreat all travelers. The Great South of the country has been blocked for more than two years. Now the whole country is controlled by gangs who do what they want with the complicity of state authorities.

This year’s food sovereignty camp was held under the theme: Youth committed to the construction of a socialist Haiti. It is a socialism based on the civilization of the peasants where they work together, where food does not belong to anyone, where the problem of one is the problem of all the others, where one is moved and the other feels it. Of course peasant civilization is based on solidarity and exchange. The capitalist system wants to eliminate the society based on solidarity and replace it with a selfish one, where everyone minds his own business, where the law of the strongest prevails.

We, the youth who participated in this camp, commit ourselves to work with the other youth organizations of the country to build a sovereign Haiti, a Haiti of solidarity, a Haiti where exploitation and domination of the human being will end. During the days we spent in the camp, we worked and reflected on various themes such as: analysis of the national and international political situation, agroecological peasant agriculture, climate change, youth organization, political commitment of young people, food sovereignty, cardiometabolic diseases, sexually transmitted infections, another way to manage health. We have done a lot of agroecological practices. This pile of reflections allows us to observe and conclude the following:

1. In Haiti there is no government that administers the country’s resources to the benefit of the population. Criminal gangs run the country as they wish. The PHTK governments are looters, criminals who plunder the country, who conspire to sell the country. Ariel’s government joins hands with the criminal gangs because they help him and the United States to stay in power.
2. The population suffocates from the high cost of living; the inflation rate rises very high, the Haitian currency (gourdes) is totally devalued. It has never been devalued to such a level in relation to the US dollar. The population faces kidnapping, massacre, planned fuel crisis; the political crisis gets worse every day. In this sense, this situation creates the necessary fear to block popular mobilization. PHTK holds on to power through fear.
3. The question of talk, the question of negotiation that Ariel Henry and his supporters (his executioners) talk about, is backward, a lie for PHTK and its allies to stay in power as late as possible to force the country to accept the “Core Group” project which is to adopt a demagogic constitution that will eliminate the Senate, the anticipated way to give a double president the right to sign contracts to give away the country’s natural resources to the multinationals of the imperialist countries.
4. Local food production is disappearing with this subjugated State that abandons peasant agriculture to facilitate the neoliberal policy of eliminating national food production. They want to eliminate the peasant class in order to take over the agricultural lands to create agro-industrial free trade zones, to monopolize the lands and exploit the mines, to create tourist free trade zones where they will slavishly exploit the workers.
5. Young people are forced to leave the country to go to the city, to leave their country to go to the Dominican Republic, Chile, Brazil and other countries of the world. Many of them clandestinely try to go to the United States which they consider as paradise; many owners of economic enterprises are forced to go to the Dominican Republic, many young professionals are forced to leave the country due to unemployment, besides they are massacred, kidnapped on the way.

WE ARE COMMITTED TO:

1. To increase the awareness of youth so that they can understand that they have to organize themselves, they have to get involved in social and political organizations that fight to change the capitalist system.
2. To mobilize the peasantry to commit to the development of agroecological peasant agriculture as an example of agriculture that can produce healthy food to feed Haiti, to feed all other countries, to cool the planet in the face of global warming that initiates the capitalist system to earn thousands and millions every day, even if they risk their lives. Agribusiness and the chain of production, transformation, transport, storage only favor the emission of more greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
3. To raise awareness among youth so that they commit themselves together with peasants and workers to develop social and solidarity economy activities as an alternative to the capitalist economy.

WE DEMAND:

1. An immediate removal of Ariel Henry and his government because they do not serve the people. We are fed up with them.
2. The mobilization of the youth, the peasants, the workers, the rural women as well as the urban women to force the power of PHTK to stop the violence it inflicts on the Haitian people. Yes, we must rise up, unite to stop the kidnapping, massacre, generalized insecurity, this terrible hunger and the plundering of the country’s resources.

We call upon everybody to join us and help us to gather the forces to liberate the country under this bloodthirsty, corrupt regime of Ariel Henry.

“ORGANIZATION OR DEATH“

Organizations participating in the camp :

• MPP
• MPNKP
• Tèt Kole
• KWOS
• CNOHA
• PAPDA
• PRODESE
• KAY LA
• PLAODDAA
• KORENIP
• MPA
• MPB

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Original statement in Haitian Creole:

This post is also available in Español.