THE REGIONS
In this section:
Haitians Recover from Cycle of Violence
Special Olympics Comes to Romania’s Disabled
Afghanistan’s Women Judges Train on Web
Malawians Reclaim Their Land, Livelihoods
through Environmental Project
LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
Haitians Recover from Cycle of Violence
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Dr. Cecile Marotte (left) looking at a victim’s
x-ray with a doctor and hospital administrator in Port-au-Prince,
Haiti. The x-ray shows severe damage to the victim’s
vertebrae because of a beating. Dr. Marotte works with
a project helping victims of random, politically driven
violence that plagues Haiti.
Laura Ingalls, IFES
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PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti—A 26-year-old peasant farmer
was arbitrarily detained in prison here for 11 months last
year. He came out with various injuries, including a broken
leg, which he said was the result of a severe beating.
The farmer gained his freedom when human rights organizations,
including IFES, brought attention to his story. IFES’s
Victims of Violence program does this with political violence
cases.
IFES, which is receiving $1.7 million from USAID over three
years for its antiviolence project, has helped nearly 1,000
victims since it started in February 2004. The group works
with doctors and psychologists to provide medical and psychological
care to victims. The program also works to find ways to prevent
torture and to increase the ability of local human rights
organizations to document their work.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere,
with 80 percent of the country’s population living below
the poverty line. Starting in 1956, the country suffered under
a series of autocratic leaders, including Francois Duvalier
and his son Jean-Claude Duvalier. Successive coups, reports
of electoral irregularities, gang violence, and natural disasters
have thwarted the country’s progress.
Random violence of street gangs and armed political factions
have claimed more than 1,500 lives since former president
Jean-Bertrand Aristide left the country in 2004. Kidnappings,
including the seizure of a presidential candidate and international
elections workers, have terrorized the capital. Presidential
elections were postponed four times in four months before
the first round was held Feb. 7 (see page 11).
Lesley Richards, IFES program officer for Haiti, describes
politically driven local violence as “systemic.”
“It’s been passed down from generation to generation,
the result of many years of tyranny,” Richards said.
“IFES’ goal is to teach how to resolve conflict
peacefully rather than violently. We want victims to be reinstated
in society, and we want society to accept them.”
Added Cecile Marotte, the program’s chief of party:
“[The program] is important because it’s implemented
in the rural parts of the country, which are not easily accessible.”
Marotte works with individuals to ensure that they qualify
to receive assistance, and she organizes therapy groups for
the victims. These therapy groups are composed of six people,
including both victims and psychologists.
The project runs 15 field monitors in all of Haiti’s
nine departments or states.
“It’s not easy to work in Haiti. Nothing is normal
in Haiti,” said Marotte, who has aided victims for over
15 years. “It’s different every day, but I know
I am working in the right direction.”
The United States has provided foreign aid to Haiti for
more than 50 years. USAID/Haiti programs support the improvement
of public healthcare and education, the reform of the judicial
system, independent media, and training. Haiti is also one
of the targeted countries under President Bush’s Emergency
Plan for HIV/AIDS Relief. Most recently, aid has gone to prepare
the country for presidential elections.
Katie Lynch of IFES contributed to this story
EUROPE AND EURASIA
Special Olympics Comes to Romania’s Disabled
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Athletes compete at the Special Olympics Friendship
Games in Constanta—the first international event
of its kind held in Romania. The competition, held in
2005, drew more than 500 athletes from nine countries.
Jay Sorensen, USAID
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BUCHAREST, Romania—“I’m a happy woman,”
said 27-year-old Emilia Vaduva, an intellectually disabled
Romanian. “I may be different, but I’m full of joy.”
Vaduva—along with about 15,000 similarly disabled Romanians
and their families, friends, and coaches—is part of a
three-year project to improve the quality of life of the disabled.
The project supports families of Special Olympics athletes
and increases public awareness of the contributions disabled
people make to society.
Vaduva, who has won medals in track and field competitions
in Special Olympics competitions since the 1990s, was chosen
in 2004 as the Special Olympics Romania Foundation’s
athlete representative.
“I like when people respect, appreciate, and understand
me,” said Vaduva, whose natural aplomb was one of the
reasons she was selected to represent athletes like herself.
“Respect for other people is important.”
The Special Olympics began in the United States in 1968.
Today they are held in more than 150 countries and have 1.7
million participants.
In Romania, as in most developing countries, disabled people
are stigmatized and not well integrated in their communities.
Although Romania has several programs for children and adults
with special needs—many of them created through USAID
projects—the communist era left a lack of awareness about
disabled people.
Events like the Special Olympics are helping change those
attitudes.
Romania has hosted two major competitions and several smaller
events around the country. The first major event, the Special
Olympics Romania Games, was held in Bucharest in September
2004, and attracted more than 300 athletes and coaches.
The second, the Special Olympics Friendship Games, was held
one year later and brought more than 500 athletes from nine
countries to the Black Sea coastal city of Constanta. It was
the first international event of its kind held in Romania.
The opening ceremony was shown live on national TV, and the
games were in the news frequently during the week, raising
public awareness about disability issues.
In September 2004, USAID awarded Special Olympics, an NGO
dedicated to empowering individuals with intellectual disabilities
to become physically fit through sports training and competition,
a $500,000 grant to expand activities in Romania.
“All too often, the attitudes of other people pose
more of a challenge to someone with a disability than the
disability itself does,” said USAID/Romania Mission Director
Rodger Garner. “Special Olympics provides opportunities
for people with and without disabilities to get to know each
other better. That’s how people learn to value their
differences.”
Vaduva agrees. “Special Olympics brought a positive
change to my life, and I hope that you will feel the same,”
she said. “It’s important to support each other.
We shouldn’t be isolated, because together we are stronger.”
The medalist was born in a small town near Timisoara in
the western part of Romania, and as a child became involved
with a foundation providing educational, vocational, and social
programs for the disabled. This helped her to complete her
education and begin work as a cook, earning enough to help
pay the bills in the apartment she shares with her mother.
She later became involved with the Special Olympics.
ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST
Afghanistan’s Women Judges Train on Web
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Computer and English language training for 12 Afghan
woman judges is part of a rule of law program run by
Afghans with support from USAID/Afghanistan, in partnership
with Checci and Company Consulting and Management Systems
International. Afghan woman judges say that the new
skills and computerization will improve efficiency and
increase the prospects of bringing better judgments.
USAID/Afghanistan
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KABUL, Afghanistan—The theme for this year’s
celebration of International Women’s Day, March 8, is
“Women in decisionmaking,” an apt description for
Afghan female judges.
Today there are about 40 women serving in the judiciary,
and some of them are getting help from a USAID program that
provides them with computer and English language training.
The judges say new skills and computerization will improve
their efficiency and increase the prospects of bringing better
judgments. Having access to the internet opens the door to
general and professional libraries and a huge reservoir of
knowledge.
“This training is meant to facilitate the work of Afghan
women judges,” said Mohammad Arif, senior program coordinator
with Checchi and Company Consulting Inc., which carries out
the program. Since it began in August 2005, 17 women judges
and two lawyers have participated.
“Women judges are now getting some of those things
that they asked for from the U.S. government,” Arif said,
listing laptop computers provided by USAID and desktop models
from the State Department and the Office of the First Lady.
Training and equipping judges is one among a number of projects
that USAID supports related to Afghan law. The Agency also
distributes written materials—copies of the constitution,
for example—to educate Afghans about their rights and
responsibilities. Some of the products are posters. Others,
like comic books, are designed to reach people of various
reading levels.
USAID also helps Afghanistan to collect, classify, index,
and publish its laws, both in paper and electronic formats.
Inge Fryklund, USAID’s legal advisor in Afghanistan,
explains that people cannot follow the law if the law is not
available and understood.
USAID trains judges, repairs judicial institutions and district
administration buildings, and provides equipment. The Agency
is also contributing to the development of a national communications
system that will connect court offices in Kabul with those
in the provinces.
Initiatives like this are meant to set the foundation for
the rule of law, but the road toward justice for all is a
long one, the judges acknowledge. Critical problems have yet
to be resolved.
Speaking in front of her peers, Anisa Rasouli, head of the
Juvenile Court in Kabul, explained that Afghans are not aware
of their rights, with a majority of Afghans—particularly
women—being illiterate. “They do not have an understanding
of their rights,” Rasouli said.
Illiteracy, lack of economic opportunity, gender inequality,
and lack of awareness of rights are some of the hurdles that
can perpetuate injustice, she added.
Judges like Rasouli say they squeeze computer courses into
their schedules because of the potential they have for bringing
justice to their country.
“We are busy making judgments and bringing justice,”
she said. “It is very hard to make a living as a judge.
Afghanistan and Afghan women judges face many problems, but
a change needs to start someplace.”
AFRICA
Malawians Reclaim Their Land, Livelihoods through Environmental
Project
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A woman from Chilipula Village in Malawi explains how
she grows mushrooms. She and other farmers in the region
are getting help with their crops through the Chia Lagoon
Watershed Management Project, a $4.8 million collaboration
between public and private institutions.
Anna Sparks, USAID
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Chia Lagoon, Malawi—For years, the people who
lived around Chia Lagoon in central Malawi earned their incomes
through fishing, supplemented by food from their gardens.
But in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they began to notice
a decrease in their gardens’ yields and fewer fish in
their nets.
At the time, large areas in the upland were opened for a
booming business—estate tobacco farming.
The results were devastating to farmers. Land overuse practices,
including uncontrolled tree clearing, unnecessary bush fires,
and cultivating crops on steep slopes and in stream banks,
left the air polluted, the land unhealthy, and the local lagoon
a swamp. Local residents also began to see increases in malaria,
respiratory ailments, dysentery, and cholera.
The Chia Lagoon Watershed Management Project is allowing
a number of public and private organizations—brought
together by the Nkhotakota District Assembly through USAID’s
Global Development Alliance—to attack the problems. The
project combines enterprise development with environmentally
sound practices. USAID put $2.1 million into the effort, while
the partners are picking up the remaining $2.7 million for
what is envisioned as a three-year project.
The partners—Washington State University, Total LandCare
(TLC), Cooperation for the Development of Emerging Countries,
Business Consult Africa, AgriCane Malawi, and the Dwangwa
branch of the Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi—each
have specific roles. But the goal is to give people living
within the watershed skills to manage natural resources, sustain
agricultural production, and pursue enterprise development
on their own.
The types of assistance include hands-on training sessions,
farmer-to-farmer exchange visits, marketing assistance, and
business management training. The project has also helped
establish community-managed revolving funds, and is working
to create comanagement agreements between local and higher
level governments.
“This is one of the most important projects I have
been involved with both in terms of size and scope,”
said Zwide Jere, the director of TLC. “The biggest challenge
for all of us was to get the team together, which later turned
out to be a big opportunity as each team member brought to
the table a wide array of experience and expertise.”
After one year, the project has helped farmers form business
associations and raised their awareness of environmental degradation.
Chia Lagoon’s residents are now cultivating chilies,
beans, and mushrooms; producing honey; and farming fish. The
project includes 7,970 farmers—43 percent of them women—from
126 villages.
One of them is Eliya Sitolo, a 60-year-old farmer and father
of eight who began growing chilies for paprika production
through the initiative. He also joined an association of chili
producers, which allowed him to negotiate higher prices. After
an especially dry year, Sitolo and his wife still made enough
profit from only a half acre’s worth of chilies to buy
food for the family, fertilizer, and a bicycle to ease travel.
The couple plans to plant 2.5 acres with chilies this year.
Communities are also raising and planting seedlings to replace
trees lost to poor land management. The partnership is helping
with woodland protection, conservation techniques, and soil
fertility as well.
Mark Visocky of USAID/Malawi calls the project a “shining
example” of what can be accomplished with private-public
partnerships. “Linking fishermen, farmers, woodcutters,
and households together has created a better understanding
of the interlinkages of economic and environmental problems
among the stakeholders, and how to move forward to solve these
problems in a way that brings lasting results and benefits
to all the stakeholders,” he said.
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