PRESS CONFERENCE BY INTERNATIONAL PEACE ACADEMY

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE BY INTERNATIONAL PEACE ACADEMY

The President of the International Peace Academy (IPA), David Mallone, told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon that the biggest problem in the political culture of Haiti was a reluctance to compromise. Constructing good governance in Haiti was a difficult task, he said.

Mr. Malone introduced a report on the two-year Project on Policy Advocacy and Facilitation in Haiti, carried out by the IPA, which is an independent, non-partisan, international organization dedicated to promoting the peaceful settlement to armed conflicts between and within States. It works closely with the United Nations, regional and other international organizations, governments and parties to conflicts.

Mr. Mallone, who was accompanied by Senior Associate of IPA and Director of the Haiti Facilitation Project, Chetan Kumar, and IPA Programme Officer, Marlye Gelin-Adams, said the project had attempted to facilitate dialogue between a select group of civic and political leaders in Haiti. He added that the report was brutally frank and discussed the places where the project had fallen short. The project was implemented in cooperation with the Canadian Centre for International Studies and Cooperation, the Institute of Applied Social Sciences of Norway, the United States Institute for Peace and the Friederich Ebert Foundation of Germany.

Mr. Kumar said the key premise of the project was that it would take more than a revival of democratic institutions to bring good governance to Haiti. It must encompass the behaviour of the leaders. The objectives of the project were to generate discussion and knowledge about good governance; to generate a belief in dialogue so the participants would continue the process on their own; to encourage them to address the total lack of engagement of the majority of the people in the political process; and to generate mutual confidence at an individual level, so participants might work more amicably to solve the numerous political deadlocks.

He said the extensive participation was encouraging, but there was an emphasis on creating consensus instead of identifying real issues and effecting compromise. The consensus often amounted to platitudes that were presented to the public. The dialogue continued even after the IPA was no longer the primary facilitator, but that might have been due to the emphasis on the implementation of a civic education project. That project had been a key incentive to get the participants to meet and engage each other. The concept of dialogue alone might not be self-sustaining unless there was a tangible inducement.

Continuing, he said that while there was some success in encouraging participants to formulate strategies to increase the involvement of the Haitian people in the political process, he had not seen any serious discussion on the issue of civic participation. Most of the participants in the project represented a small elite within the capital area.

On the other hand, he said, the confidence and trust that developed among the participants allowed their continued participation even during the political crisis in Haiti. A group of opposition politicians created a dialogue space called "L'Espace de Concertation" to develop common strategies for negotiating with the Presidency to end a two-year political crisis. While

IPA Press Conference - 2 - 21 October 1999

that was not an outcome that IPA intended, it had hoped that creative strategies would emerge for dealing with political deadlocks.

Among the lessons learned was the difficulty in sustaining such an effort without concrete outside support, he said. Another observation was that facilitators could rarely stay disengaged. The most important lesson was that this kind of effort was sorely needed in Haiti. The majority of the population had an almost complete lack of interest in the coming elections. If the people witnessed the political class engaging each other, it might be an incentive to them to come out and vote.

Ms. Gelin-Adams Marlye said that many Haitians expressed concern that the concept of the dialogue process had not originated in Haiti. She noted that the party of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide had not participated because they felt it was not an authentic Haitian exercise. She added that the establishment of L'Espace, a platform for dialogue among the opposition parties, had raised question about the neutrality of the IPA. By providing exercises in strategies for dialogue, the IPA had inadvertently become associated with the opposition.

A correspondent asked, with the total breakdown of system that had turned off the electorate, what could be done by outside people to get a reasonable turnout during elections?

Mr. Mallone said the political class seemed to be alienated from the electorate at large. The capital had long been seen as disconnected from the problems of the rest of the country. The last national elections had brought out only 5 to 10 per cent of the electorate.

Ms. Gelin-Adams said the lack of participation by the electorate was in large part the result of the violence surrounding elections. People did not want to risk their lives. Moreover, there was a total lack of faith in the leaders, who changed nothing when they were elected.

A correspondent asked if the panel was aware of last week's United Nations evaluation mission in Haiti. If they were to make pronouncements about Haiti they needed to keep current. Did the IPA understand the message that Haitians wanted their affairs handled by Haitians, he asked.

Mr. Mallone responded that the facilitation exercise had been open to all. Given its history with foreign intervention, there would always be concern in Haiti about actions of the outside world. He noted, however, that most Haitians had been happy that President Aristide had been restored by outside intervention.

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