Statement by the National Coalition for Haitian Rights to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Concerning the Situation of Haitian Workers in the Dominican Republic

Patrick Gavigan
Jocelyn McCalla

October 11, 1996

Contents

• Introduction
• Background
• Haitian Labor in the Dominican Economy
• Key Findings
• Recommendations

Introduction

Honorable Chairperson and Members of the Commission:

Good afternoon. My name is Patrick Gavigan. I am the coordinator of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights' Refugee Advocacy Program. With me today is Mr. Jocelyn McCalla, the Executive Director of the National Coalition. We would like to thank the members of the Commission for granting us this opportunity to appear and request the assistance of the Commission in addressing the human rights problems faced by Haitian workers, their families and descendants in the Dominican Republic.

The National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR) is a not-for-profit human rights organization that seeks to promote and protect the rights of Haitians under United States and international law. The organization was founded in 1982 as the National Coalition for Haitian Refugees with the mission to assist Haitians fleeing the Duvalier dictatorship obtain political asylum in the United States and to work for the establishment of democratic government in Haiti. After United States and United Nations forces restored President Aristide to the Haitian presidency, the National Coalition expanded its mission in two principle respects:

1. to advance respect for human rights and the rule of law and support the development of a thriving civil society in Haiti; and
2. address the situation of Haitian migrants in the Caribbean region.

As a consequence of this wider focus, the National Coalition changed its name to the National Coalition for Haitian Rights. The National Coalition has offices in New York and Port-au-Prince.

In 1995, we launched a Caribbean Migration and Human Rights Project to evaluate and seek solutions for the human rights problems faced by Haitian migrants in several Caribbean states as a result of their often-indeterminate immigration status. We have brought with us copies of our description of that program for the Commission's information. The first Caribbean state we examined is Haiti's neighbor and source of the largest Caribbean population of Haitian workers, their families and descendants -- the Dominican Republic. We sent a mission to Santo Domingo in October 1995. The findings of the investigation were published in a May 1996 report called Beyond the Bateyes: Haitian Immigrants in the Dominican Republic. We have brought copies of the report (in English and Spanish) for the members of the Commission. We would like to briefly share with you the major conclusions of the study and ask for the Commission's assistance with our strategy to address the serious human rights problems outlined in the report.

Background: Haitian Sugar-Cane Cutters

The use of forced Haitian labor on state-owned sugar cane plantations was the focus of four reports issued by NCHR between 1989 and 1992. Those investigations described how Haitians were deceptively recruited in Haiti, turned over to the Dominican military at the border and transported to sugar plantations throughout the Dominican Republic, where they were forced to work and live under appalling conditions for the duration of the cane harvest. The 1989 and 1990 reports generated a storm of international publicity and denunciations which led to the promise of reforms. Although Dominican President Joaquín Balaguer issued a decree in 1990 ordering changes, they were never fully implemented.

Three months prior to the 1991 military coup which drove Aristide from Port-au-Prince, President Balaguer responded to the international criticism of Dominican treatment of Haitians in the sugar industry by ordering a deportation of Haitian cane cutters under 16 and over 60 years of age. The order was used to indiscriminately remove Haitian residents and their descendants, whether or not they had proper visas or had been born in the country (and were, therefore, Dominican citizens). In the ensuing chaos, an estimated 60,000 men, women and children flooded across the border.

In August 1991, this Commission sent a mission to the Dominican Republic to investigate the expulsions. The Commission found "clear and reliable evidence" that the expulsions violated several articles of the American Convention on Human Rights, particularly those prohibiting the collective expulsion of aliens (Article 22, paragraph 9) and the deportation of nationals from their home state (Article 20, paragraph 3) and requiring the provision of due process protections prior to any deportation (Article 8, paragraph 1).

The deportations ended with the September 1991 coup against Aristide but, as our 1992 report noted, the use of coercion in the sugar industry continued and working and living conditions in the cane fields remained abysmal.

Focused on events in Haiti, we did not revisit the Dominican Republic in 1993 or 1994. Concerns about Dominican immigration policy resurfaced in the summer of 1995 when NCHR received several reports indicating that the level of forced repatriations of Haitians had significantly increased, returning to pre-1991 levels. The mission to the Dominican Republic followed. We looked closely at the relationship between the Dominican economic need for low-cost labor, Haitian migration to supply that labor, the refusal of the Dominican government to normalize the immigration status of these migrants, and the resulting discrimination, economic exploitation and serious human rights abuses.

Haitian Labor in the Dominican Economy

Although our earlier investigations focused on Haitian sugar cane cutters, it is important to note that Haitians are now working in most Dominican agriculture industries (coffee, rice, cacao, tobacco) and perform much of the hardest manual labor in the construction industry. Haitians are also found in other sectors whose most important cost of production is manual labor, from tourism to domestic work. Sugar-cane cutters are now a distinct minority of the estimated 500,000 Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent working and living in the Dominican Republic and this situation will continue in the future as sugar becomes less important to the Dominican economy and the Dominican government privatizes or closes sugar mills. We would like to reiterate, then, that the problems of Haitian workers and their families extend far beyond the sugar fields and reach into large sections of the Dominican economy.

It is also important to note that there are at least three distinct Haitian populations in the Dominican Republic, each of which may have different legal claims on the Dominican government under Dominican or international law. The first group, seasonal migrants, enters the Dominican Republic at the beginning of a harvest season and returns (or individuals are deported) to Haiti when the harvest has ended. Estimates for this group ranged from 15,000 -- 20,000 prior to the 1991 coup (mostly for the sugar harvest). The second group consists of Haitian migrant workers who are long-time residents of the Dominican Republic but have been unable to obtain any regularized immigration status. This number may reach 250,000. And the third group, perhaps another 250,000, is comprised of the children of Haitian migrant workers born in the Dominican Republic. (Please note that these estimates are very rough and are used only for broad comparisons among groups). These individuals are Dominican citizens as a result of their birth in the country, but face a government that makes it extremely difficult to obtain the identity document necessary for access to education and social and health services and to participate in the political life of the country.

Key Findings: Immigration Status and Human Rights Abuses

Our October 1995 investigation concluded that little has changed in the Dominican treatment of its Haitian workers and Dominicans of Haitian descent since the Commission's last visit in 1991. The investigation report notes that the discrimination, exploitation and abuse suffered by the sugar cane cutters is also characteristic in kind (if not always in degree) of the situation of the much larger number of Haitians (and Dominicans of Haitian descent) living and working elsewhere. In general,

1. The immigration status of most Haitian workers and their families and Dominicans of Haitian descent is precarious. Some cane cutters and other agricultural workers have been issued temporary worker immigration cards, renewable annually, but most workers we spoke with possessed only a state sugar mill worker identification card or no proof of identity at all. The same state sugar mill and private farmers and companies who have harshly exploited Haitian workers in the past are responsible for regularizing the status of these same workers now, with little government oversight and no effective penalties for not doing so.
2. Army and police round-ups of "Haitian-looking" individuals and forced repatriations continue as official government practice. The arbitrary round-ups occur for several reasons:
   • to collect Haitians living inside the Dominican Republic to work during the cane harvest and to deport Haitian-looking individuals after the harvest, when labor needs decline;
   • in response to pressure from merchants complaining of Haitian competition, or politicians of a strongly nationalist, anti-Haitian bent;
   • to diminish the alleged effect of the alleged "Haitian vote" in Dominican presidential elections (at least 6,000 were deported prior to the first round of the May 1996 election); or
   • on behalf of employers (particularly in the construction industry) who wish to deport Haitian workers rather than pay them. In the last case, the construction workers are replaced by other Haitians recruited in Haiti and brought in without visas. As in 1991, Haitian "appearance" is usually the only requirement for detention and deportation. Proper visas, Dominican cédulas, passports or employer documents usually do not prevent repatriation -- the documents are normally taken and destroyed to prevent the individuals from returning. Those rounded up have no chance to contact families or collect belongings. These round-ups and deportations sometimes result in the violent abuse of detained Haitians; less frequently, dozens are killed in accidents involving dangerously overcrowded military buses used to transport them by force to work in the cane fields or to the border for deportation.
3. Despite repeated promises over five years, the Dominican government has done little to curb the abuses of sugar cane cutters. Working conditions remain onerous and dangerous, freedom of movement is strictly controlled, effective pay is far below an already-miserly minimum wage, labor contracts are rarely used and effectively unenforceable, cheating in weighing and paying continues, union organizing is repressed and military units and armed guards control the sugar plantations as if they were prisons, and the cane cutters, prisoners. Efforts by the Secretary of Labor to improve conditions -- primarily through the use of 25 inspectors to supervise 16 sugar mills and 400 bateyes (the shantytowns where the cutters and their families live) -- have proved woefully inadequate. Some abusive sugar mill employees, sugar plantation guards and police have been disciplined, but usually only in cases which have attracted extensive press coverage. Health and social services for cane workers and families remain largely inaccessible. Conditions in the bateyes remain terrible. The most fortunate few have electricity and well-water, but housing and sanitation facilities (if they are available at all) are poor. The state claims it has no funds for adequate repairs or new facilities investments, so any improvements made usually result from the work of NGOs or unions.
4. Haitians who give birth to children in the Dominican Republic often face enormous hurdles in registering their offspring as Dominican citizens and thus permitting them to attend public schools and claim all the political and social rights of Dominican nationals. Long-standing Dominicans of Haitian descent also face serious discrimination when seeking to vote or obtain the social, health and educational services to which they are entitled under Dominican law.
5. Finally, the Dominican government refuses to recognize any obligation toward the large segment of the Haitian immigrant population which has lived and worked in the Dominican Republic for many years but has never received official immigration status. The Dominican Republic's responsibility for this population derives from its having welcomed -- and often coerced or induced through deception -- the arrival of these immigrants, who carry out work in critical Dominican industries which Dominican nationals refuse to perform. Moreover, the Dominican government itself has been the major employer of these residents through its ownership of sugar mills and its role in the construction industry (which depends upon government public works contracts).

Immigration reform measures currently under discussion by the Dominican government would change the basis of Dominican nationality in order to deny citizenship to the children of Haitian immigrants born in the Dominican Republic. The reform measures, as currently drafted, fail to address actual migration patterns and practices in Dominican agriculture and completely ignore the long-time undocumented Haitian residents.

The Dominican labor system operates this way because Haitian migrants form the basis of important formal and informal economic networks. Most obvious is the cheap labor Haitians provide to the crisis-ridden sugar cane industry, the agricultural sector as a whole, the construction industry and in other lines of work where inexpensive manual labor is a critical production factor. Under constant threat of deportation, these workers have no leverage to bargain for better pay or working conditions and must accept the feudal control imposed by employers. Thus, uncertain legal status is a mechanism for guaranteeing the availability of an easily controlled low-wage labor force for industries that might not remain competitive in domestic and global markets if labor costs and benefits were forced to rise. And, as we noted earlier, the largest beneficiary of this state of affairs is the government itself, which must bear the huge costs of the inefficient state owned sugar mills and pay for road construction and other public works.

Informal economic networks are just as crucial to the maintenance of the status quo. The army and national police, in particular, benefit from the illegal "trade" in Haitian workers. A bus carrying Haitians from Port-au-Prince to Santo Domingo, for instance, must pay an "entrance fee" at the border to Dominican army officers in order to permit visa-less Haitians to enter. Additional "fees" must be paid to security officials at every one of the dozen-to-two-dozen army or national police checkpoints on the highway to Santo Domingo. Haitians who are stopped randomly by national police or the military often must pay a fee in lieu of deportation. And Haitians who are caught in round-ups -- or removed from construction sites en masse -- are usually stripped by soldiers of any cash or belongings they might be carrying. Finally, soldiers are paid by state and private farms and owners of other businesses which employ Haitians to collect and deport groups of workers. These revenues, we were told by a senior military official, are significant to large numbers of poorly-paid national police and soldiers.

Recommendations

Recognizing the long-standing nature and complexity of Haitian-Dominican migration conflicts, the National Coalition has developed what we believe to be a multi-pronged, realistic strategy for addressing the problems we have outlined here. The strategy involves three approaches:

1. insist that the Dominican government comply with its human rights obligations under Dominican and international law, and bring political and economic pressure to bear if necessary;
2. persuade both the Haitian and Dominican governments to address these migration and human rights problems in bilateral discussions which began just a couple of weeks ago; and
3. persuade governments and intergovernmental organizations involved in the region (such as the United States, Canada, the European Union, CARICOM, the OAS, UNHCR, UNDP, the World Bank and the IDB) to reorient their work to address migration issues within the context of economic and social development programs. These organizations can encourage Haiti and the Dominican Republic (and other areas in the region with large Haitian populations -- The Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guyana) to address migration and human rights issues and provide technical assistance and financing to support the reorganization of immigration institutions, bilateral migrant labor accords, joint border control and development initiatives, or other programs designed to ameliorate the problems faced by these migrant workers.

We would like to request the Commission's assistance in two areas. First, we would request that the Commission send a mission to the Dominican Republic to investigate these migration-related violations of the American Convention and provide a set of recommendations to the Dominican government for resolving them. The Commission's insistence that the Dominican government honor its obligations to its Haitian residents and citizens of Haitian descent contained in Dominican domestic law and the international human rights instruments to which it is a party can help to ensure that these issues are addressed in bilateral discussions. A mission now is, we believe, particularly appropriate for several reasons:

1. the Commission sent a mission to the Dominican Republic in 1991 to investigate issues relating to the treatment of Haitian workers by the Dominican government. The practices indicted by the Commission, including the arbitrary expulsion of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent, still exist, and the Dominican government has ignored the Commission's recommendations. Five years later, the Dominican government has adopted no effective measures to regularize the immigration status of Haitian workers and has never made an effort to assure that those unlawfully expelled received the compensation to which they were entitled or the opportunity to demonstrate a legal right (including that of nationality) to live in the Dominican Republic. Thus, a follow-up visit by the Commission is merited.
2. The OAS General Assembly, at its 26th Regular Session, requested the Commission "to include in its next annual report an evaluation of the situation of migrant workers and their families in the Hemisphere." It would be appropriate for the Commission to begin by addressing the most contentious migrant worker situation in the Caribbean: Haitians in the Dominican Republic. The National Coalition and other organizations have been examining various aspects of this situation for several years now and would be disposed to assist the Commission with its work in this area. Moreover, Haitian workers face similar problems in other Caribbean states -- the Bahamas (to which the Commission sent a delegation in 1994 to evaluate the situation of Haitian refugees), French Guyana, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Turks and Caicos and Saint Martin.
3. Finally, the timing is particularly important given the recent presidential election in the Dominican Republic. The victory of Leonel Fernández, who has spoken of the need for closer relations with Haiti, offers a new opportunity to address Haitian migration and human rights problems in a context where both states have new, democratic governments in place at the same time for the first time in the island's history. The two republics have recently initiated discussions on a range of bilateral commercial, trade and economic development issues. It is not clear, however, that migration issues -- and the related human rights problems of Haitian migrant workers -- will be included on the Haiti-Dominican Republic Bilateral Commission's agenda.

In addition, NCHR believes that the Commission can play a highly constructive role in highlighting these migration issues and recommending that the OAS and its member states, the United Nations system, particularly the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and international financial and development institutions coherently and comprehensively address the migration practices which generate the kind of human rights abuses existing in the Dominican Republic and elsewhere in the Caribbean region.

The National Coalition is willing to assist the Commission in each of these endeavors. We thank you once again for the opportunity to appear and discuss these issues.