Wondering what YOU can do for Haiti?

Advocacy Guide for the United States

Advocacy Guide for Canada

The widespread devastation caused by the earthquake was only possible as a result of economic injustice. Haiti has long been subjected to external interventions such as unjust international trade policies, onerous debt payments on debt acquired by the Duvalier dictatorships, military interventions and paternalistic charity that have perpetuated the nation’s structural poverty. Beginning in the 1980’s, structural adjustment policies imposed on Haiti by international financial institutions like the World Bank and IMF and food dumping by the United States weakened national agricultural production and exacerbated the poverty in rural Haiti, resulting in mass urban migration that made Port-Au-Prince especially vulnerable to this earthquake.

The MCC Haiti advocacy program is seeking to address these issues both by engaging constituents and policymakers in the US and Canada and by working through local partner organizations that are committed to social and economic justice. Political advocacy is a form of public witness and a tangible way of loving our neighbor.

This guide is intended to be a tool to help you become an advocate for structural changes that help create the conditions for a more sovereign and dignified Haiti than the one that existed before January 12th, 2010.