Imperialist feminism: Canada funds compliance from Haitian human rights groups
Editor’s note: This is part one of Travis Ross’ multi-part series on Canadian imperialism’s manufacturing of Haitian imperial feminist collaborators.
Written by: Travis Ross
The Canadian government funds several non-governmental organizations (NGO) in Haiti under the banner of promoting human rights. A significant portion of this funding is devoted to feminist and women’s advocacy groups in Haiti. Often in coordination with the United-Nations and private foundations, the Canadian government directly implicates itself in the governance of these NGOs. Other Canadian-funded programs in Haiti include leadership programs that provide training to individuals to participate in developing reforms related to governance. Key leaders in Haiti’s feminist movement are also long-time recipients of Canadian government funding. They hold positions of influence in Haitian society, influencing government policy.
An ‘imperial feminist’ foreign policy towards Haiti
The Canadian government announced its Feminist International Assistance Policy in June 2017. In August 2021, then Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrysia Freeland released a detailed plan for implementing it. This included $150 million over five years to “support local women’s organizations and movements that advance women’s rights in developing countries.”
This feminist foreign policy offered a new paradigm for Canada’s interventionist policies abroad.
In the case of Haiti, this feminist foreign policy justified funding of several organizations inside Haiti who were active in the destabilization campaign that led to the 2004 coup. Additionally, many of these same organizations, as well as key members and leaders, played significant roles in the coup regime that was installed following the coup d'etats.
The civil society organizations (CSO), funded by Western governments and private foundations, produce reports and statements that the U.S. and Canadian governments can then point to as evidence of the targeted government's alleged corruption as justification for eventual regime change.
Canadian “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) also produce their own statements and press releases reinforcing Canadian foreign policy in Haiti in the same manner. This was shown to be the case in a recent investigation by The Canada Files, where three associations of Canadian NGOs representing dozens of organizations (most of whom rely on funding from the same western governments and private foundations) produced a joint-statement that fundamentally supported Canadian foreign policy in Haiti.
While these CSOs sometimes take part in astroturfing campaigns to create the false impression that there is a large, grassroots movement against the targeted foreign government, in the case of Haiti the CSOs are more often relied upon to produce spokespeople, reports, press releases, and statements that are congruent with American and Canadian foreign policy.
Since playing a key role in the 2004 coup that overthrew Haiti’s democratic leader in 2004, Canada’s foreign policy has been designed to accommodate American imperialist domination there.
Aside from lending diplomatic support for American foreign policy in Haiti, this is accomplished along two vectors: One, consistent funding for Haiti’s National Police Force (PNH); and two, consistent funding for several CSOs in the so-called human rights sector.
Canada’s feminist rhetoric obscure imperialist policies in Haiti
The Canadian government’s shift toward a ‘feminist foreign policy’ then, does not represent a fundamental change in foreign policy in Haiti, but a shift in rhetoric that has a negligible effect on how funding is allocated to the PNH and various organizations in the human rights sector.
For example, Yves Engler pointed out in a 2020 article that under “its Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) the Trudeau government has tendered a $12.5 million contract in operational support to the Haitian police.” This funding was provided to “help stabilize the country politically and socially” at a time where popular protests aimed at removing then President Jovenel Moise from power faced constant police repression.
Canada’s feminist foreign policy also provides Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly with new rhetorical tools for funding Haiti’s repressive police force. A November 2022 article for Rabble.ca mentioned Joly stating that Canada is ”concerned about the violence in Haiti, in particular against women and girls.” Therefore, “Canada will not remain idle”. On the same day, during a press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Joly said “Canada already has sent roughly $40 million and armored vehicles to the Haitian police, a force Canada helped train and develop over decades of close cooperation.”
Three months later, the Canadian government announced yet another $50M CAD in funding for Haiti’s police force.
Meanwhile, then Canadian Ambassador to Haiti, Sébastien Carrière, met Haiti’s police chiefs, tweeting “Canada is pleased to have been able to engage with leaders of the HNP [Haitian National Police] in order to reinforce Canadian and Haitian collaboration in the security sector.”
The Canadian government also provides funding for several feminist groups in the so-called human rights sector in Haiti.
A recent investigation published by The Canada Files revealed that the Canadian government returned to funding the Haitian human rights organizations named the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH) through a Canadian NGO named Avocats sans Frontières.
The RNDDH played a key role in the coup d’etat that forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power in 2004.The RNDDH is generally understood to be a political organization with the facade of a human rights group.
Human rights lawyer Mario Joseph, the Managing Attorney at the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) described the RNDDH as an “injustice machine” that was invented with Canadian government funding. He argued that the RNDDH accusations against Fanmi Lavalas leaders were political and resulted in “more than a hundred Fanmi Lavalas grassroots activists” being “arrested and detained with no charge, and no trial.”
Similarly, funding from GAC was provided to several human rights groups in Haiti, including several organizations who claim to have a feminist orientation. These funds were not provided directly from GAC. Instead, they were funneled through a Canadian NGO named Avocats sans Frontières Canada (Lawyers without borders Canada - ASFC).
For several years, ASFC ran projects in Haiti through the Accessibilité aux Services Judiciares program (Access to Judicial Services). This includes the “Access to Justice and Fight Against Impunity in Haiti” (AJULIH) project for “advocacy activities”.
ASFC and FOKAL select Haitian NGOs for Canadian funding
In fact, a representative from one of these organizations sat on the comité de direction (Managing Committee) and the comité de coordination (Coordinating Committee) for ASFC's Accessibilité aux Services Judiciares program.
These committees were made up only of one ASFC general director and the general director of FOKAL, giving the organization a significant influence over the program. In fact, a document obtained by The Canada Files states that the Managing Committee “constitutes the ultimate decision-making body of the project”, while the Coordinating Committee was “in charge of monitoring the implementation of the project.”
The program’s overall budget was approximately $19M CAD.
The Fondasyon Konesans Ak Libète (Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty - FOKAL) was founded by George Soros through OSF. In the past, FOKAL has functioned as a soft-power arm of American imperialism in Haiti.
FOKAL’s longtime president is Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, widely regarded as an eminent feminist leader in Haiti.
Predictably, FOKAL was one of the Haitian organizations who received funding under the AJULIH program.
FOKAL’s vice-chair is Danièle Magloire. Magloire has had a close relationship with the Canadian government going back to 2003.
As Yves Engler points out in a 2014 article, Magloire’s career in the NGO world begins with Canadian government funding.
Danièle Magloire is generally presented as a militant feminist. She is a founding member of Kay Famn (Woman’s House). She is also a founding member of Coordination Nationale de Plaidoyer pour les Droits des Femmes (National Coordinator of Advocacy for Women's Rights - CONAP) and ENFOFANM (Women’s information).
Kay Fanm also received funding through the AJULIH program.
Magloire is very influential in Haiti, not only as a leading feminist, but as an academic who plays a key role in the nexus of government, international NGOs, and academia. In an interview with the Association québécoise des organismes de coopération internationale (AQOCI) Magloire explained that Kay Fanm is a founding member of the Concertation nationale contre les violences faites aux femmes (National Dialogue for the Prevention of Violence Against Women).
Founded in 2003, before the coup d'etats that toppled the Fanmi Lavalas government, Magloire explained that the Concertation nationale “brings together the Haitian government Ministries for the Status of Women, Health, and Justice, and Haitian civil society organizations, in collaboration with international cooperation organizations (agencies, NGOs).” The Concertation nationale’s mandate “is to develop and propose public policies relating to interventions with women and girls who have suffered gender-based violence and to work towards the validation of these policies by the relevant state authorities.” This provided Kay Fanm and other western-backed NGOs with some influence over government policy.
Kay Fanm is also a signatory to a joint-statement published by three Canadian NGO associations. An investigation by the Canada Files revealed that this statement provides support for Canadian foreign policy in Haiti. The majority of the Canadian NGOs who supported the statement have no current projects in Haiti. Of the seven NGOs who do have ongoing projects in Haiti, all receive funding from the Canadian government. The joint statement is supported by another nine organizations based in Haiti, three of whom receive funding from the Canadian government: Kay Fanm, Fanm Deside, & Kri Fanm Ayiti all receive funding from Global Affairs Canada through the NGO Lawyers Without Borders Canada. While two other signatories, Union pour le développement et le respect des femmes haïtiennes (UDREFH-Centre) and Fanm Deside, receive funding from the French government though the French Embassy in Haiti. All five organizations focus on women’s advocacy.
Magloire has a long history of working with Canadian-funded NGOs in Canada and Haiti. So much so that Magloire received a “human rights champion” award from the Canadian Embassy in Haiti in 2018.
The Canadian government’s legacy of funding anti-democratic NGOs
Magloire’s biography on the FOKAL website notes that she “directed human rights advocacy” for the former Canadian ‘NGO’ which was “responsible to Parliament through a designated cabinet Minister”, Rights & Democracy, that had a (R&D) Haiti office from 2005 until 2012. Author Yves Engler notes that in “October 2005 R&D began a $415,000 CIDA-financed project”, led by Magloire, to “foster greater civil society participation in Haiti’s national political process.”
In a 2014 article, Engler explained that R&D “was widely viewed as an NGO even though it was created by an act of Parliament.”
R&D was initially named “International Institute of Human Rights and Democratic Development. In a March 2021 article, TCF EIC Aidan Jonah showed that the Institute was “constituted in 1990, with former NDP leader Ed Broadbent (from 1975-1988) serving as its first president” to be a“Democracy Promotion” institute. It functioned as a hybrid National Endowment for Democracy meets the United States Institute for Peace. R&D was closed in 2012.
Magloire’s career working for Canadian-funded NGOs did not begin with R&D, however.
In an article for Canadian Dimension, Engler explained that Magloire’s reputation as a human-rights defender “arose largely out of her positions at Enfofanm (Women’s info) and the National Coordination for Advocacy on Women’s Rights (CONAP)”.
CONAP was founded in 2004. According to Engler, both CONAP and Enfofanm were “CIDA-funded feminist organizations that would not have grown to prominence without international funding.”
On February 29, 2004, the US, France and Canada overthrew Haiti’s elected government.
CONAP played a key role in amplifying anti-Lavalas propaganda to help destabilize the Aristide government. Magloire continued spreading this propaganda at R&D. Engler notes that a few months prior to the coup, R&D “released a report that described Haiti’s pro-coup Group of 184 as “grassroots” and a “promising civil society movement.”
The Group 184 was a collection of Haiti’s elites, funded by the International Republican Institute, an arm of the NED.
The NED is the soft power arm of the CIA. Its operations in Haiti have played a large role in undermining sovereignty.
Indeed, the Group of 184, a US-backed “civil society” front with alleged ties to paramilitary forces led by Guy Philip who were instrumental in the 2004 coup that toppled Aristide’s democratically elected government. In an interview with Peter Hallward, paramilitary leader Guy Philip was asked if Haitian oligarchs leading the Group of 184 had provided funding. In response, Philippe said “Yes we had meetings with various businessmen and they helped us… they contributed around $200,000 (US) to buy arms and ammunition.”
Haiti’s Canadian and Western-backed Imperial Feminists
CONAP and EnfoFanm, the two Canadian-funded NGOs Magloire worked for, were, according to Engler “groups that shunned the language of class struggle in a country where a tiny percentage of the population owns nearly everything.” CONAP in particular was “virulently anti-Lavalas”.
Indeed, Peggy Antrous, an ex-General Coordinator of the Caribbean feminist organization Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), explained that CONAP “took a leadership role among civil society organizations mobilizing against Aristide” and “represent[s] the privileged few.”
Antrobus explained that imperial feminist groups like CONAP demonstrate “how vulnerable civil society organizations are to political manipulation”, and “can be co-opted” by “taking large amounts of money from the U.S. government.”
Writing in Press for Conversion!, Richard Sanders described CONAP and EnfoFanm as “two stridently anti-Aristide women’s organizations” who “actively participated in destabilizing the popularly-elected Lavalas government.” Magloire, Sanders explained, “played a central role in selecting Haiti’s illegal junta, thereby giving it a veneer of legitimacy” following the 2004 coup.
Sanders explains that “within days of Aristide’s kidnapping, a ‘Tripartite Council’ - representing Aristide’s domestic and foreign opponents - chose what they called a ‘Council of Sages’” (or Council of the Wise).
This group of seven “wise” Haitians, included Danièle Magloire and Dr. Ariel Henry, the recently ousted defacto PM turned dictator of Haiti.
In the book “Canada in Haiti”, Anthony Fenton and Yves Engler argue that Magloire’s status as a ‘wise’ person came largely from her positions at EnfoFanm and CONAP.
As a member of the “Council of the Wise”, Magloire helped to select the members of the unconstitutional coup regime that replaced Aristide’s popular, democratically elected government. This began with the selection of Gérard Latortue as Prime Minister.
Demonstrating her disdain for democracy and Haitian sovereignty, Magloire issued a joint-statement on behalf of the “Council of Wise People” in mid-July 2005, saying “any media that gives voice to ‘bandits’ (code for Lavalas supporters) should be shut down. She also asserted that Fanmi Lavalas should be banned from upcoming elections.”
This joint-statement was just one part of a broader campaign to criminalize and suppress the Lavalas movement following the coup.
Magloire had nothing to say about the illegal detention of Annette Auguste, widely known as "Sò An" (Sister Anne). She was a popular folk singer and leader of a popular Lavalas organization, called Pouvwa Rasembleman Organizacion Popile.
Sò An and her five grandchildren were detained after an assault on her home led by U.S. Marines on May 18, 2004, less than three months after the coup. She was a key organizer for a demonstration against the coup and occupation to be held a week later.
While Magloire stood in support of the unconstitutional Latortue regime that she helped to select as a member of the Council of the Wise, Sò An remained illegally detained for 27 months.
Sò An was eventually acquitted of all charges.
"I am in jail for no other reason than that I am perceived as a leader and member of Fanmi Lavalas”, Sò An explained. “I am in jail because I was defending the vote the people of Haiti gave to Jean Bertrand Aristide in the elections of November 26, 2000."
There’s a sharp contrast between what Sò An endured in comparison to Magloire’s ascendancy to power through western-funded NGOs to sit on the Council of Sages. This illustrates how a feminist leader's commitment to democracy and Haitian sovereignty directly affected their trajectory in Haitian politics.
Magloire, whose role in government and career in the NGO world was leveraged largely on funding from foreign governments and private foundations hostile to Haitian sovereignty for organizations she led or was a member of. This led to her being selected by the tripartite council as a “wise person” who could select Haiti’s interim regime following the coup.
Sò An, a popular leader who fed and represented the poor masses, was detained in jail on fabricated charges for over two years, while a campaign of violent repression was unleashed on Haiti’s popular Lavalas movement.
FOKAL and the Open Societies Foundation: Agents of imperialism in Haiti
In the same year Magloire received an award from the Canadian Embassy in Haiti, her peers in FOKAL, the RNDDH, and others presented her with an award for “human rights and citizenship engagement”.
At the award ceremony, several feminist leaders spoke.
Among them was Sabine Lamour, coordinator of Solidarité des Femmes Haïtiennes (Solidarity with Haitian women - SOFA), another CIDA-funded Haitian NGO who contributed to the destabilization of the Aristide government.
SOFA also received funding from Global Affairs Canada through ASF’s AJULIH program.
Michele Pierre-Louis, FOKAL’s president, also spoke at the event.
FOKAL worked to undermine support for the Lavalas movement and the Fanmi Lavalas political party in the run up to the 2004 coup. This is largely because Aristide largely opposed neoliberal policies the west was imposing on Haiti.
In a 2008 article Nikolas Barry-Shaw explained that Pierre-Louis was “in league with the bourgeoisie’s ‘civil’ opposition front Group of 184, FOKAL played a small but visible role in late 2003 and early 2004 in characterizing the Constitutional government as repressive and intimidating."
Pierre-Louis also served briefly as Prime Minister of Haiti from September 2008 to November 2009 under President René Préval, who was a former ally of Aristide. During her time as PM, Pierre-Louis endorsed neoliberal reforms, promising to “focus on all potential sources of new capital, foreign and domestic, as well as international donors.” These neoliberal reforms were in line with policies Goerge Soros and OSF promoted worldwide.
Pierre-Louis’ efforts earned her the praise of then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during an April 2009 press conference. Clinton reassured her that the U.S. government was a “committed partner”, promising to “ provide more than $280 million in assistance to Haiti”. Pierre-Louis then thanked Clinton for her “very brilliant speech on behalf of Haiti” and thanked her “her personal commitment and that of the United States”.
About six months later, days before a majority Haitian Senate vote dismissed Pierre-Louis from her position as PM, Clinton attempted to intervene. According to an unnamed Embassy staff member, Clinton phoned Préval to “discuss the coming senate vote and the ‘damaging’ impact of the perception of instability” that would result from Pierre-Louis’ dismissal.
Haiti’s elite feminists, the fall of Baby Doc Duvalier, and support for the 2004 coup
Pierre-Louis, Magloire, and other imperialist feminists, have many things in common beyond their close relationship with western governments and foundations: Their careers followed a political trajectory that is emblematic of the journey taken by large segments of Haiti’s educated classes across the political spectrum between 1994 and 2010.
In the aforementioned article, Barry-Shaw described how these sectors of Haiti’s educated middle class and elite, radicalized over the course of the struggle against the Duvalier dictatorship and who were once close allies of Haiti popular movement, had “exaggerated revolutionary expectations” of Aristide and the Lavalas project – whose reformist goals nonetheless threatened the established order.” These perceived failures on the part of Aristide likely also played a role in the disillusionment many felt in regards to compromises Aristide made.
The obvious contradiction this sector ignored in their participation in the destabilization campaign against Aristide and Lavalas, is that it was backed by some of the same foreign governments - the United States and France - who backed the Duvalier dictatorship they fought so hard to rid Haiti of.
Moreover, it was Washington who compelled Aristide to implement neoliberal reforms upon his return to power following the first coup d'etats that forced him out of power.
Like virtually all of Aristide’s elite "left" critics, their pathological obsession with ridding Haiti of Aristide and Lavalas and subsequent support for an American-led coup and occupation put Haiti on a path to where it is today. Their shared class interests underline their view that a U.S. orchestrated coup against Aristide would lead to an eventual democratic renewal. Consequently, they aligned with Haiti’s tiny elite represented by the Group of 184 instead of building solidarity with the Haitian masses, who continued to enthusiastically support Lavalas.
Tom Reeves, a participant in the Emergency Haiti Observation Mission who visited Haiti three weeks after the coup, explained that SOFA, CONAP, and EnfoFanm “do not represent the poor people of Haiti, based on their record and the evidence of their growing lack of connection to the base.” Reeves maintains “that their unrelenting focus on ousting Aristide by whatever means played into the hands of the neoliberalists and far-right militarists.” He concluded that these feminist groups “aided the putschists and the U.S. imperial goals that lay behind them.”
To underline this point, Reeves referred to a former SOFA employee who observed that the organization had “become politically aligned with the elite political movement" who “used its position to reach the international community.... their position [on Aristide] was not derived from a vote of a dwindling membership, but rather reflects the sentiments of a small handful of paid leaders."
The trajectory of Haiti’s liberal bourgeoisie seems to have been part of a broader trend in the Caribbean during the 1990s. Gerald A. Perreira, a Guyanese educator and activist, argues that many on the Caribbean Left morphed “into liberal democrats and apologists for neo-liberal economic policies” after the fall of the Soviet Union and the U.S. invasion of Grenada and subsequent assassination of Maurice Bishop.
Perreira says that these events led to “the dominance of the Caribbean ‘Mulatto’/Creole middle-class over political parties and movements.” He explains that:
“The privilege enjoyed by this social stratum affords them the ability and access to be very vocal, dominating societal discourse and shaping narratives. They are the authors, the producers of knowledge, their voice is large, but their following is small. In fact, they are most often, with very few exceptions, alienated from the people whom they purport to represent. This means that they find themselves in the doomed-to-fail situation of fighting ‘for’ the people, rather than ‘with’ the people.”
Magloire, Pierre-Louis, Lamour, and Espérance’s ability to influence political discourse in the west and shape narratives is facilitated and enhanced through funding from Canada and other Western governments along with private foundations, who leverage their positions of privilege in Haitian society to suffocate Haiti’s sovereignty and further neoliberal policies that impoverish the masses.
Travis Ross is a teacher based in Montreal, Québec. He is also the co-editor of the Canada-Haiti Information Project at canada-haiti.ca. Travis has written for Haiti Liberté, Black Agenda Report, The Canada Files, TruthOut, and rabble.ca. He can be reached on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
Please consider setting up a monthly or annual donation through Donorbox.
More Articles
