APPENDICES
THE ARISTIDE EFFECt, THE ARISTIDE FACTOR

As a priest, molded within a religious community of the Roman Catholic Church, who then became the leading statesman of his country, Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide has been confronted with the strained relations between his country and the Western World. In his speeches at the 46th, 47th, 48th and 49th General Assemblies of the United Nations, on September 25, 1991, September 29, 1992, October 28, 1993, and October 4, 1994, this unease is clearly expressed for those who are able to read between the lines.

SEPTEMBER 25, 1991

APPENDIX I
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF
DEMOCRACY IN HAITI

Address by Mr. Jean Bertrand Aristide,
President of the Republic of Haiti,
at the Forty-Sixth Ordinary Session
of the United Nations General Assembly,
on September 25, 1991.

UNITED NATIONS, SEPTEMBER 25, 1991

Mr. President,
Mr. Secretary-General,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Friends of the 46th Ordinary Session of the General Assembly,

I am happy to greet you on behalf of the Haitian people, whose hearts beat in time with liberty, pride and dignity:

the liberty we have conquered, the pride we have rediscovered and the dignity we have restored.

From a distance may be glimpsed the smiles of a people happy to greet you in the manner of “Lavalas”.

From a distance may be heard the voice of the Haitian nation happy to be part of the United Nations, happy to be present at the United Nations.

As the echo of this multitude of Haitian voices resounds, I wish to extend to Mr. Shihabi my warmest congratulations on his election to the presidency of the General Assembly at its forty-sixth ordinary session. His exceptional qualities and his vast experience in dealing with international problems have undoubtedly rekindled hope.

Mr. President,

I should like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to his predecessor, Mr. Guido De Marco, who conducted the proceedings of the General Assembly at its forty-fifth session so wisely and with such competence. I want also to pay a warm tribute to the Secretary-General, Mr. Javier Perez de Cuellar, for his courage and patience. His mandate, unfortunately, will expire in the next few months. Without the slightest doubt, he has, with skill and farsightedness, put into effect the prescriptions laid down for the international community in the Charter of the United Nations. To a very large extent, the United Nations is in his debt for the restoration of confidence that it is enjoying today. We shall long remember this representative of Latin American diplomacy.

(In Spanish)

To my dear Latin American friends and companions I now extend a fraternal greeting. As you know, we share the experience of struggle — struggle against the enslavement of man by man, struggle for the advent of an era of peace and total liberation of the Latin American continent and the whole world.

With our comrades, friends, brothers and sisters we were united yesterday, and we are still united, for certainly, with democracy, victory will be ours. Together, we shall prevail.

(In French)

The vibration of these linguistic chords encourages me, if you allow me to do so, to add just a few notes to this symphony of languages.

(In English)

I am sure that anglophones are delighted to hear a Haitian voice saying hello. Great! Here we are all together on the way to democracy, fighting against all kinds of injustice and exploitation. The world, I am sure, will be better. Let’s go. Together, with strengthened solidarity. Up with the poor. Up with Haiti and Haitians living in the United States of America, building solidarity for the kingdom of justice, respect and dignity. To arrive at this stage of life in the history of Haiti, friends and organizations within the international community provide great solidarity to the Haitian people. For that solidarity, we shall remain grateful to the Organization that helped, and continues to help, Haitian people. For decades, Haitians have been refugees around the world. To the countries that have received us, we way, “Thanks”. To the countries that have mistreated us, we say, “Look, brothers, we are Haitians, and we are proud to be Haitians. We love Haiti. We are citizens of the world, and we are proud to be citizens of the world.” To those who have received us with respect and dignity, we say once again, “Thanks”.

(In French)

Many of our African and Arab brothers, of course, speak English. But this does not mean that we cannot have recourse to the Lingala language to greet all Africans.

(In Lingala)

I greet all Africans. Solidarity between Africa and Haiti. Let us renew the links with Africa and return to our roots of solidarity. Hand in hand. I love Africa and invite Africans to come to Haiti.

(In Swahili)

I love Africa.

(In French)

I wish also to have recourse to Arabic to speak to our Arab sisters and brothers.

(In Arabic)

How are you doing? I am very happy. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Peace be among you.

(In French)

For peace in the Middle East, I open my heart to the Jews with these words of peace:

(In Hebrew)

Peace be with you. Blessed be the name of Yahweh. I lived for three years in Israel and learned your language, and today I am happy to say to you on behalf of my people, “Peace to all of you”. We now have the opportunity, together, to do many good things. However, we do not have the time today to mention them. May this time come to pass. Blessed be the name of Yahweh.

(In French)

How can we turn our eyes toward Germany and Italy without saying:

(In German)

Good evening. How are you? Together we are strong. We have many things to do, and of course we shall travel together toward democracy.

(In French)

Already I hear the voice of eloquent silence asking me, “What about Italy?”

(In Italian)

Let there sound an Italian note. Here it is — better late than never. It would have been difficult for me to forget my friends, especially when I think that at this very time many of them are working for peace. We have said over and over again to everyone, and today we say again, that to speak of peace is to speak of the people. That is why we are happy to be among you. Let’s go!

(In Creole)

Let representatives guess which language is now going to make its entry into the United Nations. A beautiful language, a very beautiful language. A truly unique language, it is our very own Creole. I had kept it for the end since “the last shall be the first”.

(In French)

Yes, we are on our way, together with all peoples of all the United Nations, towards a better tomorrow.

Indeed, this decade has begun with events that can shape the future of mankind and of course give rise to hopes and questions. The forty-sixth session of the General Assembly crystallizes, in our view, a period of profound reflection for the international community. Unlike previous periods, this session is taking place at a time when profound upheavals are appreciably changing the geopolitical axes of our planet. The dialectic of a bipolar policy is prompting the international community to wonder who is to accede to the seat of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations. What about democracy at the global level?

We are talking about the future of the geopolitical axes, which should never be allowed to develop into totalitarianism and absolute power.

At the time when the international community is absorbed in the shifting of the geopolitical axes of the planet, let us turn to our dear Haiti, the rebellious, faithful daughter.

Rebellious toward every imperialist dictate,

Faithful to every democratic precept.

Let us also speak primarily of ten glowing beacons called “The Ten Commandments of Democracy”, arising out of our democratic praxis. Indeed, our message is limited to this democratic road where, in a straight line, are found the tenglowing beacons called “The Ten Commandments of Democracy”. [Ourtranslation]

1. The First Commandment of Democracy: Liberty or Death

As you know, Haiti was one of the first beacons of liberty in the western hemisphere. In 1791, we presented to the world the first slave revolution, through which hundreds of thousands of blacks freed themselves from the yoke of repression. The leaders of that victorious revolution helped to finance the liberating crusades of Simon Bolivar in South America. It was in Haiti that slavery was abolished for the first time: a giant step toward the liberation of humanity. The roots of the Declaration of Human Rights arose from the Haitian revolution. The Haiti of Boukman, of Dessalines, of Toussaint Louverture is and remains the first black republic in the world.

Haiti shone in the eyes of all as a star of liberty. Throughout our history, often glorious, sometimes troubled, we have always remembered with pride the unprecedented exploits of our ancestors. The cries of “Liberty or death, liberty or death”, far from being stifled by a sterile past, have resounded steadily in the heart of a people who have become, forever, a free nation.

Throughout our long march toward 1991, in spite of our contribution to the free world, Haiti has never been able to open all the doors of the international community. The colonials of those days and their allies have been afraid of freedom; our leaders and the traditional oligarchy have feared it as well. From white colonials to black colonials, we have had to break the yoke of the black dictators and their international allies.

Happily, in 1986, to the astonishment of the whole world, the Haitian people overthrew a dictatorial regime that had lasted thirty years. That was the beginning of the end of a dictatorship whose marks stare us in the face, the louder we cry out:

“Liberty or death, liberty or death!”

2. The Second Commandment of Democracy: Democracy or Death

After having banished the oppressive and corrupt regime of the Duvaliers on February 7, 1986, at the end of that long and courageous struggle, the people of Charlemagne Peralte had only one choice: to install, once and for all, a democratic regime in Haiti. In that light, “liberty or death” is no different from “democracy or death”. Hence we have waged an unremitting struggle for the conquest of our rights against minority groups who have monopolized power since 1986. The struggle is unremitting and legitimate because that power has not worked to change the nature of a government that, for a long time, has created the objective conditions for maintaining the operation of the machinery of exploitation and oppression.

Finally, on December 16, 1990, thanks to the heroic courage of the Haitian people, thanks to their contribution, we for the first time carried out free, honest and democratic elections! Honor to the Haitian masses! Glory to our ancestors, who put a stop to colonialism throughout the nineteenth century! Bravo to the international community! Bravo and applause to the United Nations!

Indeed, this was a great beginning in history. For once, through a brilliant tactical movement, a nation had carried out a revolution through the ballot box. The election of the president of the republic by more than 70 percent on the first ballot symbolized simultaneously:

The victory of the people,

The power of the people,

The demands of the people.

To summarize these free, honest and democratic elections are the outcome of a strategy proper to us, that is to say, the historic rise of Lavalas. In union there is strength: is that not our slogan? With the fork of division, we said, no one can drink the soup of elections. In the same way, no one can drink the soup of democracy with the fork of division.

In a certain sense, the strategy of Lavalas corresponds to the thinking of the Pope who, in his encyclical Centesimus Annus, indicated that the events in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union are paving the way toward the reaffirmation of the “positive character of an authentic and integral theology of human liberation”. In Haiti, this theological approach cannot be confined to a simple analysis of reality: it is meant to be, rather, a method and thought of action in the school of the poor, a privileged site of the revelation of God, historical object of that struggle for the integral liberation of humanity.

It is out of the actual experience of the poor that the pedagogy of democratic praxis arises, nourished and illuminated, of course, by liberation theology. The dialogue that must be established between the theology and politics of liberation necessarily passes by way of the experience of the poor.

When Jean-Paul Sartre, in criticizing Hegel, asserted that the latter forgot that the emptiness is empty of something, that is the point at which we, the theologians of liberation, can proclaim that the emptiness of the poor is receptive, is hungry, and it is not empty of what is essential.

Hungry for liberation — that emptiness suggests a legitimate expectation, the essence of which dwells in the spirit of the poor. It lives and gives life to democracy. It is for us who have been democratically elected to be faithful to their rights.

3. The Third Commandment of Democracy: Fidelity to Human Rights

If human beings have duties, they certainly have rights: rights to respect and to be respected. It is, in this analysis, to guarantee those rights that a just government is established.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is and remains sacred. It lays on us the heavy responsibility of faithfully obeying the constitutional mandate to “guarantee our inalienable and indefeasible rights to life, liberty andthe pursuit of happiness,” according to our Act of Independence of 1804 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. We respect the Constitution on behalf of “a Haitian nation that is socially just, economically free and politically independent”.

We respect the Constitution for the sake of establishing an ideological pluralism and political succession, to strengthen national unity, to eliminate distinctions between city and countryside, to ensure the harmonious separation and distribution of the powers of the Executive, the Judiciary and the Parliament, that is, to install a governmental regime based on fundamental freedoms and respect for human rights, and to assure the cooperationand participation of the whole population in the great decisions involving the life of the nation through an effective decentralization.

4. The Fourth Commandment of Democracy: the Right to Eat and to Work

It goes without saying that the right to eat is naturally included within the framework of human rights. The reality of people who are starving because they are exploited is an immediate accusation against the oppressor as well as the authorities who are responsible for seeing that the inalienable and indefeasible rights of life are respected.

In Haiti, the victims of the international axes of exploitation can hardly feed themselves because they are being eaten up by those international axes of exploitation. [Our translation]

With respect to the arms race, “all countries taken together devote more than five hundred billion dollars a year, i.e. one billion four hundred million dollars a day. With only fifteen days expenditure, it would be possible to eliminate hunger throughout the planet for several years.”

The drama of the starving has nothing to do with a lack of food, but rather with a lack of social justice. Work, work, and more work: that is what they need to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. Some people have shown that if, instead of a single B1 bomber, one were to build houses, for the same amount of money one could employ seventy thousand people.

How can we justify the fact that 71 percent of Haitian farmers cultivate plots of less than 1.2 hectares? How can we justify the fact that, in our country, 30 percent of the richest landowners possess more than two-thirds of the arable land?

Certainly, we have to move past the traditional indifference of the dominant political and economic sectors in order to demand respect for the right to eat and to work. The hunger of one person is the hunger of humanity itself.

Work for everyone — and a civilization based on work — in that way we can strike at the roots of hunger. The hunger of one person is the hunger of humanity itself.

In order to get beyond the limitations of language, let us explore a few trails of reality going back to February 7, 1991. In fact, since that date, the government of Lavalas has begun to bring order into our administration. The resources of the government have increased sharply…

But an increase in food production has proved to be indispensable. To achieve that, we are undertaking the agrarian reform envisaged by the Constitution, article 248, and providing the peasants with the necessary framework within which they can produce.

The private sector’s participation is essential for the creation of highly labor-intensive industries. While in the past illicit practices have enabled certain sectors to despoil the country at the expense of the majority of the population, our Lavalas government, on the contrary, is on the alert to see that the rights of all are respected. These include the right to invest in accordance with constitutional guidelines, and the right to work for human and economic growth. To you, our dear friends and foreign investors, Haiti wishes, now and in the future, to extend the warmest and most cordial welcome.

5. The Fifth Commandment of Democracy: the Right to Demand what Rightfully Belongs to Us

“Pan se pan. Pan pa paw.” (Creole) (What belongs to us is ours. Ours is not yours.)

The contribution of the Haitian people in the democratic struggle that has been set in motion throughout the last five years all over the world is remarkable and exceptional.

At the intersection of the democratic streams of Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East, South Africa, Central and South America, there erupte damongus, in Haiti, a democratic avalanche called Lavalas. No democratic nation can exist by itself, without weaving geopolitical, diplomatic, economic, and international connections.

Today, we are recording our right to demand what is rightfully ours in the context of that network of relationships where we have first acknowledged the fruits of a rich but impoverished past. Today, we also acknowledge the fruits of a present that is exploited but the bearer of hope, and this thanks to the possibility of reconciling a colonized past with a democratic present.

Heraclitus of Ephesus rightly said: “People who are awake have only one world, but those who are asleep each have a world of their own.”

As Haitian women and men who are awake, our world is the world of justice. Justice for everyone: for Haitian women and men, too often the victims of social injustice at the international level! If we scan the horizons of this world of justice, we wonder how long the impoverished will have to cry out with Democritus: “We seek the good and do not find it, we find evil without seeking it.”

Convinced that Mens agitat molem (the spirit moves the mass), our politics remains alert and attentive to the masses whose voices demand, in respect and dignity, that which is owed to them. It arises out of the treatment inflicted on a great number of our Haitian sisters and brothers who are living in foreign lands.

6. The Sixth Commandment of Democracy: Legitimate Defense of the Diaspora, or Tenth Department

Driven out until 1991 by the blind brutality of the repressive machine or by the structures of exploitation erected in an anti-democratic system, our Haitian sisters and brothers have not always had the good fortune to find a promised land. Illegal because the brutes have not had the forethought to give their victims a “certificate of torture” properly signed; or, because they have had to travel as “boat people” or without being provided with legal documents, they have nevertheless made great contributions to the economic prosperity of their bosses, preferring to do all the hardest work rather than depending on handouts.

What shall we say to our sisters and brothers who are imprisoned at Krome and elsewhere? In the name of democracy, is there no room for bending a little with regard to their files and transforming their pain in to joy? With a view to encouraging the authorities concerned to take steps in the direction of that hoped-for joy, we, the government of Haiti, are continually battling against fraudulent practices and the obtaining of phony visas on Haitian soil. At the same time, we condemn the flagrant violation of the rights of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic.

While acknowledging the sovereignty of the Dominican Republic, we must denounce and energetically condemn that violation of human rights.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic are two wings of one bird, two nations that share the beautiful island of Hispaniola. Echoing the voice of all the victims whose rights have been mocked, committed to respect human rights in spite of the social problems and financial difficulties caused by the forced repatriation of our people, we insist on respecting the two wings of the bird. This is attested by the welcome Haiti offers to all those who cross its border: women and men, Haitians and Dominicans.

In solidarity with all disadvantaged minorities, we call for reparations both for the native-born citizens of the Dominican Republic and those born in Haiti, and for the Haitian citizens who are victims of this repatriation. Here, it is not a matter of weeping when one realizes what is happening in the Dominican Republic; it is a question of defending human rights, in the name of the Haitian people, and in the name of all the men who are men all over the world and of all the women who are women all over the world. As a result, we Haitians will work together with our Dominican sisters and brothers to live in harmony and in constant dialogue. That is why, together with the Dominican citizens who do not agree with this manner of trampling human rights, we Haitian men and women, we, the people of Haiti, declare to the world that we demand reparation.

We will continue to work with the Dominican people as brothers and sisters to live in peace, but never, never will a human being worthy of the name bow his or her head when human rights are trampled under foot as is now the case for Haitians born either in the Dominican Republic or in Haiti, Haitians of Dominican origin or Dominicans of Haitian origin. It is regrettable that the question of color enters the picture, even when the people in question are Dominicans.

Arrested and expelled to Haitian territory, they ordinarily have neither roof, nor family, no remployment. Already, conservative estimates set the number of repatriates at more than fifty thousand. In the hope that the international bodies concerned will help us ensure that the fundamental rights of the persons are respected now and here after, and that they will act in solemn fashion, we proclaim with pride and dignity that:

Never again
Never again
Will our Haitian sisters and brothers
Be sold
To convert their blood into bitter sugar.

Let us always walk together with our Dominican brothers and sisters in dialogue, for the protection of the rights of all human beings, Dominicans and Haitians. To my Dominican sisters and brothers whom I love so much, I say: let us go forward together to build this peaceful work.

7. The Seventh Commandment of Democracy: No to Violence, Yes to Lavalas

A political revolution without weapons in 1991? Is it possible? Yes. Incredible, but true. The pedagogy of Lavalas, the tactical and strategic convergence of democratic forces, brandished the weapon of unity against that of violence. A stunning victory! An historic surprise!

Schooled by the poor, the pedagogy of active nonviolence and unity triumphed over institutionalized violence. After 1804, the date of our first independence, 1991 opened the era of our second independence. Does there exist a democratic nation that is capable of remaining indifferent to that victory of nonviolence precisely in the place where the structure of economic violence still holds sway? Is it right to test the patience of the victims of economic violence? If there is no such thing as a politics unconnected with force, neither is there such a thing as an economy unconnected with interests.

The capital of nonviolence that the Haitians have already invested represents considerable economic interests, thanks to the restoration of peace. A simple social-psychological approach speaks volumes. In fact, the less the social self is under attack by the antiquated oligarchy, the more psychological, political and economic health it enjoys. The pedagogy of nonviolence may support a collective raising of consciousness with regard to our country of nonviolence — a nonviolent country where, nevertheless, 85 percent of the population, crushed under the weight of economic violence, is still illiterate; illiterates who are not animals. Teaching these victims to read, today, is a challenge to the true friends of the Haitian people. I am not speaking of friends but of true friends. You who are true friends, do not be observers. Be actors, in as much as you are citizens of the world.

Together, let us participate in a campaign for literacy. Can we count on your cooperation? We hope so. All cooperation at this level testifies to a willingness to struggle against economic violence through active nonviolence.

May the sunshine of nonviolence shine Lavalassely where the cannons of violence are roaring! [Our translation]

8. The Eighth Commandment of Democracy:
Fidelity to the Human Being, the Highest Form of Wealth

To speak of the human being as the highest form of wealth may imply that we are forgetting gold, oil, or greenbacks. Far from it. There is wealth, and then there is wealth. According to certain experts, if America’s hydroelectric potential were fully exploited, it would furnish more energy than all the oil that is consumed by the whole world.

All this wealth should be at the service of human beings, the pivot on which the whole politics of Lavalas turns. We, too, are ready to prove our fidelity to humanity, embracing everything that promotes its full development. Hence the harmonious ties already fashioned with CARICOM are located within the framework of Caribbean solidarity for the purpose of better promoting human well-being.

Weare also working at the intersection of our south-south relations, between our neighbors in South America and ourselves. South-south relations are not the only important ones for Haiti. In fact, we share a political heritage with the United States, whose independence reminds us of the Haitian pioneers who, precisely for the sake of that independence, were beaten and killed. Like France, with which we also share a political heritage together with the United States, the other countries of North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and other parts of the globe are situated together with us within the network of interdependence that binds all the nations of the globe.

We offer patriotic greetings to the Haitian women and men living in Cuba, without forgetting Cuba and the Cuban people to whom we express our wishes for peace and growth in democracy. We want to address these same wishes for peace and growth in democracy to the Middle East and South Africa. United with all the blacks of Africa who are called to enjoy all the rights recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we take advantage of this occasion to ask the international community, and especially the industrialized countries, not to lift too soon the global sanctions imposed against the government of Pretoria. Diametrically opposed to apartheid, the Republic of Haiti is striving to see that the black majority in South Africa may have full enjoyment of its rights in a multiracial, democratic society. Bravo Mandela! Honor to Mandela!

If the name of Mandela excites such applause, certainly another man deserves to be applauded as well: I am speaking of Martin Luther King.

The Haitian government has noted with satisfaction the cease-fire recently adopted between the parties to the conflict in the western Sahara, and reiterates its support for the process now at work. The suffering of one human being is the suffering of humanity. Our politics intends to offer, day by day, an eloquent witness to that fidelity, fidelity to humanity.

9. The Ninth Commandment of Democracy: Fidelity to our Culture

The Lavalas praxis interlaces the cultural bonds at the very heart of the political universe. Resistance to cultural alienation guarantees the psychological health of the democratic fabric. In fact, every kind of cultural suicide results in deviance in the social body and inevitably threatens the democratic cells.

To live, and to live fully, also means nourishing one self at the sources of one’s culture; it means plunging the roots of one’s being into those sources.

Those cultural sources incorporate the whole life of a people. We are speaking of a density of nature that has to be studied and explored. By that nature we mean a fabric of multidimensional relationships. Defining the human being not as an end but as a bridge, Friedrich Nietzsche situated humanity, whether that was his intention or not, at the intersection of acculturation and inculturation. It is a question of the transmission of cultural seeds capable of vivifying or wounding a being in its very essence.

The seeds of pathological guilt transmitted by contact between the cultures that are called dominant and dominated can only injure any democratic encounter.

The politics of Lavalas endeavors to validate our cultural identity. No truly deep change can be accomplished democratically without an articulation of the indigenous values that are closely linked with any genuine socio-cultural fabric.

Kòd lonbrit nou
mare n ak rasin nou.

Rasin nou ak mwèl nou
se menmman parèyman.

Souse mwèl nou
se koupe rasin nou.

Koupe rasin nou
se sasinen kilti nou.

That fidelity to the culture of humanity invites us to share the concerns of the Kurdish people, the Palestinian people, the Jewish people, the peoples of Iraq — all of them firmly attached to the roots of their own being.

In this perspective of respect and peace, the Republic of Haiti rejoices greatly at the imminent admission of the two Koreas to the family of the United Nations.

Fidelity to our culture urges us to sharpen our critical sense in order to protect the health of our culture against certain plagues, such as the illicit traffic in narcotics. The Haitian government is resolved to recall that an effective struggle against the production of drugs is also conditional on the extension of stronger assistance to the Latin American countries.

As regards drug trafficking itself, it is important to recall that is generated and fed by the demands of the North. It is also necessary, at all costs, to eliminate the incentives to production coming from consumers in the industrialized countries. Concerted action involving governments North and South, aided by the United Nations, would permit us to conduct a more effective struggle against this plague of assorted drugs that is eating away at men and women.

10. The Tenth Commandment of Democracy: Everyone Around the Same Table

Yes, everyone around the democratic table.

Neither a minority on the table,

Nor a majority under the table,

But everyone around the same table.

That, I think, is the historic meeting place as we approach 1992; on the eve of the celebration of five hundred years of evangelization for more than one country, but primarily and before all, of resistance on the part of us Haitians, women and men. For throughout those five hundred years we have resisted in order to follow and protect our freedom and our dignity. That is why, on the eve of the celebration of these five hundred years, which we call the five centuries of resistance — quantitative and qualitative — we can speak of this gathering around the table. It is truly and genuinely a challenge to be accepted on the threshold of the third millennium.

Sisters and brothers of Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Martinique: our past struggle against colonialism has inevitably led us toward the establishment of deeper ties in the course of our long march toward the democratic table.

A new social contract at the Caribbean, Latin American and international level is clearly necessary for us to join together one day, all of us around the democratic table.

Since December 16, 1990, the date of our elections under the supervision of the United Nations, we in Haiti are on the march toward that meeting place.

To get there — and so that wemay all get there — it is time that indebtedness cease to be the condition that governs the net transfer of the resources of our impoverished countries to the rich nations — I do not talk about “developed countries” but rather “countries that are called developed” — a transfer that has reached $115 billion. In 1989 alone, that transfer reached almost $60 billion — financial resources that the southern countries for their own growth need absolutely .

Mr. President,

I hope that the Fourth Decade of Development will produce concrete results in the realmof the new international order that is to be inaugurated.

HERE AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, THE REPUBLIC OF HAITI RENOUNCES ABSOLUTISM, EMBRACES PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY, AND INTONES THE HYMN OF LIBERTY, PRIDE AND DIGNITY.

Liberty achieved!

Pride restored!

Dignity restored!

Here at the end of the twentieth century, the Republic of Haiti has the honor to salute the Unity fo the Nations.

Nations united

For one united world.

Nations united

By united peoples.

As for the Haitian people, we again hail their heroic courage, crying “in the voice of Charlemagne Peralte,” “in the voice of Dessalines,” “in the voice of Lavalas”;

It is better to perish with the people
Than to succeed without the people.
But with the people,
We know no defeat, so
Victory is ours!

Pase pou n reyisi san pèp la
Pito n echwe ak pèp la
E ak pèp la, nou pap echwe.

And again,
We believe in humanity.
Whenever a human being is exploited,
Call out to us.
At your call, we answer
“yes”, 77 times “yes”,
To exploitation, we answer
“no”, 77 times “no”.
To defend human rights
Is the mission of the United Nations.

We believe in peace.
Where war is raging,
Call out to us.
At your call, we answer
“yes”, 77 times “yes”,
To war, we answer
“no”, 77 times “no”.
To guarantee the peace
Is the mission of the United Nations.

We believe in the brotherhood, the sisterhood of peoples.
Where whole peoples are excluded, disenfranchised,
Call out to us.
At your call, we answer
“yes”, 77 times “yes”,
To exclusion, to disenfranchisement, we answer
“no”, 77 times “no”.
To be a place of dialogue
Is the mission of the United Nations.

We believe in the Haitian people.
Where they are struggling “Lavalas-ly”,
We are there and we will always be there.
It is better to perish with the people
Than to succeed without the people.

While holding fast
To the echo of this credo
By way of a conclusion
Let us hold fast
To the echo of the credo of democracy.

We believe in these Ten Commandments of Democracy
We believe in democratic politics.
We believe in a meeting place where there will be
Neither a minority on the table,
Nor a majority under the table,
But where ALL will be around the table.

Thus let it be
In the name of the People
And of their Children
And of their Holy Spirit
Amen!

United, we are strong.
United in the Caribbean, we are a power,
United in the world, we are a power
For Peace, for Justice, for Love and for Liberty.

Do we have the right to speak here?
If so, let us speak together, so that the echo resound in Haiti.
Yon sèl nou fèb.
Ansanm nou fò.
Ansanm ansanm nou se Lavalas.

Alone we are weak,
Together we are strong,
All together we are Lavalas.