Social Science Research Council

Solidarity with the Struggle of the Dominican Minority of Haitian Descent for Citizenship and Justice

By Movimiento de Mujeres Domínico-Haitianas (MUDHA)


Introductory Comment (By Samuel Martínez)

The following article contains selections from a document distributed at the UN's Durban Conference on Racism in August of 2001. It is authored by the staff of the Movimiento de Mujeres Domínico-Haitianas (MUDHA), a non-governmental organization based in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. MUDHA's main mission is to defend and promote the rights of female immigrants from Haiti in the Dominican Republic (the two nations share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola), and to attain rights of full citizenship for their Dominican-born children. MUDHA came to life in 1983 as a branch of the Centro Cultural Domínico-Haitiano (CCDH), the oldest Haitian rights organization in the Dominican Republic, and it has been an officially-registered organization since 1995. In the late 1990s, MUDHA gained international prominence for its courageous sponsorship of successful litigation before the Inter-American Court of Justice on behalf of undocumented Haitian immigrants and Haitian-Dominicans who were repatriated to Haiti without due process. In spite of repeated anonymous threats of physical harm against them, MUDHA continues to bring such cases before this international court, with the assistance of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Justice and International Law, and the law clinics of the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University. This said, grassroots organizing and education in Haitian-Dominican base communities remain MUDHA's core activity, with a particular emphasis on health (especially reproductive health), rights education and legal advocacy. MUDHA, in much the same manner as its parent organization, the CCDH, collaborates with local groups to determine priorities for action and to coordinate strategies for community outreach. These local groups are mainly found among the large and relatively-stable Haitian communities in the country's sugarcane plantations.

It is frequently said that the living conditions and social relations in these sugar company compounds (bateyes) hearken to another century. The extreme poverty of the target population constitutes a major challenge. Add social discrimination and a lack of legal documentation and one can begin to understand why MUDHA and the CCDH work on a very broad spectrum of issues, including not just constitutional rights and legal defense but women's empowerment, public health, child and adult education, economic development, and cultural revitalization. The article that follows provides an excellent panorama of the multitude of basic rights deprivations that confront the Haitian-Dominican community. Coming to terms with not only the multiplicity but the inter-connections among these rights infringements may yet test the limits of the international human rights community's conventional, legally-based and political/civil rights-oriented, approaches.

Even as certain problems appear to remain intractable, the overall circumstances of MUDHA's work have undergone rapid change since the mid-1990s. Capital divestment in the predominantly state-owned sugar industry has precipitated a rapid, if probably overdue, decline in sugar production. The state is leasing its sugar properties to private interests and these have balked at taking responsibility for the upkeep of housing, non-essential infrastructure and amenities in the bateyes. Municipal and national government has been slow to take up the burden of providing services to the bateyes, which had been treated as de facto sugar company fiefdoms for generations previous, beginning back when these plantations were all North American corporate enclaves. Already grossly inadequate at the best of times, both levels of employment and living conditions of sugar workers and their families have undergone a dramatic decline. Those workers who have the opportunity are leaving. Though no reliable general survey of the Haitian immigrant population has been done, it is clear that the majority of newcomers from Haiti are now going into a variety of bottom-level urban and rural jobs without first passing through the sugar plantations.

In this volatile situation, even reforms can bring unforeseen negative consequences for the immigrant populations they are intended to serve. For example, human rights observers had for years denounced that the sugar companies were granted almost complete autonomy in policing their properties through their own private police forces (called guardias campestres) that committed abuses with impunity. The National Police rarely set foot on the sugar plantations. With the recent privatization of the estates, the size and power of the guardias campestres have declined and in a few bateyes police stations have been built. Unfortunately, unpublished reports indicate that certain police officers have seen their placement in these remote communities as an opportunity to exploit and prey upon their vulnerable hosts, and do so with perhaps even greater impunity than could the guardias campestres. The latter, after all, lived in the communities that they policed and hence were more controllable by locals via gossip, shunning, witchcraft, and vandalism of their personal property.

This is but one anecdote, of limited relevance, but it is I think illustrative of the current challenge before MUDHA and the other Dominican and international actors who are trying to bring some betterment to the Haitian immigrant community. Piecemeal legal reforms may in the short term simply expose Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans to an unfamiliar and even more rigid set of national police and juridical institutions, open to all citizens in theory but in practice closed as avenues of redress to impoverished undocumented immigrants. Amid the rapid changes in the immigrants' mode of insertion into the Dominican economy and the crumbling of the sugar empire, certain constraints remain largely unmodified. The illiteracy, undocumented status and fear of mistreatment of the victims combine with the racial prejudice, xenophobia, and sexism of the victimizers to make access to justice elusive. The rapid pace of change brings hope for a better future-and there is so much more hope than existed a mere decade ago-but the process of adjustment will likely bring painful reverses, for which solidarity from the international human rights community must not only continue but be broadened to match the scope of the challenge before MUDHA and its allied and partner organizations and groups.

Racism and 'anti-Haitianism' are the most powerful ideological instruments used by the ruling classes in this country to justify and defend exploitation. Here, as in all the systems of production based on forced labor in the New World, the construction of anti-African racism was an instrument to justify the unjustifiable exploitation of the Black African. This ideology, writes historian Roberto Cassa, became "a social factor of such importance that it penetrated the non-white sections of the ruling classes and even has great influence in our own times among the exploited masses, composed basically of blacks and mulattos."

A 'successful' process of racial mixing in the Spanish part of the island gave rise to a mulatto people but this did not prevent skin color from being a strong element of social differentiation. Thus the myth of hispanidad (Spanish-ness) was imposed by the ruling class on the rest of the population. This ideology created a scale of values where the whitest people, physically and culturally closest to the colonizer, benefited the most, and it created the need among the mulatto population to 'whiten itself' (blanquearse). Lil Despradel writes that "the desire to whiten him/herself gave rise in the Dominican mulatto to a sense of shame for the African half, for a past that became an enemy; and from there, in a process of alienation, the mulatto adopts the racism of the colonizer." In this same process of cultural alienation is born the myth of the Dominican 'indio' (Indian), a social construction which consists of denying blackness in order to be more like the white. Thus the mulatto becomes an 'Indian' and the black person, a 'dark Indian', different levels of approximation to the white, which have nothing to do with being black.

The Dominican intelligentsia, historians and writers, assumed the responsibility of giving a theoretical basis to hispanidad and the myth of the indio among Dominicans. These two elements contributed to the development of a social consciousness that identifies the enemy with the Haitian and the Haitian with the black.

'Anti-Haitianism'

The Dominican Republic has a peculiar political history. Unlike the other nations of the continent, its independence was not achieved against a European colonizer but against its island neighbor, Haiti. Very early, the leadership of the ruling class was expressed in relation to the need for defense against the neighbor. The national identity was developed in opposition to Haiti.

With the development of the sugar industry at the end of the 19th century and the massive importation of Haitian labor for that industry, anti-Haitian sentiments among the population were reinforced. However, it was during the Trujillo tyranny (1930 to 1961) that anti-Haitianism achieved its most intense expression, becoming a crucial part of the ideological justification of the dictatorship, particularly in relation to the definition of the nation. This meant strengthening of the concept of Dominican identity as closely linked to the myth of hispanidad. The following words of former Dominican President Joaquín Balaguer sum up the racist and anti-Haitian ideology of that regime well: "The Haitian immigrant has also been a producer of laziness in Santo Domingo. The Ethiopian [sic] race is indolent by nature and does not apply its energy to any useful purpose…the black that migrates to Santo Domingo is a being marked by horrific physical symptoms."

The development of a racist ideology in the context of a society where the majority of the population is black or mulatto implies a profound cultural alienation. Similarly, anti-Haitian xenophobia contains a triple prejudice-ethnically, racially and class-based-in as much as it discriminates against the Haitian for being poor, black and Haitian, a prejudice that boomerangs on those Dominicans who, though not Haitian, are poor and black. This prejudice is maintained and reproduced by means of the education system, certain aspects of popular culture and the cynical manipulation of the issue by political parties and successive governments.

In recent history, the moment where anti-Haitianism was perhaps most exacerbated was during the election campaigns of 1994 and 1996. Through the Patriotic Front a political propaganda campaign was orchestrated to frighten the country with the argument that the nation was in danger of being absorbed by Haiti if the late Dr José Francisco Peña Gómez (a very dark-complexioned man, of distant Haitian parentage) were to win the election, given that for Balaguer and his allies of the moment, Peña was Haitian. Through this use of the myth of the Haitian menace to manipulate the Dominican people, the most conservative sectors of the country managed to block the path to power of Peña Gómez, thus depriving the people of having as their president a black man of working class origin.

Migrant Workers

Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic suffer severe exploitation and discrimination. Compelled to do the roughest and worst paid work, they usually lack legal documents. In spite of having in many instances lived and worked in the country for decades, they live in constant fear of expulsion.

Workers of Haitian descent today are to be found in all branches of agriculture, in domestic service and, with considerable problems of insertion, in other sectors of the labor market open to the popular classes. Following the sharp downturn of the sugar industry of the last two decades, some immigrant workers from Haiti no longer go to the sugar bateys but go straight into urban activities.(1) Women are also a much more significant part of this new immigration, and they come with a greater than ever degree of independence in relation to men, which allows them to go into a wider variety of occupations. Good examples are those women who come to take part directly in the informal economy, selling clothes and food and taking part in other forms of petty commerce. Despite these new trends, the batey, with its growing problems of hygiene and housing, continues to be an important place of residence and point of reference for the population of Haitian descent.

The arrival of this new wave of migrants coincides with the substitution in the Dominican Republic of the economic model based on agricultural exports for one based on the Export Processing Zones, tourism and services. The significant incorporation of the host population into these new activities and the dramatic growth of emigration to the US and other new destinations, led to a shortage of labor in rice, coffee, cocoa and other branches of agriculture, as well as in certain urban activities such as the most arduous and worst paid jobs in the buildings trade. These are the jobs generally filled by the new Haitian immigrants.

Official discourse has tried to explain the growing presence of these workers exclusively as a function of poverty in Haiti. There is no doubt that the prolonged political crisis and collapse of the Haitian economy are factors that generate emigration, not only among the peasantry but also for significant urban sectors. However, this immigration also responds to the needs of various sectors of the Dominican economy for a supply of labor prepared to do work that local workers will not, due to low salaries and terrible working and living conditions.

There is a double standard at work here. The very same government that expels undocumented workers also facilitates their entry and exploits them in the building of public works. Similarly, the same boss that says he feels frightened by Haitian 'invasion' is the one who pays the trafficker who recruits the immigrants and brings them into the country without documents.

Being undocumented becomes a powerful mechanism of exploitation, to the degree that it prevents the immigrants from organizing or making any claims whatsoever. The use of Haitian labor in the country is accompanied by a racist and xenophobic ideology that attributes all sorts of ills to Haitian immigration: unemployment, the loss of national identity, the transmission of contagious diseases. This reinforces the exploitation of these immigrants, for the more they are hated, the more they are forced to accept low wages. The cultural division of labor (the worst for the Haitian, the rest for nationals) and the ideology that supports it, corresponds perfectly to the interests of the employers, as it divides the labor force and prevents any organization on the basis of class solidarity.

Dominican Women of Haitian Descent : Racism and Xenophobia in the Dominican Republic

Dominican women of Haitian ancestry suffer a four-fold discrimination: being poor, women, black and of Haitian descent. This is in a country signatory of the Convention on all Forms of Racial Discrimination and in which many international instruments for the protection of human rights have been incorporated into national laws. The relationship between ethnicity, poverty and blackness is clear. The living and working conditions of Dominican women are relatively better than those of Dominican women of Haitian descent and of Haitian immigrant women. Limited access to education and the lack of documentation of Haitian immigrant women and Dominicans of Haitian descent combine with anti-Haitianism and racism to place these women at a distinct disadvantage in relation to Dominican women.

Dominican women of Haitian descent have unclear citizenship status due to their lack of documentation. The exclusion of Haitian immigrant women and Dominicans of Haitian descent from access to services even threatened to assume legal status in a proposed law, not passed by Congress, which would have sanctioned doctors who gave medical attention to these women. Its failure to become law was partly the result of an unprecedented incident, in which a woman, who had been refused admission to a hospital, gave birth in the street. During the last few years, Haitian women and Dominican women of Haitian descent who do give birth in hospitals have been denied the certification of the birth, an act, which later prevents them from registering the child on the Civil Register. These children are thus condemned to being 'undocumented persons' in the country of their birth.

The Right to a Nationality

The Dominican State has systematically withheld the recognition of their civil rights to that part of its population that is of Haitian origin, even when that ancestry is remote, despite the fact that the Dominican Constitution and all the International Conventions the country has signed clearly recognize these rights. The Dominican Constitution recognizes 'jus soli' as the main means of acquisition of Dominican nationality, establishing only two exceptions: "All persons born on Dominican soil, with the exception of the legitimate children of foreigners resident in the Republic with diplomatic status, or those who are in transit through the country" (Article 11). The meaning seems clear enough. The children of Haitians who are born in the country are Dominicans, given that they are, except in the rarest of circumstances, neither children of diplomats nor persons in transit to another country. Yet the authorities assert that this is not so, invoking the exception referring to persons in transit to deny the right to Dominican nationality to those children of Haitians born in the country, by arguing that their parents, who generally have no documents, are in transit as described in Article 11. In a deliberate act of bad faith, the notions of 'in transit' and 'non resident' are confused. In this way, people who have been living in the country for more than twenty years may be considered to be in transit, which is patently absurd. This interpretation of Article 11 holds in spite of the fact that the current Migration Law (Law No.95 of 1939) clearly defines the notion of transit as referring to "those foreigners who try to enter the Republic with the main aim of going through the country en route to an external destination." Following this definition, the category 'in transit' can in no way be applied to Haitian immigrants whose intent is in fact to stay and work, and who have in most instances been in the country for years. They are in fact undocumented workers, not transients.

Another argument that has been used to deny the right to Dominican nationality to Dominicans of Haitian descent is the legal principle that no one can derive legal benefits from an illegal act. The problem here is that a legal principle needs to be enshrined in the laws of a country to be applicable. Neither the Constitution nor the Migration Law make any reference to this principle. Furthermore, many Haitian immigrants originally came with state or other legal contracts. Still others were brought in 'illegally' but by legal Dominican entities.

The denial of the right to a nationality can have dramatic consequences for Dominicans of Haitian origin. The case of Claubian Joseph Jacques illustrates this well. In spite of having the highest mark in the whole country in the national exams of 1998, which earned him the commendation of then President Leonel Fernández, he was unable to graduate from high school for lack of a birth certificate proving his Dominican nationality. Nor was Claubian able to continue his studies, get a national identity card, a passport, or the right to vote. Like so many of his peers, he has no official existence. He has no record of his birth, and if this situation is not resolved, even his death will go unrecorded.

With the denial of these rights, Dominican authorities stand in clear violation of all the international conventions on the right to a name and a nationality that the Dominican Republic has signed, particularly the International Convention on Political and Civil Rights. This has been ratified by the country and in its article 24 establishes that:

a) Every child, without discrimination as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, national or social origin, fortune or birth, has the right to the measures of protection that his status as a minor demands from his family, society and the State.
b) Every child should be registered immediately after his birth and should be given a name.
c) Every child has the right to acquire a nationality.

The denial of these fundamental rights is in sharp contrast to the treatment the Dominican government has traditionally given to other ethnic groups, and incidentally with that accorded the children of Dominican immigrants in the US. Indeed, the refugees who arrived from the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, as well as the Syrio-Libano-Palestinians who arrived at about the same time, are now fully fledged Dominican citizens, whereas the Haitians, who have been here longer, continue to be Haitians and their descendants, stateless. The former are seen as a desirable immigrants, easily accepted. The latter, by contrast, have been traditionally perceived as the 'other,' 'black,' and 'inferior,' and are not considered worthy of being Dominican, despite the fact that they, their parents, their grandparents, and even their great grandparents may have been born in the country.

The Culture of Dominicans of Haitian Descent:

The children of Haitians born in the country are Dominicans because they are culturally Dominican, as well. Without turning their backs on the culture of their parents, they share the essential aspects of a common culture-beliefs, language, traditions-with the rest of the Dominican population. Moreover, they define themselves as Dominicans or Haitian-Dominicans. This should not be seen as a double identity. The most recent work on second-generation immigrants suggests that theirs is in fact a syncretic identity, a new identity. In our case, it is a new way of being Dominican.

The fact that they tend to define themselves as Dominican does not, however, prevent them from admitting that the biggest problems that they confront in the country are racism, the denial of their nationality and their rejection by certain sectors of the host population. The common perception has been that Dominicans of Haitian descent are Haitian. Even most social scientific studies on the Haitian presence in the Dominican Republic fail to make a distinction between the generations. In the information media, it is common to hear people speak of "Haitians born in the Dominican Republic," as if the children of Haitian parents did not have the right to be Dominican or take part in a process of acculturation that would allow them to be seen as such.

Access to Justice

Dominican laws purport to guarantee access to justice without discrimination by race or ethnicity, but there are both objective and subjective impediments that make it impossible for Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent to have access to justice. These impediments violate Dominican laws and the rights of these immigrants and their descendants born in the country. The first of these is the high cost of legal proceedings, an average of RD$5,000 a month (US$300).(2) This is up to four times the monthly salary of Haitian residents and their descendants. Free legal aid is limited to accused parties and is not available for victims in litigation. Most Haitian litigants need help in labor matters (e.g., exploitation, theft of their earnings) and human rights (e.g., mistreatment, discrimination, unjustified deportation). Dominicans of Haitian descent also need legal help in civil matters, such as the recognition of their nationality.

Lack of information is also a problem for this population. Usually, Haitian immigrants are completely ignorant of Dominican laws and so are incapable of knowing which of their rights are guaranteed by those laws. Then, even if they do somehow manage to get free access to justice, the case will be conducted in Spanish, a language, which many do not speak well, thus limiting their ability to defend themselves still further.

The lack of legal identity documentation is another factor limiting their access to justice, especially in cases of Civil Law (Private Law). The fear of expulsion, mistreatment or the confiscation of their documents also limits the access to justice of Haitians and their descendants.

Massive Expulsions

The Dominican Republic has implemented a systematic, massive and increasing policy of expulsions and harassment of Haitians and their descendants with or without documents. One criterion for expulsion is skin color. Black Dominicans (with no known Haitian ancestry) have in fact been expelled on the basis of their color. The length of residence, goods acquired or family ties established have little influence over the application of this policy.

The numbers of people expelled have been increasing year by year. In 1998 the Dirección General de Migración (DGM) expelled 13,733 undocumented Haitians.(3) In 1999, this increased to 17,524, and between January 2000 and April 2001 to 20,121. These figures may be underestimates, given that the Army reports having deported some 45,135 Haitians, just between August 2000 and January 2001.(4)

Usually, expulsions to Haiti have been characterized by violations of human rights, international agreements and national laws. On various occasions, both Dominican and Haitian social organizations have denounced the Dominican government before different international organizations for these violations. The main violations have had to do with unjustified expulsions, mistreatment, the separation of families, confiscation of goods and procedural violations.

On August 3rd 2000, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recognized various cases of human rights violations during the expulsion of Haitians and of Dominicans of Haitian ancestry. The Government was instructed by the Court to facilitate the reunification of separated families, to avoid expelling Dominicans of Haitian ancestry and to provide quarterly reports on conditions in the bateys near the frontier. During the expulsions there have been reports of mistreatment, including beatings. Detainees have been made to wait for expulsion in unsuitable places, exposed to the elements. Expulsees have been taken to Haitian departments far from their places of origin. There have also been accusations of rape of women and girls during expulsions, such as the cases of the Batey Muñoz in Montellano and in coffee-growing areas of Barahona in August of 1998.

Family separations have occasioned dire hardships. Mothers and fathers have been separated from small children. When arrested, expulsees lose their few belongings after being prevented from gathering these to take with them. Other violations flow from the failure to observe the country's own laws, bilateral agreements and international treaties. The military chiefly carries out expulsions without observing the legal and administrative procedures established by law.

The way in which these expulsions have been carried out has only served to discredit the Dominican Republic internationally and to make relations between the country and its neighbors even more difficult. The expelled workers come back into the country quickly, because they have left behind their belongings and their families and have an employer waiting to give them a job for a few pesos.

Access to Services: Health, Education, Housing & Drinking Water:

As a result of an immigration and general public policy that is racist and segregationist, most of the population of Haitians and their descendants still live in the bateys or in marginalized parts of the Dominican Republic where access to services is very precarious. According to the Commission for Public Companies (CREP), 32 % of the bateys of the State Sugar Council (CEA) have no drinking water infrastructure, 66% have no form of sewage, and 16% receive no kind of medical assistance.(5) Furthermore, the privatization process in the bateys has been a source of great worry and uncertainty to the families who live there. Very few Haitians or Dominicans of Haitian descent own the dwellings where they live.

Thirty percent of the inhabitants of the bateys have no access to formal education.(6) Those that do suffer from over age children in classes, truancy, desertion, multi-grade classrooms with inadequate conditions, over large classes, lack of teachers and curricula that in no way reflect the cultural diversity of the batey.(7) According to research carried out by FLACSO, about 30% of batey children have no birth certificate, which prevents them from going to school. The Secretary of State for Education has promised that all children would be allowed to register for school, with or without birth certificates. However, this would only resolve the problem of entry into the school system. All other problems stemming from this lack of documentation would continue.

As President Hipólito Mejía has recognized, "If we ask ourselves what is the case that best represents the extremes of poverty in the country, I think we would all mention the conditions of life in the bateys." The current government has offered to improve the living conditions in the bateys but the lack of decent housing and basic services in these communities remains shocking.

Ways Forward in the Struggle against Exploitation, Discrimination, Racism and Anti-Haitian Xenophobia. The social, economic and legal situation of Haitian workers and a Dominicans of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic is extremely precarious. In the light of this, we propose the following agenda:

Judicial & Legal

1) We need reliable data on the population in question. We call for a special census, carried out under the authority of the Dominican State, but advised and monitored by the international community. Persecution and expulsion have bred mistrust of the Dominican authorities among the Haitian immigrant population. This census should moreover consider women as autonomous legal subjects, not as attachments to their legal or common law husbands.
2) We call for the modification of the obsolete immigration law that treats immigration exclusively in terms of security, forgetting that it is essentially a social phenomenon. We insist on the elimination of procedures that make it impossible to regularize the legal status of these workers, thus perpetuating their undocumented status.
3) We call for the setting up of administrative mechanisms so that all Dominicans of Haitian descent can be included, as the Constitution demands, in the civil registers of the country's municipalities.
4) The announcement by the Secretary of State for Education that school inscriptions will be allowed for children with or without birth certificates will benefit many children of Haitian descent and other marginalized Dominicans. It is, however, a measure of limited effect, to be supported but understood as only a step in the struggle to do away with all the administrative obstructions that prevent full official registration of all children.
5) We propose that permanent residency be offered to all Haitian workers that have been in the country for five years or more.
6) We propose that workers with less than five years in the country be issued with temporary work permits, which can later be transformed into permanent residents' permits.
7) We propose the regularization of temporary migration, the issuance of temporary work permits and the recognition for these workers of the rights established in the Labor Code.
8) We demand from the Haitian government that, prior to reaching an agreement with the Dominican authorities, they issue identity documents (e.g., birth certificates, passports) to Haitian immigrants who have settled in the Dominican Republic.
9) We call upon both the Haitian and the Dominican governments to respect their own legislation and the relevant international conventions on migration, integrating them into their respective national laws where they have not already done so.

Political

1) We urge that the Dominican government relieve the army of all responsibility for matters related to Haitian immigration and that these be put into the hands of a civilian institution.
2) We demand that an end be put to the tragic expulsions that have been going on since 1935.
3) We ask of the international community that all economic aid to the Dominican Republic be made conditional on respect for the human rights of the Haitian immigrants and the entire Dominican population.
4) We insist that the Dominican-Haitian Bilateral Mixed Commission pay more attention to the question of migration, given that so far the economic matters have taken precedence over all others.
5) We propose that an international conference be held in the Dominican Republic with representatives from the Organization of American States, CARICOM, the UNDP and the ILO, international human rights organizations, the Dominican and Haitian authorities and civil society organizations from both countries, in order to define the forms of collaboration that can be offered by the international community to both states for regularizing the status of Haitian immigrants and of Dominicans of Haitian descent.

Socio-economic

1) We propose that a general social agreement be sought on the Haitian question in which the responsibility of the government, employers and unions be defined in relation to this population.
2) We suggest that the international institutions (World Bank, IADB, the EU) implement programs to improve the living conditions of this population in the Dominican Republic.
3) We demand that the Dominican government eliminate all the practices that impede this population's access to health services, housing, education and justice. This should be accompanied by affirmative action programs among Haitian immigrant workers and their descendants to facilitate their integration and to pay back the social debt that the Dominican state owes them.
4) We suggest that studies be carried out of the crucial contribution of Haitian labor to the Dominican economy.

Cultural

1) We ask governments and international organizations with pertinent experience in migration and its effects to make available resources for sensitizing and educating the Dominican public concerning the contribution of Haitians and their descendants to the development of the country and the necessity of their harmonious integration into Dominican society.
2) It must be made quite clear to Dominican workers and the rest of the popular classes that the exploitation of and denial of rights to Haitian immigrant workers and Dominicans of Haitian descent and do not correspond in any way to their own interests but rather to those of the ruling classes.
3) We propose that all the country's schools introduce anti-racist and inter-cultural education and teach about human rights with the aim of teaching children to respect difference and promoting among them harmonious inter-cultural relations. All teaching materials should be free of racist or anti-Haitian references and should include full recognition of the contribution made by Haitians and their descendants to the economic, social and cultural development of the country, with particular reference to their contribution to popular culture.
4) There is much work to be done to strengthen organizations that represent the population in question. Conditions have prevented Dominicans of Haitian descent and Haitians from developing a prestigious institution like other groups in Dominican society have done. Unstinting effort should go into the creation of a solid community institution to raise the sense of self-worth of the community, to celebrate Haitian and Haitian-Dominican culture and to negotiate better living conditions for Haitians and their Dominican descendants living in the country.


__________

Notes:

1. The term batey, of Taino origin, is still used to refer to the living quarters constructed for the sugar cane workers.

2. Said, Javier. Costo del Sistema de Justicia Penal en Santo Domingo. [Cost of the Penal Justice System in Santo Domingo.] Cited by Ricardo Valverde Gómez in Acceso a la Justicia y Equidad [Access to Justice and Equity], (San Jose, Costa Rica: BID-IIDH, 2000), 372.

3. DGM. Anuario de Migraciones 1998-2000. [Migration Almanac 1998-2000.]

4. González, Peterson. National Army deported more than 45 million Haitians from August to January. El Siglo (5 February 2001).

5. Mateo, Wendy. Los bateyes y el paquetazo social. [The bateyes and the social legislative package.] Hoy (16 March 2001).

6. CREP. Diagnóstico social de los Bateyes. Análisis-Encuesta de hogar bateyes ingenios del CEA. [Social Examination of the Bateyes. Household Survey-Analysis, Bateyes of the CEA.]

7. FLACSO. Derecho al nombre y a la nacionalidad de los hijos de inmigrantes nacidos en el país. [The Right to a Name and a Nationality of the Dominican-Born Children of Immigrants.]

Movimiento de Mujeres Domínico-Haitianas (MUDHA), a non-governmental organization based in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. MUDHA's main mission is to defend and promote the rights of female immigrants from Haiti in the Dominican Republic (the two nations share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola), and to attain rights of full citizenship for their Dominican-born children.