(Re)construction | The case of Haiti (Mark Schuller, Nixon Boumba & Katja Maurer)
Channel: medico international
Date: 2021-03-26

On the Haitian revolution and its disappearance from the idea of universality - reflections on a work of destruction

Discussants:
Mark Schuller (Anthropologist, Chicago)
Nixon Boumba (Activist, Port au Prince)
Katja Maurer (medico international, Frankfurt)
Facilitator: Andrea Steinke (Center for Humanitarian Action, Berlin)

With the revolution of 1804, Haiti is an essential part of the history of modernity. For this reason, an understanding of universalism freed from its Eurocentric character requires explicit remembrance of this revolution and of the long history of its suppression from the historical memory of the present.

Mark Schuller is one of the international experts on Haiti who has also studied and pointed out the negative effects of humanitarian aid for years. Schuller is Chair of Anthropology and Nonprofit and NGO Studies at Northern Illinois University in Chicago and is a Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Haiti. His research on the deepening of dependency through humanitarian aid in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake disaster has been widely noted and received beyond scholarly circles. Schuller's latest book is titled “Humanity's Last Stand: Confronting Global Catastrophe” (2021).

Nixon Boumba is a Haitian human rights activist and member of the Kolektif Jistis Min nan Ayiti (Haiti Mining Justice Collective). Boumba has been working in mining-affected areas of Haiti to ensure that local people understand their rights in regard to the extractives industry. Besides his work on mining, Boumba is also a supporter of economic and cultural rights in Haiti, a staunch advocate on behalf of all marginalized and oppressed populations in Haiti, and a leading figure calling for vigilance and justice in Haiti’s current development climate, which is marked by notoriously low wages and controversial efforts to create industrial and tourist zones. Boumba also works on issues of gender and sexuality in the context of humanitarian aid.

Katja Maurer is a journalist and editor-in-chief of the medico newsletter. A trained interpreter and translator, she headed the public relations department of medico international for many years. In her journalistic work, she regularly deals with political developments in Latin America. She regularly publishes on Israel-Palestine and on the topic of multi-perspective memory. Since the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, she has written on the country's history and present, and co-authored with Andrea Pollmeier the book "Haitian Renaissance. The Long Struggle for Postcolonial Emancipation" (2020). 

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The (Re)Construction of the World. Aid. Solidarity. Politics.

A conference not only on the miserable state of the world, but also and above all on the possibilities of its reconstruction into a place that will finally be worth inhabiting. In lectures and forums, the aim is to determine the relationship between aid, solidarity and politics from the promise we made to ourselves in the Declaration of Human Rights: The promise of a global and social order in which the rights granted to us all would be fully realized.

The online conference (February 12th until February 14th, 2021) was organized by medico international e. V. in cooperation with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Institut für Sozialforschung Frankfurt, International Institute of Political Murder and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.

www.medico.de/en/reconstruction