For
immediate release
Contact:
Leadership Conference of
Women Religious
Director of
Communications
301-588-4955 or
301-672-3043
Religious of
Washington,
DC (March 11, 2004) – The leadership of the Catholic women and men religious of
the Americas have called upon government leaders to restore order to Haiti by
committing themselves to long term reconstruction plans that respect the
independence and autonomy of the Haitian people, their culture, their values
and their social traditions.
The
leaders, representing approximately 250,000 Catholic sisters, brothers and
priests in Latin America,
In
a statement issued by the religious leaders, they called upon all nations
collaborating in the effort to restore order to Haiti to: immediately provide
all forms of humanitarian aid; disarm all factions so that peace can be
restored both nationally and in local communities; commit resources and
personnel to help in training for conflict resolution and processes of
reconciliation at the local and national level; train an effective police presence under civilian control within effectively
supervised standards of international human rights law and practice; and model
international human rights law and practice by assuring that intervening forces
are carefully monitored.
In
addition, the leaders called upon the international community to: help Haitians form a transitional government with a minimum one-to-two year
mandate so that elections are only held in a peaceful context and thus, have
meaning; avoid imposing foreign structures of government and economics that
would trample on Haitian values, and to strengthen the role of government in
its ability to protect its people; help the Haitian people develop an economy
that can produce real jobs in order to lift the nation from its structured
poverty and endemically radical economic class divisions; and begin a
widespread and concerted effort to raise the education level so that Haitians
will be equipped to compete in the world market.
The leaders also recognize that the government
leaders need to: provide mechanisms for redressing the human rights violations
by helping victims document the violations and have their cases heard to
eliminate impunity and lessen the need for the private redressing of wrongs
leading to another spiral of violence; effect immediate changes in immigration
practice and policy, especially in the United States, in order to assure that
those asserting refugee status can truly have their asylum petitions heard,
and suspend deportation of Haitians
until order is restored in Haiti as the Dominican Republic government has
recently done; and work with and through the United Nations in helping the
people of Haiti.
and Sr.
The four conferences of religious not only have
many members who minister in
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