A general overview of development assistance for Haiti

Content :

I - A brief history P.2
II - Aid architecture after the earthquake P.3
III - Project management according to donors' procedures P.4
IV - Public investments into development P.5
V - Perspectives P.6

For several years, the impact of foreign aid on Haiti’s deve-lopment has been questioned. Following the earthquake of 12 January 2010, international donors multiplied their pled-ges in order to respond to the emergency (“humanitarian aid”) as well as to support the recovery and long-term deve-lopment of the country. More than US$ 13 billion was pro-mised for the period of 2010 - 2020 and significant sums have already been disbursed (OSE, 2012)¹.

Official development assistance consists of donations and certain loans (at concessional terms) from the public sector with the purpose of promoting the economic development and welfare of a given country¹. Thus, in official aid statis-tics, neither private donations (at least US$ 3 billion worth of private donations were traced after the seism) nor mili-tary spending are included.

Nevertheless, official development assistance includes ad-ministrative costs, humanitarian aid and expenditure for armed forces that deliver this aid. For example, more than US$ 450 million coming from humanitarian funds from the United States were allocated to the US Department of De-fense for its interventions shortly after the earthquake(USAID, 2011)¹.

In this third monitoring bulletin, the Observatory focuses on the use of official assistance disbursed for the country's recovery and long-term development and wonders most particularly about the impact of these donations. Hence, unless explicitly mentioned, our charts do not include hu-manitarian aid.