Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Haiti "After the Earthquake: Empowering Haiti to Rebuild Better"
May 19, 2010
In the wake of the January 12 quake that killed more than 200,000 people and left over 1 million homeless, an avalanche of humanitarian aid poured into the Haiti to save lives and reduce human suffering. Due to its magnitude and proximity to Haiti's lone urban center and economic hub, Port-au-Prince, this earthquake has demonstrated the extent and scope of vulnerability of the Haitian population, of whom over 80% were below the poverty line before the earthquake.
As the immediate crisis stabilizes, the U.S. must transition its assistance programs in Haiti in order to promote broad-based, long term economic growth and gradually phase out short term humanitarian aid. In March of this year, the Haitian Government unveiled their "Action Plan for National Recovery and Development of Haiti," which portrayed this tragic event as "an opportunity to unite Haitians of all classes and origins in a shared project to rebuild the country on new foundations." The Government's desire to "everse the spiral of vulnerability" created by natural disasters seems to focus on the proper target.
This tragedy was not simply a natural disaster; it was a man-made disaster stemming from a failed Haitian state characterized by widespread patrimonialism, corruption, and critically ineffective service delivery. Despite $5.3 billion in foreign aid invested by bilateral and multilateral donors from 1990 to 2005 (approximately $1.5 billion of which came from the U.S.), Haiti persists as one of the poorest and worst governed countries in the hemisphere, if not the world.
Much of this US government assistance has been humanitarian rather than nation building assistance, and has kept people alive through repeated political crisis. The Government of Haiti has been characterized as autocratic and unstable. To ensure loyalty within a society that has been riddled with gang violence and plagued by abject poverty for decades, elites have created patronage networks to employ their supporters, provided selective public services to them, all funded by rent-seeking and limits on the creation of legitimate institutions which might challenge their monopoly control over the society.
In 2009, Transparency International assigned Haiti the 10th lowest score in the world on its Corruption Perception Index, next to Equatorial Guinea, Burundi, and Iran. According to an advisor to the organization, Roslyn Hees, co-author of the handbook "Preventing Corruption in Humanitarian Operations," Haiti is the perfect storm for corruption risk due to "shattered institutions, an anemic state, a history of graft and the sudden deluge of aid money." Not only does this failed state ensure that the majority of Haitians will remain poor, but it also limits the potential of aid programs that simply provide budgetary support to the Haitian government. The solution must be to focus on improving public policy, establishing the rule of law, and improving governance.