by Paul Farmer
The reconstruction process has indeed proven to be difficult. As I finish this chapter, a year after the earthquake, progress has been painstakingly slow, life in Haiti remains unbearably hard, and those who work untiringly for Haiti’s recovery are deeply frustrated. The massive needs of more than a million people in tents, the rebuilding of physical and institutional infrastructure, and the negotiation of a complex political landscape are overwhelming challenges. But Leslie remains dedicated to his country, and all of us working for Haiti forge on. Even disinterested observers cannot help but root for Haiti. Even skeptics cannot help but be impressed by the fortitude and grace with which the Haitian people are bearing up. They are a strong lot. Leslie says it best. “We are warriors. It’s in our DNA.”
BUILDING BACK BETTER
JÉHANE SEDKY
In May 2009,President Bill Clinton was appointed the UN Special Envoy for Haiti. His passion for Haiti, dating to his posthoneymoon visit to the island nation, was well-known. He had been deeply engaged with Haiti while President of the United States and had launched a development program for Haiti at the Clinton Global Initiative.* He had been successful as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery in 2005 and 2006. Now Annan’s successor, Ban Ki-Moon, looked to President Clinton for his unmatched convening power.
Ban recognized that progress was being made in Haiti and believed that a focused effort could result in further success for the country. The UN peacekeeping operation that had been deployed in Haiti since 2004 had dramatically reduced the levels of violence in the country; reported kidnappings had declined from an average of thirty per month in the first half of 2008 to fewer than eight per month in the first half of 2009.† However, the UN recognized that what Haiti needed most was private sector investments, which UN officials and peacekeepers had little expertise in attracting.
*Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) convenes global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges.
†Report of the Secretary-General’s on the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), September 18, 2009.
I had worked for President Clinton in his capacity as UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery. Trained in human rights law, with a focus on women and children, I have spent the majority of my UN career at UNICEF. Although I have seen firsthand what organizations such as UNICEF can do at the country level to improve the lives of communities, I also know the limits of UN agencies’ mandates and capabilities. With President Clinton in the lead, however, I sensed that the UN had a unique opportunity to create positive momentum in Haiti.
I was the first one recruited to serve President Clinton in his capacity as UN Special Envoy for Haiti in June 2009. By early August, his team consisted of five staff members. five. We were thrilled to learn that Dr. Paul Farmer would soon be appointed President Clinton’s deputy. Both Farmer and President Clinton had agreed to lead the UN effort for a salary of one dollar a year. Their mission was to build on the success of UN peacekeepers in establishing stability and seize the political moment to jump-start international investment and strengthen the government’s capability to deliver social services to its people.
During President Clinton’s first visit to Haiti for the UN in June 2009, he met a twenty-seven-year-old Haitian who ran a fuel briquette project. The program processes household waste into briquettes in an environmentally responsible as well as a less-expensive alternative to wood-based charcoal that people can use for heat and cooking. The president immediately saw the environmental value of the program and its potential to reduce community violence through youth employment. He was also determined to support this young entrepreneur who had successfully run the project in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince. After watching a group of young Haitians sorting garbage to make the briquettes, President Clinton told us that he would help make this small project an example of “building back better,” an expression he had coined while working in the countries affected by the tsunami.
During another visit to Haiti in October 2009, President Clinton met Valentin Abe, a Cote d’Ivorian who had studied in the United States before moving to Haiti, where he created Caribbean Harvest, a fish farm run on solar energy. When President Clinton visited the small farm outside Port-au-Prince, he was captivated by Valentin’s ingenuity and commitment to helping the poor. Valentin’s fish farm teaches local farmers to grow fish and then farms out fingerlings to families who raise the fish in cages in nearby ponds. (The cages are privately owned and each family is responsible for their investment.) After the growing cycle, Caribbean Harvest collects the fish and transports them to Port-au-Prince for sale; the profits are shared evenly between Caribbean Harvest and the farmers.
It’s difficult to imagine now, post-earthquake, how optimistic we were in the fall of 2009. Our UN office strategized around two central concepts. First, the country’s future had to be guided by the Haitian people. And second, we would position Haiti not as a lost cause but as a country primed to make a huge leap forward. Our objectives: facilitate job creation through private sector investments; secure donor disbursements; support hurricane preparedness across the country; and promote coordination of the estimated ten thousand not-for-profits working in Haiti. Both Paul Farmer and President Clinton often reminded us that “in its two hundred years of independence, Haiti has never had a fair chance.” We were determined to use the extraordinary momentum created by our bosses to turn the tide and put an end to unfulfilled pledges to the island nation.
From day one, President Clinton made it his responsibility to hold donors accountable to their pledges. Equally important, the mission of the UN office was driven by support for Haiti’s own vision for its recovery, not the international community’s. Paul Farmer calls this approach “accompaniment.” It means that any intervention in Haiti must be built on the premise that Haitians will lead. We would work with the Haitian government, support efforts to recruit and train Haitians whenever possible, and advocate that a greater portion of aid funding be channeled to direct budget support for the government.
During their October 2009 visit to Haiti, President Clinton and Dr. Farmer attended a high-level private sector meeting organized by the Inter-American Development Bank in Port-au-Prince. President Clinton was the keynote speaker. His attendance at the meeting helped to draw an estimated five hundred investors to Haiti, most of whom had never set foot on the island. The conference began with then-Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis announcing: “Haiti is open for business.” A survey conducted by the Inter-American Development Bank on the heels of the conference revealed that 97 percent of the participants expressed an increased level of interest in investing in Haiti.
Back in New York, our small team was working closely with the Inter-American Development Bank to compile the first comprehensive, dynamic, web-based directory of not-for-profits working in Haiti. More not-for-profits per capita are in Haiti than in any other country except for India, and coordination among them is woefully lacking.
By December 2009, momentum was building. For the first time, the tone of the international media coverage on Haiti was hopeful. Meanwhile, private investors were showing interest in committing to Haiti. An estimated thirty-five thousand short-term jobs were created nationwide between March and September 2009.f
Just before Christmas, Paul Farmer convened a meeting with the staff. Each technical expert had to present his or her 2010 plan and provide strategic advice on how the UN office should fill in existing gaps and accompany the government of Haiti on its path towards recovery. Paul was focused on hurricane preparedness. He was visibly worried about the next cyclone season. Our disaster expert, a staff member from the UN, said: “Paul, the next disaster will most likely be an earthquake or a tsunami.”
At 5:02 P.M. on January 12, 2010, I was at my desk in the Office of the Special Envoy in New York, preparing for a meeting with philanthropists and privat
e sector investors the next day. My colleagues Nancy Dorsinville, John Harding, and Ricardo Sanchez were on assignment in Port-au-Prince. As I worked on a briefing note, I received a “red earthquake alert” by an e-mail message, part of a natural disaster alert system to which I’d been subscribed since the tsunami. A 7.0 earthquake had occurred in Port-au-Prince. I immediately e-mailed and texted Nancy, John, and Ricardo: “Are you okay?” Nothing. Within minutes, my New York colleagues were in my office. We were in a state of shock. Was Paul Farmer in Haiti? No. He had just left a week before. Had anyone heard from Nancy, John, and Ricardo? No news.
Each hour brought worse news. We sat in the UN’s Situation Center, listening to live updates by satellite phone from the top UN officer, Brazilian Commander Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz. Cruz’s voice was controlled but shaken as he recounted what he saw: The UN compound, holding approximately two hundred staff members, had collapsed. Both the head of the mission, Hédi Annabi, and his deputy, Luiz Carlos Da Costa, had been in a meeting with a Chinese delegation on the sixth floor of the UN compound when the earthquake struck. That meant that our colleagues—their chiefs of staff, administrative assistants, and special assistants—were also in the meeting with the Chinese. As we were absorbing this update, we learned that another UN building had collapsed. So too had the National Palace and the Hotel Montana.
The next day, President Clinton addressed the United Nations General Assembly. He conveyed determination to support the Haitians as they recovered from the worst natural disaster in the region’s history, and he set out the foundations of his “building back better” approach. As he stood there, with Paul Farmer at his side, in front of 192 delegations and countless media and UN staff, we had a momentary sense that we could pull through this, that Haiti would get back on its feet.
President Clinton continued to use the term “building back better,” and it took on a more profound meaning. The phrase was about not rebuilding to pre-earthquake standards but using the disaster as an opportunity to define and support a sustainable vision for Haiti. Haitians must be in charge of their own destiny. International organizations and not-for-profits must coordinate their efforts and strengthen Haiti’s government and local institutions instead of implementing programs that have unintended negative consequences (such as food aid leading to the destruction of the Haitian agriculture sector).g
At the time of this writing, we can point to a few initiatives led by the Office of the Special Envoy and aimed at laying the foundation for Haiti’s long-term recovery.
Tracking international assistance
On March 31, 2010, the government of Haiti, the United Nations, and the U.S. government cohosted the International Donors’ Conference Towards a New Future for Haiti in New York. This conference culminated in $6.2 billion in pledges for 2010–2011. The Office of the Special Envoy (OSE), together with the government of Haiti and the United Nations Development Programme, supported the conference by launching online, real-time tracking of donor pledges. These efforts made the conference one of the most transparent of its kind, and built upon advances made by the Office of the Special Envoy in tracking the April 2009 Washington, D.C., conference pledges to Haiti.h
The tracking of international assistance was part of the Office of the Special Envoy’s original, pre-earthquake mandate. President Clinton was determined to ensure that the funding for Haiti’s recovery would be transparent and that donors would be held accountable for the pledges they had made. Before the earthquake, the Office of the Special Envoy was the only entity tracking overall aid to Haiti, and the only one with credible information on the April 2009 Washington donor conference pledges. Between December 2009 and January 2010, due in large part to the work of the Special Envoy, Washington conference disbursements increased from 12 to 30 percent.
Changing the way not-for-profits work in Haiti
Any thoughtful analysis of the work of the not-for-profit community in Haiti before the earthquake will reveal that although intentions were usually good, the results of the work often did little to make lasting change in Haiti or, in many cases, to even help Haitians. This lack of long-lasting effect has many explanations. The work of not-for-profits was uncoordinated and did little to reinforce the priorities of the Haitian government. International NGOs expended great effort determining ways to address problems they saw, but often they did not include Haitians in meaningful ways as they developed those plans.
International NGOs are accountable to their international donors—not to the disenfranchised communities they are trying to serve. They often deliver goods and services but less often pay local salaries. As a result, NGOs have created a culture of dependency rather than self-sufficiency. Many years of effort by NGOs has served to only weaken the already weak government, which did not, even before the earthquake, have the resources to pay its employees. As a result, public health and education officials are paid intermittently, hospitals lack basic medicines and supplies, and schools are 90 percent privately owned and unregulated.
Some NGOs have sought to break this pattern. After weeks of quiet advocacy from President Clinton and Paul Farmer, Gail McGovern, CEO of the American Red Cross, committed $3.8 million to strengthen the Hôpital Université d’État l’Haïti (HUEH). In addition, the Red Cross provided a $500,000 grant for hospital equipment and an additional $2 million was approved for support to the hospital. Paul Farmer helped the government of Haiti meet the conditions set by the American Red Cross so that they could discharge their responsibilities to their donors and stakeholders. This was the first time the American Red Cross has provided direct budget support to a government. Imagine if we could replicate this model in the education sector or throughout the social sectors.
Increasing the level of commitment to budget support
A little more than two hundred years ago, Haiti produced threequarters of the world’s sugar. Yet despite this wealth in natural resources, the island nation is now the poorest in the Western hemisphere. This is largely due to its history, fraught with donor governments undermining its capacity to thrive. Promises were broken, debt was imposed, dictatorships were supported, and natural resources were depleted.
Since the earthquake, donor disbursements to Haiti have been consistent and debt forgiveness has been forthcoming. The donor community is committed to supporting Haiti. But will it be willing to invest directly in the government? Or will it continue to channel the majority of its funding through the not-for-profit community? Without a solid commitment to budget support—and without the capability to control the monies flowing in and the capacity to strengthen its own public institutions—Haiti will never fully recover.
This is why, in all its advocacy with donors, multilateral institutions, nongovernmental organizations, and foundation partners, the Office of the Special Envoy has promoted investment in budget support for the government of Haiti. This advocacy effort, and President Clinton’s personal engagement with donors, has as of December 2010 helped mobilize US $226.7 million in new commitments to budget support following the earthquake, in addition to $122.4 million in existing commitments.i Although this figure represents a small percentage of the total contributions to Haiti from the pledges made at the New York conference ($5.6 billion for 2010–2011), it is an important step in the right direction.
As this book goes to press, I am struck by how heartbreaking the last few months have been for those of us who care about Haiti. Recovery has been slow, rubble still fills the streets of Port-au-Prince, and hundreds of thousands of people still live in camps. The spread of cholera has exacerbated an already dire situation.
Yet, pockets of hope exist. The government of Finland, for example, announced a 700,000 euro contribution to teacher salaries. This contribution is significant because it represents a shift in priorities; rarely do donors provide budget support in the form of salaries.
What will Haiti look like in ten years if we truly commit to “building back better”? Although we are humbled by the question and realisti
c about what can be achieved, our vision for “building back better” includes a robust public sector (especially in health and education), investment in job creation, food security, safe housing for all Haitians, and a truly participatory recovery process, where Haitians from all walks of life are consulted in a meaningful way. This vision for Haiti, although it is one we believe in and strive for, is far from reality today. A week before Christmas 2010, our team met with Paul Farmer for dinner. While we discussed the cholera epidemic and the disputed first round of presidential elections, some of us found it difficult to remain optimistic about the possibility of “building back better” in Haiti. Paul was quick to remind us of Haiti’s history of struggle, the fighting spirit of Haitians, and the need for perspective in our analysis. “You must not think of where Haiti will be in two years but where it will be in one hundred years, and how what we do today will help Haiti in the long run,” he said.
Whether displayed in the streets of Port-au-Prince or in the camps, the resilience of the Haitian people is resounding. Haitians are survivors. The twenty-seven-year-old Haitian whom President Clinton met on his first visit as Special Envoy is now selling his briquettes to the UN, which is using them to warm meals for school children. The plastics and metals that cannot be used in briquette production are sold to recycling companies at market value. And the consumers of the briquettes pay 78 percent of the price of a comparable amount of charcoal.j Meanwhile, since meeting President Clinton, fish farm owner Valentin Abe was among those voted the hundred most influential people in the world for 2010 by Time magazine.