DISCUSSION
The following provides a longer discussion of the issues raised above, based on a series of meetings, interviews, and several committee staff visits to Haiti, both before and after the January earthquake.
What is the rebuilding strategy for Haiti?
At the March 2010 donors conference, the Government presented its ‘‘Action Plan for National Recovery and Development in Haiti’’ (http://www.haiticonference.org/HaitilActionlPlanlENG.pdf), which delineated four broad areas of priority for rebuilding: territorial (roads, watershed, infrastructure, urban redevelopment), economic (agriculture, private sector investment, electricity), social (housing, education, health), and institutional (democratic governance, justice and security, public administration). This represented an important step forward at the time and provided a good blueprint for guiding implementation and more specific programming. Unfortunately, progress on planning seems to have stalled since then, and specific plans to move forward on implementation of these four priority areas have not yet been issued. As a result, key decisions remain in flux and critical humanitarian issues related to shelter and resettlement are not resolved. Even if longer term rebuilding issues require additional time and deliberation, short-term imperatives should be acted upon with greater urgency. We advise the following:
• Work from the Government of Haiti’s Action Plan to flesh out specific implementation details.
There is an agreed upon development framework for Haiti rebuilding. The Government of Haiti, donors, and NGOs now need to come together and determine specific details of this plan in order to begin implementing key priorities. While most agree on broader principles of rebuilding, the success or failure of rebuilding ultimately rests on specific programs, activities and projects.
• Agree upon a timetable and hold stakeholders accountable.
Key stakeholders need to come together and decide on an implementation timetable—i.e., by a certain date a full resettlement strategy will be agreed upon and by a subsequent date, the Government will promulgate necessary land policy regulations to allow camp inhabitants to transition back to permanent housing and permanent communities.
• Come up with a short-term priority list and enforce a rigid implementation schedule.
Even while longer term issues require further thought and deliberation, there is consensus on some key issues that need to move forward in the next 3–6 months, especially with regard to resettlement. These issues need to be expedited and resolved as soon as possible.
Capacity of the Government of Haiti.
The ability of the Haitian Government to lead an effective, credible and legitimate rebuilding process has been debated extensively. Some interlocutors believe that Haiti’s national leaders lack the political will to lead, but all observers readily concede that the Government lacks the human, financial, and technical resources to take a decisive role in shaping recovery and development efforts—and it clearly needs international help. There are many factors behind this:
• Presidential leadership.
The effort to rebuild Haiti must be led by Haiti’s Government, starting with President Preval. To date, the Government has not done an effective job of communicating to Haitians that it is in charge and ready to lead the rebuilding effort. President Pre´val should take a more visible and active role, despite the difficulties confronting his government. One of the President’s main priorities has been to remove the informal Champs de Mars settlement, which sits in front of the ruined Presidential Palace and sprang up after the earthquake. His leadership and commitment to tackle a broader array of priorities in the near future is crucial.
• Key Government deputies are not empowered.
President Preval can help enormously by providing vital support to deputies assigned to lead the Government rebuilding efforts. It is important that the President empower his lieutenants to make key development decisions about where to permanently house displaced citizens, where to allocate resources, and how to prioritize rebuilding. As a result of the current consolidation of decision making power, many parts of the process have been beset by paralysis because donors do not have the green light to move forward on critical issues and their government counterparts do not feel empowered by President Preval to sign off on important tasks and decisions.
Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC).
The IHRC is touted by many in Haiti as the best near-term solution for galvanizing the rebuilding process and moving things forward. The idea behind IHRC is to create an efficient mechanism separate from the bureaucracy of Haiti’s line ministries that will sit key donors together with government officials and allow for swift decisions and implementation of development priorities. As the President’s top economic advisor indicated, an executive director of the IHRC would work with a technical team of 60 people (including Haitian, expatriate and international experts and advisors) to vet donor and NGO proposals as they come in, as well as to fill in the specifics behind the Government’s rebuilding framework. The executive director would be the first screen for approving projects forward or declining to advance them. The executive director’s recommendations would then be forwarded to either the full IHRC board (which is chaired by Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and U.N. Special Envoy Bill Clinton, and comprised of an even balance of donor representatives and Haitian representatives from the government, parliament, and civil society) or to a partial board for projects requiring less money. If the projects were independently funded, then the process would conclude. If the projects required funding from the multidonor trust fund, then they would be screened by its board before funds were finally released and the project approved. There are several concerns with this setup and the general evolution of the IHRC:
• Is it overly bureaucratic?
Multiple checks are essential for transparency and accountability, but this must also be balanced with efficiency. The outlined process has the potential to
dramatically slow things down through cumbersome bureaucratic obstacles at a time when Haiti cannot afford to delay its rebuilding. At a certain point, one questions if the added value of yet another board signoff is worth the delay in time. It is strongly recommended that key stakeholders involved in the IHRC, particularly the Government of Haiti and donors, consider streamlining and consolidating boards into a single approval process, and that specific fast-track authority for smaller projects be given to the executive director and a core ‘‘advisory board’’ to speed up the process. This is an area in which breaking with past Haitian practice is absolutely essential.
• Who is in charge?
Since the March donors conference, which established the IHRC structure, it is still unclear what resources the IHRC has at its disposal to start moving resources in support of key development priorities, and who is empowered to make the necessary leadership decisions. While President Preval and former President Clinton have supported Gabriel Verret as the acting executive director of the IHRC, a formal search process is underway to find a more permanent executive director. Until an executive director is officially named, the acting executive director has very little authority to actually implement critical time-sensitive decisions.
• Donor disagreements.
There are clear disagreements among donors about how the IHRC approval structure should work, which entity has ultimate sign-off for disbursement of funds from the multidonor trust fund, and how much discretion should be given to the IHRC secretariat. If not resolved, these disagreements threaten to slow funding. It is difficult to pressure the Government of Haiti to move expeditiously when donors themselves lack consensus about the structure of the IHRC.
Constructively addressing the resettlement issue.
Adequately addressing the hundreds of thousands of Haitians residing in temporary or informal settlements has arisen as the major recovery issue for the country, and the paralysis in decision-making bodes poorly for speedy resolution. Moreover, the longer Haitians continue to reside in makeshift camps, the harder it will be to reintegrate citizens into communities and take down the camps. Experts estimate that 200,000 Haitians could move back into homes labeled ‘‘green’’ (deemed to be safe from collapse) right away, and that another 125,000 could be housed in semi-permanent transitional shelters (‘‘T-shelters’’) in the next month. Unfortunately, this resettlement is delayed because of several factors, including lack of clarity on land policy (i.e., whether displaced persons owe full back rent to landlords despite not living in leased houses for the last 5 months), as well as significant customs delays for getting essential construction and building material into the country. Meanwhile, in the camps, there is a reluctance to improve services—to provide more latrines, better security, food assistance, and access to schools—due to the concern that more Haitians will be drawn from their communities and move into the camps in order to get these services (however unpleasant and dangerous conditions may be). The land policy stalemate must be overcome as soon as possible to encourage Haitians to move out of the camps en masse and rebuild their lives in regular communities. In the longer term, the Government needs to consider more permanent solutions to the problems that plague Port-au-Prince, including land scarcity, overcrowding, and an unsustainable strain on services. In particular, this means seriously considering the concept of ‘‘decentralization,’’ and whether to invest significant resources into developing alternate economic centers away from the Port-au-Prince.
