Authors: Paul Farmer, Brian Concannon, Jr., Beat Rohr, Robert Maguire
Interviewer: Toni Johnson, Senior Staff Writer, Council on Foreign Relations, January 12, 2011
One year after Haiti's devastating earthquake on January 12, 2010, that killed more than two hundred thousand people and left nearly one million homeless, the country remains chaotic and desperate. Exacerbating the continuing challenges of providing adequate food, housing, and clean water following the earthquake are a deadly outbreak of cholera and a contested November 28 presidential election, which have led to renewed debate about how to rebuild the country and usher it into a more prosperous and stable future.
Global health expert Paul Farmer says international aid organizations cannot replace the government and that Haiti's public sector should be strengthened so it can provide for Haitians' needs until the government is able to do it. Brian Concannon Jr., a former election observer in Haiti, argues the United States should insist on new elections because the country needs a credible government to establish stability and rebuild. Beat Rohr, Haiti country director for CARE International, notes the recent flawed process shows that "elections and aid are not silver bullets," and that besides better governance the country needs a number of other things, including successful community-based economic and social development. Robert Maguire at the U.S. Institute of Peace suggests investment in a national civic service corps that puts Haitians to work rebuilding their country.
Paul Farmer, Kolokotrones University Professor and Chair, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, UN Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti
Relief is not reconstruction. The earthquake was what doctors would refer to as an acute-on-chronic event: a disaster in a setting of profound social precarity. Building back better means adding schools, hospitals, public services--and improving governance. And to do it well, we need to build foreign assistance back better, too: Only 28.8 percent of the donor dollars promised for recovery in 2010-2011 (excluding debt relief) have been disbursed. As much as half of this is eaten up by overhead, never reaching the intended recipients, and the quality of services delivered is too often poor, in spite of best intentions. In no other business would this be acceptable, and we shouldn't accept it either.
We must strengthen the public sector; until the government has resources to provide for the needs of its citizens, Haiti will remain the "republic of NGOs."
Create jobs. Even if reconstruction meant little more than massive job creation, that would be a tremendous step forward. The great majority of the $10.2 billion pledged should be dedicated to giving Haitians decent employment: clearing rubble (only 5 percent has been cleared to date), rebuilding federal buildings (all but one were leveled), and planting trees (Haiti is almost entirely deforested), for example. Fisheries and produce cooperatives generate jobs that also boost local production.
Build decent housing. As many as a million Haitians still live in camps that clog Port-au-Prince's open spaces. Conditions are unsafe and inhumane. But people stay because they have nowhere else to go; the houses they lived in--often as renters in unfavorable conditions--collapsed. Resettlement will require not only decent housing, but also healthcare, education, jobs, and other basic services.
Accompany the public sector. You can't have public health, public education, or public services without a public sector. NGOs like the one I work with cannot replace the government --nor can the United Nations or any other group. We don't have the skills or the mandate, and if aid is to work, it can't fall apart when the expats leave. Although most agree with this principle, less than 1 percent of the more than $2.1 billion in humanitarian aid has flowed to local authorities. We must strengthen the public sector; until the government has resources to provide for the needs of its citizens, Haiti will remain the "republic of NGOs."
Brian Concannon, Jr., Director, Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti
Haiti and the global community should lay the foundation for a more stable, prosperous Haiti by running new, inclusive elections with a new, independent electoral council. The current attempts to salvage the disastrous November 28 parliamentary and presidential elections by recounting the votes are like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic: They will not lead to a result acceptable to the Haitian people, which will imperil both Haiti's recovery from the earthquake and long-term U.S. interests in the region.
Haiti needs a credible government with a popular mandate to establish stability and rebuild. The documented fraud and the subsequent protests that shut down Haiti down for most of December proved that the elections were neither credible nor popular. If the Haitian government and its foreign partners--especially the United States, which contributed $14.5 million, half the election's cost--persist in forcing the results of this election onto reluctant voters, the protests and disruption could continue for the next president's five-year term.
The United States should take leadership in insisting on new elections to protect its investments in Haiti--almost $2 billion spent in 2010 for earthquake response and reconstruction.
The election's problems started long before Election Day, with a stacked electoral council and the improper exclusion of fifteen opposition parties, including Haiti's most popular, Fanmi Lavalas. Turnout was less than 25 percent, and the top three candidates combined received support from 14 percent of registered voters. The solutions to the problems should therefore start at the beginning, with the installation of a new, independent electoral council and the inclusion of all qualified parties.
The United States should take leadership in insisting on new elections to protect its investments in Haiti--almost $2 billion spent in 2010 for earthquake response and reconstruction. Stability in Haiti also reduces the refugee flows that stress our border security and immigration programs, and makes Haiti less hospitable for drug transshipment to the United States.
The "realists" say that there is neither time nor money for new elections. But a few months and $30 million is a small price to pay to avoid wasting five years and the $10 billion promised for earthquake reconstruction. Good elections would also accelerate the departure of the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti, currently spending $2.5 million per day.
Beat Rohr, Haiti Country Director, CARE International
The unresolved November 28 parliamentarian and presidential elections serve as a reminder to both national and international actors that elections and aid are not silver bullets for Haiti's endemic issues. Instead, aid and elections must go hand-in-hand with a sustained commitment to design and implement policies and programs that address the root causes of poverty and inequality in Haiti. Among the principal underlying causes of poverty that threaten Haiti's development and long-term stability are: social exclusion, poor governance, inadequate access to education and other social services, and limited economic opportunities along with environmental degradation.
During its fifty-six years of collaboration with Haiti's impoverished groups, CARE has witnessed that strategies that ignored these factors, their interconnectedness, and the voices of the beneficiaries have always failed to tackle the endemic poverty that has kept the majority of the population vulnerable to natural disasters as well as internal and external shocks, particularly in rural areas.
The Haitian government and the international community need to continue pursuing medium-term development plans to provide urgently needed shelter and improve living conditions for the vast internally displaced population and construct government institutions capable of providing services and stability. But both national actors and donors--including the United States--must also implement a long-term strategy that includes policies and programs with target actions to reduce extreme poverty in Haiti.
Among the principal underlying causes of poverty that threaten Haiti's development and long-term stability are: social exclusion, poor governance, inadequate access to education and other social services, and limited economic opportunities along with environmental degradation.
Through a participatory process, with the goals of ensuring that the needs of Haiti's most vulnerable populations are taken into account, national and international policies must address several critical development needs simultaneously by placing priorities on four deeply interconnected pillars: 1) strengthened democratic governance processes that promote national dialogue and social inclusion; 2) sound economic governance and institutional development at national, regional, and local levels; 3) economic recovery that focuses on job creation in rural and urban settings; 4) build the government's ability to provide access to basic services and social safety nets and protection. Additionally, a successful community-based economic and social development to ensure sustainable livelihoods will require the active engagement of Haiti's private sector.
Robert Maguire, Associate Professor of International Affairs, Trinity Washington University, Chair, Haiti Working Group, U.S. Institute of Peace
After last January's earthquake, "resilience" was used to characterize the strength and courage of Haiti's people. The ability to spring back quickly, however, is a mocking compliment if it becomes an end state. Spring back to . . . what? A year following the earthquake--indeed, as in the decades preceding it--the vast majority of Haitians are stuck in impoverished and desperate conditions, as opportunities for them to improve livelihoods, enhance well-being, and achieve personal growth are lacking. Haiti will become stable and prosperous only after its political and economic elites, and their partners in the international community, find ways of helping the Haitian poor transcend resilience by matching their talents to opportunities and thereby cast off grinding, debilitating poverty.
Haitian government poverty alleviation and economic growth plans in 2007 and 2009, endorsed by international donors, importantly identified decentralized investment in education, healthcare, infrastructure, environmental rehabilitation, and the productive capacity of the long-neglected agrarian economy as keys to stability and prosperity. The government's post-quake recovery and growth plan reemphasized these points, adding a call for decentralized manufacturing, agricultural and tourism "growth poles" as a means of stimulating economic recovery, and improved well-being. International donors responded by pledging close to $10 billion in support of the plan.
A year following the earthquake--indeed, as in the decades preceding it--the vast majority of Haitians are stuck in impoverished and desperate conditions, as opportunities for them to improve livelihoods, enhance well-being, and achieve personal growth are lacking.
So why is Haiti stuck? The problems are myriad and challenges enormous. On the international side, there are the problems of slow disbursements and a continuing approach of unchecked bilateralism that bypasses local and national authorities, inhibits coordination, and maintains a project-by-project approach toward development. On the Haitian side, what's striking is the timid decision-making, continued orientation of elites toward self over country, and the exclusion of poor people's voices in policymaking.
Beyond doubt, decentralization is the key to building Haiti back better. Plans to achieve this, however, not only must address the aforementioned problems, but also must assist people to move beyond resilience. Investment in a New Deal type of national service that puts Haitians to work rebuilding their country could be crucial to transcending resilience and taking strides toward stability and prosperity. It would help Haitians render services to their countrymen and women and gain transferable skills. Also needed are initiatives such as investment credits for small and micro enterprises and conditional cash transfers tied to improved education and healthcare that get money into the hands of the poor.
From: Kim Ives kives@toast.net
"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI LIBERTE newsweekly. For the complete edition with other news in French and Creole, please contact the paper at (tel) 718-421-0162, (fax) 718-421-3471 or e-mail at editor@haitiliberte.com. Also visit our website at http://www.haitiliberte.com.
HAITI LIBERTE
"Justice. Verite. Independance."
* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *
January 5 - 11, 2011
Vol. 4, No. 25
OAS TELLS PRÉVAL TO CHIPGE RUN-OFF RATHER THAN ANNUL FLAWED ELECTION by Kim Ives
Can one imagine the Organization of American States (OAS) assembling an "Expert Mission" to intervene in the U.S. elections of, say, 2000, reviewing voter rolls, polling station tallies, and hanging chads, interviewing candidates as well as observer and human rights groups, then making "recommendations" to the U.S. Electoral College on what the election outcome should be? Of course not.
U.S. voters would never submit to such foreign oversight.
However, in Haiti, an OAS mission has now done exactly these things, supposedly at the invitation of President René Préval. Haiti Liberté has obtained a copy of the OAS report (still undelivered to the president at press time) in which the mission"recommends" that Préval's appointed Provisional Electoral Council
(CEP) change its first-round results so that "the position of the candidate in third place would change to second," and "the candidate now in second place would move to third."
In the CEP's preliminary results released Dec. 7, ruling Unity party candidate Jude Célestin with 22.48 % of the vote came in second, nudging out of the run-off former konpa performer Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly with 21.84%, a difference of 6,845 votes.
But the OAS threw out 17,220 of Célestin's votes and only 7,150 of Martelly's, leaving the former with 21.9% and the latter with 22.2%. So by the OAS's calculation, Martelly has elbowed aside Célestin by an even thinner margin:
3,225 votes.
But "the way that the OAS team reaches this conclusion is by throwing out tally sheets that do not meet certain criteria," wrote Robert Naiman, Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy, in the Huffington Post. "However, the OAS team is not proposing to throw out all tally sheets that do not meet these criteria. It is only proposing to throw out tally sheets that don't meet these criteria that belong to a sample that the OAS reviewed," which was only 919 (8.2%) of all
11,181 tally sheets processed by the vote-counting Tabulation Center. Those cherry-picked tally sheets comprise only 192,063 votes or 16.9 % of all the votes counted.
"Thus, what the OAS team is proposing to do violates the principle of equal protection," which the U.S. Supreme court invoked to stop the Florida recount in 2000, Naiman continues. "Because if you were a Haitian voter whose vote belonged to the sample that the OAS team looked at, your vote will be treated differently -- and be more likely to be thrown out -- than if your vote did not belong to that sample." In other words "different standards were being applied to the counting of different votes."
Secondly, it is "laughable" that the OAS is still proposing a run-off rather than an annulment of the exclusionary and grievously flawed election, wrote economist Mark Weisbrot, director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in the Jan. 10 Guardian. Like the OAS, the CEPR reviewed the CEP's tally sheets (proces-verbal) and found that "nearly three quarters of [the Haitian electorate] did not vote in the presidential and parliamentary elections" and hence the "OAS is proposing a runoff between presidential candidates who received about 6% and 4%, respectively, of the electorate's votes in the first round," that is former First Lady and senator Mirlande Manigat and Martelly. Both candidates supported the 1991 and 2004 coups d'état against former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Both have close ties to Haiti's former Army, which Aristide disbanded in 1995. Manigat's mentor and husband, Leslie, was placed in the presidency in 1988 - and later removed - by a military junta. Martelly was a former Army cadet and close associate of Col. Michel Francois, who spearheaded the 1991 coup.
The CEPR found that the CEP never received or quarantined 12.7% of the votes and that "8.4% of tally sheets had vote totals that were irregular" and another "5.4% of tally sheets had obvious clerical errors," wrote Weisbrot.
"Clearly, an election that was so severely flawed and plagued by irregularities cannot be considered legitimate," Weisbrot said "But even less excusable is the exclusion of the country's most popular political party," Aristide's Lavalas Family, "the equivalent of banning the Democrats or Republicans in the United States."
Finally, the OAS report makes clear that the election is in foreign, and mainly U.S., hands. For instance, it notes that "when not being reviewed, sensitive election materials were kept under lock at the CTV [Tabulation Center] with tamper evident seals. The CTV is under guard by MINUSTAH," (UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti, as the military occupation force is called), not by Haitian police, as should be the case.
Also, nine of the 14 OAS "experts" reviewing the elections are from the very nations that backed the 2004 coup against Aristide: the U.S. (5), France (2), and Canada (2).
The leaking of the OAS report was also clearly a way to put pressure on Préval, who on Jan. 10 did not officially receive it because he "declined to grant an appointment to the observation team, OAS assistant secretary-general Albert Ramdin said," according to the Associated Press's Jonathan Katz.
In short, there is very little political difference between Manigat, Martelly or Célestin. All three participated in an exclusionary vote which the vast majority of Haitians shunned. Manigat and Martelly jumped out of the candidate front calling to annul the vote on Nov. 28 after Edmund Mulet, MINUSTAH's chief, told them they were leading, both thereby showing that they are ready to cast principle to the wind.
The OAS shows that it too has no principles when admitting that its "recommendations do not completely remedy everything that went wrong on November 28" but "partially rectify the consequences of the problems and outright fraud on Election Day."
But their pragmatism has other ends. "Washington and its allies, including the people who are currently making decisions about Haiti at the OAS, are pushing these illegitimate elections for the same reason that they overthrew Aristide, and will not let him back into his own country - in violation of the Haitian constitution and international law," Weisbrot concluded. "These people want to determine who rules Haiti, without allowing the majority of Haitians themselves to decide. There will be resistance to this, as to the dictatorships and foreign occupations of the past."