Haiti After the Earthquake (26 page)

Was this giant March meeting to yield more of the same? Sometimes it seemed that the quake had changed everything, but as the history of chronic problems revealed, much had not changed. Uneven development, the gap between rich and poor, the ongoing exclusion of most of the latter, the unseemly quest for control of the frail apparatus of the state, the ecological crisis, the reliance on fractured foreign aid, and the privatization of basic services (when they were available at all)—all were longstanding problems worsened by the quake. It was tempting, at times, to give an ivory-tower shrug of inevitability and assume that it was all too hard to improve, much less to fix. The donors' conference would be bigger, but surely it could also do better. Garry, Claire, and I were physicians, and we were there to give reconstruction our best good-faith effort, knowing full well that we would fall short of our aspirations and those of the Haitian people. But we had to try.

And so on we went, organizing and cajoling and seeking to make New York not just bigger but better. The Office of the Special Envoy team had been working around the clock, as had President Clinton
and his staff, official teams from the hosts (the UN and the U.S. government), and many Haitians who had worked on the needs assessment and action plan.

The conference was held on the second floor of the General Assembly Building of the United Nations. Security was tight at the UN and across New York because so many dignitaries were flying in for the meeting. The morning consisted of welcomes and introductions; all speakers underlined the need for long-term financial support for Haiti's reconstruction (as they'd done in Montréal). Ban Ki-moon spoke, then Hillary Clinton, then René Préval. The Haitian president thanked those present for helping Haiti, but also noted that his government had received little support from the international response to date—a paltry $23 million of the $1.35 billion disbursed for immediate earthquake relief.
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My job was to sit behind Clinton, along with Laura Graham, and to brief him on the “civil society” session he would be chairing. He knew my views—that although the session brought in perspectives from certain NGOs, certain parts of the Haitian diaspora, and certain private sector groups, no poor people were present. During the plenary session, Michèle Montas would summarize the views recorded by the “Voices of the Voiceless” team. Because we couldn't hear directly from those most affected by Haiti's social and economic fragility, Michèle's testimony was the part of the conference that mattered most to me.

Michèle knew the rural and urban poor as some of the sharpest critics of Haitian society and politics and the development enterprise. Her statement, not much more than ten minutes long, presented their suggestions about rebuilding Haiti. Although her elegant contribution to this book introduces the Voices of the Voiceless project in more detail, I'd like to underscore how her words, echoing this, challenged a number of assumptions about Haiti that persisted among those gathered in New York. In contrast to reports of Haitians passively accepting handouts in refugee camps, these interviews revealed that leaving the camps was a priority for almost everyone surveyed. Camp dwellers desired nothing more than to return to their homes—some of them little more than heaps of rubble—or to rejoin family in the
countryside. Interviews far from the quake zone were also instructive. Rural farmers interviewed were adamant that Haiti needed to rebuild its agricultural base before it could reap the benefits of local and international trade; mothers and fathers demanded adequate food for their children and their neighbors' children; many stressed the importance of aid independence and sovereignty after reconstruction was underway. During the few short minutes that Michèle spoke, I wondered if some new paradigms of foreign assistance and economic development might come out of all this.

Clinton's optimism and Michèle's testimony set a tone of hopeful pragmatism for the afternoon, when the pledging sessions took place. As in Montréal and Santo Domingo, the meeting had its share of posturing and grand promises. But for the most part, the concern and willingness to help expressed by foreign ministers, international organization representatives, and other delegates seemed genuine (as political theater often does). When Venezuela and the United States began vying for the biggest pledge, it seemed best to applaud politely. Even those from nations with divergent interests handled themselves with a certain comity. And the numbers—the amount pledged—kept going up.

A stunning $9.9 billion of reconstruction pledges were made on March 31.
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The funds were earmarked not just for rebuilding but for rebuilding better: $5.3 billion for the near term (2010–2011), $4.6 billion for the long term. Venezuela and its allies emerged as the largest contributors, pledging more than $2 billion; the European Union collectively pledged $1.6 billion; the United States pledged $1.15 billion.
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It was an impressive show. “Today it has been demonstrated,” concluded Préval, “that the international community will continue to support Haiti in the long term.”
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Hillary Clinton noted in closing that after the Asian tsunami, some 80 countries pitched in with humanitarian relief, while about 20 pledged reconstruction assistance; in Haiti the numbers were more than 140 and 50, respectively.
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Ban Ki-moon was similarly optimistic: “As we move from emergency aid to long-term reconstruction, what we envision is a wholesale national renewal, a sweeping exercise in nation-building on a scale and scope not seen in generations.... Today, we have mobilized to give
Haiti and its people what they need most: hope for a new future. We have made a good start; we need now to deliver.”

Delivery would indeed become the chief challenge if the capital really showed up in Haiti. Below the surface consensus, rifts began to appear regarding who would be in charge of the reconstruction dollars. The international financial institutions were vying for control, as were a few major donor nations and the UN. But the cast of characters raised the same question I'd had in Montréal: What about the Haitians? And which Haitians? It was an election year, and all involved feared that political turmoil would delay reconstruction.

These tensions, though hidden away, were fierce, and led to another proposal: a new approval body was needed to coordinate the coming surge in reconstruction funds. The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) would be co-chaired by Bill Clinton and Jean-Max Bellerive and made up of Haitian officials and representatives of donors that had pledged at least $100 million of reconstruction assistance or debt relief (the United States, Canada, France, Venezuela, the EU, Japan, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and a few others). During its eighteen-month mandate, the commission would act as a clearinghouse for Haiti's recovery with the goal of increasing the efficiency and impact of allocations. It would also provide an infrastructure of transparency to reassure donors that funds were not languishing in corrupt or inept bureaucracies and to hold donors accountable to their pledges. Finally, the commission would find new ways of tracking, in real time, the implementation of projects.

The commission's evolution—from the doubts about Haiti's “absorptive capacity” (and veiled references to corruption) that surfaced in Montréal to the process of choosing who would be members among those gathered in New York—was fascinating to watch. The elephant in the room was that few donors trusted the Haitian government to disburse their money. But the government was by necessity a protagonist in Haiti's rebuilding effort, and almost three months after the quake, it was still sorely in need of funds just to keep its civil servants at their posts (mostly large tents or temporary buildings).
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To move relief funds quickly, donors had relied heavily on NGOs and contractors. For reconstruction to proceed in keeping with the action plan, the Haitian government needed to have an active role in vetting projects, inspecting progress, ensuring that laborers got their lot, and resolving land-title disputes. The public sector had not proven capable of performing these regulatory functions even before the quake, and now many donors deemed it even less able to do so. A history of outsourcing development projects to NGOs and contractors made trying to help the public sector now like trying to transfuse whole blood through a small-gauge needle, or in popular parlance, to drink from a fire hose. But leaving reconstruction solely in the hands of private contractors and other implementers (including large international NGOs) was a sure way to continue the same dysfunctional cycle.
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The IHRC was meant to break through this impasse by providing a platform for collaboration and coordination, enhancing trust and inspiring what was termed donor confidence. However, as one could have guessed, the IHRC would be forced to live out its short life—eighteen months seemed short to me—in very adverse circumstances.

After many debates about governance, local control, transparency, and other issues, the commission did at last come into being by presidential decree and later parliamentary approval. The weeks ticked by during this long labor, which took us into May, and like any infant, the commission needed care and feeding. It needed funding. It had been clear in New York that some donors thought they should have more control over the flow of pledged resources. Bilateral agencies seemed unsure why they should abandon business as usual and go through a commission. Meanwhile, many Haitians were sure that the
blan
—foreign firms and contractors—would get all the money.

Clinton helped work through these disparate fears and concerns, approving projects that fit the national plan and bringing into the open who was doing what and with how much money, as we had tried to do in the Office of the Special Envoy. Staff and space and resources didn't show up until June, when Norway and Brazil sent $45 million and Mexican and Canadian philanthropists provided another $20 million in business loans. The Clinton Foundation chipped in $1
million to build urgently needed storm shelters in areas particularly vulnerable to hurricanes or heavy rains.
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A system of financial tracking and aid coordination that would build public-sector capacity seemed like a good idea. The Haitian government had tried to coordinate aid and NGOs in the past but with scant resources and personnel. (The two members of the NGO coordination unit had perished in the quake.) The UN cluster system was still struggling to keep track of all the groups working in post-quake Haiti. The Ministry we knew best, Health, lacked even the space and staff to vet offers of help—some great ideas, some goofy ones—that came in over the transom, if they'd still had a transom.

There had to be better ways to speed up implementation; money was clearly out there. In addition to the promises from officialdom, Haiti was also the object of a tsunami of generosity: it was estimated that 50 percent of American households donated to earthquake relief.
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And families across Europe, including the U.K. and generous Ireland, responded with significant sums, too. Just as no previous natural disaster had wreaked such havoc in such a crowded space, neither had one prompted such an outpouring of solidarity. Where lay the disconnect between the great need on the one hand and the steady flow of aid and support on the other?
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What would it take to transform these immediate expressions of solidarity or mercy or pity into the desired long-lasting outcomes—safe housing, clean water, good schools, health care, food security, and the dignity that comes from being liberated from the noxious cycle some describe as underdevelopment and others as structured dependence?
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One unanswered question was how much it would take to rebuild Port-au-Prince. The $9.9 billion pledged to Haiti in New York represented about $1,000 for every Haitian—not a lot if you're trying to rebuild a business or home, much less a safer capital city. And what if only 15 percent of the funds pledged arrived, as had occurred after the 2009 donors' conference? What little euphoria we felt right after the pledging conference gave way to anxiety and discord all too soon.

It was urgent that reconstruction start boldly and visibly. How would more than a million refugees make do in the spontaneous settlements throughout urban Haiti? We knew to expect strong winds and driving rain by mid-April, which threatened to strip the displaced of their tarps and tents and sheets, leaving the Haitians standing—if they still had strength to stand—on acres of mud and waste. People in the camps, some of them perched on steep hills, dreaded the rainy season and the flooding and mudslides that came with it. Every heavy rain that summer triggered anxiety and endless calls among groups seeking to provide care in the settlements. It proved far easier to demand better coordinated assistance, as John Holmes had done in February, than to really make it happen.