Coupons Ease Chaos in Efforts to Feed Haitians
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Women are considered a crucial part of a new coupon system for distributing rice in Haiti. The coupons are replacing a process that had been confusing and difficult to manage.
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By DAMIEN CAVE and GINGER THOMPSON
Published: February 2, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Four days into a new food distribution program from the United Nations that aims to repair a faltering aid effort, paper coupons that can be redeemed for 55 pounds of rice have become more valuable than Haitian money.
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Haitians desperate for basic necessities have left calls for help. Relief organizations that were in the country before the quake found themselves suffering surprising logistical problems.
Women hide them away in their bosoms. Aid workers count them furtively in the back of S.U.V.'s. The government wants control over who gets them, while schemers have already created counterfeits.
The food coupons are akin to diamonds: they are precious because sustenance is scarce. For three weeks since the international effort to feed millions of Haitians has been dogged by confusion, transportation snags, security problems and a lack of coordination. Before the coupon program started on Saturday, food giveaways had become a Darwinian sport — with biscuits and bottles of canola oil or biscuits thrown like footballs from the backs of trucks to masses of men jockeying for position.
Many are still hungry. As of Sunday, 639,200 people had received a meal from the United Nations' World Food Program, 32 percent of the two million estimated to be in need.
Aid groups say that they have been knocked back on their heels by a catastrophe they describe as more difficult to manage than famine in Africa or the tsunami in Asia.
Rarely if ever, they say, has a natural disaster so ravaged the crowded capital of an already poor country, devastating both the government and the international agencies that usually step in.
And yet the food crisis is not simply a natural disaster. Interviews with aid groups, United Nations officials, experts and Haitian government leaders reveal that communication was not a top priority early on. Inexperience and a go-it-alone approach — by groups Haitian and foreign — contributed to the dysfunction.
In many ways, the new food distribution program is an improvement, with its stepped-up security, emphasis on women as recipients and its plan for 16 fixed locations. But the disorientation that immediately followed the earthquake has been especially hard to cure.
Two weeks after the quake, in a khaki tent on the United Nations campus in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's interior minister led a meeting of bleary-eyed officials from the government, the United Nations and a half-dozen other agencies assigned to such issues as food, water and shelter.
Almost immediately, confusion surfaced: they were not working from a common map.
Several people at the meeting complained that they were not getting reports fast enough from organizations on the streets to help keep an accurate tally of which areas were getting assistance.
Numbers were tossed about, all of them adding up to staggering challenges. The shelter cluster reported that it had only 4,000 of the 200,000 tents requested by Haitian authorities. Food rations — a basic meal — had been distributed to less than half of the people the government believed needed them. And while potable water was reaching about 500,000 a day, only 20,000 had been given access to latrines.
"How do you provide toilets to makeshift camps," Guido Canale of Unicef said in an interview after the meeting, "in a city that did not have sufficient sanitation to begin with?"
Agencies Were Also Hurt
The meeting revealed how aid groups were struggling with an unexpected development: in a country where many of them had worked for years, they were starting from scratch. Sophie Perez, the country director for CARE, for example, said that 80 percent of her 133 employees had lost their homes to the quake.
The government, weak in the best of times, was incapacitated, and three of four United Nations warehouses with stockpiles of rice and other staples had been damaged. Food, more than anything else, became the pressure point. Haitian officials pushed to get off the sidelines; aid groups, fearing rampant corruption and violence, sought to limit their role.
The World Food Program started out by trying to feed as many people as possible, wherever, whenever. But by Week 2, some aid groups and Haiti's interior minister, Paul Antoine Bien-Aimé, were saying that without better coordination, "it's like we are shooting in the dark."
Anthony B. Banbury, a high-ranking United Nations logistician, said that it had become clear that distributing food properly would bring peace, while mistakes could lead to unrest.
"One of our main tools to achieve security is also a source of insecurity," he said after being sent to Haiti to speed the relief effort. "We need to do it in a well-planned, well-organized and well-coordinated manner."
That, however, proved to be immensely difficult. The collapse of the headquarters of the United Nations mission here robbed the relief effort of a central command.
Some of the groups that had rushed into the void were competent veterans. Others were what organizers from larger groups described as "humanitarian tourists": nongovernmental organizations full of good intentions, but with limited supplies and experience.
"They added to the confusion," Mr. Canale of Unicef said, "not to the solutions."
Dysfunction Was Clear
The dysfunction was all too obvious to besieged Haitians. Sheets and splintered plywood with painted calls for help began to appear on the streets of Port-au-Prince just a few days after the quake. "We need food," said one sign, then 6, then 20.
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Rigaud Joachin on Sunday handed out food coupons in his Port-au-Prince neighborhood, Nazon.
Multimedia
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Panoramas: Views From Haiti
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Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
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Parents Tell of Children They Entrusted to Detained Americans (February 3, 2010)
At a Queens Chocolate Factory, Grief After Haitian Earthquake (February 3, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti
Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute | Tips on Donating
More Multimedia on the Haiti Earthquake
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
The coupons have provided some order to the distribution process, which often involved food being tossed out of trucks and collected by the mightiest men.
Most were in English, Spanish or French. The underlying message was not just that Haiti's people were desperate — they also had no idea who was in charge or how to get help. Voltaire Samuel, like many others, concluded that perhaps the foreigners needed some direction.
Last week, with one arm in a sling, he and a half-dozen neighbors put up another S O S sign in the median of Delmas Street, outside downtown.
"They are giving food to other places," Mr. Samuel said. "Here, they bring us nothing."
Many of the residents in the district of Delmas 1 said last week they had not eaten in days. They hesitated to go too far in search of food because they feared that someone would steal their last remaining possessions, so they selected five men from among them to look.
But it did not work for them, or for thousands of others.
At the most visible food distribution site in the capital, near the collapsed presidential palace, the line typically lasted hours, with a swell of hungry Haitians leaving empty-handed.
After several days of trucks coming and leaving without serving the entire group, chaos engulfed the process.
Marcus Prior, a spokesman for the World Food Program, said that around 60 police officers and United Nations troops usually managed security at locations where as many as 5,000 people crowded around trucks with food.
On at least two days last week, United Nations troops used tear gas after a mass of men rushed the food distribution point and began grabbing what they could. In a separate case, one World Food Program truck stuck in traffic was robbed by men on motorbikes.
First Come First Served
Violence was more the exception than the rule, but food was still given out first come first served. A truck would drive up and men would run toward it. After awhile, women and those who lived a few blocks away did not even bother.
"They are treating people like dogs, just tossing things at them," said Séjour Jean Rodrigue, 38, one of the leaders in Delmas 1. "We don't want anything to do with it."
The new system for food distribution, devised to address these problems, has two major changes: coupons and a focus on women, who are supposed to be the only ones collecting rice.
The process also shifts power from Haiti's government to foreign aid groups; and from men throwing food from trucks to local leaders giving out coupons, like Rigaud Joachin, 48, a gregarious bookkeeper with the national telecommunications company who lives in one of the few houses still standing in the neighborhood of Nazon.
He was responsible on Sunday night for handing out 300 coupons to a list of families, and he took his job seriously. Inside his porch at dusk, he bellowed for each person to come forward.
"Lafleur Fernande!"
"Renette Briole!"
Before long, the crowd was 15 people wide and 3 deep. But Mr. Joachin, a respected neighborhood figure, had little trouble keeping order.
The next day, his 300 coupon holders and hundreds of others lined Poupelard Street, as two women at a time walked away with sacks of rice.
Security Still a Problem
Other locations have had a harder time. Security has been stepped up for food distribution, but twice since Saturday Haitians have set up blockades to try to stop United Nations supply trucks from passing, and pressure on coupon holders has intensified. On Monday afternoon, a crowd of several hundred people rushed workers from Catholic Relief Services as they tried to hand out coupons near the presidential palace, forcing them and a small team of American soldiers to flee.
One woman, Marcelin Cristana, admitted that she had gamed the system. "I bought the coupon for 20 Haitian dollars," she said, or about $2.50 in the United States.
At a park in the wealthy suburb of Pétionville that day, the food arrived late, after thousands without coupons had already gathered. Brian Casey, an emergency coordinator with Goal, an Irish aid group, explained that there had been a problem obtaining fuel. His loaders also failed to show up, leading him to pull 23 men with coupons out of line, offering them $5 each.
The biggest problem was the location: the driveway of a police station that was wide open, with no natural entrance or exit. Aid workers and United Nations troops set up a perimeter with orange plastic fencing, and the area where people left with rice felt as chaotic and aggressive as the food lines before the new program had started.
Meanwhile, theft occurred almost openly. Partly because workers were trying to move quickly — letting men, not just women, pick up the rice — pairs of off-duty police officers slid in to collect what they had no right to take.
"I'll make a note of it," said a United Nations police officer who had pulled one of the men aside. "But he's a policeman, so nothing will happen."
Many people nonetheless left pleased. Bernadette Volcy, 54, said she was "so happy the Americans are helping us." But, she added, "it's not enough."
United Nations officials agree. As of Tuesday morning, the new program had handed out enough rice to feed about 212,000 people, according to United Nations figures — more than 100,000 people short of its initial goal. Of the 16 sites chosen for distribution, only 9 were up and running on Sunday, increasing to 12 on Monday, and 14 on Tuesday.
Hundreds of thousands of people are still waiting. When the empty trucks left Pétionville, Haitians from the camp walked around looking for another gathering, holding up small strips of paper with their names written in careful script.
Desperate, hungry and still not satisfied, they said they were looking for the white men in control of food distribution. They needed coupons. They needed to eat.
Enlarge This Image
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Rigaud Joachin on Sunday handed out food coupons in his Port-au-Prince neighborhood, Nazon.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Panoramas: Views From Haiti
Interactive Feature
Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
Related
Parents Tell of Children They Entrusted to Detained Americans (February 3, 2010)
At a Queens Chocolate Factory, Grief After Haitian Earthquake (February 3, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti
Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute | Tips on Donating
More Multimedia on the Haiti Earthquake
Enlarge This Image
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
The coupons have provided some order to the distribution process, which often involved food being tossed out of trucks and collected by the mightiest men.
Most were in English, Spanish or French. The underlying message was not just that Haiti's people were desperate — they also had no idea who was in charge or how to get help. Voltaire Samuel, like many others, concluded that perhaps the foreigners needed some direction.
Last week, with one arm in a sling, he and a half-dozen neighbors put up another S O S sign in the median of Delmas Street, outside downtown.
"They are giving food to other places," Mr. Samuel said. "Here, they bring us nothing."
Many of the residents in the district of Delmas 1 said last week they had not eaten in days. They hesitated to go too far in search of food because they feared that someone would steal their last remaining possessions, so they selected five men from among them to look.
But it did not work for them, or for thousands of others.
At the most visible food distribution site in the capital, near the collapsed presidential palace, the line typically lasted hours, with a swell of hungry Haitians leaving empty-handed.
After several days of trucks coming and leaving without serving the entire group, chaos engulfed the process.
Marcus Prior, a spokesman for the World Food Program, said that around 60 police officers and United Nations troops usually managed security at locations where as many as 5,000 people crowded around trucks with food.
On at least two days last week, United Nations troops used tear gas after a mass of men rushed the food distribution point and began grabbing what they could. In a separate case, one World Food Program truck stuck in traffic was robbed by men on motorbikes.
First Come First Served
Violence was more the exception than the rule, but food was still given out first come first served. A truck would drive up and men would run toward it. After awhile, women and those who lived a few blocks away did not even bother.
"They are treating people like dogs, just tossing things at them," said Séjour Jean Rodrigue, 38, one of the leaders in Delmas 1. "We don't want anything to do with it."
The new system for food distribution, devised to address these problems, has two major changes: coupons and a focus on women, who are supposed to be the only ones collecting rice.
The process also shifts power from Haiti's government to foreign aid groups; and from men throwing food from trucks to local leaders giving out coupons, like Rigaud Joachin, 48, a gregarious bookkeeper with the national telecommunications company who lives in one of the few houses still standing in the neighborhood of Nazon.
He was responsible on Sunday night for handing out 300 coupons to a list of families, and he took his job seriously. Inside his porch at dusk, he bellowed for each person to come forward.
"Lafleur Fernande!"
"Renette Briole!"
Before long, the crowd was 15 people wide and 3 deep. But Mr. Joachin, a respected neighborhood figure, had little trouble keeping order.
The next day, his 300 coupon holders and hundreds of others lined Poupelard Street, as two women at a time walked away with sacks of rice.
Security Still a Problem
Other locations have had a harder time. Security has been stepped up for food distribution, but twice since Saturday Haitians have set up blockades to try to stop United Nations supply trucks from passing, and pressure on coupon holders has intensified. On Monday afternoon, a crowd of several hundred people rushed workers from Catholic Relief Services as they tried to hand out coupons near the presidential palace, forcing them and a small team of American soldiers to flee.
One woman, Marcelin Cristana, admitted that she had gamed the system. "I bought the coupon for 20 Haitian dollars," she said, or about $2.50 in the United States.
At a park in the wealthy suburb of Pétionville that day, the food arrived late, after thousands without coupons had already gathered. Brian Casey, an emergency coordinator with Goal, an Irish aid group, explained that there had been a problem obtaining fuel. His loaders also failed to show up, leading him to pull 23 men with coupons out of line, offering them $5 each.
The biggest problem was the location: the driveway of a police station that was wide open, with no natural entrance or exit. Aid workers and United Nations troops set up a perimeter with orange plastic fencing, and the area where people left with rice felt as chaotic and aggressive as the food lines before the new program had started.
Meanwhile, theft occurred almost openly. Partly because workers were trying to move quickly — letting men, not just women, pick up the rice — pairs of off-duty police officers slid in to collect what they had no right to take.
"I'll make a note of it," said a United Nations police officer who had pulled one of the men aside. "But he's a policeman, so nothing will happen."
Many people nonetheless left pleased. Bernadette Volcy, 54, said she was "so happy the Americans are helping us." But, she added, "it's not enough."
United Nations officials agree. As of Tuesday morning, the new program had handed out enough rice to feed about 212,000 people, according to United Nations figures — more than 100,000 people short of its initial goal. Of the 16 sites chosen for distribution, only 9 were up and running on Sunday, increasing to 12 on Monday, and 14 on Tuesday.
Hundreds of thousands of people are still waiting. When the empty trucks left Pétionville, Haitians from the camp walked around looking for another gathering, holding up small strips of paper with their names written in careful script.
Desperate, hungry and still not satisfied, they said they were looking for the white men in control of food distribution. They needed coupons. They needed to eat.
Rebuilding will mean reversing past failures
Updated 8h 56m ago | Comments 150 | Recommend 7 E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |
Enlarge Pool photo
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with Haitian President Rene Preval, third from left, in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 16 to discuss conditions in the country following the deadly earthquake.
BY THE NUMBERS
Countries around the world continue helping Haitians recover from the magnitude-7.0 earthquake that struck there Jan. 12. Here is a look at the tragedy and U.S. efforts, by the numbers:
Official death toll: 150,000
Number of homeless: 1 million
Meals distributed each day: Nearly 100,000
Water bottles distributed each day: 308,000
U.S. military personnel: 15,000
Navy and Coast Guard ships: 23
U.S. military aircraft: 120
Patients treated by U.S. officials: 12,600
U.S. government assistance obligated: $379 million
Private donations made by Americans: $519 million
Sources: Haitian government; United Nations World Food Program; United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF); U.S. Southern Command; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Indiana University Center on Philanthropy
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By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — During the 1990s, the U.S. government spent $100 million trying to improve Haiti's police and justice systems, and had little to show for it.
After a decade of such aid, the nation's law enforcement and courts remained corrupt and ineffectual, a 2000 Government Accountability Office report said.
From 2005 to 2007, the USA tried again, paying a contractor nearly $4 million to improve Haiti's judicial system. There was "no measurable improvement," a government audit found.
Those programs were a small part of the river of foreign aid that has flowed into Haiti in recent decades, even as it has descended further into the depths of poverty and dysfunction.
After receiving $8.3 billion in foreign aid since 1969, Haiti is 25% poorer than it was in 1945, according to statistics compiled by Nicholas Eberstadt, an economist with the American Enterprise Institute. Even before the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed at least 100,000 people, three-quarters of Haiti's 9 million people lived on less than $2 a day, the United Nations says.
MASS GRAVES: Lasting spiritual impact on Haiti
ETHICAL DEBATE ENDS: Doctors do surgery on Haitian baby
U.N.: Violence near food-aid locations
DETAINED: Americans questioned by Haitian judge about orphans
World leaders now are talking about a massive effort to rebuild Haiti's shattered infrastructure. Haiti's tourism minister says it could cost $3 billion. The recovery challenge is without modern precedent, says Laurent Dubois, a Haiti expert at Duke University.
There have been equally devastating quakes, Dubois says, but "you have to go really far back to find an earthquake of this magnitude that hit a capital city," in a country already so lacking in decent housing, roads or public utilities, like water and electricity systems.
Helping Haiti involves more than just humanitarian issues, said Robert Fatton Jr., a Haiti scholar at the University of Virginia. If the United States and the international community don't help rebuild Haiti, there could be waves of Haitian refugees trying to reach the USA.
"You have the possibility of an attempted mass migration," Fatton says. "That would be a public relations disaster for any administration in Washington. It would be an embarrassing sight."
There are 535,000 Haitian immigrants in the USA, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based group. From 1980 to 2000, the number of Haitian immigrants quadrupled, the institute says.
PHOTOS: A daily look at the conditions in Haiti
Images of Americans helping Haiti also help the USA abroad, President Obama said Tuesday. "It's part of our national security, it's a smart thing to do," he said.
Those planning the rebuilding say a new way of dispensing aid is needed in Haiti. It starts with a clear-eyed view of what has gone wrong, says Cheryl Mills, chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Mills visited Haiti routinely before the earthquake, helping to craft a new aid strategy that her boss says now will be the starting point for Haiti reconstruction.
"We didn't have a model that was sustainable," Mills says of previous aid efforts. "A lot of our assistance was channeled through (private aid groups) and contractors. There was no clear strategy for how you might ultimately transfer capacity to the Haitian government and the Haitian people, putting the nation on a more sustainable path."
The plan Mills and others helped write focuses on security, agriculture, electricity and health. Mills says it would be "a comprehensive and integrated approach to achieve long-term stability and economic growth."
Former president Bill Clinton, special United Nations envoy to Haiti, is likely to play a key role in coordinating it, Mills says, though much is still being decided.
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COMEBACK: Aid operations help Haiti's commerce
Mills acknowledges that "a historic concern about corruption in Haiti" is one reason so little aid has been routed through the Haitian government. "We'll need to be smart about how we invest … and ensure that appropriate accountability mechanisms are employed," she says, "but we must also be willing to allow the development of Haitian capacity."
Physician Paul Farmer, who founded a network of medical clinics in Haiti and is now deputy U.N. envoy under Clinton, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday that the "aid machinery currently at work in Haiti" costs too much in overhead and relies too much on aid groups and contractors.
"There is an opportunity not only to build Haiti better, but to build a more functional and beneficial aid structure," he says.
A Marshall Plan for Haiti?
The challenges are "almost unimaginable," Mills says.
The United Nations says half the buildings in Port-au-Prince are rubble and 1 million Haitians are homeless, with hurricane season approaching. What little infrastructure there was — ports, roads, bridges, sewer systems, water lines — has been decimated. Key buildings, including the presidential palace, parliament, the justice ministry and the prison, have collapsed.
Haiti will have to start almost from scratch.
"The government ministries — nearly all have been decimated," says Rajiv Shah, who is coordinating the U.S. relief and rebuilding effort as administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. "The leadership of so many of the organizations that Haitians look to — many have died and many have suffered tremendous loss of relatives and property. It's extraordinary."
The business sector also has been crippled, Shah says.
"Just one example: 60% of the construction firm capacity in Haiti was destroyed by the earthquake," he says.
"What is needed is a Marshall Plan for Haiti," says Irish billionaire Denis O'Brien, whose company, Digicel, provides mobile service in the country. "For once and for all, we have to lift Haiti off the floor."
Under the Marshall Plan, which also was invoked by Farmer and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, the USA provided about $13 billion in cash, goods and services to Western Europe from 1948 to 1951 — more than $100 billion in today's dollars.
The aid, credited with laying the basis for Europe's prosperity and helped rebuild devastated countries. But unlike Haiti, those nations had literate populations, the rule of law and long traditions of good governance, trade and industry. Most Haitians eke out an existence on a deforested, hurricane-prone stretch of island the size of Maryland. Its economic, education and legal systems barely function.
Founded by former slaves who threw out their French masters in 1804, Haiti suffered years of isolation, and the French government extracted steep reparations that hindered Haiti's economy. U.S. Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, using forced labor to build roads. Dictators ruled it for most of the 20th century. Most recently, after years of political upheaval, U.N. peacekeepers were responsible for security.
Haiti's legacy of slavery, oppression, corruption and coups made it one of the world's hardest development cases, even before the earthquake.
Some international efforts arguably made things worse. Others have been stymied by political instability. Still others were simply ineffectual.
In the name of free trade, the International Monetary Fund encouraged Haiti to lift tariffs on rice in the 1980s. Its local rice production collapsed, and now it imports rice from the United States, enriching U.S. growers subsidized by Congress, says Georgia State political scientist Henry "Chip" Carey.
In the 1990s, President Clinton sent in U.S. troops to restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been ousted in a military coup. Clinton led a $2.6 billion international aid effort. But in 1999, the United States and other donors cut off aid over allegations of election fraud and corruption. It didn't flow again until 2004, when more U.S. troops were sent in to restore order.
Then there are the white elephants, such as the five German-built windmills that overlook the bay of Port-de-Paix, says American anthropologist Timothy Schwartz, a fluent Creole-speaker who spent eight years living in rural Haiti. The windmills were never hooked up and quickly stripped for parts, he writes in his 2008 book, Travesty in Haiti.
"The problem is not goodwill," he says by e-mail from Haiti. "I don't even think the problem is resources. … The big problem is the lack of accountability, lack of a mechanism to pressure aid agencies into effective, long-term development."
That's why Haiti's rebuilding should be orchestrated by a single powerful entity, says Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He's calling for a $3 billion reconstruction fund, including $1 billion from the USA, run through a multinational agency with a governing board including Haitians.
British development expert Paul Collier, who consulted with the United Nations over Haiti development before the quake, likewise sees a reconstruction effort costing "in the low billions."
Jobs are key
If the U.S. government gives $1 billion, it would be about one-third of what it is spending on non-military aid to Afghanistan this year. Current U.S. aid to Haiti is about $300 million a year. After the 2004 tsunami killed more than 160,000 in Southeast Asia, the U.S. government pledged nearly $1 billion of the $13.4 billion pledged by countries, businesses and private groups, the United Nations says.
Such a U.S. donation could materialize again, but the Haiti quake comes as the USA is in recession and mired in debt.
The U.S. government has $375 million designated for Haiti, says Tom Gavin of the Office of Management and Budget. Beyond that, he says, "it would be premature" to say how much the USA will give" or where the money would come from.
The earthquake has raised questions that previous planning didn't account for. For example, Haitians are leaving Port-au-Prince in large numbers for the countryside. Should the rebuilding effort encourage that migration, given that much of the capital was a fetid, crowded slum before the earthquake?
Hillary Clinton suggested the answer was yes.
"So many people are leaving Port-au-Prince into the surrounding countryside," she told reporters recently. "People feel safer in the countryside and we want to support them there."
Yet Port-au-Prince is home to key economic infrastructure, such as the main seaport and airport, both of which should be upgraded and expanded, says O'Brien, whose Digicel mobile phone network was quickly up and running after the earthquake.
The effort should focus on restoring "electricity, water, sanitation, bridges, roads," he says.
And it all must be built according to an earthquake-resistant building code, says Timothy Knight, a former USAID disaster assistance manager now with the International Resources Group, a private contractor.
It's crucial for the reconstruction effort to create jobs for Haitians, even if it means a less efficient operation than one run solely by contractors from rich countries, says Brian Atwood, a former USAID administrator and dean of the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.
One skeptic is William Easterly, a New York University professor and critic of foreign aid practices. He supports rebuilding Haiti's infrastructure but says aid should focus on fixing specific problems, not on "yet another delusional attempt" by outsiders to fix Haiti.
Contributing: Aamer Madhani in McLean, Va.
Updated 8h 56m ago | Comments 150 | Recommend 7 E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |
Enlarge Pool photo
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with Haitian President Rene Preval, third from left, in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 16 to discuss conditions in the country following the deadly earthquake.
BY THE NUMBERS
Countries around the world continue helping Haitians recover from the magnitude-7.0 earthquake that struck there Jan. 12. Here is a look at the tragedy and U.S. efforts, by the numbers:
Official death toll: 150,000
Number of homeless: 1 million
Meals distributed each day: Nearly 100,000
Water bottles distributed each day: 308,000
U.S. military personnel: 15,000
Navy and Coast Guard ships: 23
U.S. military aircraft: 120
Patients treated by U.S. officials: 12,600
U.S. government assistance obligated: $379 million
Private donations made by Americans: $519 million
Sources: Haitian government; United Nations World Food Program; United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF); U.S. Southern Command; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Indiana University Center on Philanthropy
Share
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Add to Mixx
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By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — During the 1990s, the U.S. government spent $100 million trying to improve Haiti's police and justice systems, and had little to show for it.
After a decade of such aid, the nation's law enforcement and courts remained corrupt and ineffectual, a 2000 Government Accountability Office report said.
From 2005 to 2007, the USA tried again, paying a contractor nearly $4 million to improve Haiti's judicial system. There was "no measurable improvement," a government audit found.
Those programs were a small part of the river of foreign aid that has flowed into Haiti in recent decades, even as it has descended further into the depths of poverty and dysfunction.
After receiving $8.3 billion in foreign aid since 1969, Haiti is 25% poorer than it was in 1945, according to statistics compiled by Nicholas Eberstadt, an economist with the American Enterprise Institute. Even before the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed at least 100,000 people, three-quarters of Haiti's 9 million people lived on less than $2 a day, the United Nations says.
MASS GRAVES: Lasting spiritual impact on Haiti
ETHICAL DEBATE ENDS: Doctors do surgery on Haitian baby
U.N.: Violence near food-aid locations
DETAINED: Americans questioned by Haitian judge about orphans
World leaders now are talking about a massive effort to rebuild Haiti's shattered infrastructure. Haiti's tourism minister says it could cost $3 billion. The recovery challenge is without modern precedent, says Laurent Dubois, a Haiti expert at Duke University.
There have been equally devastating quakes, Dubois says, but "you have to go really far back to find an earthquake of this magnitude that hit a capital city," in a country already so lacking in decent housing, roads or public utilities, like water and electricity systems.
Helping Haiti involves more than just humanitarian issues, said Robert Fatton Jr., a Haiti scholar at the University of Virginia. If the United States and the international community don't help rebuild Haiti, there could be waves of Haitian refugees trying to reach the USA.
"You have the possibility of an attempted mass migration," Fatton says. "That would be a public relations disaster for any administration in Washington. It would be an embarrassing sight."
There are 535,000 Haitian immigrants in the USA, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based group. From 1980 to 2000, the number of Haitian immigrants quadrupled, the institute says.
PHOTOS: A daily look at the conditions in Haiti
Images of Americans helping Haiti also help the USA abroad, President Obama said Tuesday. "It's part of our national security, it's a smart thing to do," he said.
Those planning the rebuilding say a new way of dispensing aid is needed in Haiti. It starts with a clear-eyed view of what has gone wrong, says Cheryl Mills, chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Mills visited Haiti routinely before the earthquake, helping to craft a new aid strategy that her boss says now will be the starting point for Haiti reconstruction.
"We didn't have a model that was sustainable," Mills says of previous aid efforts. "A lot of our assistance was channeled through (private aid groups) and contractors. There was no clear strategy for how you might ultimately transfer capacity to the Haitian government and the Haitian people, putting the nation on a more sustainable path."
The plan Mills and others helped write focuses on security, agriculture, electricity and health. Mills says it would be "a comprehensive and integrated approach to achieve long-term stability and economic growth."
Former president Bill Clinton, special United Nations envoy to Haiti, is likely to play a key role in coordinating it, Mills says, though much is still being decided.
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Mills acknowledges that "a historic concern about corruption in Haiti" is one reason so little aid has been routed through the Haitian government. "We'll need to be smart about how we invest … and ensure that appropriate accountability mechanisms are employed," she says, "but we must also be willing to allow the development of Haitian capacity."
Physician Paul Farmer, who founded a network of medical clinics in Haiti and is now deputy U.N. envoy under Clinton, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday that the "aid machinery currently at work in Haiti" costs too much in overhead and relies too much on aid groups and contractors.
"There is an opportunity not only to build Haiti better, but to build a more functional and beneficial aid structure," he says.
A Marshall Plan for Haiti?
The challenges are "almost unimaginable," Mills says.
The United Nations says half the buildings in Port-au-Prince are rubble and 1 million Haitians are homeless, with hurricane season approaching. What little infrastructure there was — ports, roads, bridges, sewer systems, water lines — has been decimated. Key buildings, including the presidential palace, parliament, the justice ministry and the prison, have collapsed.
Haiti will have to start almost from scratch.
"The government ministries — nearly all have been decimated," says Rajiv Shah, who is coordinating the U.S. relief and rebuilding effort as administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. "The leadership of so many of the organizations that Haitians look to — many have died and many have suffered tremendous loss of relatives and property. It's extraordinary."
The business sector also has been crippled, Shah says.
"Just one example: 60% of the construction firm capacity in Haiti was destroyed by the earthquake," he says.
"What is needed is a Marshall Plan for Haiti," says Irish billionaire Denis O'Brien, whose company, Digicel, provides mobile service in the country. "For once and for all, we have to lift Haiti off the floor."
Under the Marshall Plan, which also was invoked by Farmer and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, the USA provided about $13 billion in cash, goods and services to Western Europe from 1948 to 1951 — more than $100 billion in today's dollars.
The aid, credited with laying the basis for Europe's prosperity and helped rebuild devastated countries. But unlike Haiti, those nations had literate populations, the rule of law and long traditions of good governance, trade and industry. Most Haitians eke out an existence on a deforested, hurricane-prone stretch of island the size of Maryland. Its economic, education and legal systems barely function.
Founded by former slaves who threw out their French masters in 1804, Haiti suffered years of isolation, and the French government extracted steep reparations that hindered Haiti's economy. U.S. Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, using forced labor to build roads. Dictators ruled it for most of the 20th century. Most recently, after years of political upheaval, U.N. peacekeepers were responsible for security.
Haiti's legacy of slavery, oppression, corruption and coups made it one of the world's hardest development cases, even before the earthquake.
Some international efforts arguably made things worse. Others have been stymied by political instability. Still others were simply ineffectual.
In the name of free trade, the International Monetary Fund encouraged Haiti to lift tariffs on rice in the 1980s. Its local rice production collapsed, and now it imports rice from the United States, enriching U.S. growers subsidized by Congress, says Georgia State political scientist Henry "Chip" Carey.
In the 1990s, President Clinton sent in U.S. troops to restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been ousted in a military coup. Clinton led a $2.6 billion international aid effort. But in 1999, the United States and other donors cut off aid over allegations of election fraud and corruption. It didn't flow again until 2004, when more U.S. troops were sent in to restore order.
Then there are the white elephants, such as the five German-built windmills that overlook the bay of Port-de-Paix, says American anthropologist Timothy Schwartz, a fluent Creole-speaker who spent eight years living in rural Haiti. The windmills were never hooked up and quickly stripped for parts, he writes in his 2008 book, Travesty in Haiti.
"The problem is not goodwill," he says by e-mail from Haiti. "I don't even think the problem is resources. … The big problem is the lack of accountability, lack of a mechanism to pressure aid agencies into effective, long-term development."
That's why Haiti's rebuilding should be orchestrated by a single powerful entity, says Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He's calling for a $3 billion reconstruction fund, including $1 billion from the USA, run through a multinational agency with a governing board including Haitians.
British development expert Paul Collier, who consulted with the United Nations over Haiti development before the quake, likewise sees a reconstruction effort costing "in the low billions."
Jobs are key
If the U.S. government gives $1 billion, it would be about one-third of what it is spending on non-military aid to Afghanistan this year. Current U.S. aid to Haiti is about $300 million a year. After the 2004 tsunami killed more than 160,000 in Southeast Asia, the U.S. government pledged nearly $1 billion of the $13.4 billion pledged by countries, businesses and private groups, the United Nations says.
Such a U.S. donation could materialize again, but the Haiti quake comes as the USA is in recession and mired in debt.
The U.S. government has $375 million designated for Haiti, says Tom Gavin of the Office of Management and Budget. Beyond that, he says, "it would be premature" to say how much the USA will give" or where the money would come from.
The earthquake has raised questions that previous planning didn't account for. For example, Haitians are leaving Port-au-Prince in large numbers for the countryside. Should the rebuilding effort encourage that migration, given that much of the capital was a fetid, crowded slum before the earthquake?
Hillary Clinton suggested the answer was yes.
"So many people are leaving Port-au-Prince into the surrounding countryside," she told reporters recently. "People feel safer in the countryside and we want to support them there."
Yet Port-au-Prince is home to key economic infrastructure, such as the main seaport and airport, both of which should be upgraded and expanded, says O'Brien, whose Digicel mobile phone network was quickly up and running after the earthquake.
The effort should focus on restoring "electricity, water, sanitation, bridges, roads," he says.
And it all must be built according to an earthquake-resistant building code, says Timothy Knight, a former USAID disaster assistance manager now with the International Resources Group, a private contractor.
It's crucial for the reconstruction effort to create jobs for Haitians, even if it means a less efficient operation than one run solely by contractors from rich countries, says Brian Atwood, a former USAID administrator and dean of the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.
One skeptic is William Easterly, a New York University professor and critic of foreign aid practices. He supports rebuilding Haiti's infrastructure but says aid should focus on fixing specific problems, not on "yet another delusional attempt" by outsiders to fix Haiti.
Contributing: Aamer Madhani in McLean, Va.
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