Making Haiti Whole
NY Times

Published: March 27, 2010
A donors’ conference at the United Nations this Wednesday is meant to be the beginning of the long, slow birth of a new Haiti. Representatives of the Haitian government, the United States and other nations and aid organizations will be discussing large, ambitious, farsighted plans. Participants will be asked for lots of money: $11.5 billion to start, $34.4 billion over 10 years.

That is a large investment for a small country, but it is not all Haiti needs. For this to succeed, the commitments made this week will need to be sustained for many years, and the rebuilding will need to clear away more than just rubble.

It will need to sweep out the old, bad ways of doing things, not only those of the infamously corrupt and hapless government, but also of aid and development agencies, whose nurturing of Haiti has been a manifest failure for more than half a century.

The good news is that even before the Jan. 12 earthquake, international donors had largely reached a consensus on what they had done wrong, and how to get Haiti right. Their conclusions are reflected in the plans to be presented this week, with ideas like these:

TRANSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY, EFFECTIVENESS No donor wants to pour more cash down a Haiti sinkhole, or to fritter it away in small-bore projects that do not accomplish much. The plan envisions a multidonor trust fund managed by the World Bank that pools money for big projects and avoids wasteful redundancy.

The Haitian Development Authority would approve the projects; outside auditors would oversee the spending. There also is a parallel idea, in which certain donors choose just one area to focus all their efforts — reconstructing government buildings, say, or fixing the power grid. That promises to be an effective way to eliminate the curse of inefficiency.

HAITIAN INVOLVEMENT Haiti is Haiti’s problem, for Haitians to solve with the help of the rest of the world. The rebuilding must involve genuine, not token, engagement by the Haitian government and civil society.

Previous efforts by aid organizations to entirely avoid the control — and corruption — of the government were an understandable impulse, but had the unwanted effect of undermining the effectiveness and credibility of the Haitian state.

The new plan proposes an interim recovery commission of Haitians and non-Haitians, which would eventually evolve into a Haitian Development Authority that answers to the prime minister.

If it works, Haiti might no longer have to rely on freelance charities roaming the country, doing scattershot good works that cannot be sustained. Relief agencies have also recently been hiring thousands of Haitians to clear rubble. The country needs much more of that strategy, in other areas like reforestation and reconstruction, to boost not just employment but also the skills of the work force.

SELF-SUFFICIENCY Haitians need seeds and fertilizer more than bags of charity groceries. President Bill Clinton recently confessed that United States trade policies in his tenure did more to help rice farmers in Arkansas than those in Haiti.

Haiti now enjoys generous access to the American market, which should be continued and expanded. As many experts have pointed out, modest investments in the garment industry, and trade preferences for it, could swiftly employ many thousands of Haitians and accelerate foreign investment.

TAPPING THE DIASPORA Haiti does have a large, successful professional class — entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, teachers and administrators. It just happens to live in Brooklyn, Miami, Boston, Canada and other places. Many of its members are eager to go back to Haiti to help.

They could do so far more easily if their governments subsidized their salaries when they moved. Such paid furloughs would quickly supply Haiti with people of great expertise, language skills and deep commitment to the rebuilding.

DECENTRALIZATION There are too many people in Port-au-Prince. Haiti needs new population centers, less congested and more vibrant. The failure to build safe housing for earthquake survivors is a continuing tragedy; the time to start fixing it is now, far from the capital.

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The paradox being confronted on Wednesday is how to rebuild a country that was never properly built in the first place. Haiti may yet escape the crushing legacy of its tragic history, propelled by the opportunity that this latest tragedy creates. The government of President René Préval has not inspired confidence in its handling of the relief effort, but it has a chance to shake off its inertia and show it wants to get the rebuilding right, beginning this week.

todays editorial from NY Times makes some very good points .......let us hope this horrible disaster has a silver lining for the People of Haiti

aiti, Donors Face Huge Task to "Build Back Better"
By REUTERS
Published: March 28, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - "Retou ala Vi. Ayiti Pap Peri" (Back to life, Haiti will not die) reads the banner in Creole stretched up beside a crowded camp of earthquake survivors in the heart of the wrecked capital Port-au-Prince.

Life, in the form of bustling pedestrians, chaotic traffic and teeming street markets, has indeed bounced back in the city after the devastating January 12 quake that killed maybe more than 300,000 and turned streets into jumbles of rubble.

But a massive task of reconstructing the quake-shattered capital and its dependent nation -- a small Caribbean state that was already a byword for poverty in the Western Hemisphere -- now faces Haiti's government and donors when they meet in New York on Wednesday to pledge funds and agree to strategies.

President Rene Preval and the country's foreign partners have stressed that the rebuilding should seek not just to put back what was lost -- the destroyed buildings, schools and hospitals -- but lift Haiti out of the cycle of instability and underdevelopment that has kept it mired in misery for decades.

"Haiti is on its knees, we must get it to stand back up," Preval said in a recent speech to private entrepreneurs.

Estimates of damage inflicted by the magnitude 7.0 quake, viewed by some as the most deadly natural disaster in recent history, range between $8 billion and $14 billion.

Participants in Wednesday's conference will look to secure not only a major envelope of funds -- an initial figure contemplates $3.8 billion over 18 months, much more for the longer term -- but also a viable blueprint for Haiti's successful future development.

This will try to tackle some of the restraints that have locked Haiti in a poverty trap for years.

Proposals include an urgent decentralization strategy to create jobs and wealth outside the capital of some 4 million people -- more than a third of the country's population -- which has so monopolized national economic life that Haitians jokingly refer to it as the "Republic of Port-au-Prince."

There are also calls to rally private investment to the reconstruction effort, for example in textile manufacturing, tourism, and agriculture, where cheap subsidized imports of rice and sugar have kept Haitian peasant farmers relegated to dirt-poor subsistence farming.

Supporters of Haiti, who include former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who spent his honeymoon there and is now the special United Nations coordinator for the relief effort, say the disaster provides an opportunity to "build back better."

"This country has the best chance to escape its past that it's ever had," Clinton said last week in a visit to Haiti. "As horrible as this is, it gives them a chance to start again."

STILL AN EMERGENCY OPERATION

But this hopeful vision must be set against the deep pessimism that seems to affect many ordinary Haitians, accustomed as they are to seeing the country's resources, and foreign largesse, being monopolized by a small elite. The specter of corruption looms large in the national conscience.

"There might be some more money (from the donors), but those who need it won't receive it," said mother of three Gilene Morquette, as she jostled in a crush of women waiting to receive a Save the Children aid handout at a sprawling quake survivors' camp in the city's Petionville golf club.

Skepticism also gripped 47-year-old barber Raymond Martin as he showed reporters his destroyed barber shop in the ruined downtown city center. He lost a child in the quake.

"For Haiti to have a chance, the foreigners must be the ones who reconstruct," he said. "I don't want Haitians to govern, we should have a foreign protectorate here," he said, touching off a debate on the still rubble-strewn street side.

There will be no foreign protectorate -- donors and aid partners are careful to insist that Haiti's government directs the reconstruction -- but monitoring mechanisms are being included in plans to finance the rebuilding effort.

The World Bank is due to act as "fiscal agent" of a Multi-Donors Trust Fund to be created for Haiti.

But while the government and donors plan reconstruction, aid workers are urging them not to ignore the immediate needs of the more than 1 million homeless quake survivors who are still camped out precariously in streets and open spaces, vulnerable to the approaching rains and hurricane season.

"For us, this remains an emergency operation," said Iain Logan, head of Haiti operations of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

He saw Haiti's rebuilding as a bigger challenge even than the reconstruction after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. "In my professional lifetime, we've never had to rebuild a capital city, on which the whole country was fundamentally based."

The European Union and a coalition of U.S.-based humanitarian groups have indicated they are likely to pledge more than $2.7 billion for Haiti at the New York conference.

U.S. President Barack Obama has asked Congress for $2.8 billion in funds for Haiti relief and reconstruction costs.

But there is recognition this will be a long job. "No one walks away from the scenes of devastation I've seen ... within 18 months. This is for the long haul," said British International Development Minister Mike Foster, after a visit last week.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The lights of the casino above this wrecked city beckoned as gamblers in freshly pressed clothes streamed to the roulette table and slot machines. In a restaurant nearby, diners quaffed Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Champagne and ate New Zealand lamb chops at prices rivaling those in Manhattan.
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
Near the camp, well-to-do Haitians and foreigners dined recently at Magdoos.

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
Aleksandr Dobrianskiy and his wife, Pascale Andree Theard, danced at a nightclub. He said business at his casino had never been better.
A few yards away, hundreds of families displaced by the earthquake languished under tents and tarps, bathing themselves from buckets and relieving themselves in the street as barefoot children frolicked on pavement strewn with garbage.

This is the Pétionville district of Port-au-Prince, a hillside bastion of Haiti’s well-heeled where a mangled sense of normalcy has taken hold after the earthquake in January. Business is bustling at the lavish boutiques, restaurants and nightclubs that have reopened in the breezy hills above the capital, while thousands of homeless and hungry people camp in the streets around them, sometimes literally on their doorstep.

“The rich people sometimes need to step over us to get inside,” said Judith Pierre, 28, a maid who has lived for weeks in a tent with her two daughters in front of Magdoos, a chic Lebanese restaurant where diners relax in a garden and smoke flavored tobacco from hookahs. Chauffeurs for some of the customers inside lined up sport utility vehicles next to Ms. Pierre’s tent on the sidewalk near the entrance.

Haiti has long had glaring inequality, with tiny pockets of wealth persisting amid extreme poverty, and Pétionville itself was economically mixed before the earthquake, with poor families living near the gated mansions and villas of the rich.

But the disaster has focused new attention on this gap, making for surreal contrasts along the streets above Port-au-Prince’s central districts. People in tent camps reeking of sewage are living in areas where prosperous Haitians, foreign aid workers and diplomats come to spend their money and unwind. Often, just a gate and a private guard armed with a 12-gauge shotgun separate the newly homeless from establishments like Les Galeries Rivoli, a boutique where wealthy Haitians and foreigners shop for Raymond Weil watches and Izod shirts.

“There’s nothing logical about what’s going on right now,” said Tatiana Wah, a Haitian planning expert at Columbia University who is living in Pétionville and working as an adviser to Haiti’s government. Ms. Wah said the revelry at some nightclubs near her home, which are frequented by rich Haitians and foreigners, was now as loud — or louder — than before the earthquake.

The nongovernmental organizations “are flooding the local economy with their spending,” she said, “but it’s not clear if much of it is trickling down.”

Aleksandr Dobrianskiy, the Ukrainian owner of the Bagheera casino here in the hills, smiled as customers flowed in one recent Saturday evening, drinking Cuba Libres and plunking tokens into slot machines.

He said business had never been better, attributing the uptick at his casino to the money coming into Haiti for relief projects. That spending is percolating through select areas of the economy, as some educated Haitians get jobs working with relief agencies and foreigners bring in cash from abroad, using it on housing, security, transportation and entertainment.

“Haiti’s like a submarine that just hit the bottom of the sea,” said Mr. Dobrianskiy, 39, who moved here a year ago and carries a semiautomatic Glock handgun for protection. “It’s got nowhere to go but up.”

Sometimes the worlds of haves and have-nots collide. Violent crime and kidnappings have been relatively low since the earthquake. But when two European relief workers from Doctors Without Borders were abducted outside the exclusive Plantation restaurant this month and held for five days, the episode served as a reminder of how Haiti’s poverty could give rise to resentment and crime.

The breadth of Haiti’s economic misery seemed incomprehensible to many before the quake, with almost 80 percent of the population living on less than $2 a day. A small elite in gated mansions here in Pétionville and other hillside districts wields vast economic power.

But with parts of Port-au-Prince now in ruins, tens of thousands of people displaced by the quake are camping directly in the bulwarks once associated with power and wealth, like Place St.-Pierre (across from the elegant Kinam Hotel) and the grounds of Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive’s office.

The city’s biggest tent camp, with more than 40,000 displaced people, sprawls over the hills of the Pétionville Club, a country club with a golf course that before the quake had its own Facebook page for former members. (“Had the best Citronade; I bet I drank thousands of them, no exaggeration,” one reminiscence said.)

Pétionville’s boutiques and restaurants stand in stark contrast to the parallel economic reality in the camp now at the Pétionville Club. Throughout its maze of tents, merchants sell dried fish and yams for a fraction of what the French cuisine costs in exclusive restaurants nearby like Quartier Latin or La Souvenance.

Manicurists in the camp do nails. A stylist in a hovel applies hair extensions. The camp even has its own Paradis Ciné, set up in a tent with space for as many as 30 people. It charges admission of about $1.50 for screenings of “2012,” the end-of-times disaster movie known here as “Apocalypse.”

“The people in the camp need their diversion, too,” said Cined Milien, 22, the operator of Paradis Ciné.

Still, a ticket to see “Apocalypse” is a luxury out of the grasp of most people who lost their homes in the earthquake. Some of the well-off in Pétionville who have reopened their businesses have done so cautiously, aware of the misfortune that persists on their doorstep.

“It’s kind of hard for people to dance and have fun,” said Anastasia Chassagne, 27, the Florida-educated owner of a trendy bar in Pétionville. “I put music, but really low, so like the people walking outside the street don’t hear, like, ‘Hey, these people are having fun.’ ”

Not everyone in Pétionville has such qualms. Mr. Dobrianskiy, the casino entrepreneur, said he was pleased that Haiti’s currency, the gourde, had recently strengthened against the dollar to a value higher than before the quake, in part because of the influx of money from abroad.

And on the floor above Mr. Dobrianskiy’s casino, a nightclub called Barak, with blaring music and Miami-priced cocktails, caters to a different elite here: United Nations employees and foreigners working for aid groups. They mingle with dozens of suggestively clad Haitian women and a few moneyed Haitian men taking in the scene.

As hundreds of displaced families gathered under tents a few yards away, the music of Barak continued into the night. A bartender could not keep up with orders for Presidente beers.

“Those who are gone are gone and buried, and we can’t do anything about that,” said Michel Sejoure, 21, a Haitian enjoying a drink at Barak. Asked about the displaced-persons camp down the street, he said, “I would want to help but I don’t have enough, and the government should be the ones that are actually helping these people out.”

“But,” he said over the booming music, “they’re not.”

Europeans Woo U.S., Promising Relevance

By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: March 28, 2010


BRUSSELS — Stung by a perception of America’s indifference to its historical alliance with Europe, senior European leaders are calling for a rebalancing of the relationship, promising the Obama administration that the Europeans can be partners for global challenges ranging from security to climate change.
Related

Sarkozy, and France, Look to U.S. Visit (March 29, 2010)

A high-level conference here on Sunday was dominated by European efforts to get Washington’s attention, with promises of new, concerted action that were met with polite skepticism. American officials and European experts largely see European national leaders as focused on their own debates about Greece and the debt crisis afflicting the group of countries that use the euro, divided over China and Russia and tired of Afghanistan. Europe is seen just now as not a problem for the United States, but not much help, either.

But the European message here was striking, both as a response to criticism from Washington and as an effort by Europe’s new leadership, put in place under the Lisbon Treaty, to articulate a new foundation for an old relationship that most take for granted."


They can start with Haiti. They started that tragic story, perhaps they can help establish a sustainable space for their former colonial slaves.

France Asked to Return Money ‘Extorted’ From Haiti
By ROBERT MACKEY
In an open letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, published on Monday in the Paris newspaper Libération, an international group of scholars and activists called on France to repay Haiti, its former colony, more than $20 billion that had been “extorted” in the 19th century.

As Isabel Macdonald, a Canadian scholar who helped draft the letter, explains in The Toronto Star:

Prior to independence, St. Dominique — the country that is now Haiti — was France’s most profitable colony, thanks in no small part to its particularly brutal system of slavery. In 1791, the slaves revolted, and in 1804, after defeating Napoleon’s armies, founded the world’s first black republic.

Following Haiti’s independence, former French slave owners submitted detailed tabulations of their losses to the French government, with line items for each of “their” slaves that had been “lost” with Haitian independence. In 1825, King Charles X demanded that Haiti pay France an “independence debt” to compensate former colonists for the slaves who won their freedom in the Haitian revolution. With warships stationed along the Haitian coast backing up the French demand, France insisted that Haiti pay its former colonizer 150 million gold francs — 10 times the new nation’s total annual revenues.

Under threat of a French military invasion that aimed at the re-enslavement of the population, the Haitian government had little choice but to agree to pay. Haiti’s government was also forced to finance the debt through loans from a single French bank, which capitalized on its monopoly by gouging Haiti with exorbitant interest rates and fees. The original sum of the indemnity was subsequently reduced, but Haiti still disbursed 90 million gold francs to France.
The money Haiti paid to France from 1825 until 1947 was estimated by the Haitian government in 2003 to be the equivalent of nearly $22 billion today.

Last month, a group calling itself the Committee for the Reimbursement of the Indemnity Money Extorted From Haiti — or, C.R.I.M.E. — drew attention to Haiti’s independence debt with an elaborate hoax, in which an actor impersonating a French Foreign Ministry official announced that France would repay the money.



As The Lede reported, video and text of the mock statement were posted on a near-replica of the French Foreign Ministry’s Web site.

Monday’s letter on the issue also appears on the fake Foreign Ministry site, above the names of dozens of well-known activists, including: Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Noam Chomsky, Ariel Dorfman, Naomi Klein, José Bové, Eduardo Galeano, Cornel West and the founders of the group that seems to have inspired the hoax announcement, the Yes Men.

The letter ends by linking threats of legal action against the pranksters with the fate of the former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who asked France to repay the debt for Haiti’s bicentennial in 2004:

In 2003, when the Haitian government demanded repayment of the money France had extorted from Haiti, the French government responded by helping to overthrow that government. Today, the French government responds to the same demand by C.R.I.M.E. by threatening legal action. These are inappropriate responses to a demand that is morally, economically and legally unassailable. In light of the urgent financial need in the country in the wake of the devastating earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010, we urge you to pay Haiti, the world’s first black republic, the restitution it is due.
In March, international donors pledged to provide Haiti with just over $5 billion to help in its reconstruction. Earlier this month, Bill Clinton, who is helping to coordinate aid to Haiti, told The Associated Press that so far just five countries had made good on their promises and that less than 10 percent of that money had been delivered.

Activists Urge France to Repay 'Independence Debt' to Haiti
VOA News 16 August 2010

An international group of writers and academics is calling on France to reimburse Haiti $21 billion that the Caribbean nation was forced to pay to secure its independence 200 years ago.

The group, which includes journalists and members of the European parliament, made the appeal to French President Nicolas Sarkozy in an open letter published Monday in the French newspaper Liberation.

American linguist Noam Chomsky and other signatories said France should repay Haiti's independence debt in light of the former French colony's "urgent" need to recover from a devastating earthquake in January. They called the 19th century payment demand by French slave owners seeking compensation patently illegitimate and illegal.

Critics say international donors have not fulfilled their pledges of aid to Haiti, where the earthquake killed some 230,000 people and caused $7 billion in damage.

Haiti became the world's first independent black republic in 1804 as a result of a successful slave revolt against French colonial rule.

In 1825, French monarch Charles X demanded Haiti pay 150 million gold francs to French slave owners as compensation or face invasion and a restoration of slavery.

Haiti continued making the payments until 1947, transferring to France a reduced debt of 90 million gold francs, valued today at $21 billion.

In 2003, then-Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide also demanded that France repay the money. Monday's letter accuses Paris of responding to that demand by helping the effort to oust the Aristide government a year later.

Mr. Aristide left Haiti in February 2004 during an armed rebellion and violent protests by Haitians who accused him of corruption and intimidating opponents. He has been living in exile in South Africa.

The former Haitian president said after the earthquake that he was willing to return to his country to help rebuilding efforts. His offer has not been accepted.

I guess France's dream of shoving the Haitian problem onto DR is finally knocking on their doors. Could it be the guilt setting in.

You and I will have dinner with santa claus with elvis as the waiter and jimmy hoffa as the valet before the French government agrees to repay this money.
I think it should be in the form of technical expertise rather than cash (my 2cents) if it happens.

Wait I will ride a unicorn before this happens.

Iggy a brilliant answer but it is a good thing they are shining the light on somebody else for a change ......... Froggy played the first and most important cards in this game