Haiti: Managing Things in the Short Term: Can Anything Useful Get Done?
Haiti: Managing Things in the Short Term: Can Anything Useful Get Done?
by Elliott R. Morss, Ph.D.
Introduction
There are countries worse off than Haiti – Somalia comes to mind. But the economic and environmental plundering that Haiti has experienced during the Duvalier era and forward has made it a near-hopeless case, even before the earthquake.
Directly following the quake, there was a flurry of activity with many promises to help. But now, things are quieting down – another crisis has occurred in some other part of the world, so the media and the publicity-seeking alms-givers have moved on.
And in Haiti, important things are getting back to normal: crime and corruption are on the rise. And there is growing frustration with the government’s slow and inadequate response to the earthquake.
The Problems
1. The Environment
The country once had fertile land for growing tobacco, sugar cane, and other crops. In 1923, 60% the country was forested. Since then, 98% of its forest cover has been cut down with the wood being used mostly for cooking food. The loss of forest has destroyed fertile farmland soils and has resulted in flooding, erosion and desertification. It is no exaggeration to say that Haiti was an environmental disaster, even before the earthquake.
2. From Exploitation to Corruption
Globally, the Duvalier era ranks as one of worst exploitative periods for any country in recorded time. The Régie du Tabac was used to get treasure out of the country. It was a straightforward stripping operation at the expense of the environment. The post-Duvalier regimes have continued the exploitation by pocketing large sums of government revenue for their own use. Transparency International does annual surveys on corruption. In its latest survey, Haiti ranked 168 out of 180. Only 12 countries in the world were seen as more corrupt than Haiti.
3. Donor Dependency
Even before the earthquake, Haiti depended on donor assistance to survive. In 2008, government tax revenues were US$1.2 billion. Donor assistance was US$912 million. This means that more than 40% of government revenues came for donors.
The Earthquake
We have all seen pictures from this tragic event and the resulting death and destruction.
On the financial side, the donors met and made new pledges. The media had a field day with coverage. And the alms givers came out in full force. For more on alms givers, see Barbara Harrell-Bond, Imposing Aid: Emergency Assistance to Refugees, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1992 and Eugene Linden, The alms race: The impact of American voluntary aid abroad, Random House, 1976. Beware of NGOs bearing “gifts”.
What does all this mean? One thing we can be sure of: more money in the government coffers will mean more money will disappear. Let’s look at some details.
The Haiti Reconstruction Fund (HRF)
After pledges of more than US$3 billion right after the earthquake, a May 11th World Bank press release indicated that Brazil was the first country to contribute (US$55 million.
But perhaps more interesting than the news of the first pledge was a description of how the HRF will be governed. The HRF is controlled by a steering committee chaired by the Government of Haiti. The steering committee includes HRF donors and “partner entities” such as the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations, and the World Bank. The press release says that funds will be transferred to “a broad range of actors on the ground” – government ministries, NGOs, the private sector and UN agencies.
I ask you: does this sound like a transferral mechanism that is likely to result in efficient uses of disaster monies? No. Money will disappear.
Put yourself in the position of a donor that already has a mechanism to transfer aid to Haiti. Would you rather use your own mechanisms, imperfect as they might be, or transfer monies to HRF? Of course, there is no question – you would use your own mechanisms.
Too Many Donors, Too Many Projects?
The UNDP indicates there are now 147 donors and 522 projects on-going in Haiti. Every donor has its own objectives and its own reporting requirements for its projects. This means a large cadre of government officials supplemented by expatriates is needed just to manage the donor projects.
Is this a setting in which an overall unifying strategy for the country is likely to be developed and implemented? I have my doubts. While working in Africa, I wrote an article that counted, for 1981, the number of donors and projects in 3 countries. I concluded that none of the countries had the ability to cope with so many donors and projects. I also suggested that the countries had to spend so much time trying to satisfy the donors with reports, etc., they had no time to develop their own country strategies.
The results of my study are presented in the following table, along with the current numbers for Haiti:
| Country | Donors | Projects |
| Haiti | 147 | 522 |
| Lesotho | 61 | 321 |
| Malawi | 50 | 188 |
| Zambia | 69 | 614 |
Source: Morss, Institutional Destruction Resulting from
Donor and Project Proliferation in Sub-Saharan African
Countries, World Development, vol. 12, no. 4.
Institutional destruction in Haiti? This has been going on for so long in Haiti….
One Bright Light in Haiti – The UNDP
For the last 40 years, the UNDP has been the one donor that consistently showed a concern for donor and project coordination. That is reflected in a report that used to be written each year by the UNDP Resident Representative for the developing countries where it had missions (the report would be titled, “The 19xx Annual Report on Development Assistance to xxxx”). In these reports, all projects would be listed by donor, topic, and government agency). I found them invaluable whenever going to a country for the first time. I observed that few donors, in their single-view focus to design and implement their own portfolio of projects, knew or cared anything about these reports and what they might imply for new project initiatives.
In light of this, I am heartened to come upon a new project by the UNDP for Haiti. The project is intended to support the Ministry of Planning and External Cooperation, the Office of the Prime Minister, other government bodies and all partners including the private sector, in addressing the challenges linked to the management of external aid. It will try to achieve this goal by This will be achieved through a three-tier approach:
- enhancing the Government’s capacity, both institutional and human, to manage development assistance;
- strengthening the architecture for the coordination of aid; and
- setting up tools for enhancing the effective and accountable management of external aid.
It might appear odd to single out one project for attention. But I have always believed the UNDP was on the right track in focusing on donor and project coordination. Its efforts in this area have often been ignored. But in today’s Haiti, this focus is desperately needed.
Concluding Thoughts
This piece has focused on important short run management details.
It has not addressed the broader issue of relief and rehabilitation for Haiti, nor on what might be done in the longer run to make Haiti less-dependent on donors.
These matters will be addressed in a follow-up article.
