 Good morning. I'd like to welcome you here to the US Institute of Peace. This is a special meeting of our Haiti Working Group. My name is Bob Pareto. I'm the director of the Haiti program here at USIP. We have a very special guest this morning, the former prime minister of Haiti, Michelle Pierre-Louis, who I will introduce in a moment. We also want to welcome those viewing this event online. We invite you who are watching to participate in the online chat. We also would welcome your questions, and we will introduce those later in the program. Today, the government of Haiti faces three major challenges. First, it must provide leadership for the removal of rubble, the reconstruction of municipal areas around Port-au-Prince, and the resettlement of more than a million internally displaced people. At the same time, it must organize and conduct national elections for the presidency and the parliament at the end of November. And it must then manage the transition to a new government. And third, it must deal with unexpected development, such as the cholera epidemic that is threatening to spread throughout the country. Meeting even one of these challenges would test any government. Meeting all three of them at the same time will require considerable assistance from the international community. In the past, the Haitian government was dictatorial and predatory. But today, it is simply not present in many areas in the country. The parliament has completed its term and has left office. The president is in the final months of his term. Haiti civil service was devastated by the earthquake. All but one government ministry building was destroyed. Some 16,000 civil servants or about 20% of the country's total public administrative force were lost. Ironically, after going about the job of creating the Republic of NGOs over the last couple of decades, the international community has learned its lesson and has put the government of Haiti in the lead for reconstruction and future development. This is the first principle of US policy for Haiti's recovery as we learned a few weeks ago when the State Department representative spoke from this podium. Unfortunately, the government of Haiti may not be able to play that role. Even if the elections go off without problems, it will be next spring before the government of Haiti, including both the presidency, the parliament, and all appointees are in place and able to provide leadership. So in these trying times, how will the government of Haiti deal with the situation of multiple emergencies? And what help can the international community most usefully provide? Our guest speaker this morning is someone well-qualified to answer that question. Michel Pierre-Louis became Prime Minister of Haiti in September 2008, during a month when four named storms, Fay, Gustaf, Hannah, and Ike, slammed into Haiti with devastating force, killing more than 800 people and causing more than a billion dollars in damage. As Prime Minister, she guided the recovery process and managed the international response, was culminated in a April 2009 donors pledging conference at the Inter-American Development Bank, where Bob and I sat in the audience and watched her lead the Haitian delegation. You have Michel Pierre-Louis bio, so I will limit my introduction. But I will say that she has had a remarkable career of dedicated service to her country in many areas, including governance, protection of human rights, community development, health, and education. Currently, she is a resident fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. We are very honored and delighted to have her with us today. I will ask her to come and speak. Thank you. Thank you very much for these introductory words. Good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased to be here and thanks to my friend Bob Maguire. Bob and I go a long way, 1980s, where I was involved in a literacy program that was financed by the Inter-American Foundation, where we used to work at the time. So thank you, Bob, for having invited me here this morning. I'm going to talk about the situation in Haiti and I think they have given you the handout. So I'll try to explain where we are at today and what we're trying to do in this phase where the relief effort should end and the recovery and reconstruction phase should start. Bob had suggested that the title of my presentation is Building Back Better, but then he said, maybe it's better if we have the question mark. Is Haiti Building Back Better? This is the plan of my presentation. You know the facts. We're going to go through that rapidly. The collapse of the government's infrastructure. What decision we are taking after? The government plan, the Interim Haitian Recovery Commission. What has been done in terms of land expropriation but we're still waiting for a plan. We're going to see briefly the efforts that were made before the earthquake and also the rent report, which is probably the major report that was elaborated after the earthquake. The need for investment today, no matter what the conditions are, but we need to create jobs. We will have a new government and I myself call for a necessary change of paradigm in Haiti. You know the facts, 300 or more dead. About two weeks ago, they were excavating some rubbles in Port-au-Prince and they found 19 bodies. So the count goes on and on and on and we don't quite know, but the government officially talks about 300,000 whereas the international community is still up to 250. 400 and, between 400,000 and 500,000 orphans and adoption is a real issue today. Kids are in the streets and there is a lot of family solidarity because even in these dire conditions, the Haitian people behave admirably well so far. Left on their own devices. As you know, no national palace, no ministries, no court of justice, no fiscal entity, and so on and so forth. And I'll go rapidly through the images which I think you probably saw, but to me who worked in all those places just about a year ago, it really mind-boggling to see the national palace, parliament, the tax bureau, and it was a three-storey building, the Court of Justice, which was a beautiful, magnificent building, the Ministry of Justice, Pirate of Robles, Ministry of Women Rights, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture, the former army headquarter that was transformed into a Ministry of Culture, beautiful building that goes way back at the turn of the century, the Ministry of the Environment, Ministry of Social Affairs, Ministry of Public Health, Public Works, Interior, Commerce. Foreign Affairs was a beautiful building that was built in the 1940s, and this is what remains of it. By the seashore, and it was really a beautiful building, and the cathedral. So all the major symbols of this country and of this state were totally destroyed and collapsed in what, between 36 and 42 seconds. And as was told earlier, about 40% of the workforce, civil servants died. And you know the earthquake happened after four o'clock. And in Haiti, people work, civil servants work from eight to four. So whoever remained in the office afterwards were the directors, the top management, and they are the one who really died. And lots of ministers had their kids who were in school who died or their parents whose house collapsed and died. So what has been done after, right after, you know, the government was in a position where it could not even have a place to meet. But the international community right after decided on a series of conferences, symposium, round table, people told me not too long ago, including one minister, we are really tired of conferences. We've been to so many already in nine months and we still don't know what's happening because we don't have the funding. So anyway, right after the international community and the government created, worked on something which is called a PDNA, the Post Disaster Needs Assessment. When I was in office after the earthquake, we also, I'm sorry, after the hurricanes, we also had a PDNA. And at the time it was, we thought there was an enormous amount of money that we needed because 15% of the GDP were lost in the hurricanes. And now it's 40, 50%. And the government worked on an action plan for recovery and national development that was presented in the March 31st conferences at the UN. There is a commission which is called, in French, La Commission Inter-American, pardon me, La Commission Inter-Ministeriale pour l'aménagement du territoire, the Inter-Ministerial Commission for Territorial Management, Siat. And Siat, actually I created the Siat when I was by a minister because Haiti's territory is not managed. We've never decided on which land is for agriculture, which land is for housing, if there are infrastructures, ports, airports that need to be built within the country, where to. So I created the Siat with the idea that after the hurricanes, it was important to think we're building already and to think of territorial management. And Siat has elaborated a very interesting document which is called Haiti Tomorrow, but nobody has taken that into account. And if those of you are interested, I can send it to you. It's really, to me, one of the best documents that was elaborated after the earthquake in terms of planning, urban planning, territorial planning. The IMF after the earthquake, because when I left office in November, the three-year accord that we had with the IMF had expired. The extended credit facility, so was renewed in April of this year with the IMF, and it's an important document because the IMF usually sets the tone. Other donors look at the IMF to see where they should position themselves. And the president had created several presidential commissions. Their reports were due, so the education submitted their report after the earthquake. The IT, the technology, the competitiveness, which was the private sector, investment and enterprises, the constitution, the justice and security, which I think this one is kind of problematic still. The private sector made several propositions, and the Ren Corporation, as I said, published close to 200-page document recently called Building a More Resilient Haitian State. And of course, they're still in vigor, the document strategy for poverty reduction in France is DSNCRP. So there are lots of documents. Nobody has really made a thorough assessment of those documents to see, all right, this is where we should concentrate our efforts. This is what comes from all those documents and that could create a real plan. And then there was the response of the international community and the NGOs, as you know, billions of dollars were raised. I was in Great Britain last week, and I was myself surprised to hear that citizens in Great Britain raised over a hundred million sterling pounds for Haiti. But nobody really knows what happened to those funds. They've gone to several NGOs. They've gone to credible NGOs. Some of them are still in the bank. Some of those funds are still in the bank, not even delivered because they're still waiting to see what to do with. But the response was incredible. I think so on TV, elephants in Thailand, and Haiti has practically no relationship with Thailand, that had basket, flowered basket on their trumps collecting funds for Haiti. So there's been a lot and a lot of money. And again, we in Haiti are extremely grateful to the international community, to the US, Canadian, British citizens for their response, because at the time, even my own house collapsed. So I spent about a month sleeping in the streets right in front of the house. So, and it was a very moving experience to see all those people sleeping in the streets with no food, no water, no clothes. And at the time, they were not even tents. Fortunately, it was not the rainy season yet. But I was fortunate enough to go live someplace. But most of the people don't have that capacity to rent a new place, to go live somewhere. So they created those tents cities that you see everywhere. And on the health side also, the response was very important. Lots of hospitals, Israeli, Argentine, Brazilian, French. The US came with the US Comfort, which is this big ship where all the operations that could not be done in the hospitals there, the patients were transported on the ship. So a lot of money. I remember in April, I met with the US ambassador in Haiti. And that was what, three months after the earthquake. And he said that the US already spent a billion dollars in Haiti. And he said, you're not going to see where that money goes because we have to take care of the ship, which is in the harbor, to pay for oil, to pay for all the people who came. You know, there were over 200 doctors, nurses, and ed nurses, American in the country. So, of course, the cost for all those expenditures and teachers were very high, but you don't quite see how it is involved in the reconstruction. But then we went into temporary shelters, temporary schools. IDB gave funding to FIS. FIS is the Fund d'Assistance Economique et Social, the entity that was created at the time of the structural adjustment programs. And they were able to create temporary schools in most of, because 65% of the schools in Port-au-Prince were destroyed, and 95% of the universities. I used to teach at the university. Actually, I'm going back. I know how bad it is for our universities and our students. Now, the action plan of the government, the rebuilding effort should go in four major areas. So, this action plan document has a lot of good intentions. You know, good way of looking at things. So, there was a territorial economic, social, institutional efforts of rebuilding because the president said that Haiti should, in 30 years, Haiti should be an emerging democracy. So, lots of good intention, but at the same time, we're still waiting for the plan, the operational plan. They created the Interim Haitian Recovery Commission, which is headed by the actual Prime Minister and President Clinton. And the IHRC is just an approval entity. So, on the left-hand side, you have l'Agence pour la Reconstruction d'Aït, which is the donor agency, which is headed by the World Bank now, I think, with the UN and IDB. They have a committee and other sectors can come and present their propositions. So, they are the donors under the two blocks on the left-hand side. Now, the IHRC approves projects. So, they have a board, you know how it's been constituted with all the donors, but also representative of Haiti. Even though in Haiti, there was a lot of discussion on how those representatives were nominated. I was discussing with some people in the diaspora while I was in Harvard, and they said, we've heard that there is a representative of the diaspora, but we don't know who elected him, how is this person sitting in that board? So, anyway, the IHRC, the Interim Commission, receive projects from everyone, even my foundation, resubmitted projects. Everyone submits projects, but there is no coherence yet. They just receive projects and approve, and I think most of the project have been approved. There are different sectors. The sector on housing, for instance, is headed by Ms. Priscilla Phelps, who is a World Bank official, and there is a young Haitian-American doctor from Harvard University who had the health sector, and they're supposed to just approve projects. No funding goes to the Interim Commission. So, either the private sector, the NGOs, or any other stakeholder has a project that is funded, submits it for approval, or even if it's not funded, the commission tried to see if they can direct you to the agency for the funding. And of course, the implementation sector, or the public sector, or the ministries, are the NGOs and the private sector. It's kind of complex so far. They have approved over 200 projects, but I don't think one third of those projects already have funding. So, in a sense, it's just the approval which is there. Now, the government also has expropriated land. This is on the north, this is the Bay, the black spot is the Bay, so it's going to north to the north, and all this part has been expropriated, but there is a big issue of land tenure. So, we don't quite know what the government plans to do there, and all the owners of those land, because there is private land there also, are in the process of seeing if they would be compensated for their land, because once the government declare there is a decree of expropriation, the land becomes state land. But the government has the obligation by law to compensate the owners of the land as long as they can produce their titles, and it's a big, big issue. There is another expropriation that went very recently. This is the historical part of Port-au-Prince, and there also, there's a lot of discussion with the owners, because most of the properties there, this is really the historical part of Port-au-Prince, which was created by the French during French colonial times, and then expanded through the century when we became independent. So, this is the part that the government has declared state property, with the idea of having a reconstruction project for the government, because this includes the National Palace and all the ministries that I showed earlier, but also the port, and all the freight forwarders, and so it's not clear yet what project is going to come out of this. Now, everyone is asking, where is the operational plan? In other words, as I said, there are lots of good intentions. Projects have been approved, but there is a lack of funding and there are lack of coherence. There has been two degree of land expropriation, but we don't see the urban planning and reconstruction scheme. There is an agency for reconstruction. We don't know the disbursement mechanism. And there is certainly a lack of communication because there is a feeling that the Haitian people, one of the major stakeholders, through a civil society organization, is being left out of the process. And I can tell you because I'm pretty much involved in a lot of civil society and grassroots organization and the complaint is constant. We are not part of what is happening to our country and to our city. But at the same time, let's go backward, the event this year, foreign affairs and the foundation for peace, they publish every year a failed state index. And in the one published this year, we made some progress in spite of the earthquake because we were eight. And for the first time we went on top, but for the bad reasons. So Haiti makes 11 among 177 countries listed among the most fragile state. But as you know, in 2009, when I was prime minister, Professor Collier, who is an economics professor at Oxford University in Great Britain, has had challenged the failed state in this regard to Haiti. And this is what Collier said, that our fundamentals are not as bad as those that are usually categorized in the fragile state condition. We are not part of the troubled region. Our neighbors are peaceful. We don't have ethnic problems or deep ideological cleavage. We don't have a military. And we have a huge proximate diaspora. All the Haitians abroad, which is a reserve war of skills, provider of remittances. The amount of remittances is larger than all foreign assistance to Haiti. So Haitian working abroad make a lot of sacrifice to send money home. The problem is that this money is not structured and it's used a lot in consumption. And since we import most of our goods, the money comes back right here, considering that we import mostly from the U.S. I have a plan for the diaspora fund. Maybe we can talk about that. I had it when I was prime minister. I didn't have the time to implement it, but it could be a very interesting outlet. Now, of course, Professor Collier thought of the whole legislation that was passed here, which allows government products to come here duty-free and quota-free for the next, at the time it was nine years, 10 years, but I think it's been extended. The U.S. Congress has voted a no one that extends it and opens the government industry to no projects. These two things that Professor Collier said about the hope and minister, of course, a lot of discussion about that. People don't agree necessarily. Some people believe that the economy cannot be based on assembly industry, which is true in a way because it does not contribute to wealth, but at the same time, we have a large unemployed and unskilled labor. So if we want to create jobs and get advantage of this hope legislation, it's good, but we have to have a vision in our country that this cannot be the answer. We have to invest in education. We have to have credit facilities. We have to create SMEs. We have to have other economic devices in the country. The economy cannot be based on just job creation with regard to the hope legislation. And as for Ministar, you know, the head of Ministar lost about 100 people in the earthquake, but even before, there was a lot of discussion about the use of Ministar in Haiti and we can debate on that. Now, a few indicators. Now, of course, I chose the one in 2009 because I was there and they look better, but it's not to talk about me. It's to show that I was Prime Minister during 14 months. After four hurricanes. And we were able to change all the figures, go on any data. Even CIA, you will see the improvements that was done in 2009, because we took our job seriously and decided that something had to be done for the country. It did not change much because 14 months is not a long time, but still we were able to increase the GDP. We were the only country in the Caribbean to have a real growth rate in 2009, considering the financial crisis. Whereas in 2008, it was 0.8, 2009 we were able to raise it to 2.9. Of course, this had no incidence on the GDP per capita because again, there is a growth issue. Budget was also increased in 2008. The inflation rate decreased tremendously. Now, the GDP composition shows the larger part of agriculture, but if you look at the labor force, you see that 66% are officially mostly informal. Still working agriculture gives you an idea of the poor productivity in that sector, which means that we cannot let the patient peasant continue to plow his land with a colonial hope that dates since colonial time, 200, 400 years old. So something has to be done towards that population that has carried the economy of the country on its shoulder. And if you look at the IMF figures for the past 25 years, not even 1% of all the funds given to Haiti went as investment to agriculture. So it's a real issue that has to be addressed. So even in expert and imports, we made progress. We increased expert with decreased imports. And again, I refer to the Ren Corporation because there was the Collier before the earthquake. There is the Ren after the earthquake. And I found it a very interesting report, very thorough considering all the sectors. There might be issues that need discussion with all the stakeholders, but they say very important things about building back better. The Haitian state should overcome its weaknesses in areas of human resources, education, organization. I heard a quote from President Clinton, but again, I never know if it's true or not. It seemed that he's in traveling in Asia and he said that Haiti lacks systems. There are no systems in Haiti. So it's very important in terms of organization, procedures and policies to revamp the country if we continue to have no culture, no systemic culture. And the Ren report said something which to me is extremely important. Haiti's poverty, like its governmental weakness, is a product of its political culture. Well-placed to know what it means. Any effort to build a stronger, more resilient Haiti, one that is less dependent on external help will depend on changing that culture. I was involved with a World Bank. Every year, the World Bank publishes a report which is called Doing Business. And Haiti is really at the bottom of doing business because it's so hard. Here is a country where we need investment and job creation, but it is so hard to create an enterprise in Haiti. So doing business while I was prime minister, we just discussed a lot about that short-term reforms. First, elimination of the obligation to legalize the accounting. Do you know that in Haiti, the accounting book have to be filled out by hand. They don't accept digitalized or computerized form. You cannot have a printout to send to the fiscal entity for audit. It has to be handwritten. And now, when you create an enterprise, you have to take your accounting books, go to the Court of Justice, and then on every page, they put a seal, page by page, from time 200 pages, and it signs on the soul. So can you imagine? And until today, it's the law. So this was extremely difficult for me to eliminate that process because it has to be changed by law. The sudden acceptance of type legal documents from the public notary rather than handwritten. When you want to create an enterprise in Haiti, you go to a public notary by obligation and you have these 19th century papers, you know, that help. That also I could not change because it's a law. Elimination of the prime minister and president's signature on cooperation, on new cooperation and enterprise, that we eliminated. The president and I agreed that there was no use. It's a procedure that existed under Duvalier. Duvalier wanted to control who is creating an enterprise or cooperation in Haiti. But it was not a law. So the president and I agreed and now it goes directly to the register in the Ministry of Commerce. No commercial laws on commercial enterprise. There is a mandatory minimum capital and most corporations today are saying it's not necessary. They don't do it in other countries. Make the public notary documentation optional because now it's mandatory. Provide standard documentation and forms. You know, there are so many steps that you go to the Ministry of Commerce, they give you a form. You go to the fiscal entity, they give you a form. And sometimes people get discouraged just by the very bureaucratic and inefficient steps that need to be taken. So we place the publication in the official journal. There is an official journal and all new enterprise have to be published there. But there is tax, you know, it's piled at the journal. So it may take six months before your enterprise, even though you have all your papers, but it's not published yet. So very often it's, there's a bribe to be paid so that they remove yours on the bottom, they put it on the top. So they say it's not necessary. It could be just published online in the Ministry of Commerce register. I think they have started. They have started because I looked at it and I saw that there are no publications. Install a booth at the Ministry of Commerce because you have to go back and forth from one minister to the other. That I did also when I was Prime Minister. And we are in the process, we were in the process of reassessing the use of what they call a professional identity card. Same thing with the trans-border commerce. Lots of bottlenecks, so they propose a lot of improvement to see if the enterprise can import an expert much easier. And the new corporate laws. There are lots of conflict of interest in Haiti, in the corporation and enterprises. Issue corporate governance procedures. The issue of right and obligation of the shareholders, particularly vis-à-vis the authorities and the audits. So these are recommendations that were made last year at this time actually in October, September. And we were in the process of trying to see how to implement them when the earthquake arrived. So in 2011, we're going to have a new government. The campaign is on, 19 candidates for the presidency. There are over 60 candidates for 12 Senate seats. Over 500 for 100 lower house seats. And local government, which is going to come after, we probably will have 10,000 candidates for the local government. And me, I insist on something which I did talk about when I was Prime Minister after the earthquake. We are in a situation now where all major leaders, stakeholders in the country need to have an effort of transcendence. You know, I'll give you an anecdote and I'll cruise right after. I went to South Africa in 1996. I was head of the foundation that I created in 1995. I was invited by, with the support of the Source Foundation. And I was invited by the foundation in South Africa. And when I arrived, President Mandela was in power. And while I was there, he invited the former wife, the wives of the former Prime Minister, the white Prime Minister to have breakfast at his palace. And that was a time of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. So there were TVs and a lot of mobilization in the country. And there was a big uproar in the townships about that. How can you do that? You know, and the black community, mostly the young were extremely upset about that. But he explained, he said, you know, they were probably the closest advisors to their husbands. And I need to talk to them to understand and see what was this all about. But the uproar continued. So they all came to have breakfast except for Mrs. Bota. So he called her and he said, I have invited you, you did not come. So me, I'm coming to your house. And there was even more uproar. You know, people love it. But anyway, he did go under closed doors. And when he came out, he made a speech about transcendence. About the obligation to transcend the past if we want to build the future. You know, I'm telling you that I have goose pimple because I remember that speech. And it's probably something that had such an impact on me that it always crossed my mind. It always comes back to my mind with regard to Haiti. If we continue with our stereo divisions, if we, especially the so-called elite in this country, and when I say elite, I just don't talk about the private sector only. I talk about the university elite, the peasant elite. You know, all those leaders, if we cannot have an effort of transcendence and continue to fight for power, what power as a matter of fact, I think reconstruction is going to be extremely difficult. And that's what I call a necessary paradigm shift. To build back better, we need to depart from a political culture which is too much based on nepotism. You know, when I was Prime Minister, every day I had mostly Parliament members as a matter of fact, in my office with piles of curriculum vitae, of their sisters, their brothers, their mistress, their father, their mother. You know, can you hire that person for me, Prime Minister? You know, it's very important for me because they think that I have such a big job that I have to take care of the whole family. And it's like that constantly. And it's not just me, it's all the ministers. And usually it's very tricky because usually the state is the larger employer in Haiti. So, nepotism, having your family, you know, in your office or pushing for your family members to be hired by a friend minister is common. So, clientelism is there constantly. You know, you have to give money to this. And so, it creates also an ineffective bureaucratic administration. And very often when the opposition starts, the government creates its own Tonton Makut or Militia. So we have to move from that to a mentality of public service, institution building and fight corruption. From a rent-seeking economy based on lack of vision, venality very often. And very elitist posture, dependency deals and archaic legal system to an understanding of the role of human capital, education, skilled labor, the new legal environment, risk-taking investment and wealth creation. From social exclusion, there is a population which has been historically marginalized. That's enough. And they want to participate. The Haitian people want to be enfranchised. So, let's stop that exclusion business and fight against poverty. Develop a middle class. We are in a constant rapport, elite masses because they say that the Haitian middle class is in the diaspora. Well, the middle class has to be in Haiti. And it has to go, it has to, it means investing in education, investment in our human capital, creating SMEs, giving access to credit. Because the country has a lot of assets. There are opportunities. If only we manage what we have as assets in culture, in history, we can make a big, big change. And of course, from cynicism to ethics. Pride and self-esteem, I think we are very dignified people. Public engagement and a willingness to debate and to communicate. There is such a lack of communication. So, this is what I had for you today. Merci, Ampil. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's a wonderful speech and a great start to our morning. I'd now like to introduce our second speaker. As they say very often, this is someone who needs no introduction. Bob McGuire is the chair of the Haiti Working Group here at USIP. Normally he sits where I sit, but we thought we'd take advantage of this unique opportunity this morning to give Bob the opportunity to make a formal presentation. Bob is also an associate professor of international affairs at Trinity Washington University and probably one of the most informed people in the United States on Haiti. As you heard from the prime minister, she and Bob are old friends. We kind of thought about this program this morning as a dialogue. And when she would begin, Bob would follow and then we'd open the opportunity for you all in the audience to join in and to those online. So I'll introduce Bob McGuire. Thank you. You shouldn't applaud before I speak. I might not want to afterwards. It's been a pleasure to hear Michelle this morning and I knew we would have something special when we invited her here. And when I posed the question to her to answer, I deliberately said it should be is Haiti building back better, not Port-au-Prince? As many of you who've been to Haiti know, or at least when the first time you go to Haiti you're often told this, that there are actually two Hades. There's the Republic of Haiti and there's the Republic of Port-au-Prince. And even though the earthquake struck in the vicinity of Port-au-Prince, I think the idea of building back better pertains to all of Haiti and the need to build Haiti back better was an issue even before the earthquake. And I'll get into that momentarily. After the earthquake struck, and I sat here in Washington having left Haiti two days before the earthquake and tried to make sense of it, I thought that well, sometimes you might try to see a dark lining and a silver lining in a very dark cloud. And I thought, well, maybe this earthquake does provide an opportunity to address issues and problems and imbalances within the country and with the relationships externally to Haiti that have been holding back Haiti's development. And I think Michelle has touched on many of them in her presentation, particularly this last segment where she talks about these necessary paradigm shifts and this whole concept of transcendence, which I think is extremely important. It strikes me that one of the ironies of Haiti, a country with a proud history that should be celebrated, is that so many of its leaders have kind of betrayed that history because when they get in leadership positions, and I think it's important that she stressed that it's not just political leaders or elites, it's leaders at all segments of the society, that when leaders get in positions, their tendency is to look for what can this do for me and how can I use this to improve the people in the nation? So I think that transcendence idea is one thing that we definitely should take away from this meeting and think about it and see how we might be able to enact it. My assessment immediately after the quake pointed to a number of paradigm shifts, those that Michelle mentioned and maybe a few others. I thought about that demographic imbalance of Haiti where the country had been evolving from one that was essentially an agrarian society with about 80% of the population traditionally living in rural settings and much smaller percentage in cities and how that had shifted over time and very rapidly. In the late 1970s, there was that 80-20 demographic split at the time of the earthquake, most analysts said it was like 55% rural and 45% urban with the urban population continuing to grow. So I thought, well, maybe this is an imbalance that can be changed somehow after the earthquake and I reflected on why is this imbalance grown as it has and you have to go back to this whole concept of the Republic of Port-au-Prince where education, health, and other services were principally available only there and for poor people outside of that city, the city held the promise of opportunity which for most of them turned out to be a mirage in fact with little opportunity once they got into the city with people ending up piling upon themselves along vulnerable coastal areas in dry riverbeds on instable hillsides and in ravines and we saw the result of that both with the earthquake and previously and since then whenever there's a heavy rain, just two weeks ago I think there was a heavy rainfall in Port-au-Prince and 12 people died and these were people who were in very vulnerable areas even before the earthquake. So I thought maybe there's an opportunity here to strengthen that agrarian society and I've had some people criticize me when I talk about this and they say, well you think the peasants should stay peasants? You know and I say of course no I don't think so I mean my grandfather was a peasant, I'm glad I'm not a peasant. But I talk about an agrarian society and I often think about a man I know who was a skilled furniture maker in the area of Haiti that's called Dene and when I first met him he had a workshop in this rural village that employed 20 people and they made furniture and when I met him again the last time I met him which was five or six years ago he employed four people and the only thing they made was coffins because that was the only thing that people could afford. So invest in that agrarian society, invest in those small and medium enterprises that are in the agrarian area. Not just to grow food, not just peasant farmers but to service an agrarian economy. And I think this is really important. And going back to Michelle's comments on the Hope Act and the assembly jobs as I think I may have said even here before the whole conundrum of the assembly sector is for me summed up in the title of a poem that was written by Richard Amimi Farini, a couple of hip beat poets from San Francisco a long time ago, I'm giving away my generation. But the title of the poem was I've been down so long it looks like up to me. And this is the way I perceive the assembly jobs. It is something that's required and people benefit from it. But I go back to something that Hillary Clinton said at the donors conference that Michelle, I guess you managed it or organized it, presided over it. In April of 2009, when Hillary Clinton remarked that there is so much talent in Haiti. And the real challenge for Haiti's future development is somehow to find ways of twinning talent with opportunity. And when we talk about Haiti's middle class being outside the country, I think part of the reason for that is that it is only outside of Haiti that Haitians can twin their talents with opportunity. And somehow that has to change and has to happen in Haiti. And I also thought that perhaps part of that silver lining could be that we could continue to evolve, see the Haitian state evolve. When I first started working in Haiti in the 70s, the common description of the Haitian state was the predatory state, the state that preyed on people. And many academics use this phrase in their books and in their articles. And I think what we've seen essentially in the transitional period after the collapse of the Dubai dictatorship is an evolution to now, when I think Michelle mentioned this herself, where the state is absent. The state is virtually absent. It has been cannibalized over time. It hasn't received resources. State officials find themselves drawn to work in international organizations and NGOs to pay them regularly and well. Might even offer the promise of a green card. And the state is robbed of its personnel. Francois Pierre-Louis spoke here last year and talked about the demoralization of the state. And somehow, and I think this is one of the positive things in the aftermath of the earthquake, at least on the rhetoric side, is that there's a recognition that the state needs to be attended to. The Haitian state is an important actor. It has to play a role. Its institutions have to be strengthened. It has to be able to regulate. It has to be able to lead. And at least in the rhetoric that we're hearing now, that is very, very clear. And hopefully, we will see that more and more become beyond rhetoric and into strong action. In a nutshell, much of what I thought could occur to help Haiti build back better is predicated upon overcoming one fundamental imbalance in Haiti. And it's what I call the kind of Citoyen-Andeo-Imbalanced dichotomy. And Haiti used to be, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, that there were two kinds of birth certificates. When you were born, depending on your status in life or your stature, you were either determined to be a peasant or a citizen. And it was a kind of a ritualized apartheid, in a sense. Well, that has changed. I believe now there's only one birth certificate. You're born as a human being, not as a peasant or a citizen. But you have this kind of cultural, economic, political, and even geographical imbalance in dichotomy in Haiti that really needs to be overcome. And this needs to be transcended. So it's this, I live in the city, I'm a citizen. You live in the countryside and you're a peasant. That's something that really, I hope that this earthquake's greatest silver lining will be enabling Haitians to overcome that dichotomy. In 1987, when I traveled to Haiti shortly after the collapse of the Duvallé dictatorship, I learned a phrase. Someone explained it to me. The phrase was, pour de Prince on toujours manger des revolutions. Pour de Prince has always eaten the revolutions. And I was trying to figure it out. And it was explained to me that, you know, when there's opportunities for change in Haiti, the status quo comes out of pour de Prince and change really doesn't occur. And I've been thinking of that phrase for the past couple of months, although certainly an earthquake is not a revolution, but this earthquake has provided opportunities. And I'm now thinking that pour de Prince is eating the opportunities. Now, I'm not gonna say there isn't a need to attend to pour de Prince and all of the horror stories we hear about shelter and abuse of people in the camps and so on. I mean, this is a very serious need. But it seems to me that pour de Prince is once again eclipsing the rest of Haiti. For me, after the quake, one of the key barometers would be to follow what would happen to the roughly 700,000 people who left pour de Prince after the quake and went outside somewhere in the rural areas. This was a kind of a de facto decentralization or a de-concentration in the country. And I thought, wouldn't it be terrific to kind of use this as an opportunity to support these displaced people so that they can contribute outside of pour de Prince to build a better Haiti, to create jobs, to rehabilitate the countryside, to improve services around them where they went, to engage in public works, and to do this with really a sense of urgency and some resolute decision making. Some of you who have followed my thinking on this, I was been talking a lot about this whole idea of a civic service core to mobilize youth, to do a kind of a FDR type of public works administration to rebuild the country, to engage this in franchise use. But this takes a sense of urgency and resolute decision making. And I don't think we've really seen that after the quake. So much of these opportunities, I think, are being frittered away because this has not happened. I've been receiving a lot of anecdotal reports, including from conversations with your successor as prime minister of the return to pour de Prince of many of those who have left and bringing people with them into the ravaged city because this is where they can get some attention. This is where they can get some treatment, some water. And there's not much happening in the countryside. In fact, in the recent cholera epidemic, I noted something in a piece from in the New York times that is just too short paragraphs to read to you. But this kind of indicates that kind of continuing neglect of Haiti and emphasis on Port de Prince, where Andrew Marx, a spokesman for Partners in Health, a non-governmental organization that works closely with the Ministry of Health in rural areas, said that it had been warning of such a calamity away from the capital, but that authorities had focused disease prevention mostly on Port de Prince. He said, we tried to make the case not to focus exclusively on Port de Prince, noting that considerable effort has been made to provide clean water in the capital, but the rural areas remain lacking. And that phrase, rural areas remain lacking. It's a tragic phrase. I think it's something that is helping me to see that maybe that silver lining in that cloud was not quite what I hoped it would be. This, to me, simply doesn't sound a whole lot like building back better. Now, I wanna modulate that a little bit by saying that the action plan and maybe some of the other plans, including the plan that Michelle referred to that I hadn't seen, the Haiti tomorrow, there's a lot of emphasis on decentralization. There's emphasis on growth poles and corridors. And as we heard from Megan Curtis earlier this month that the U.S. is focusing a lot on helping to support the territorial and economic decentralization that are reconstruction priorities of the government. And we realized that these things are not gonna happen quickly. This is like that proverbial aircraft carry, they can't turn around on the dime because Port de Prince has dominated so much Haiti's life in recent decades. But you know, one of the things that I've heard repeatedly in Haiti, particularly since 1986, this analogy to hearing about Haiti's window of opportunity. And you know, it's the analogy, it's open, it's closing, it's small, it's large, and so on. I mean, it's used all the time. And you know, you hear it today. I mean, there's a window of opportunity. In a sense, I wish that window was not kind of a Western window, but more like a window in a Haitian teakai where it was just one big shutter that you could fling open and it would stay open. But I don't know how long the window's gonna stay open this time. There's always that kind of ogre expression of Haiti fatigue that is there. We just don't know. But I would just conclude because I know a lot of you have comments and I'd like to have the opportunity to have Michelle address them. But I just feel that the time to build Haiti back better from what I can see, it's beginning to slip away. Thank you. Thanks very much, Bob. We'd now like to open our discussion to include those of you in the room and those of you online. I'd have to ask that anyone who wants to make, who wants to offer a question, please come to the microphones on either side of the room so everyone can hear you and so we can capture your questions. When you do ask a question, please identify yourself by name and organization. So while people are making their way to the microphones, I want to comment that in the current issue of foreign affairs, Secretary Clinton has an article in which he previews the QDDR, which will come out and lay out the policies and the restructuring of the Department of State and USAID. But in that article, she talks about innovative programs and one of the programs that she calls attention to is the use of cell phone technology in Haiti to direct rescue operations. USIP contributed to one of the most effective programs during this period. There is a new USIP publication out on the table with the catchy title, Crowdsourcing Crisis Information Disaster Effected Haiti, but this is a very interesting report and I would encourage you to read it. I'll give you the first comment. Okay, we have a number of people in line. I would ask that you keep your questions a bit short so that we can get everybody in and I'd like to do one thing. I'd like to take two questions at a time. So the first two questionnaires will start on that side. You go here and then we'll stop and let the Prime Minister or Bob respond to your questions. Please. Thank you. Cherise SP Glassman with Catholic Relief Services. Madam Prime Minister, you talk about land tenure in your presentation and President Bill Clinton did say this was one of the most problematic areas that we have to deal with and you spoke about land entitlement and we know during the earthquake that some of the land titles were lost in the quake and you said that they have to present that to the government in order to identify land. Can you please just elaborate or expand upon that because if they can't identify the land entitlements, how can we provide land for those people, those vulnerable people that need shelter? Thank you. Yeah, I got here late so I don't know whether this was covered and I apologize if it has been but do you think it would help in rebuilding Haiti to restore the duly elected president of Haiti to his position? Okay, in your name and... Oh, Ken Mayercourt representing himself. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, do you want to start? Yes, I will. Land title. Yes, land title is a big issue. Before the earthquake it was already an issue. It's an issue that has to do with the creation of the Haitian state per se because in part of the country, actually the Haitian state is the largest land owner in the country. And throughout history there's been distribution of land titles, mostly in the beginning to the former generals and army officers that are fought for independence. So there is a quagmire with regard to land tenure in Haiti. However, I must say that when I was prime minister with the minister of finance, then we are able to secure in the fiscal bureau the office where all copies of land titles are supposed to be. So it so happened that nothing happened to this quarter. We had a contingency plan for the land titles and anybody today, of course, there are lots of officials in the fiscal bureau who died, especially at the top of actually the general director of the tax bureau died in the earthquake. So, but I know there is a movement of trying to see if in that bureau they can find copies of land titles of all those people who want compensation for their properties. It's a slow process because the people who are now working in this bureau are not very familiar with all the way these documents were classified and nothing has been digitalized yet. So it's not easy. It's not easy. And I heard even president Pueval saying that it's gonna take some time because and they don't want to move too fast if this issue of titles is not resolved. So it's going to take some time, but at least I know the copies are there. Even those who lost their titles in the earthquake have the possibility of recuperating in the tax bureau. Now about, I suppose you're talking about president Aristide. Well, you know, president Pueval always say, and I think he's right, that president Aristide can come back anytime he wants, that the constitution forbids exiles. So that's all I can say to that regard, you know? I don't know if president Aristide wants to come back. I don't know if he has made the necessary steps to recuperate his passport if he doesn't have one. I don't know, but the official position of the government of Haiti, and I think president Pueval has said it publicly several times, is that the constitution does not recognize exiles. So anyone who is out of the country who wants to come back has the possibility to come back. Does Aristide recognize the present government of Haiti? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why he would. I don't know, you see? This is, I know it's a controversy, but if we are based on the constitution and the laws of the country, that's what the official position of the government is. Okay, thank you. Obain the constitution after he was forced out. Excuse me, can we move on? We have a lot of people here. Please, you're next. Hi, yes, my name is Rachel Levinfall. I'm with Nomadic Stories, and spearheading a project building women's peer-to-peer network, mostly in the countryside, connecting women using their technology, radio integrated with cell phones. We're actually working with Ushahidi, the group that you mentioned, the crowdsourcing. And I just wanted to follow on what you said about the spirit of transcendence. My experience is actually working more with women in West Africa, where the spirit of transcendence really happened over a 10-year period. And didn't come from government or NGOs. It really came a lot from women who met in refugee camps during the war and crossed borders and began to network through the Mano River Union. And so my question is really, when we're in a room, a lot of people are representing NGOs. And so I'm thinking also about not just a shift of people within the country, but how do we adjust our thinking as people from the outside in terms of supporting these kind of movements that are already happening? And that's my intention with what I'm trying to do. But how do we support what's already happening rather than think in terms of imposing policy or working through government, which needs to be held accountable by people? And just in terms of Haitian culture, I'm curious about what you think about that and how you think that should happen as quickly as possible, just given the circumstances. And given how particularly women in the countryside have no voice and haven't been included at all in the construction discussion. Thank you. Do we have a question over here? We'll take two at once. Okay, my name is Asuka. I work for LaRouche PAC. And my question is regarding to this cholera disease outbreak. Because right now it hasn't been like, I mean, 10 days already. And I have a case, right, during the 90s, 1994 under Clinton, we had a similar situation in Rwanda where there was a cholera disease spread. But within two days, Clinton sent a whole team of US Army together with San Francisco Fire Department and heavy water purification equipment. And within two days, we actually produced 200,000 liters of pure water per day. And it actually saved half a million people in Rwanda at the time. This mobilization was very quick and it was massive in terms of support that we provided. And it was a top-down decision. And this we can do today. And there's a call right now from Mr. Lyndon LaRouche to mobilize US Army in that fashion very quick. But my question is, do you think it's gonna happen under President Obama who actually have been refusing to mobilize massively to actually relocate Haitians to safe ground right after the earthquake? And there are a lot of things we can do, right? Like there was a proposal again from Mr. Lyndon LaRouche to mobilize in a similar way as what Franklin Roosevelt during the 30s to have massive infrastructure project in Haiti. None has been done. And my question is, well, doesn't that mean we have to actually get Obama out right now for the sake of not only Haiti but also US economy? Could we allow the Prime Minister to respond to your questions? That would be really good. I think everybody would like to hear her answer. Thanks a lot. Thank you. About the women issue, that's very interesting. See, yesterday I had a class at Harvard and my topic was the long process of emancipation of Haitian women. And unfortunately, you cannot tell everything in 20 minutes in a 20 minutes PowerPoint, but I had an idea that I should have talked about that. It's very interesting what happened in Haiti. I would say even in the past 80 years because the women's movement started in the 30s with at the time educated women, but they were the one who launched a struggle that was later picked on. They were the one who actually forced the presidency at the time and the constitution in the 1940s to allow for women to be elected. Now, I still have a contradiction. Women could be elected, but women could not vote. But in 1957, that was universal. So this long struggle that started reached out to the rural areas. It took time because under Duvalier, of course, all civil liberties were prohibited. But since 1986, April 3rd, 1986, which is now the National Day for Women's Right, women took to the streets, including organizations from the countryside. We were over 35,000 women that demonstrated they wanted to participate in the democratic process in the country at the time. And it's interesting to see that today, even though there are different categories, there are the feminist organization that work mostly on the legal framework. And I think it's important because they've been able to change the laws on adultery, on rape, and it's important. Sometimes they are attacked, like they are too bourgeois or whatever, but they work on what's important also. But at the grasswood level, indeed, the idea of transcendence is probably much more mature there, and much more prominent, and important, let's say, then at the government level or even the major international donors. Now, you're asking, what should you do? I think you should first be informed. What's going on there? Because there are so many experiences in Haiti that are not known to the outside world that are positive. Of course, they are micro. They don't reach a macro level, but they are important. They change things at the local level, and very often they are spearheaded by women. So it's important to find out what you have a project which seems interesting. It's important to go find out, talk to people, don't come with your said ideas, be open to the culture of the country, what people say, their own experience, and you'll be surprised to see how important change can come that way also. Yeah, interestingly, in most countries in the world, the group of women who drive change are market women, because they're illiterate. And they are the majority. They're business women, but they also are used to coming together. Absolutely. Can we ask that we, can we move on? Thank you very much. I know these are, each one of these are just really interesting questions, and we have a question that you have to respond to. I cannot say anything about President Obama or President Clinton. All I know is that sometimes the conditions under which these presidents are different, and the response in Haiti, even though the president did not send this armada of healthcare, there's still a very important response from WHO, Pan-American organization, all these major NGOs like Doctors Without Borders, Partners in Health, they are all there on the ground. And it's interesting to see that the number of dead is decreasing, and they've been able to contain so far the epidemics in the Arti Bonit region. So it's true that when you have full capacity to respond to a disaster, it makes a big difference. But when it doesn't happen, actually it's more your role than mine, then see why and see what could be done on your side. Thank you very much. I'll take three questions. I want to take a question from those watching online from Sherry from the International Medical Angels Network. She asks, when will... Angels? Angels, I think that's it, angels, right, angels. She asks, when will permanent multifamily housing begin to be built? Oh, that's interesting. Actually it was, oh, you wanted another question? Well, I was gonna take three, all right, please. Okay. Patricia Fagan, I'm here at USIP in the Jennings Randolph Fellowship Program. I'd like to ask both speakers, both the prime minister and Bob McGuire, to speak a bit more about the diaspora, which both of you mentioned in your addresses. And it's interesting, first of all, at the very beginning and from January on, many, many of the major donors spoke of incorporating diaspora initiatives. I myself looked at the website of several diaspora organizations and they responded massively and immediately and with great enthusiasm and great and many contributions. But I do not have the impression that the diaspora organizations have been successfully incorporated. And I just call attention to one point that was raised and that is the decentralization point. Many of the diaspora organizations are hometown associations that work in parts of Haiti that were not directly affected by the earthquake, but to which earthquake victims have gone and which are incapable of absorbing them. Well, the hometown associations are singularly able or prepared to at least help on that front. But from what I understand, it's been very, very difficult for them to link up with donors that might also help in that respect. Thank you. Thank you. And one more question. Good morning. Good morning. And Prime Minister, my name is Joseph Baptiste from NOAA. And to echo the question that you have about inclusion with diaspora, and thank you again for your speech as well as I want to have a paradigm shift. We always felt that, again, to echo her questions, the diaspora itself feels that, how can he help when we're construction projects in Haiti? And we felt that we've been excluded and we didn't have a voice. And more importantly, do the government of Haiti is part of that exclusion? So please give us a- More importantly, I didn't get to- The government of Haiti. Is it, we feel that is really not supporting the fact that the diaspora would be back in Haiti to help. So do you think that, as a former Prime Minister, do you think that is that the case? Thank you. Thank you. Thanks very much, please. Okay, multi-family housing. Until last June, it was not legally possible to buy an apartment, let's say, in Haiti or to be the owner of an apartment. But we passed the legislation in June 2009 where it's possible. So now it's possible to build multi-housing buildings and it's possible for people to be the owner, to buy it. So it's an improvement, except that now we have to see what the rebuilding process is in Port-au-Prince but also in the provinces. And that leads me to the hometown association that was just talked about and the diaspora. Now, to speak very frankly, there's always been an issue with the diaspora. There's been those who stayed and those who left. And there is guilt on both sides. So this is the unspoken aspect of the diaspora dilemma. And I know for sure, I know myself. I remember when they were drafting the Constitution of 1987, a friend of mine was a lawyer and was part of the assembly that was drafting the Constitution. And when it came to this dual nationality thing, she was adamant, violently against it. You see, even though she herself mentioned how difficult it's gonna be for the second generation and also in terms of ownership because in Haiti, foreigners cannot own properties. So when a second generation Haitian-American who happens to be Haitian-American cannot inherit, do you say that? Inherit from their parents or their grandparents. It's a big, big problem, it's a mess. So, but it was based on this idea that those who left made it in the diaspora and left us under the dictatorship and this guilt thing grew somehow and I don't even know if today it's gone. But anyway, I know that Haiti has to count on its diaspora. You know, I was told as I'm in Harvard that there are more PhDs in Boston than in Haiti. So how do you want us in the dire conditions we're living in not to count on the diaspora? But there has never been a framework. You see, in one of my classes, there is a Haitian-American who graduated from Harvard. He told me, I went back after my graduation. I wanted to be an intern in different ministries. I went to seven ministries telling them, you don't need to pay me. I just want to work there, learn, but also put my competencies at the service of the government. He was never accepted nowhere. So if we don't build a framework where we can be sure that all those Haitian diasporas, and as a matter of fact, foreigners who want to work in Haiti too, but the diaspora first, because they're connected, can be at use to the country, can at the same time bring their capacities and learn from the mutations that occurred in the country too, it's not going to work. You see, there is a member, as I said, of the diaspora in the Interim Commission. Nobody knows how this person was elected. And you'll write about decentralization. It's time also to see what kind of framework, so that instead of having individual little donations, there is some kind of thing which is built on both sides. I have a little idea about it, but I don't know if I should already talk about it. But it's important, you see, it's very, very important to tap into the diaspora and know how much they can help in the rebuilding process. And the last one was... Oh, that was the doctor. Doctor, that's it, you know? We know how much you are available. You know how much you want. We want, that doesn't mean everyone wants again. As I said, that guild building and that repellent position is still there. But again, let's have this effort of transcendence there too and know how much the diaspora can help. But we have to build the framework. Otherwise it's going to be individual. There's going to be a lot of frustration and it's not going to work. Thanks very much, Bob. Just a couple of quick comments on diaspora. And I think this concept of the framework is extremely important. We heard Megan Curtis earlier this month talk about a program that the U.S. government will be establishing. It's kind of like a Fulbright-type program that will support diaspora to work directly in government ministries in Haiti. But excuse me, Bob. You see, there is a problem there. The OAS already has a program like that. UNDP has a program like that. But it creates problems in the ministries. Sometimes there is a very qualified engineer or the qualified diaspora person who comes to Haiti to work for a year or six months or two years. But they get paid much more than the minister himself. So it creates also some frustration on the side of the government. And if we don't deal with these issues very openly also and see what can be done, it creates also a problem. Very clear. And for that reason, when I had follow-up discussions on this, I was thinking of this conundrum. And what crosses my mind is the way the peace court kind of solves this problem where people go and they live on the level of the people where they are living. And there's some sort of a readjustment allowance that's set aside for when they return. And in that regard, I think my experience in working with the diaspora tends to suggest that a very underutilized resource are Haitian-American university students and recent graduates who could be mobilized to participate in the education system and other forms of volunteer work. In infrastructure. When I was prime minister, I arrived at the time of the hurricanes. 10 bridges collapsed. And I heard the Ministry of Public Works saying we don't have one single engineer in the country that can build a bridge. So we had to call on the French to build an 8-meter bridge on the Canadians for a 7-meter bridge and for USAID for a 6-meter bridge. And there are piles of engineers, Haitian-American or Haitian in the diaspora. Take two questions. Please, on that side. Well, thank you very much for your presentations. My name is Anna-Lise Romozer, and I work with Lutheran World Relief. And we have projects in Haiti, particularly in rural regions, focusing on agriculture and food security. In what part? In the north. And I was pleased to hear Dr. McGuire your emphasis on investment in agriculture. And it also resonated with me, prime minister, what you said, that civil society feels they're not part of what is happening in the country or in the city. And something that we find hopeful is the Feed the Future Initiative out of the Obama administration that will be focusing on investment in rural agriculture. And a component of that is consultation with civil society. But it seems to me there's a lack of mechanisms in place or perhaps previous experience about how best to consult with civil society in rural regions. And I would love to hear from both of you. If you have any experience with this in recent history or any examples of how consultation in rural regions can work best in Haiti. Thanks very much. One more question on this side. Thank you very much, Robert Nicholas, with AME-SEDA. We've been working in Haiti for the last 24 years, north of Port-au-Prince in the Chandon-Matteau region. I would like to ask both speakers who are following up on your mentioning of the agricultural sector. First of all, why do you think there has been a lack of investment? And most importantly, where should we go from here with the agricultural sector? Thank you very much. Thanks very much. Please. Yes. Haitian economy is a red-seeking economy. To give you a very recent example, there was a family who had a lot of import substitution enterprises, you know, and they closed these enterprises and they were renting the space because they were making much more money with ministers renting the space. So they are not producing anymore whereas they were producing for the internal market, but it's easier for them to make money much more renting the space. So the red-seeking economy does not leave room for much investment. I wouldn't say that's the reason probably there are multiple reasons why there has been so little investment in agriculture, and I would come back to the idea that Bob also talked about the dichotomy of this country. We have a very dichotomic society culturally, economically, socially, and the peasants have always been left to their own devices with very little support, very little education, very little roads of communication, and you talk about Meaghan, Mrs. Clinton herself. When I was Prime Minister, that's when we started the discussion. When Mrs. Clinton decided that she wanted to refocus the foreign assistance in Haiti while refocusing USAID in general, and I told her agriculture is extremely important, except that there also, you cannot think that by giving the peasants seeds and even tools that you're going to make a change. If you don't invest in the whole value chain in agriculture, just like Bob said, and all the other services that are around agriculture, if you don't install credit for small SMEs, credit is extremely outrageously expensive in Haiti. And it's a big issue post-Earthquake because most people who lost their houses built it in 25 years, 30 years out of their own salaries because they cannot get a mortgage. And they have no insurance. So when the house is destroyed, they don't even know what they're going to do. And it's part of this little middle class also that is building. So to come back to agriculture, if you want to really make a difference, there are lots of peasants organizations in the country that have a lot of experience work with them on the whole value chain. Seeds, water irrigation when it's necessary, whatever it means, harvest, transformation, marketing. That also means electricity and roads. But if you keep on giving peasants seeds, forget it, it's not going to make any difference. So I think they heard the discussion were useful because Mrs. Clinton sent three sets of experts in agriculture, in environment, in credit, in electricity. Well, the earthquake, I don't know what's going to happen now, but it was very useful that we had this discussion on the value chain in agriculture. How do you want a Haitian peasant to cultivate rice in their tibonit to compete with the farmer from Mississippi, from Biloxi, Mississippi who is subsidized? It's impossible. So if you don't help him throughout the whole thing and make sure that there is an internal market for that, it's not going to work. Michel answers these questions with such thoroughness, it leaves little for me to say. But you've been looking at this for a long time. I'm a passion for my country. You can feel it. I would remind us of what we heard just a couple of weeks ago in this room about agriculture and this whole issue of the fact that Haiti has reduced its tariffs and its agriculture is naked in the world market. That's right. It just has to compete with farmers who are subsidized elsewhere and we were reminded of the reading of former President Clinton's own recognition of the fact that while he was in office he helped the Arkansas farmers export rice to Haiti while destroying the Haitian rice industry. So I think part of the issue is certainly investing in Haitian farmers and learning from them and doing it throughout the chain. But I think some of that has to rest upon our own policies as well that we can't continue to export surplus. Yes. Thank you. We'll take two more questions, please. Hello, Madam Prime Minister. I'm Linda Delgado. I'm Director of Government Affairs with Oxfam, America. We are we've been in Haiti for many decades as you know. And we are now thinking and looking at the next three years and in how we and our NGO, many NGO partners can think differently outside of the box as we rebuild and rethink our work in Haiti. I'd like you to give us a grade not Oxfam, but the NGO community generally. Are we coordinated or not? What's your sense of that? And two, do you sense that we're beginning to think outside of the box? Thank you. It's going to be a fast answer. No and no. Thank you very much. Please. Hi. Sheamus Brennan I'm with the Rule of Law Program here at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Returning briefly to the land and property issue and trying to hide into the larger discussion, we did a limited survey of some of the issues this spring. And one of the things that we really thought was pretty evident was not just the fact that titles were missing, but those that were present were of poor quality. They weren't current because it wasn't in people's interest to go and update with the courts when they divided it amongst their family and in the way that people actually used the land. At the time it appeared that the most promising initiative was an OAS mission to produce a new land disaster in the long term. I think it was a three-year timeline and I was wondering if anyone had an update on the status of that, but also to what extent does an initiative like that that ought to be only undertaken once displaces government function or does it supplement because it is this sort of one-off? Very well. I have a question from someone watching online who seems to be David who is with Quarles and Brady LLP and he asks are religious and charitable organizations required to coordinate their relief reconstruction efforts with any government agency? We have three kind of legalistic questions. Please go ahead. Now thank you for the question about the NGOs. It's a mess. It's a mess. It really is. And there are so many categories. You know they are the charitable, all the churches, all the sects. Well, again and even within this category there is such disparity. And then there are the international NGOs. Then there are the national NGOs and foundations. Then there are the civil society organizations. It's extremely difficult. When I just arrived in office President Prival told me I don't know if you are going to be luckier than I am but I'm trying to coordinate the international aid and the NGOs and I'm giving up. I don't think I was luckier. We tried but you see some of them are the state in the state and they have more money than the ministries in education, in health and especially now after the earthquake where there has been so much money raised so many NGOs have more money than the ministries. Considering also that the pledges that were made are not substantiated with disbursements. So not much money is going to the government. Of course there is the issue of corruption but that's not just the case. The government needs to be reinforced. You see the state needs to be reinforced and we need capacities, we need financial support, we need budget support even to tackle the NGO mess we need to reinforce the institutions. I think it's going to take time you know but at the same time it's important to see that some NGOs are doing great work really. Some NGOs they are subsidiaries of the government they go to so many places where the government has no public service and sometimes I wonder what would happen if one day they just leave. People will be even in worse conditions in terms of providing communication, health sometimes even justice. Sometimes wards are being built with the support of NGOs and now communication. So there's something has to be done and it's not yet in progress and I don't think the earthquake has shown how big even bigger is the problem and there too I think it's going to take time and it's going to take a government that has the legitimacy and the leadership and then the OAS yeah that's again you see when I was Prime Minister I worked closely with the OAS even before the Cadastre half Haitians don't have an identity card so they are not legally existing it's a big big problem I remember after the earthquake IEDB came to the government and offered us a cash transfer program that is very successful in Brazil and in Central America but the first requirement is an ID card because the money goes through the bank and it's through the ID card that this is burst to the women it's a women program so we were working along those lines because it's true that it has to be the first database even if you have Cadastre and you don't have identity it's a problem and there are peasants that have that are owners of their land but they don't have an identity so the OAS is working on both issues the identification the civil registry and the Cadastre now again, you see in Haiti there is something the international donors game with something they call boot so it's build organize what's the other O build organize and then the T is transfer so in Haiti we call it boo because we never reach the T you see so each time they have to transfer that to the government it's a big problem because we don't have the money we don't have the qualifications and I'm afraid even with this project if from now the OAS there is nothing how are we going to transfer these capacities to the government and make it a step program it's going to be an issue just to add one point I think that again part of this problem with NGOs that you're describing has to do also it also should be placed on the lap of the donors who fund the NGOs particularly those who work under contract and competitive bidding because we've seen repeatedly that donors select their NGOs to do their projects and the government is marginalized or bypassed or brought in after everything is already decided and again just to reinforce the point that I think the rhetoric is understanding this and the discussion is understanding it but it needs to become an actionable program and one last thing I would mention that one of the first things I learned about Haiti in the 1970s I was asked by a wizened old priest if I knew the definition of a project in Haiti and I said how is it any different from any place else he said well be careful he said when people talk to you about a project a project is defined as a way of getting money and once you get your money then it's a success because the project is successful so I think we have to be careful about also this idea of what sometimes is a projectitis we have to look more at plans and strategies and programs and achieving results okay we have 10 minutes left we have 5 questioners what I'd like to make you a deal the deal is that each questioner gets 5 minutes each questioner gets 1 minute we get 5 questions in and then we give our panelists 5 minutes to respond and then we'll be over and leave on time we can take them all at once one after the other and please be brief hi good morning my name is Jean-Michel Voltaire I'm an attorney with the Justice Department here NDC both of you spoke of the state is absent that's a very diameter for to describe Haiti I would assume that the governments have been absent but the state is absent it's very very bad for the future of the country if that's the case I think the government has been absent in the lives of the people because they most often focus on themselves instead of the well-being of the people and in terms of the spirit of transcendency we have to transcend the history that we have the history of divisions and exclusions do you see any group or any particular person in the position to start the process to begin the process of transcendence the division that has been the culture of Haiti thank you you set the standard I'm called Henry Prophet representing myself my question for Prime Minister Pierre-Louis is you mentioned the political culture in Haiti as a major impediment for progress you also mentioned the need for transcendency but on a more operational level from your experience is there any concrete small step that could be taken in order to at least start to change this political culture thank you Jan DuPlein International Correspondence Committee National Press Club there is supposed to be an election November 28th is that happening what about the candidates any predictions I understand there's a woman that's leading good very good okay next good morning Daniel Petz from the Brookings Institution I have a couple of questions quick questions related to the land issue again to the land appropriation do you know if there's kind of are there any estimates how much compensation will have to be paid to the land owners is there kind of already a plan who is going to pay for this compensation is there funding within the Haitian Government or will some international donors step in for that and according to the master plan that doesn't exist yet do you think there will ever be this master plan will it be still with the Preval Government now or will we only see it with the new Government after February thank you very much thank you you're doing great last but not least Carol Mates I'm Co-Chair of the American Bar Association International Sections Haiti Task Force and the ABA is an NGO actually we have recently formed a task force we have some lawyers that are interested in doing human rights work and they've actually liaised with some groups in Haiti you Prime Minister you've identified certain other issues that seem to me we have volunteer lawyers American and non-American who are interested in doing this work and given what you say is the plethora of various organizations and NGOs tripping over each other I appreciate if you can tell us what is perhaps the best way that we could liais with local groups to provide assistance on these commercial law issues land tenure and land tenure of course is such a big social and economic area and then secondly the way to deal with some of these issues is registries and registries mean you need investment in IT, technology, etc we as lawyers can't do that is there funding available for that given the more immediate needs of health, sanitation rebuilding, etc thank you our questionnaires have stayed within the 5 minute deadline so we'll ask the panelists to stay within the 5 minute response and we'll all get out of here at noon thanks very much to everyone who asks questions now thank you I'll try I usually explain too much but I'll try to be short about the state being absent well it's a figure of speech you know this state is there I mean this state is it's a way of saying that considering on the one hand what happened to the government loss of infrastructure loss of human resources and the difficulty they were in to give any response even to speak to the population you know it took the president a week before he said the first word to the population and people could not believe it and when the president doesn't talk nobody talks he's the one that has the legitimacy so it's a figure of speech saying that considering the conditions before the earthquake and then the earthquake the response has been extremely limited that's my way of saying it now the government the state is there the government's response has been limited who can begin the process of transcendence I think again there is someone who talk about the women I think the women can play a big role in the country and then the university I was at the symposium at MIT last week there is one that ended in Haiti yesterday headed by UMass and there were 35 foreign universities there I think there is a big momentum to rebuild the Haitian university and I personally am involved in it because I can tell you the drive for learning that there is from the student community in Haiti and the gatekeepers are usually not the students so if we work hard at that level something can spring out of there too and there are other constituencies the problem is how to have that converging movement that can have an impact and create some kind of critical mass the small steps of political culture I think what I just said covers somehow if I have to be if I have to be short I have a tendency to talk too much but yeah I think there are lots of groups that needs to be federated and give a response at a higher level now the elections that's an issue I don't want to talk about October September 28 I saw on the net again I am always cautious that the president seems to have said to the Christian Science Monitor that if the cholera epidemics how do you say that expands the election might have to be postponed now that's all I know now there are 19 candidates at least I would say from my perspective 12 of them come from the same political movement so each one of them wants to be president it's exactly what happened to our people in Florida you know one of them could have been congressmen there were five of them and the five of them had more votes than the one that finally was nominated because they could not choose one you see so these are issues that's why I don't like to talk about that because there also there is a need of transcendence we don't know what's going to come out we don't know but I can say personally none of them makes me say wow land compensation you see the law in Haiti when you expropriate is very precise there is a commission with the ministry of finance the tax bureau one or two other ministers I don't remember exactly but there is a commission that has to be formed and the commission makes an evaluation of the land based on different parameters the market price the size whatever but it's all in the law and then there is this commission also has the expertise to see if the titles are legal are correct and they propose a price for the compensation an amount for the compensation now the owner can refuse but the government has the last word and if the owner refuse they just leave the check at the at the lawyer's office of the ministries of finance and economy so there is a procedure for that now who pays usually when we're not in a situation like post earthquake or natural disaster the government puts that on their budget I did that personally because I was part of an expropriation property when I was by minister and I budgeted for the amount because the Bureau of Tax told me this is how much we want to give those owners but now it's a lot of properties and a lot of land I don't know if the donors are considering giving funding for that I don't know at this stage and the master plan there is none yet there's going to be a new government theoretically in six months I suppose the new government will have the difficult task of elaborating the plan not just for Port-au-Prince and again Bob insisted on that but I also insist on that the future of Haiti is in decentralization no association you see there are lots of human rights organizations that you can connect with there is a civic movement that started in 2005 or 6 during the transition with the prime objective or the do you say re-foundation no you don't say that re-elaboration of the codes the penal code the code description you know all the all the judicial system codes and it was a very interesting movement because it was participatory they went all over the country to hear what people had as grievances against the Haitian justice system and they have a log of all those all those meetings and it's very interesting to see if you could liaise with them and they have a lot of information and of course again I think you can be helpful also in the civil registry which is so important when I was prime minister the IEDB gave me 10 million dollars to start an experiment with the civil registry but I left the office right at that moment I think I covered as fast as I could well just very briefly because again Michelle does a wonderful job systematically knocking off the questions and it's a pleasure to hear her speak because in the sense that it kind of revives a little bit a feeling of optimism that things in Haiti can change I think we need to be careful about the elixir or the silver bullet or one particular individual who will lead the change and that's why again I like the idea of trying to work with women trying to work with the university students there's a creole proverb that says just because you can't read doesn't mean you're stupid I think it's very important to bring those voices into the discourse the peasants the urban workers and make sure that we listen to them and we seek out their advice and their views in terms of the election I think it looks more or less it just may be an unprecedented election in Haiti and that it may go to a second round there is no real wow factor so there may be a runoff election which would be scheduled in early January I think mid January and that would in Haitian presidential politics that would be unprecedented since the new system of 1987 anyway thank you very much I'd like to ask for a round of applause for our panel