 Good morning. We'd like to start. Can we ask the people there's those of you at the door? There's lots of seats down front You want to come on down and take these places here? There's lots and lots of places to sit We have places down here if you'd like to come on down there a couple places in the back I'd like to thank you all for coming this morning. This is a wonderful turnout on This is the first meeting of the Haiti working group for the 2010-2011 program year We're looking forward to a very busy schedule ahead Which will include the move of USIP into our new headquarters building in April and there's some wonderful pictures in the hallway of the new headquarters As you can see from the stack of publications out on the table outside the door We've had a very busy summer and we have three new Peace briefs They're in the table outside the latest one is by Alex Berg it deals with the issue of crime politics and violence and post Earthquake Haiti. There's two others which detail The circumstances in Haiti over the summer in terms of recovery and reconstruction We have two new USIP special reports The first deals with Crowdsourcing crisis information and disaster affected Haiti. It's a report on work done by Yusha Didi Yusha Hedi and Immediately after the quake They use cell phones and open source crisis man crisis mapping software to direct search and rescue operations immediately and In a circumstance where they broadcast a number to call in your cell phone if you were in trouble People could call that number the message would be flashed up to a group of students working in a basement at Tufts University it would be mapped out using Haitian assistance where it would be flashed back to the US Marines or search and rescue teams and people would be on their way within a matter of minutes To the rescue very interesting stuff and also a new report on education and conflict in Haiti Which discusses the history of education in Haiti and the challenges facing the restoration of an educational system in that country On the 31st of August USIP hosted a public forum here on the issue of violence and rape in Haiti after the earthquake Representatives from several NGOs were present and they talked about the work they've done and trying to reduce violence against women in that country there is a Audio recording of that program on the website if you go to the USIP homepage click on Haiti and then you'll see the the link a Written report on that summarizes that event will be available in the next few weeks and Finally, I'd like to ask you to mark your calendar. There's an announcement outside on the table on the 29th of October The former Prime Minister of Haiti Michelle Pierre Louis will be here To give us her thoughts on the election and in Haiti's future This morning. We're extremely pleased to have with us Jim Dobbins and Keith Crane from Rand who are going to be talking about their their report as Always we're delighted to have the chairman of the Haiti working group with us Professor Robert McGuire from Trinity University and So I will begin by turning the meeting over to Bob who introduced the panel. Thanks very much Thank You Bob. Good morning everyone Welcome to the USIP Before I'd say anything further. I would just like to remind you to please Mute or turn off your cell phones Here we are October 13th roughly eight months after the earthquake that shook Haiti And it seems to me that the news coming out of Haiti what little there tends to be of it these days Is often contra contradiction of hope and despair It's hopeful for example that the Interim Patient Reconstruction Committee which met last week And approved 777 million dollars of projects. That's a hopeful sign It's a little less hopeful when you realize that those 777 million dollars are not completely available for projects at this point I'm particularly hopeful because I hear reports of interesting developments outside of Port-au-Prince in the decentralization or Deconcentration of the country In such areas as road building and infrastructure improvements Decentralized industrial parks. That's somewhat hopeful But then on the less hopeful side are the stories that dominate of the continuing trauma of internally displaced people The lack of housing and the issue of rubble and also of the slow disbursement of funds that have been pledged So it's a yin and yang for Haiti these days And then of course the elephant in the room is the political side with elections coming up for Haiti's parliament and president On November 28th So we have three speakers four speakers. Sorry to help us sort through some of these issues Today in our meeting entitled building a better Haitian state I will introduce them extremely briefly because you have their bios. They were available outside You could pick them up after the meeting if you didn't pick one up on your way in But speaking first will be Megan Curtis and Megan is senior advisor of the office of the Counselor and chief of staff Cheryl Mills at the US Department of State Following Megan will be James Dobbins the director of the international security and defense policy center of the Rand Corporation and The co-author of the Rand report on building a more resilient Haitian state and I should add this is not the first time I'm introducing Jim when we had the Haiti program at Georgetown years ago in the late 90s And he was working as the special envoy to Haiti Well, I had occasion to introduce him then as well. So it's been a long and steady Commitment to Haiti We have following Jim will be Keith Crane who is the director of environment energy and economic development at the Rand Corporation and also a co-author of the Rand report and last but certainly not least will be Alex Dupuis a distinguished professor of sociology from Wesleyan University In Connecticut and the author of at least three Well renowned and recommended books on Haiti. So with that done Megan. It's all yours Thanks Bob And thanks all all of you for coming today Thank you to the Rand Corp region whose report on Rebuilding the Haitian state is really an excellent resource encourage everybody to take a look at that has been a great resource for us at the State Department and Jim and all of his years of knowledge working on Haiti is really a benefit. So I'm gonna Sort of run through a very brief PowerPoint here Giving you a snapshot look at what about the new Haiti strategy for the US government is Different and specifically what about that new strategy aims at strengthening the Haitian state And moving in a new a fundamentally new direction for US foreign assistance To start off We we framed the new Haiti strategy with with five key principles and the very first principle Among them is USG assistance will be country-led and build country capacity This is something I think I've maybe some of you have been here on prior occasions I've spoken and some of my other colleagues have spoken about The process in the US government to review the Haiti policy which started back in March of 2009 And one of the big things that one of the big findings that we came away with well before the earthquake is that The consistent approach to channeling foreign assistance around the Haitian state Has has effectively left a shell We if we do not Either fund or support capacity building within the Haitian state We cannot expect to have a strong strong institutions or any measure of sustainability So this was the first principle among five the others being Comprehensive and integrated leveraging other donors Using multilateral mechanisms, which I'll note later the US government just last week announced $120 million to the multi-donor trust fund run by the World Bank, which is a significant contribution and also a departure From past practices in terms of using multilateral mechanisms for development So From there, I think the first point of departure in terms of developing the USG strategy is to say if this But if this strategy is in fact country-led and builds country capacity What is it that the Haitians actually see as their main needs as opposed to us deciding what their main needs are and how We can best address them so right here is a is a sort of quick snapshot break out of The four key pillars that were identified by the Haitian government in the wake of the earthquake as to their their reconstruction needs some of these Speak to greater needs that existed before the earthquake some of them are more specifically related to Two needs that were derived Or or precipitated by by the earthquake in terms of destruction Territory, economic, social, institutional Historically donors will gravitate towards category number three social. This is obviously Or not obviously, but but it frequently ends up being some some of the least sustainable Sustainable development that we do because we're bringing in doctors and nurses educators and so forth But not necessarily investing in systems So this is something that we you know we historically as as well have have gravitated towards a lot of our portfolio in the past And Haiti has been focused on sort of I would say health Education stability operations and humanitarian assistance So our our approach to this was to say both a what are the the highest priorities of the Haitian government and be Where are other donors not going to play and where can we be effective in filling in those gaps? I think one of the big departures on the ground in Haiti is the Is the advent of the interim Haiti recovery Commission? This is a Organization that is co-chaired by Prime Minister Jean-Max Bell Reeve and former US President President Clinton and Has a number of board members. I believe it's 16 but perhaps more at this point consisting of Haitian government represents representatives from all branches of the government including parliament unions the Haitian private sector Caricom and all major donors and that and that is the threshold being any donor that commits over a hundred million dollars for reconstruction Beneath that board is a secretary which is Just now beginning to to be staffed up I think the IHRC which is the unwieldy acronym for this institution has been soliciting Both succumbents as well as funds from the international community to support the operational costs of this operation the thing that distinguishes this I think Really from from the past is that it puts the Haitian government in the place of Actually being a part of the process of planning that happens with the international community So instead of international donors deciding what it is that they think should happen in Haiti They have to submit their pro plans and proposals to this commission For approval then the commission can come back to the to the donors make tweaks changes Or reject them flat out or give an approval and then it goes back to the implementing partner to To actually do the implementation. It's not a funding mechanism. Money does not flow through the IHRC but it is sort of a I'd say a glorified planning ministry It also I think the idea is as it as it continues to develop to be something of a one-stop-shop for Setting up businesses getting land permits construction permits and so forth. It's not there yet But I think that the the real value here is is two things one is that the government has a say and How things are being done and what projects donors are? Are are committing against and how they prioritize those projects and to I think I think is the sort of Externality that all of us sort of expected would happen But didn't realize how valuable it would be is that all the major donors and very high level decision makers from all those donors are now in a room together on a regular basis and know each other and work together and Collaborate on projects together and this is big. This is this is this has not happened in Haiti in the past This is a snapshot of the of the IHRC website Which I put up here just because this is you know This is new thing for for Haiti having a public portal that people can tap into and look and see what what's going on I just want to also Take you to this site very briefly and show you some of the things You know, you can look at what are the pledges? actually the pledge page is super interesting and You can see look on here and scroll around and see You know how much donations have been done how much of it is new funds? How much of it is is? Pre-existing pledged money. It's a very useful tool Not only that but it allows for digital submission of project proposals that you can have some level of efficiency in terms of getting this done So back to this. Oh, that's the wrong one Okay So this here just gives you the the basic frame of the USG strategy going forward the five principles Four pillars the two the two things to constitute on this slide is the four pillars and the three quack Three corridors infrastructure and energy food and economic security health and other basic services Governance and rule of law and then three corridors, which you'll see here on this map A northern corridor a corridor running down the west coast up to and a little bit beyond say mark and then the Port-au-Prince corridor This is and also a pretty significant departure from past Practices for the US government and the idea here is to really, you know I think take a deep dive on the four pillars that we're addressing and each of these corridors So if it's on security and rule of law, it's rebuilding all of the Judicial infrastructure the police The prisons if it's on on health care It's rebuilding a lot of the public health infrastructure and helping the systems actually function effectively And so forth housing Agriculture you'll see here noted these are there are three fertile planes that we focused on which are really kind of right for expansion of Cocoa and mango production, which is something that we're going to focus on in the agriculture piece This is not to say that we won't be involved in other parts of the country But it'll be sort of a core package in the whole country and then a targeted comprehensive package in the corridors So now just quickly to go through the four pillars and focus on what is it about these that focuses on on building state capacity The infrastructure and energy piece. This is going to be targeting about 140 IDPs 140,000 IDPs for rehabilitated homes and new construction both inside Port-au-Prince and outside Port-au-Prince in terms of in support of the decentralization plan secondary and tertiary roads outside of Port-au-Prince Rehabilitating expanding the electricity grid reforming the regulatory system and then providing alternative to charcoal cooking fuel The key capacity building elements on this is we're working on a mortgage finance facility with OPIC the IFC and CHF Where we're giving technical support to the planning ministry of the IHRC To do urban planning to build to put together building codes to do land enumeration to Put together a pre-cadastar, which in turn will become a land cadastre for for land titling And then I think the big piece on this is taking on the electricity sector in a big way Which means really getting involved with the state and helping to clean out the the electricity electric per state or EDH, which is Historically had very significant problems in terms of administrative administration and and and maintaining the systems Food and economic security I'd say on this piece. It's it's a Really more of a on the economic security piece is working with the central bank to provide credit guarantees and new financing to banks so that they can get Get loans that were that are troubled assets or troubled loans after the earthquake back up and running refinanced And get some new cash flowing so that businesses can reopen and restock and rehire workers Health and other basic services the the big piece on that on the health front for us is going to be really investing in the health Ministry and moving away from what we had previously done, which is the almost complete focus on service delivery to to Expanding our focus with a lot of new funds that are coming in on this sector to do health systems strengthening And that means helping the Ministry of Health manage HMIS systems health information systems It means training doctors and nurses it means allowing the the the health ministry to actually manage all of the NGOs that operate in the country set standards and and move towards a robust performance-based contracting system to have them operating in what are now increasingly sort of hybrid public-private health facilities across the country Governance and rule of law I think you know the the Rand report is really excellent in this regard in terms of Looking at the administrative fixes that need to be taken on or reforms that need to be taken on within the within the Haitian government one We're going to be working with the Department of Treasury to work on a lot of kind of boring stuff. That's incredibly useful like budgeting tax revenue collection Planning payroll civil service reform. I think it's something that we've been talking to the World Bank about Going in heavy on These are not sexy things and they're not things that are easily done But they're things that we haven't tackled or tried to tackle ever Really in a very significant way and it's something that we really feel is necessary now And you know everybody talked about there being an opportunity or a break from past practices and with the earthquake and I think that may be still the case but I think it's it's also just this is you know With all of the attention on Haiti right now We've all come to the realization that it's time to think differently about what are the things that we put our money into That it's not just band-aids, but it's it's actually a refoundation One other thing I should note that we're we're going to do on the governance side Which I think is interesting is is actually imitating a project that was done in Liberia with Haitian government fellows So these will be fellowships targeting Haitian diaspora to serve as special assistance to minister ministers within the cabinet to Basically perform middle management tasks that right now there is no capacity to do And that may be a Fulbright program that we're developing right now that we could replicate in other countries So I think that's pretty exciting Elections this is pretty Standard a lot of the stuff that we do in most elections international domestic observation elections planning sort of logistics Civic education voter mobilization some new things that we're doing in here in terms of polling and Funding civil society organizations to host public debates political political support party support and then media support So just to wrap up, you know a couple of big things that I think are important about The way in which the new Haiti strategy is addressing the kind of the need to really Support the Haitian state support Haitian institutions and try to really rebuild them a couple of big things budget support Is a big thing. This is something that we haven't done before directly. We have previously done debt relief Now we're doing actual budget support. This is about right now a modest 17 million dollars in terms of the US contribution But that could grow going forward if we if we find it to be a successful operation Obviously working inside institutions with technical experts and embedded Technicians and fellows 120 million dollars to the multi donor trust fund like I explained earlier Investing in public infrastructure. I think this is something we haven't done in the past. We're rebuilding the general hospital in Port-au-Prince So said setting sustainability targets This is a big thing in terms of if we're going to build something How is the Haitian government going to take over maintenance in the long run? and then participation in the IHRZ which is obviously Barely new for all of us So that's I think basically the full picture here. I'll turn it over to Jim or Keith to give the The more elaborate picture on on your study, but thank you Thanks Megan. That was great I'm going to I'm going to see most of my time to Keith who was the lead author on our study I just want to say a few introductory words basically on the origins of the study as the origin and to two things First of all was my own experience in Haiti when I was The administration special envoy in the in the mid 90s and in the aftermath of the earthquake It occurred to me that That it would be nice if we could avoid some of the mistakes we made back in the 90s and Among those mistakes I think was believing we could fix Haiti in two years believing we could fix Haiti on a budget of about a hundred million dollars a year and Thirdly having a strategy that was almost exclusively focused on police and privatization Almost all our efforts went into building the police force, which was fine but there wasn't a comparable effort to build a justice system or a penal system and the police thus eventually just A Excellent new police force receded back to the low to the average level of corruption and incompetence very quickly in the absence of those supporting institutions and privatization while it made absolute economic sense for things like the Electric company and the port and many other Parastatals I think we found in Haiti and I think the World Bank and others have found in any number of other countries that it is Politically one of the most difficult things to achieve and probably not something that you want at the forefront of your transformation strategy the second Contribution to this work on Haiti is Is work that Keith and I have been doing since I left the government in 2002? We produce now six volumes of studies on nation-building Including a three-volume history of nation-building a book called the beginners guide to nation-building and our basic assessment of the problem in Haiti is that Haiti is located where it's always going to have hurricanes and occasional earthquakes the reason that they're so Devastating is because Haiti doesn't have a government that can plan for those kinds of disasters and respond to those kinds of disasters and Nothing we do to respond to this disaster is going to help unless we fix that underlying problem And so we produce a report that's very much focused on the state-building agenda in post earthquake Haiti Keith I Might note that another of the authors is in the audience Charlie Grease who's on a six month Leave of absence from Ram to be the executive vice president of the Clinton Bush Fund for Haiti Give a little plug first. This is available for free on our website. You can download it in electronic form Or you can purchase hardcopy, but our WWW ran.org so we'd be delighted to have people download it following up on what? Jim and Megan had talked about is that, you know, the devastation is extraordinary in Haiti, especially Port-au-Prince people have compared Port-au-Prince to World War two Europe where we have there's not been a city that has been so devastated since 1944-45 But again as harking back to what Jim had said is that The earthquake and all its devastation really revealed or again highlighted the weaknesses and of the Haitian government Because the earthquake in its own right was so severe But the problems in terms of building codes for quality materials greatly exacerbated the consequence of the earthquake So our rent study then focused on what what could be done at the state level to improve Haiti And the Haitian government does have a number of advantages to draw on And like many of the other states we look at we've been working a lot on Afghanistan in Iraq These countries are are are driven by factional problems. They have long histories of violence They have neighbors who are focused on tearing them apart Haiti has the advantage of being located in a peaceful region Its next-door neighbor has been extraordinarily helpful as opposed to trying to harbor insurgents to go across the border And if you will it also has had extraordinary help from the neighbor writ large We've had a Brazilian led International force provides stability and the US has opened up its market like it has to no other country in the region So giving these potential advantages Our post-conflict nation-building books. I think they have an optimistic spin to them We see that there are a real possibilities for Haiti to move on That said the core problem has been the Haitians government's inability to develop and implement realistic policies and plans There are Very numerous studies by other groups many of them and many of the people here have more experience and definitely I do on Haiti But what we focused on here is you're saying there seem to be a gap in the in the general discussion about where do we go from after the earthquake and That was is what is really practical? What could you implement now and what could you see some results in the next two or three years? So we were are not set out to reform or reconstruct a new Haiti What we focused on is what really is doable and with a focus in terms of the government So our study was designed to release this what you know What types of plans should the Haitian government be focusing on and where should the international donor community be putting its resources and its support we focused on These sets of these key areas and these were deliberate This is not just picking and choosing a little bit here there and everywhere What we felt is is these are really core areas that the international community and the Haitian government really needs to focus on if You don't fix these you won't fix anything. There's some other areas, which would be nice to fix And but that said is that these we felt were really core the key to making some progress in Haiti And so for each one of these we first Looked at what we saw as real challenges to the state and Then subsequently said what are what are some solutions that could be implemented? Both by the Haitian government and by the international community In terms of public administration I was very heartened to hear Megan's discussion of the focus on trying to build a civil administration In the Haitian government today, there's no job descriptions. There's no civil service North civil service Structure for people to be promoted. There's really no accountability there's no sense of what people should be doing or what their jobs are doing and without having a civil service That has some ability to implement government policy decisions. Nothing happens. So we felt that this is probably the key recommendation we made is to focus on public administration There's a lot of fairly mundane if you will almost simple Steps that need be made although these are are difficult for those who've done them past But first say what's your job? What are you supposed to be doing? Secondly, what are standards for hiring and firing up to this point in time? You know in the United States is a very elaborate Process of hiring people for the civil service. You have to demonstrate some capabilities and skills We again advocated not a real complicated us system, but just setting some basic standards maybe in terms of literacy in terms of hiring people into the bureaucracy on Creating some sort of career path if you will for a Haitian civil servant Where would promotions come from is it just that you have to be related to the minister or the Director general or there's a real career path where if you perform well, you will actually see a possibility of expanding both your responsibility and your salary and We also focused on the fact that the Haitian government really has not allocated Resources and doesn't have resources to implement these types of changes and although these are not very expensive There's the types of things were a little bit of targeted money from the international community would go a long way We then focused on justice and security The key justice challenges have in my view Really focus both in terms of the legal system itself, but especially in terms of the the point between arrest and Trial conviction and the and the prisons I was just horrified to find that 80% of the people in the Haitian prison system are on pre-trial detention and some people have been sitting in those prisons long Much longer than any type of sentence. They would get for the crimes with their charge It's it's almost like out of the middle ages and that you could lose your papers If you don't your family doesn't have the resources to hire a lawyer who will Nag the judge you can be lost the papers lost and you could be there in essence forever So this was a key problem in addition to that on the civil side. They're a major problem in terms of who owns what and This is compounded of course after the earthquake in the sense that now if you're going to do Rebuilding who owns that parcel of land becomes very important in terms of who's going to be building on it Our key recommendations here was to First and foremost build on some of the initiatives that have been started by a number of groups To try to create and and to create and implement as quickly as possible Comprehensive systems so that if you're arrested in Haiti Someone somewhere in the system has your name what you're charged for and that it will then be in a system Where you could also hold prosecutors and judges accountable for your particular case so that you eventually will emerge From the system or end up in prison and finish your sentence and go back into society We also really focused on making a concerted effort to create a property dispute resolution based in part on a system of registering both property and and So there's an ability to start this reconstruction process so that people know who's knows what and if there's an argument about it That that at least can be resolved fairly quickly As part of that it becomes very important in terms of registering births and deaths Right now. Haiti is a very cumbersome system of registering deaths and so many people who have had relatives and family friends fathers Wives husbands who died in the quake are unable to get that property because they are unable to prove that That they are the survivors of people who have died in the quake and this become extraordinarily important They have very limited resources Maybe there's a bank account in Miami or someplace that they can't tap because they don't can't prove that they're That their spouse has died In terms of security challenges, I hats off to the international community for what has been done in Haiti Since the introduction of the UN force levels of violence and volatility in the country have gone way down Haiti is not historically been a violent state You know it has some of the typical problems of the Caribbean But nonetheless of given the level of lack of governance given the lack of Police etc in the past it is not notably a violent state However, bringing in the international community has definitely dampened down the incentives for different political groups to try to spark violence And this has probably done more prior to the quake to create an environment for economic growth than anything else we've done Here our recommendations are Keep doing the good work. We don't see you know There's a temptation to say things are stable in Haiti. Why do we need to have this international force there? We would argue that you know give a little time. We've got a big reconstruction process here The political situation is kind of stabilized, but again, thanks to international community. Let's give it at least five more years You know over time you might want to diminish the number of troops But let's just keep it there for the time being and that will provide a really a security framework in which we think there's opportunities for political development As well as for economic and social development as well In addition to that the police have been a success story in the past the police that have very bad reputation Now there are the institution that's most highly Highly regarded by the Haitian people according to a number of polls But they really rely on the international community to make sure they get paid to make sure that they have uniforms that That they can really that they can operate when we met with the chief of police in Haiti You know if he wanted to you know even get some new uniforms or he's interested in putting Stations in the tent camps. He was spending his time talking to people like Megan and others asking for money to do this We need to move beyond that and and make sure that both He doesn't see asking for money as the first recourse for getting resources but also making sure there's a budget there that these types of decisions can be by Haitians and And that the police force can move on In terms of economic policy and infrastructure Haiti is of course the poorest country in the in the hemisphere. It also has the notable It is also notable and it's the only country in the Western Hemisphere It's actually gone backwards in terms of per capita GDP over the last three decades But I think it's sometimes forgotten or not recognized as much as it should be that The reason why Haiti is poor is it's so hard to engage in any economic activity in Haiti and this is self-imposed and you look at You know business registration is maybe not the most important thing in a country But it is one of the most complex and lengthy in the world more important are things like changing property a registration I had read that just to get you have to have a notary public to sign off that I sold this property to you Six seven percent of the value of the property you have to pay to this individual just for a signature and so naturally economic activity slows it You know, it's it's extraordinarily burdened on the economy So here we had two two suggestions First and foremost, Haiti doesn't collect a lot of taxes In terms of the total revenue they also don't spend an awful lot in public services when I looked at the ratio of taxes to what they're actually spending on it's it's You know one could say they could they should raise more taxes But they better make sure they're spending on things that are needed by public services that said there's a lot of little nuisance taxes Taxes that are actually designed for police or tax collectors or government officials to shake down businesses So they have to pay them be better to kind of eliminate those and then focus on some of the taxes like value-added tax and Potentially property taxes that could target some of the individuals in Haiti that do have the wherewithal to Provide more money to the government While at the same time eliminating some of their strictures in terms of business activity Finally, and I would say more importantly in terms of economic policy Is to really focus on trying to eliminate and reduce these steps that impede businesses USAID has had a Fairly long history now and success in terms of creating one-stop Processes where you go to one place in order that say to pay your taxes or register your business or Make a transaction in terms of selling property Whatever it's these types of things that they can push forward also just to push push push to start eliminating Particular steps often there's like 16 17 different things in different offices You have to do in order to do a transaction you can get rid of many of those and then put pressure on within the Haitian government to accelerate those types of The time in which it takes to do that Next to you know the longer term we argued that creating a civil administration was probably the most important thing to do in Haiti On the medium term the most important thing to do is is to Start building homes so that next rainy season the next hurricane season season you won't have all these tents important prints This is probably the key thing that the international community needs to do in order to make sure We don't have another humanitarian disaster. We dodged a bullet this year or the Haitians did They weren't hit by a major hurricane But in light of all those hundreds of thousands of people living in tent cities. This is this is really important People focus on Haitian infrastructure is a big problem. Yes, they don't have very good infrastructure But what they've had in the past is they let wash into the Caribbean there has been Virtually no focus on once a road is built to make sure it's maintained There's been on countless studies where people have said a road that's been well maintained the rainy season comes it's there when the rainy season is over a road that is poorly maintained is gone and Going forward the key thing for Haiti is not so much that build it It's more to maintain it and I was really heartened to hear that the US government is putting a major emphasis on Any infrastructure that's being constructed is going to have a maintenance plan as well So what do we recommend here first and foremost get the rubble out We had compared Port-au-Prince to the cities after World War two the first thing that happened after World War two and Warsaw in Berlin And resin was that people got out and they started hauling bricks and hauling the rubble away Here we are eight months later. There's been a little of that, but it's been extraordinary lack of days ago based on the threats to Haitians that will That they're there from the weather next year and until you get the rubble out until you have a place to build nothing's going to happen Haitians are very inventive As soon as there's a place to build people will start building, but until that rubble is gone that won't take place In addition to that again, we focus on regulation Haiti the cost of importing a container to Haiti is two or three times What is important Los Angeles people in Los Angeles have incomes, you know several times what they are in Haiti This is probably the single most important thing that keeps that keeps Haiti poor today Because everything has to come in or go out. It's a very small open economy And so the cost of transportation is probably the single single most important driver in terms of Standards of living in Haiti because everything of people buy or much of what they have to buy has to be imported Finally, we really focused on electric power Haiti has two different systems. There's a private system a little gasoline generators out in in the slums to diesel generators at the larger a Larger government buildings or private enterprise or private businesses stuff is very expensive I pay 11 cents a kilowatt hour in Virginia gasoline generators can be a buck So people are in Haiti are paying 10 times what I'm paying Meanwhile, the state has had an electric power system where it is used as a patronage system 13% of Haiti's very limited resources are going to provide fuel subsidies to wealthy Haitians who can tap into the state grid No, no sense in terms of trying to get people to pay for power No sense is even charging them the amount of money. It's needed to keep those generators going And the finally turn to look at social services here we focused on education and health care Haitians are extraordinarily focused on training on educating their children. It's their social security. It's their pension It's their only route in which they really see their ability to Raise the family standard living as to educating the youth. So they spend a very substantial share of household budgets on education unfortunately the services they get in in Return for those investments have been often are quite poor We have an educational system which roughly 80% of children are go to schools which are not provided by the state Long term there's only four or five countries in the world where the state does not Educate most children long-term Haiti probably needs to go there, but it's not going to happen next year the year after So the the real problem is is then how do you? create better value for parents in terms of the expenditures are making on education and How do you make sure that there's better better quality standards? And so here we focused on was not saying the Haitian government or the international community should go out and build lots of new schools That the state would would run instead. We so let's build on the current system and had the Ministry of Education focus on Ensuring that those schools that do operate meet certain minimal standards and encourage them to create those standards is to provide subsidies to private sector teachers in Exchange for both ensuring that they provide a certain quality of education But they also show up at school and educate the students in addition to that Haiti has a number of Tests where students have to pass in order to go to the next grade Some schools are not been accredited or not able to provide those tests We would argue that you need to push out and make sure that all schools do that Healthcare advantage challenges. You're well aware of these that very few people of health care They spend 50% of health care expenditures are more are paid out of pocket for the poorest country in the region and that And then it's a hodgepodge. It's really not a system. You have Doctors flying from the States. I had a friend of the family's been there twice Provide services for a week or two, but they can't provide long-term care. There are church groups. There's charities there's some government institutions and A lot of this is uncoordinated For example, my friend who is up in the mountain in up kind of mountains of Port-au-Prince about 20 kilometers, but by foot There was a clinic that someone had built up there. They didn't have the money to keep it going There were heart medicines. There were Equipment there that were could not be used there that could be used in the hospital There's kind of abandoned and this is a type of lack of coordination by donors by charities and In terms of providing health care. So once again here, we focused on saying Let's get the health the Haitian state in this case out of the health care provision business and instead have the Haitian state become Become the coordinator eventually become prop in a sense of provider of funds But it would focus on ensuring quality standards and moving towards performance based contracting So those institutions that do get state money or get your money or charitable giving hit to provide a certain quality or level of Services finally we talked about donor cooperation. This is something Charlie Reece focused on and Here as you can see there's a whole host of problems one is that Haiti goes in and out of fashion or Haiti causes itself to go in and out of fashion depending on how the political winds Blow and so over the last four decades. We've seen extraordinary ups and downs in terms of Donor assistance We're on the upswing now And so it's very important that on this particular time of upswing because it's not going to stay forever All the major donors have there'll be other crises other countries that will need this assistance So the question is is how at this particular juncture in history? Ken Haiti best use these funds in the international community help Haiti do that and so we have had a Probably the I would argue one of the most coordinated most thoughtful donor Cooperation efforts by donors to cooperate that we have had in many places in the world or maybe Best I've seen so far Question is what else do they need to do? Um IHRC is slowly getting its act together. We started to have some meetings as we said Recently Bob mentioned that was 740 million million dollars in terms of projects are out there money's not quite there But it becomes very very important to put make sure that there's some meat on the bones that this particular Institution really learns how to work together And implement these projects Secondly, we strongly argue that not only should the United States, but the charities out there Should really support the multi donor trust fund You have these Haitians kind of like this. I like the fact that If the United States the USA ID goes down there says well We don't really want to provide this particular fund this particular project They go to Canadians or go to the EU or they go somewhere else and and ask for funds because it gives them some control and also Provides them with some flexibility, but there's an extraordinary time cost for the director generals and for the ministers in Haiti They spend a huge chunk of their time every day Coordinating with donors filling out forms making sure looking for money and then making sure that they can continue to get money by By agreeing to what the donors demand what again Charlie had pointed out is we never found a Haitian official who would say no The Haitian government at this point in time is that we're poor We would like to take as much you know if you got some money on offer a project and offer sure will take it And so there isn't really a coordinated plan. We would argue that by focusing on both IHRC and the multi donor trust fund. We can just focus on Putting funds where the Haitians want up at the same time making sure that donors who have a new pet project just don't jump in and and Are coordinate their activities with others So this is kind of our focus again first and foremost our view is that unless the Haitian state becomes stronger and more functional unfortunately the probability of having another catastrophe is fairly high and that the only solution long term to prevent these types of catastrophes in Haiti is to create a much more functional and more competent state well Thank you. I want to thank the USIP for Inviting me to participate in this conference and Especially Liz Panarelli for the help That she gave me in getting me here So I'm going to give you a very different slate on things While I think it's a very important Or it's a good idea. It would be a good idea if we there could be a Haitian government that was strong Representative responsive and that addressed the needs of the majority of Haitians But I'm going to focus my remarks mostly on the economic side of things Since to me without the groundwork for a more sustainable and viable Economic development in Haiti nothing else will will matter much So testifying before the United States Foreign Relations Committee on March 10 2010 former president Bill Clinton who is now serving as special envoy to Haiti For the United Nations and as co-chair of the IHRC Said that trade liberalization the trade liberalization policies he pushed In the 1990s and that compelled Haiti to remove tariffs on imported rice from the US Quote may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas But it has not worked. It was a mistake. I Had to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti To feed those people because of what I did and quote Two weeks later Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Marc Belive Appeared in front of the Haitian state to present the government's post earthquake recovery plans Known as the action plan for the reconstruction and national development of Haiti The action plan originally conceived by the US State Department and Co-chaired by former president Clinton And Haiti sorry the action plan originally conceived by the US State Department Co-chaired and now Recommended the creation of this IHRC which is co-chaired by Clinton former president Clinton and Prime Minister Mike Belive And is now as I think you mentioned in charge of implementing The reconstruction plans and projects for Haiti after the earthquake now when questioned by members of the Haitian Senate that Haiti in effect had surrendered its sovereignty to the IHRC Prime Minister Belive responded candidly that quote I Hope you sense you sense the dependence in this document if you don't sense it you should tear it up. I Am optimistic however that in 18 months we will be autonomous in our decisions But right now I have to assume that we are not and quote These two rare admissions by high-ranking public officials Representing the two sides of the international community Haiti partnership Express to simply the dilemma that Haiti faces in rebuilding its shattered economy in the wake of the massive destruction caused by the January 12 2010 earthquake As accurate as Prime Minister Belive statement about Haiti's dependence on and subordination to the international community is That fact did not originate with the creation of the IHRC And it is not as temporary as Belive suggests rather Rather than recounting here the long history of foreign involvement in and and dominance in Haiti We can consider the 1970s as having marked a major turning point in understanding the factors that created The conditions that existed on the eve of the earthquake and contributed to its devastating impact In return for military and economic aid from the United States and other advanced countries such as Canada and France the regime of Jean-Claude Duvalier Which succeeded that of his father Francois in 1971 Turn over the formulation of economic policy for Haiti to the international financial institutions Namely the World Bank the IMF the IADB and so on These institutions henceforth pursued a two-fold strategy that succeeded on the one hand in Turning Haiti into into a supplier of the cheapest labor in the Western Hemisphere for the export assembly manufacturing industries established by foreign and domestic investors and On the other hand one of the largest importers of US food in the Caribbean Basin These outcomes were achieved through a series of structural adjustment policies That maintain wages low Dismantle all obstacles to free trade removed tariffs and quantitative restrictions and imports Offered tax incentives to the manufacturing industries on their profits and exports privatized public enterprises Reduced public sector employment and curb social spending to reduce fiscal deficits Foreign investors are attracted to Haiti primarily because of its abundant supply of Unscaled cheap cheap and relatively non-minitent labor is close proximity to the US market No foreign exchange controls and free circulation of the US dollar tax incentives with exemptions on income and profits imported raw materials machine we are other assets used in the operation of the assembly industries as Well as the export of assembled at the assembled goods that are produced in these industries Even though the gap between the wages of Haitian workers and those in other countries in the region was high enough to offset Transportation tariff and other costs The World Bank has consistently argued that these wages should not be increased for risk of deterring investors Elsewhere that is for to take the risk of sending investors somewhere else By the end of the 1980s and 19 and early 1990s, however the bank itself recognized in its own reports That despite all the advantages it had the export assembly strategy It advocated did not create the conditions for a more sustainable development of the Haitian economy Even at the height of its operations in Haiti in the mid 1980s The assemble industry never employed more than 7% of the total labor force and did not contribute significantly to the reduction of unemployment The industry had at best a neutral effect on income distribution But a negative effect on the balance of goods and services because it encouraged more imports of consumer goods The industry also contributed little to government revenues because of the tax exemptions on profits and other fiscal incentives Which along with the subsidized cost of public services and utilities represented a transfer of wealth to the foreign investors and the Haitian Entrepreneurs who subcontracted with them for the operation of the assemble assembly industries Other than construction and services mainly transportation and catering services And some housing construction the assemble industry did not contribute to the expansion of other industrial sectors Not only because it imported its raw materials and other industrial inputs Rather than relying on domestic supplies, but also because the poverty wages of its workers did not stimulate the economy Moreover the products of the assembly industries were not used as inputs by other Haitian industries, but exported to the US The press the processing industry is entirely dependent on the US or other developed markets for its products Because it relies on contracts from the firms in the from the firms from those countries Thus when they limits on import quotas are met Or if demand decreases the industry cannot expand its production Lastly the assemble the assembly industry drain more foreign exchange than it brought in it did this in two ways First most of the profits of the foreign investors are not reinvested in that sector, but expatriated and the absence of expended investment opportunities led even Haitian Entrepreneurs to invest their savings outside of Haiti most often in the US Second the import of consumer and producers goods Surpassed the total exports of the modern industrial sector thereby draining foreign exchange from the economy The other side of this urban industrial strategy pushed by the US and the international financial institutions Was to dismantle Haiti's trade barriers and open its economy to food imports principally from the United States Although the Gevalier dictatorship embraced the assembly industry strategy It resisted demands to remove the 50% tariffs on food, especially rice imports That enable Haitian farmers to continue to produce all the rice consumed in Haiti and limiting other food imports to about 19% All that change after Jean-Claude Gevalier was overthrown in 1986, however The US government successfully pressured the succeeding military governments to slash import tariffs Reduce subsidies to domestic agriculture Open the country to commercial activities Close or privatize public utilities industries and maintain wages low When Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected in 1990 He sought to change these policies to protect domestic food production Especially rice against cheaper imports and raise the minimum wage of workers in the assembly industries These efforts fee failed because of stiff resistance from the Haitian Chamber of Commerce the IMF and the US AID The Haitian Army soon toppled Aristide in September, September 1991 And when President Clinton returned him to Haiti three years later in October 1994 Aristide agreed to lower tariffs on rice and other food imports to 3% and They have remained at that level ever since These policies had drastic consequences for the agricultural sector and for Haitian farmers Whereas in the 1970s Haiti imported about 19% of its food needs as I mentioned before Currently it imports well over 51% It went from being self-sufficient in the production of rice, sugar, poultry and pork and other cereals To become the fourth largest importer of US subsidized rice in the world and the largest importer of US foodstuff in the Caribbean 80% of all the rice consumed in Haiti is now imported Trade liberalization then essentially meant Transferring wealth from Haitian to US farmers Especially rice farmers in Arkansas and the US agri-business companies that export to Haiti and those Transportation firms that resell it on the domestic market Not surprisingly rice import has always stopped the lists of imports in terms of profitability Other than negative impact on the Haitian economy Locating the assembly industries primarily in Port-au-Prince combined with trade the trade liberalization policies That exacerbated the decline of agriculture and the dispossession of farmers Propelled migration from the rural areas to the capital city and its spreading squalor Port-au-Prince grew from a city of about a hundred fifty thousand inhabitants in 1950 To seven hundred thirty two thousand in the early 1980s and to approximately three million people today Or nearly one-third of the Haitian population of about ten million people Those who could not find employment in the assembly industries Which never as I mentioned never employed more than six seven percent of the labor force Swelled the ranks of the unemployed or the informal sector which became the largest source of employment for the urban population Since the 1970s migration to the neighboring Dominican Republic The Caribbean and North America Increased dramatically to the point that Haiti is now heavily dependent on remittances From its immigrants from its emigrants which in 2008 represented about 19 percent of Haiti's GDP indeed their remittances of Haitians To Haiti are now worth more than Haiti's exports This then brings us back to Clinton's statement at the beginning If you really believe that the policies he forced on Haiti were wrong Then he would be advocating for their repeal and encouraging Haiti to reintroduce his protectionist policies to rebuild its Agriculture and return it to itself sufficiency in the production of rice and other crops Such is not the case however on the contrary Clinton is now spearheading the very same failed Strategies that have been repackaged in the post disaster needs assessment Document prepared by the Haitian government with the assistance of the international community That we package strategy had in fact been spelled out well before the earthquake in a report commissioned by the United Nations Secretary General of Ban Ki-moon in 2009 and We'd written by Paul Collier a former World Bank official and now Professor of economics at Oxford University and now we see the Ren report Repeating the same Mentor Ignoring the evidence of the past four decades the colliers report lays out the same dual strategy advocated by the international financial institutions and The US since 1970s The only difference is that it calls for expending the exports export zones for government production beyond the two that currently exist in Port-au-Prince and what I meant Located near the border with the Dominican Republic in order to create clusters of such industries and similar zones for the production and export of selected Agricultural crops such as mangoes. I should add In passing that the one I meant zone is one of the most fertile agricultural sectors In Haiti and when I steed was president this each second time around in return for At least he hoped to get somebody from the World Bank and he you know do to help him, you know manage things He expropriated evicted farmers from that region in order to build this free trade zone near the Dominican Republic largely because the DR Had surpass its quotas in the assembly manufacturing export to Haiti I mean to the US and simply so by locating These industries on the other side of the border they could mark them as having been Manufactured in Haiti therefore not be subject to the quota regulations and so on so that's an aside Now for Collier the reason for this dual strategy is straightforward Haiti needs to take advantage of the Haiti Hemispheric Opportunity Act through partnership encouragement act of 2008 or the hope to act Enacted by the US Congress that grants Haiti at the Dominican Republic duty-free access to the US Up to 70 million square meter equivalents and I think it's now been raised too close to 250 million mistaken Which President Clinton advocated And so thus only by creating sufficiently large clusters of these industries Collier argues Could potentially employ several hundred thousand workers could Haiti and not could employ several hundred thousand workers Could Haiti become competitive on a global scale? The key to Haiti's competitiveness, of course, it's it's abundant and low-wage, but in highly High-quality labor force which rivals that of China and China is always the standard bearer Because China dominates this industry globally Establishing these zones of government production and the jobs they would create is also necessary According to Collier to reduce the population that lives off the land and in fact the rent cooperation mentions also there are too many people living off Agriculture in Haiti And Haitian agriculture could then switch to more land-intensive production amenable to more inputs and greater output in addition to increasing food production for the national market Haiti needs to establish zones for the production of export crops such as mangoes Mangoes are important not only because they are a valuable crop But because the three law the trees are large enough to have a substantial root network That would thus decrease soil erosion and contribute to the process through the process of reforestation as mentioned former president Clinton fully endorses that strategy as Does the action plan for the of the prevailing government and the international community? Yet responding to questions from reporters after the international donors conference in New York City on March 31 Clinton elaborated on the policies he once championed and admitted that I quote These policies have failed everywhere. They've been tried You just can't take the food chain out of production and Go straight into an industrial era It also undermines a lot of the culture the fabric of life the sense of self-determination And we made these devils bargain on rice, but it wasn't the right thing to do We should have continued to help them be self-sufficient in agriculture and that's a lot of what we were doing now We're thinking about how can we get the coffee production up? How we how can we get the mango production up the avocados and lots of other things? But not one a word from Clinton about resending the trade policies that have had these devastating effects What is not worthy? However, is that neither Clinton nor the the Collier report the action plan nor now the Wren Corporation report Explains how how Haiti is to regain self-sufficiency in rice or food production generally When none of them is calling for repealing the trade liberalization policies Clinton decried and which neither the administration of president Obama Nor do your US Congress is contemplating Neither is it explained how the expectations of hundreds of thousands of jobs in a government industry Will pan out in Haiti When the combined share of the US market for the government export industry in the countries of the Dominican Republic and The country the recovery public Central American free trade agreement, which includes Costa Rica El Salvador Honduras Nicaragua and Guatemala Has declined from thirteen point three percent in two thousand four To nine twenty percent in 2008 and caused a layoffs of ten thousands of workers in these countries As David Wilson put it succinctly the whole plan to expand garment industry in Haiti is Quote a race to the bottom. It isn't really about creating jobs. It's about relocating them when the professors relocating them to Haiti and When the professors and politicians say they will help Haitian workers by giving them jobs What they really mean is that they plan to take the jobs away from Dominican Mexican and Central American workers and Haitians even less for doing the same work and quote That the international financial institutions. They are paid consultants and heads of state current and former Disregard the evidence of their failed strategies and continue to advocate them advocate them should not be surprising Their objectives have never been to promote meaningful and sustainable development In countries like Haiti, but to create outlets for the products of the advanced countries and sources of cheap labor for their manufacturers It comes as no surprise to me then that the rent cooperation should fall in line with that objective. Thank you very much Okay Thank you for all of our speakers in your very insightful comments We do have about three quarters of an hour for discussion We will entertain questions from members of the audience We will need to use these microphones so that those watching on the webcast can hear you I would like to start the the presentation By asking Jim Dobbins something because I know you haven't spoken that much yet but you did make the comments that There were certain lessons that were learned from the experience of the mid 90s and It struck me as I was listening to Alex's Analysis which incorporated much of the the mid 90s in it That if you might comment on some of his critique and and maybe help us understand if some of those lessons that have been learned might incorporate some of his critique as well Well, I'd say a couple of things first of all Increasing or decreasing Haitian tariffs on Imported food wasn't a major element of American policy in the mid 90s Although it was an element. It certainly wasn't where we put most of our emphasis I think the I think the problem with the concept of Haiti as self-sufficient in agriculture is First of all all arable land and Haiti is currently under production So you can't you know short of massive reclamation projects Any shift from One product to another simply means you're producing more low value Products rice for instance and less high value products mangoes for instance. So there is a trade-off Secondly, there's not enough land not enough arable land in Haiti to feed its entire population Looking back at a time when Haiti was self-sufficient Is a time when it had a population half the size of today and more arable land but arable land has been lost as a result of erosion and other environmental devastation so I And finally of course the the idea that you would raise the price of food in Haiti at the current time given the levels of income there Strikes me as counterintuitive Any other comments Alex Q. Oh, sorry making One thing I should note is that Haiti is a is one of the focus countries in the in the secretaries Feed the future strategy, which is a food security Strategy for for developing countries So the US government is in fact actually investing heavily in agriculture production in in Haiti In the fertile plains Focusing on both cash crops and staple crops Outside of these fertile plains in our development quarters will be focused primarily on On export high-value Products, I think the same calculus has been done on our end and looking at the level the amount of arable land that's available to to produce Staple crops and the need frankly to focus on on nutritional staple crops that's not necessarily rice but But ground nuts and pigeon peas and things like that that actually can can complement the nutritional programs that we're trying to do both in food Security and health care So, you know, I think there's just a they're they're limited arable resources in Haiti right now, and that's the and that's the The fact that I think a lot of the international community and Haitians as well I've kind of come to face That's something that we also need to work on and is a big piece of the food security strategy in Haiti is As opposed to being a purely value chain Based approach in Haiti. We're actually doing much more of a watershed based approach, which is to Reclaim and restore watersheds throughout Haiti so that you can you know grow trees back so that you don't have massive floods and landslides Every time hurricanes pour through the country Okay, we have a questioner over here, sir. Could you please identify yourself and your affiliation and ask a question? Yeah, Mike McDonald global health initiatives. We worked a lot in Haiti on the infectious disease issues The app for six months after the earthquake I'm just trying to wrap my mind around the numbers I believe that Alex you had said that there's only about 20 percent or 20 some odd percent food Food production for the local population today. I believe that's what you said. Could you give me the number? I want to be clear on that Well, is that including exported agricultural goods? Okay, what is it? What what amount of food is produced for Haitians today? Well, the total food food production Haiti from what I understand is about slightly less than 50% Haiti imports about 150% of its food needs Okay, so you had stated that Haiti was self-sufficient at perhaps five million people, but the Aruble land has been substantially degraded since then and the population so you have 10 million people today My understanding is in another 10 years you have roughly 15 million people in around 15 years you have roughly 20 million people and I'm trying to understand why this is not similar to Ireland in the potato famine If our if the world economy degrades and you have this massive dependency on the outside world I Just can't see that Haiti is not going to go through a population crash given the deforestation and the dramatic Devastation to its watersheds all 55 of the major watersheds are substantially degraded So I don't see this report touching any of that and I'm just wondering if this group would open Conversation to what we really are looking at here and what would really address the problem If I may comment on this You know when these reports are being prepared by Foreign experts and Think tanks and even governments and so on They don't talk to Haitian farmers They don't talk to their the local peasant organizations and what their needs are and so on none of them was really consulted And in fact the Haitian organ peasant organizations have been saying all along that what they do need is a sustainable project of reforestation Because in fact there has been massive erosion and that has Created that has affected the level of agricultural productivity and other major factor in Haiti's a land tenure system Which is very very detrimental to increasing yield crops Because what you the situation you have is that many of the farmers don't have effective title to their land and So when they when they pass on and they pass on their land to their children That the land becomes subdivided even further among the children and doesn't so and you don't have Contiguous landholding by their farmers which creates a problem. So they've been advocating for a long time for meaningful land reform programs The largest Landholder in Haiti is a government is the Haitian state Which owes most of the land of the country and So it wouldn't be very difficult to engage in a meaningful land reform program by redistributing publicly owned land And when we talk about Deforestation farmers do not cut land on their own land do not cut trees on their own land They go to public land to just to cut it so if you have a meaningful and you have a meaningful before reforestation program and Building robust trees and you encourage this Then you can we encourage a revitalization of agriculture if you build adequate Infrastructure irrigation networks and so on you can then we build the infrastructural the infrastructure of agriculture But more importantly, I think Haitian Haitian agriculture needs to be heavily subsidized much like it is in the United States and Other they you know in Japan and in France in all the other Europeans subsidize their agriculture So it's not a matter of raising food prices for Haitians. It's a matter of subsidizing domestic food production that employs Farmers and keeps them from keep them from having to emigrate to your Urban centers or abroad or going to the American Republic to cut sugarcane for you mostly US industries so There are comprehensive things that could be done But if your objective is like as I am arguing these plans are if your objective is to make Haiti a sort of haven for foreign investments for cheap labor Then it's not going that these policies these priorities are not going to be established because you can't have it both ways If you have meaningful health care reform if you have meaningful education if you have meaningful Subsidies of agriculture Haitian wages are going to go up That's not going to be good for the assembly industry which only cares about going to Haiti if it has access to cheap labor So one has to if you think about it systemically then you see where the real bottlenecks are it's not I applaud the efforts and I'm you know I'm happy to hear that the State Department is thinking about we building Haitian agriculture But not one word has been said about the policies that they have followed that have had these devastating consequences So to me it's contradictory You can't say you want to build Asian agriculture been then prioritized farmers in Arkansas. It doesn't make sense We have questions coming in from the viewers on the internet And I want to put two of them together because they both deal with the same issue Daniel asks while money doesn't flow through the IHRC. Is there no concern for corruption in the IHRC and paying off Committee members to approve certain projects, etc. And Kennedy asks How will the organization or the Commission on the rebuilding of Haiti help the Haitians on the corruption inside of the public administration? So I know this issue corruption generally comes up with these kind of issues of fora. So does anyone want to tackle that? I'm the I'm the question about Transparency Initiatives within the IHRC. I think I can bring that slide up again. You'd see that there's a sort of Independent auditing authority that sits To the side of the of both the board and the secretariat that is Basically audits operations audits use of operational funds And just general daily practices that operation is being stood up right now What I should say is the in terms of you know our our board members necessarily Open to being paid off to approve certain projects These board meetings happen publicly and it's a very robust dialogue It's a it's a combination of both Haitian and international board members I would say that you know, these are very professional sort of open-door conversations I don't think that this is a concern that that anyone has at this time in terms of approving projects I'd also say that the projects are Funded by international donors. It's hard to believe the international donor would want to project approve so much that it would bribe The IHRC in order to approve it giving money For some purpose in Haiti, so it's not clear who would have incentives to bribe In order to get projects approved when the projects are being funded by donors. That's right Okay, yes, sir. We'll turn to you. Thank you. My name is Ken Polsky and I'm with Catholic Relief Services. I do share the One thing out of the Rand report which was the assumption that a well-functioning state is an enormous asset in terms of disaster risk reduction for example and the emphasis on We want the outcome to be a stronger more viable state it also needs to be more accountable and I Wonder where is the investment in civil society capacity strengthening that? seems the Seems to be that there should be a tremendous amount of investment on non sort of state Institutions to enable state institutions to become strong What those would be? I'm not sure there's all sorts of Whatever labor labor unions agricultural unions the ability of civil society to express itself Coherently and in an organized fashion where they're accountable to their own membership because we can all go talk to You know three people in the countryside and say we've consulted farmers, but how do farmers themselves express Their needs in a powerful meaningful way. That's you know, not clientelistic or anything. So where's that investment? I mean to be to be blunt We we really felt like there was too much diversion of effort in the international community I mean hats off to people like yourselves for bringing private sector You know getting private donors to fund Operations, but we really focus on saying that until the state can do something. It doesn't do much good To have these are labor unions or farmers, you know Petitioning the government of the government can't implement anything So we fell, you know Hades often been referred to as the Republic of NGOs We didn't see the focus at this point in time should in terms of donor State donor funding we really thought it should be concentrated on having a state So individuals then could petition the state and have something happen currently you can petition all you want nothing happens I just might want to say something about what role there is for funding for some society in the current program, but I'd say you know having a adequate functioning state is a prerequisite for any policy It's a prerequisite for Alex's policy I mean the idea that the poorest state in the world is going to subsidize its agriculture sites me is Implausible, but even if that if that were a policy adopted It couldn't possibly be implemented unless you had a functioning Ministry of Agriculture that could oversee it So all the money didn't flow into a few wealthy families The problem of overpopulation it's a real problem. You've got a time bomb only a functioning government can deal with it including population programs So you need a pie and for civil society as you know We've indicated if the civil society doesn't have a government that it can pressure. What is it doing? so We do tend to think that that solving art the problem We focused on is a prerequisite for pursuing any of the policies that are competing for attention I Would I would share the view that that The preponderance of focus within the international community has been on funding civil society organizations and NGOs and I think While that is it obviously important that has drawn away resource resources from actually developing the state That said we in our in our supplemental package have Over I'd say probably 60 million dollars committed to kind of civil society strengthening communications between the government and civil society All of a lot of our elections support goes towards civil society organizations to hold public debates polling focus groups but this is these are activities that have been going on for a long time and You know Even with that I would say that without having a responsive government It makes it very difficult with there's very little incentive for civil society groups to remain organized and cohesive And that's what we've seen as you know, you've seen Organizations like NDI invest in initiative campaigns for many many years And you know the minute the funding goes away A lot of these groups break up because they've got you know There's nobody on the other end once you you know pull your group together and and put your campaign together So you've got it's the same, you know, it's the same issue We're dealing with on a lot of fronts similar to you know We spent all this money developing a police force in Haiti, but we never focused on developing a justice system You know, there's cause and effect and you know, there's you know two pieces to To a lot of these Problems that you know, you have to work on the front and the back end. Thank you. Thank you Alex, I was happy to see your super concurrence with some what Jim was well Qualified super concurrence. Of course we need of course. He needs a functioning state that I started by we walked by saying It is a state that we sponsored for the first time to the needs of the majority of Haitians but Never mind We'll take a question from this side, please my name is James Curz. I work for Funko's a a micro finance bank in Haiti My question focuses more on I haven't read the Rand report, but just listening to your comments today I'd like to hear more from Rand and other organizations that are doing this kind of research about tackling The issues tackling the questions that Haitian bureaucrats are struggling with right now for example land tenure and The whole issue of so many property owners who claim the same piece of land in so many cases where you have one piece of land with 20 owners you can produce, you know formal documents saying that they own that land That's a really difficult challenge and the procedures necessary to resolve Situation like that is a real challenge for the judicial system in Haiti So recommendations about how actually to tackle questions like that I think are necessary from the kind of thinkers that Rand employs we recommend the Implementation of a non-judicial administrative property dispute mechanism Which would adjudicate property disputes in an expeditious manner outside the context of the existing judicial structure Which can't be fixed in time to address these issues and a lot of the reasons that there's still rubble all around is Nobody's quite sure who owns the rubble Or the property that it's on so that's one of our recommendations And there are a case I think there are instances that other places in the world So there are models that could be drawn on Any other comments on the panel? Yeah, I would just say The land title issue is huge huge constraint to moving forward on the reconstruction process The US government in in collaboration with the World Bank and a number of other UN habitat been working together to try to come up with a sort of You know pre-solution and then the long-term solution I think in the immediate term There's a going to be a community enumeration process underway in which you know all the various claims can be laid out and just merely creating a database that Sort of lists out who all has claims to the land what their you know claims are consist of Is is enough for us to get started I think on a honor on reconstruction with importer prints The alternative is is another thing that we've been working on which is to just find new land So the US government is working with a government of Haiti and a lot of large private landowners to work out deals in which They will give land for free In exchange for some of the improvements that international community will make in that land in terms of electrification roads Reclamation whatever it whatever it is to build new homes For for displacements that they can actually have real title to the land So in some ways that's the new land that will be the easiest to solve in terms of getting clear title But it's a long haul to to work at the Inside the urban communities where there's never been a system Megan don't back away from the microphone because our Viewers have sent in a number of questions the asking for clarification on us and State Department role one asks How will the US and its partners help curb the violence that is on the rise before and after elections? Another one asks, please clarify for us Haitians or maybe that's us Haitians Whether it is true that we are under us occupation are all decisions made for Haiti from the State Department and In third one asks when will the State Department release the 1.5 billion in aid funding? And who will it go to Haitian institutions or the ihrc? Okay All right, I'll take them in order In terms of violence Actually, this is something that has been a real concern for us, you know We've all been focused on how do we rebuild? What's the reconstruction strategy? How do we work together with donors? Meanwhile, you know, there's a whole process at play in Haiti both related to elections and just general ambient the rise in ambient and organized crime as a result of there being very little opportunity and Roughly 600 prisoners who escaped from prison after the earthquake. You've seen reconstitution of gangs that that were much more prevalent in 2005-2006 So these are very Concerning trends and in fact, we just took a trip down to Haiti last not last week but the week before to meet with SRSG Mulei and the rest of the menus to force to talk about what are we doing in terms of addressing gender-based violence that we're hearing? you know sort of Kind of increased reports about that Kidnapping Increased amounts of drug traffic flows And general sort of More violent crime that's happening in new parts of the city that we haven't seen before The you know, I think we were we were Somewhat heartened to hear, you know, some of the new approaches that the Menus to forces are taking on particularly with regard to gender-based violence But I think, you know The things that we're focusing on right now our training looking at hot spots Really keeping going on a lot of our cash for work projects, which keeps sort of Unoccupied unemployed youth who may otherwise turn to violence Put money in their pockets and keep the economy going keep, you know people in in productive Jobs during the day So this is you know from our side that it's the really the community stabilization approach that was very successful in You know kind of tamping down crime and C2 so lay prior to the earthquake And it's something that we're trying to do in other hot spots within with importer prints We certainly hope not to have to go back to a strategy that is entirely focused on that kind of work because It's not about development. It's about, you know keeping keeping thing, you know sort of Negative influences at bay On the second question about US occupation, I think that you know if you talk to a lot of the folks down in Haiti They would they would say, you know, a they find the US government's involvement there a force for good in fact, we just had a Survey that was done recently That's a part I would say surprisingly people found that The the survey respondents found that thought that Haiti was headed in the right direction The majority of them 60% or more I think which was actually a rise over Those who held that view prior to the earthquake. So I thought I found that fairly interesting But most also just had a generally positive view of the American influence in he in terms of, you know, our role in in In the process, we're just we're a donor in the mix I think, you know, we try to play a leadership role in some spaces given that we are the largest donor Have a historical presence in Haiti, but we do not try to play an ownership role and I think that's something that You know, the IHRC has been really great at bringing forward a lot of voices of strong partners who have been involved or have been You know taken increasing involvement in Haiti like the Brazilians the Venezuelans the Cubans And we're working with them and I think that that's you know a Very big deal that there's a sort of public forum for all of us to get together and it's not just the US government You know making demands On the final point the one point. It's actually 1.2 billion dollars, which was the supplemental package That was approved by Congress in late July. It was appropriated We had sent up the supplemental request back in March shortly after the earthquake So there was a lengthy process for approving the supplemental out of Congress We then put together our spend planned to send to Congress for approval There's lots of hoops to get through to spend this money, but it is now I would say just days away from being able to be obligated and so we should start spending that money within the month Thank you very much Megan for addressing those This side, please Ernie pre Representing Haiti democracy project today, but I spent my tour in Haiti as some of you know And I have one quick comment and then a question on a separate subject my comment is to agree pretty fully with Jim Dobbins in terms of what should be the development strategy looking ahead with the necessary important area of Exports of manufacturers my problem with professor de Puy's presentation is I didn't hear the alternative strategy I certainly don't see a country of 10 million people with very small and declining arable land Having a strategy centered on mongo exports quite frankly And also in the historical context. I won't go into any detail, but the reason the burgeoning Manufacturing industry and Haiti left and it's the most It can move most quickly Was that the the government was beginning to impose? restraints and restrictions and The electronic sector was even the most important was moving up the production ladder bringing in skilled workers from Brooklyn and Let me tell you if you have to be able to Deliver on schedule that is central particularly the Christmas season and in the late 80s early 90s when they couldn't do it anymore They they're mobile. They just left the sheds and moved elsewhere So I think this has to be looked at and there are problems on the agricultural side one last thing sorry to labor a little bit When I was down there in the early 80s On the agricultural side, I opposed sending rice into Haiti PL 480 title one I was the ambassador incidentally at that time. They couldn't say no to my objection The USDA maybe never forgave me, but we did make some efforts at least and occasionally Now I my question though has to do with this big issue of corruption, which which Bob did raise and wasn't really discussed and And this is just to elaborate a little bit and ask the question because this has been a problem throughout Haitian history And it's even more threatening now with the government being sort of decimated by the earthquake There's an internal problem in the economic losses, but also the people in the countryside and the NGOs They see government officials and government regulation as financial predators not assistance and this is true in Haitian literature as well as history and So the problem in but it's an external problem Because you lose a donor support in this country and elsewhere when these stories keep popping up in the Miami Herald and elsewhere of How this money gets stolen? So something this really has to be I think Addressed more deeply and fully and you can't just do it by an audit committee in the in the What's the IHRC? Yeah, I It has to be in the ministries not approval, but how the money is spent and And that I believe should be looked at seriously I'll just give one more example how we were occasionally We were usually successful in the early 80s USAID and frustrated Miami Herald quite frankly What we did when there was a project in the public sector in the ministry We would have one person there on the AID payroll That person had a cosine every check when it came to Implementation and that person's job was to report back exactly where that money was going and that was a great And that was largely quite successful Maybe that doesn't work today But I think you need a broader strategy than just to have some audit committee out there on the outside and not Where this unprecedented hundreds of millions of dollars is going internally. Thank you. Okay, any Comments on that? Yeah I'm one of the heartening things that when when we were in Haiti We found is that there has been this conservative effort to provide tighter electronic financial controls and after the earthquake Actually the servers they lost one server, but the financial controls were on a server that survived and so What has happened is they had all these discretionary accounts, which you know somebody could sign a check and off it would go with government funds and the Amount of funds that have been leaking from those types of accounts has just dropped precipitously so Through in there's nothing like electronic controls and accountability that you can do something about corruption and actually Over the last four or five years at least in in that particular way of leaking They made significant progress and they have more more to go Okay. Thank you. Let's turn to this side. Hi, I'm Christine Martins with DAI I'm DAI's project manager for the USAID OTI funded Haiti recovery initiative program I've been spending about half my time in Haiti since the earthquake I'm happy to see everyone agrees that we need to strengthen the Haitian government at both the national and local levels I have about a million questions in that regard, but I think I've managed to condense them into two as I've been waiting here The first is as we talk about civil service reform and potentially improving Efficiencies within the government at both the national and local level and wonder how that What your thoughts are on? You know when there is too many people doing the same job and when there is an efficiency there How do you address that problem? Considering, you know the high unemployment rates in Haiti. What is what is the intention? When you see in the Ministry of Finance 10 people doing the job that one person could do on a related question also related to unemployment is tax revenues and what what What your thoughts are on? Increasing the amount of tax revenues that it are the government receives at both the national and local levels in a Country with such high unemployment without seeming growth in the economic sector and overtaxing businesses and in the wealthy Well, I mean People who work in the government I have much much higher standards of living than than people in the countryside and a lot of the in everybody pays The the big source of tax revenue in Haiti is through tariffs or for VAT, which means that everybody pays them So I just don't see why someone who makes a lot of money should be exploiting people who are you know a very very poor by sitting around a government office and not doing a job so The a better way to make provide value for the Haitians is to carefully go through and look at what needs to be done And if someone is not doing a job that needs to be done and contributes the country They definitely shouldn't be subsidized by the poorest of the poor to do that Your second question was How to increase tax revenue Jim and I differed a little bit here I don't really want to increase tax revenue until I'm sure the Haitian government is going to spend it on something that's worthwhile And when I went through the figures, yes, they have very very low take and GDP But they provide very very little in terms of public services And if you look at other countries of he's standard, you know per capita incomes They expend appreciable amounts of money in education provide education service and public health care services currently Haitian government doesn't do that. So you say well, they take 10% of GDP was the goal for it You know goes to pay people maybe not doing very much. And so I think that first and foremost we want to look at making sure that there's accountability and Provision of real public services, and I think once there's some signs that the Haitian government is actually making progress there There's a host of recommendations from raising value added tax you can put on property tax as we mentioned is a great way to go because You can actually hit some of the rich that way And then maybe Income taxes are kind of tough in that type of economy But you know there's a host of ways you could raise tax revenues But I think you first and foremost have to make sure that those revenues are used effectively Jim did you want to comment? No, okay fine It always comes down to this we have more questions than we have time for So what I'm going to do is ask our three remaining folks here to each present yourself and your question So we can try to group them and get them answered. Okay. We'll start here Gary Johnson with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Thank you for all of your comments. They've been very enlightening I wanted to touch a bit and follow up on the tax issue Secretary Clinton a few weeks ago made an interesting content comment in the context of Pakistan and be moaned the very low around one or two percent of Pakistani citizens 180 million of them who pay taxes and now in light of the Catastrophic flooding they need about 30 billion dollars to rebuild their country And it's they're looking to the international community to pay for it and so I find Your your comments somewhat troubling because if we don't raise tax revenue in the country then the the international community is stuck with the bill and so I agree that the The institutional capacity must be strengthened before we raise taxes on the impoverished Haitians But I don't necessarily agree that we should be willing to spend US payer tax payer dollars into a system that is broken So she made the comment Secretary Clinton that That was a non sustainable model and that the US should consider Potentially not investing as much resources in countries where they don't see clear markers clear progress towards reforms So I would love to hear your perspective on what progress you have seen in the way of Reforms whether it be increasing the business climate Land tenure and if we haven't seen those reforms and are if there are no clear indications that though progress towards those reforms are being made Then should the US beyond not essential humanitarian aid Reconsider investing substantial funds and to Haiti or other countries where those Limited institutional capacity problems exist Hold your thought on that. Let's get two more questions Thank you on Adams from the Brookings Institution with regards to the US government strategy I certainly understand the the concept behind choosing priorities and establishing pillars And working in areas where the other donors aren't playing I'm curious about what the process was for sort of determining what areas what sectors and then what more importantly I guess what's the ongoing mechanism for Ensuring that we don't have gaps going forward. I'm coming particularly from looking at the education sector It's former president Clinton said last week Establishing universal education is essential and in Haiti You mentioned Megan that our social services delivery in past has not been as a sustainable way But kind of what is the and the French and the Canadians, you know I've are going to take the lead on Education, but I think there's concern in general about pulling out of that sector More specifically from the from the US perspective. So I'd love to hear just more about you know How do we make sure there aren't gaps going forward? Thank you. Thank you in our final question, please Yes, thank you My concern was more about the intermediate term. Now, obviously a lot of this is long-term goal objectives In particular, we've done studies. I'm at Maurice Hudson at Wayne State University School of Social Work Looking at a particular violence against women which has already been touched upon and other sort of human rights conditions in Haiti Currently we found that there's an extreme amount of human rights violations among Especially in the IDP camps and I'm wondering going forward the intermediate outcomes or the immediate Conditions within Haiti are going to impact long-term outcomes going forward and I'm wondering, you know, what the panel considerations were for instance security among IDP residents and even other Haitians Especially with regards to violence against women because the rates are quite astounding Okay, fine. Thank you. We have The question on taxes question on the US stance in education programs and in our concern about their immediate terms Panel, it's all yours. Let me just talk about taxes. I think there's a difference between disasters and In kind of a steady-state tax and expenditure policies In the United States if we have tornadoes in Kansas or Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans or elsewhere You know the the rest of the country steps up and helps people there and I In this case both for Haiti after the earthquake in Pakistan at the floods It is reasonable to ask international community to step forward. I agree completely however for a longer term of focus is that The donor community does have responsibility to make sure that they back you know that they have a sustained plan to back away and That it is not good for Haitians are not good for anybody to not Work with the government to make sure that the Haitian government at some point in time at some trajectory You know in a reasonable amount of time is going to take increasing responsibility for paying for social services What I and I it's Pakistan is a case in point of Pakistan Does have expenditure plans for education that's not great do some public health They could they definitely need more tax revenue. I think in the case of Haiti. My problem has been is they're not where Pakistan is They don't have a public education system. They haven't really moved forward on on public health and that they need to get those in Up and running at that point in time then you can you can slowly increase the tax take in order to cover those expenditures Let me just address the issue of how to avoid gaps although I think I can probably want address this as well Because you know in a sense we're actually advocating gaps We're advocating concentrating on a few Key issues and implicitly arguing to diminish the focus on others The view is that if you do everything you're doing nothing well and that nothing will make a difference in the next time You have an earthquake or a hurricane everything will go back to exactly the situation you find today and we'll be funding Haiti forever And that you need to go to a few key things now We're not arguing that one if you funded them adequately you shouldn't then address other Other needs But we are arguing for more focus now we do include education as one of the areas of our focus Although as Keith has noted there we believe in the short term the focus should be on getting the state creating a competence within the state to oversee and create certain educational standards in the country and supplement Through subsidies and other forms What the private sector can do rather than compete with the private sector in actually providing educational services Since we don't believe that the state in the short term by which we in the next five years is going to make able to make significant strides there I'll take both the first and second question On the issue of what what kinds of reforms is the Haitian government willing to take on? That we can feel that there's a real that we have a real partner in this Two things that I think are sort of promising that going forward is a Work being done by the ID be with the Ministry of Commerce and other parts of the Haitian government to really Move the needle on doing business indicators. One is starting a business entity Within the Ministry of Commerce and another affiliated organization within the Within the Haitian government to shave off of approximately 200 days off the process for starting a business The second is obtaining construction permits. They're in discussions about creating. What is effectively some an outsourcing mechanism? Where a private entity can do the work, but is is essentially contracted by The Haitian government and this is astounding taking it from 1,081 days to 63 days So I think you know in terms of talking about how do you raise tax revenue? One of the big things is to to give people a reason to participate in the formal economy In in Haiti when you were faced with you know over 200 to 400 days to get a business license and 1,081 days to get a construction permit you have no incentive to participate in the formal economy And it's not a matter of making taxes, you know unbearable for a small and medium-sized business It's it's making giving them incentives to actually Participate in the formal economy whatsoever, and I think that that could have a tremendous impact if you were able to really Move the you know it is a small slice of the economy that is the SME Businesses, but they've got to be a part of the formal system and that's going to be the driver of economic growth long term I think if we can make reform we can work with the Haitian government to make reforms on that side I think that that's a great step forward on the question of gap filling I Would say actually you know conversely That you know us not focusing in some of the the areas that For instance education is not necessarily leaving a gap First of all because we were never a big player in the space that to start with we spent about 12 million dollars a year And we will continue to spend 12 million dollars a year on education We've also just given 10 million dollars through the Haiti reconstruction fund to support the IDB's overall Education reform plan, but education is not a sector that necessarily occupies or represents a big gap Education is the is the sector in Haiti that most Private donors and I would say you know a large number of public donors are most interested in supporting And a recent report that came out from the Office of Special Envoy showed that the majority of funding right now is actually Directed towards the education sector So the gaps that that we need to fill are some of these things that are much less appealing to donors to fund Which is the institutional reform? and and I think that the IHRC will play a large role and in setting these priorities and For for gaps that exist. I think the Haiti reconstruction fund Will be a really valuable resource For instance debris removal nobody wants to do debris removal Even though this was not something that we set out to do initially after the earthquake We have been the single largest funder of debris removal and yet we have Not managed to move more than 5% of the debris and port-a-prince the Haiti reconstruction fund is going to be the best Vehicle for getting that done. It's the way that we can consolidate lots of small donors and big donors And the Haitian government can say this is our top priority You know, this is what we're going to spend the money on and in fact, you know in the last two sessions of the IHRC we managed to get the UN's debris removal program fully funded and so that should get started now so That's I think going to be both the the combination of the IHRC and the HRF the Haiti reconstruction fund will be The the real vehicle for filling gaps as they as they arise I just want to say about the violence against women. This is a very indeed a very serious issue in the camps And it's quite obvious that the Ministry and the Haitian police need to pay To police those areas more effectively, but also to reinforce the committees that have been created in these camps That are very much concerned about these issues of safety and so on but obviously the the most long-lasting solution is to find meaningful housing for these folks and Jobs So I think you know the housing issue solving the housing problem in the camps is It's crucial in addition to the policing and Reinforcing of the committee that's the committees that they've been, you know, most of the camps are organized Into committees, but they don't have much support And so I think that's that is a serious issue. So thanks. Thanks for bringing it up Okay, well we have reached the witching hour here and I think if there's one common thread that I heard today It's the support of a reconstituted Haitian state Not one that as we used to say was predatory and not one as today, which is largely absent But one which can render services one which can regulate one which can serve the citizens of Haiti I wish to thank you all for coming today, and I wish to thank those watching via the webcast for staying with us And before we thank the panelists I just want to remind you again that we will reconvene here on the morning of October 29th and the principal speaker that morning will be Former Prime Minister of Haiti Michelle Pierre Louis. So can we thank our panelists for a great job?