 Good morning everybody. I'd like to kind of start this meeting in a Haitian manner. Let's see who gets it. But if I say on air, try that again. On air. Okay, that's honor and respect. This is the kind of traditional way that Haitians greet each other. And I think we'll have a very honorable and respectful meeting today with our speakers here. We have a full panel and I appreciate everyone's efforts for getting here under less than desirable weather conditions. I would ask that you please take a moment now if you have not already done so to silence your cell phones while I briefly introduce this meeting. The title of the meeting is What's in Haiti's Future. I had ordered a big crystal ball to sit here on the table so we could peer into it, but it hasn't arrived on time. But I'm reminded a little bit by something that the late cultural activist and voodoo Ungan, Pierre André once told Jonathan Demé when Jonathan Demé asked him, how big is Haiti? And André said, well it kind of depends. He said, Haiti is like an accordion. Sometimes it's big and sometimes it's small. And when we were planning this meeting, we expected the accordion to be about halfway open. But it turns out now that Haiti's accordion is pretty as wide open as the bellows will go at this point. We had envisaged a meeting that would take place when it was clear. We started planning this couple of months ago. We thought it would be fairly clear who the next president of Haiti would be. And we thought it would be fairly clear what the objectives would be in moving forward. So we wanted to look into the future. But Haiti, as usual, has confounded and continued to challenge us. It's confronting at this point multiple complex and overlapping issues. I'm reminded of my high school algebra and the Venn diagram, you know, where the circles overlap. There's so much overlapping here. It's sometimes hard to keep it straight. But just in summary, I think four major issues would be the ongoing recovery from the earthquake, the rebuilding, the refoundation, or also known as the build back better. And of course, we've seen some issues there in slow disbursements, slow progress, the Interim Haitian Reconstruction Committee still kind of in first gear, slow decision making, and an erosion of that initial flush of solidarity within Haiti that we thought would propel things further and faster. And three quarter million people still living in tents. So the pace and scale of the earthquake recovery has been somewhat slow. The second issue, I think, is obviously the political and electoral situation with disputed elections on clear results. And again, this threatens very much the pace and scale of the earthquake recovery. And with President Proval's term coming rapidly to an end, this is an issue that has eclipsed all others at this point. And it needs to be resolved somehow. The third circle in that diagram I think is the cholera epidemic. And I think it's worth underscoring that that epidemic is not at all related directly to the earthquake. It is rather a condition of Haiti's vulnerabilities through poverty, lack of sanitation, weak public health system, and weak infrastructure that this virus or disease was able to spread so quickly. The good news there seems to be that the pace of the extension of the epidemic has begun to slow. And then the fourth circle came kind of suddenly and out of the clear blue sky, which was the return of the dictator. Jean-Claude Duvallier, after 25 years in exile, suddenly appears on the scene and creates more chaos and confusion. And then of course, in the minds of many, there's a potential fifth circle to join this Venn diagram, and that is of another exiled Haitian leader, Jean-Portran Aristide. So we have all this going on at once. And to help us sort this out a little bit, this morass of complexity and suggest perhaps what might be in Haiti's future, we have four excellent speakers. You have their bios in front of you. I assume you pick them up off the table there. So I will not go into any depth. I will just introduce them by their current titles in the order in which they will speak. We will first hear from Ambassador Thomas Adams, who is the special, the Haiti special coordinator at the U.S. Department of State. Following him will be Mr. Alexander Abrantes, the special envoy for Haiti from the World Bank. Then we will hear from Mark Schneider, the Senior Vice President of the International Crisis Group, and our final speaker will be Dr. Robert Fatone, Associate Dean for Graduate Programs at University of Haiti and himself a Haitian American. So without any further comments from me, I present you, Ambassador Adams. Thank you, Bob. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for slugging through the slush to get here. I hope we make it worth your while. I'm going to talk a little bit about the U.S. plan for Haiti's recovery, and I also thought I might talk a bit about the political process after that, but briefly, because I find the most interesting parts of these sessions are your questions and answers. I always start with this because I think it's good for people to know that the United States pledge there, the sort of third one from the left of 1.152 million of new money for Haiti is a relatively small part of the total of nearly 10 billion that has been pledged for Haiti. And I usually say this so that my good friends around the Beltway who are looking for funding realize that not all of it is available from us here. I think if you look at the one on the right there, the amount of money unallocated has dropped a bit, but it's still pretty high. And that's a good thing in a way because as we move forward, we find that priorities have changed a bit. The cholera epidemic has reinforced the need to move ahead faster on water and sanitation projects and other things. So that's in somewhat a good way, but we would like to see that money committed also for long-standing problems there like rubble removal and T-shelters. Bob is right that the pace of reconstruction has been slower than we expected. Nobody met their targets for T-shelters or rubble removals. And I think the problem there is basically as I talked to NGOs who are trying to get this done in the field that many of them worked all over the world and they say Haiti is the toughest place in the world I've ever been to get things done actually. And I think that's true. The encouraging news is that in the last two months we've seen these same NGOs kind of hit their pace. The number of T-shelters has increased dramatically. The rubble removed has gone up quite a bit. And typically after these kinds of disasters, the recovery process hits its stride after about 18 months. And I think Haiti will be largely true to that although there are some obstacles that Bob mentioned to making greater progress. This is kind of our strategy framework for U.S. assistance. We have picked out certain areas that we're going to help out and under certain principles. We are working in three economic quarters in the country intensively. Other countries have picked other quarters. I always get asked by Haitians, none of your quarters in the south. Do you hate the south? We don't but the Canadians and the Spaniards and others are working in the south. So there is a method to our madness here. Here you can see the three development corridors up north, kind of in the middle and then to the east of Port-au-Prince. But the U.S. has staked out for intensive development. And here's some more detail what we're going to do. The recovery of Haiti from the earthquake was probably done about as well, the massive recovery effort that was undertaken by the United States and other countries in hindsight. I think most people agree it was probably done about as well as these things generally are. Moving forward as you shift gears to development, it's a different pace. And I'll just pick out an example here of that. Haiti needs a lot of things as anybody's been there knows, but the thing they need most is jobs, maybe tied with that as a stable government. And how do you get sustainable jobs there? Well, one of the ways is to take advantage of the HELP Act, the duty-free import privileges that Congress has extended to Haiti. And the best way that we think is doing that is to actually build some industrial zones. We have one that was just we signed the agreements a few weeks ago up north in Capacien. And it will initially provide about 18,000 jobs, mostly in textile, although they're furniture, manufacturing, and others. And it won't just be the t-shirt industry. The Bush Clinton Fund is doing vocational training so that Haitians can move up the food chain on clothing manufacturing. Haitians, as you know, are very artistic. We think they can do clothing design and other things. So there's also an attempt to really expand that industry into the more lucrative parts. At full blast, these zones can employ directly 65,000 people. There's room there. And the economics of settling there are overwhelmingly favorable for most businesses. What scares them off right now is the political instability. As former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin once said, capital is a coward. And so, you know, we have to work on that. There's other possibilities. Agriculture is promising. Only in this sense is that agriculture is such a low level in Haiti that through some good agricultural extension work and practices, it's not that hard to triple the income of farmers. I don't think you're going to create a lot of jobs in the farming sector where 60 percent of Haitians allegedly work. But if you can increase their income, you'll be going up for a fair piece. Tourism has also had some possibilities, as anybody's been to the Dominican Republic can see. But the hard part on creating jobs is going to be to kind of break up the current business practices of Haiti, which in many ways are 19th century and archaic and need to be blown up and start over again. If you want to start a new business there, you have to submit your company charter handwritten in a nice French pote plume, for example. So that's something that needs to be done. And the IDB and others have taken steps to do that. There have already been some steps taken to make it easier, but that whole area needs to be improved. Health, we've taken a big stake in health. And that means we haven't taken a big stake in education. Education tends to be a fairly popular sector. A lot of donors are there. The IDB has taken a big stake in that. But we are going to do a lot in health, starting at the top with the flagship university hospital. We're going to rebuild it along with the French and move down to clinics at the bottom. Governance and the rule of law is another area. The Haitian Constitution actually currently allows for a decentralized government, but it's never been implemented. They have agreed in their plan to do so. That needs to be done. And here's a few examples of things we have done in Haiti. A variety of things just picked out. But 13, we've done about half the T-shelters that were built, but still well short of there. So that's sort of the end of my slideshow. But let me talk a little bit about the electoral crisis here, because that's kind of the topic of the day. I think most of you know the elections on the 28th of November were widely viewed as fraudulent by many of the actors down there, the opposition. It rattled around for a while. And finally, on December 13th, President Pravella agreed to allow a verification team in from the OAS, which was made up of really technical people, elections experts, statisticians, and others. It wasn't populated by political types. And they looked through. They did an audit, a fairly full audit of the balloting, and came up with some different numbers, some findings. These findings were given to the government, given to the CEP. The CEP is now folding them into its contestation process, which is going on this week. Under Haitian law, candidates can contest the results. There are a number of contestations filed, including by Michael Martelli and Jude Celestin, the presidential side. There are about 200 contestations filed on the parliamentary side. These contestations take place in public. The final stage, there are two OAS lawyers on each panel, French-speaking OAS lawyers. And they should finish their work by this Friday, and no later than February 2nd, announce the final results of the first round. And there's been a lot of press about whether Jude Celestin might withdraw, might stay in, whether, you know, exactly how it will work out, we're unsure, but it does provide for drama down there. We, the United States, all along, we have not favored any candidates. We favor a fair process. The rumor in Port-au-Prince is that we're pushing Michael Martelli or others. We're not. We're just pushing a fair process here. So I think I'll stop here and let our next speaker go. And then I guess after we're all done, we get questions. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you for the organization, too, for having invited us here. Thank you, such a wide audience, it's such a unfriendly morning outside. I was asked to basically respond to Mr. Ambassador Adams' speech. And let me, and also I'll probably take advantage to a bit brush the four points that our chair has brought. On the first point, which is the pace of the recovery, I happen to be one of the more optimistic ones in Port-au-Prince in terms of the pace of recovery. Would I like it to have gone faster? Yes. Could it have gone faster? I'm not sure. What I have done is to compare the recovery of Haiti with the recovery of other countries which have had equivalent or comparable disasters. Honduras, Ache in Indonesia, even Katrina, the horrendous things in Rwanda. How long did these countries take to rebuild their physical infrastructure and their social cohesion, their institutions? And you will look and you will see that normally it's considered first year, there's no reconstruction in the first year after the event. It's only emergency and relief. So on January 12th, we should not have been asking ourselves how is the reconstruction going. We should have been asking ourselves, was our relief and emergency operation successful? And there's plenty of evidence to say that it's quite successful. In Ache, it took them one year to even create the equivalent of the interim commission for the recovery of Haiti. And Haiti had it up in four months. After one year, while the Ache people which had a government in Jakarta far away from the problem, had a large budget. One year after, they were still creating the commission while in Haiti after one year, they have approved already $2 billion in projects. And many of them are already under implementation. So I would say also let me remember figures. It took about two to three years for people to leave the camps in Ache. In Haiti, half of the people have gone back to their homes. A third of the camps have been closed. These are not my numbers. These are the numbers of IOM. So something has happened and we shouldn't be bashing ourselves all the time given that the circumstances, because Ache didn't have rubble. Ache didn't lose 25% of his civil servants. So would I have liked it to be faster? Yes. Could it have been faster? I'm not sure, given the circumstances. And compared to other disasters, I don't think we're doing too badly. Even in terms of the pledges, we hear the press and CNN and so forth saying, oh, the money never flowed. You know, if you go into President Clinton's website, you can actually see how much was pledged, how much was disbursed and so forth. The last numbers I saw, of the $5 billion pledged for 210 to 11, 50% of it is on the table. So not too bad. Of that, $2.7 billion have been approved in projects and about 40% have been disbursed. So it's 40% good or bad. In terms of the World Bank, we are disbursing 11 million a month, which is more than we disbursed in any other Latin American country. So in spite of the difficulties of the weakness and so forth, we must be doing something right and adaptive to the circumstances and things are going not like stellar way, but I'm not embarrassed with the pace of the recovery in Haiti. The second point I wanted to bring you is this was a great disaster. Other countries have gone through great disasters and have grabbed this opportunity to do a leapfrog jump. The most famous example is the countries during World War II who actually were completely destroyed and then suddenly with a Marshall plan were able to build better roads, new factories as opposed to old factories, new technologies instead of old technology and therefore their growth rates and their economy was much better after the war than before the war. Actually with some resentment over the countries which are contributing for this reconstruction. So my question to you is that can this same happen into other situations in El Salvador after the earthquake? I think they grabbed the opportunity to introduce reforms, to introduce new packages, new ways of doing things and their growth rates just accelerated too much faster pace than they had before. Another example is Rwanda after the one million people genocide. It took them a couple of years, six, seven, eight years, but they then went into the virtual circle of a accelerated growth because the catastrophe shook them up and the government that ensued had the political will, had the reform spirit and therefore took the opportunity and had the country move forward. The bank has just finished an economics study. We did some projections and economic modeling and came up with three scenarios and I'll go from the worst to the best scenario. The worst scenario is that Haiti misses the opportunity. Basically it doesn't disperse the funds which are available, it's unwilling, it consumes its time in political crisis, it's unwilling to take macroeconomic reforms, it's unwilling to improve the business climate, it's unwilling to take any agenda. It just doesn't do its job and it is poor governance. In that scenario our expectation is there will be a peak of growth now into 10 to 11 to 12 because of the influx of financial inputs from foreign countries but that then will go down to the pre-earthquake rates of 2%, 3% growth rates in the economy and that's what I would call the missed opportunity scenario. The second one is what we call the base case scenario. That is one in which the reconstruction is successful. They use the resources available well, institutions are rebuilt but there is no real will and that foreign investment will follow the external investment from different donors but there is no real will for taking decisions or tough decisions or change dramatically the way in which the country functions either in the rule of law, in the governance side and in the business environment side. In that case we expect the economy to grow quite fast this year and next year, maybe 9%, 10% and then it will go down to 6%, 7% in the outer years. It's a base case scenario which is a good scenario and then is the leapfrog scenario, the high case scenario. That is the scenario in which this election comes up with a creative and courageous government who decides to take over some of the difficult bottlenecks in the system of governance in Haiti, takes on the business climate agenda, takes on the governance agenda, takes on the rule of law agenda and uses and disburses all the funds which are available in the reconstruction and in that scenario we think the country will grow probably 10%, 11% in the next two years and then we'll get into the 8%, 9% growth rate in the outer years. So then finally I want to before conclude where the bank fit into this, the bank is willing to bet in the leapfrog scenario and we're putting in $500 million of IDA funds in the next three years and we are preparing what we call a country assistance strategy which we were discussing with our partners so that there's no overlap and our expectation and we'll discuss with the new government orders in town and we think that about 25% of that money will go to areas where we're very strong like economic and fiscal policy, governance, business climate, about 25-30% to the social agenda, education and health, more on education and on health but we'll do a little bit on health because we're not just engaging the cholera fight and we need to rebuild in Haiti the public health core which disappeared when the countries disengaged from Haiti and the NGOs took over, all the capacity of a public health core of the CDC that all disappeared and I think it's an area probably interesting to rebuild and finally the rest more on infrastructure. Housing is our like a flagship basically bringing people back to their old neighborhoods and reviving their neighborhoods. Roads and bridge not building them but basically establish a system of maintenance of roads and bridges which doesn't exist in the country. They are built by EU who loves to pave roads by the IDB but then there's no maintenance and therefore we might add a little niche business which would be the business of maintaining. We'll probably invest in agriculture and a lot in the community driven development. We believe as ambassadors under decentralization on strengthening the communities and their capacity strengthening the municipalities. Finally we will have to have a contingency which we call disaster preparedness and response because as you know every year there is a surprise in Haiti and therefore we have to leave a flexibility in our program to be able to respond on the dot to these emergencies. Thank you very much for your attention. I'm ready for your questions. Thank you again for USIP for continuing to focus on Haiti over the past year and even before that and I want to thank my colleagues for having started the process of discussing what is in Haiti's future. Actually I think a great deal depends on what happens in Haiti over the next several days than the next several weeks before you're able to answer that question. I'm more fearful than either of my colleagues at this point. I think Haiti its people its leaders and its existence as an independent sovereign country are rapidly approaching a moment of historical truth. From the dawn on November 28th until the present moment Haiti has resendled nothing more than a driverless SUV carrying 10 million Haitian citizens its leaders fighting over the wheel and aimed to crash into a brick wall. The fraud confusion and utter despair of voters and massive unhappiness of Haitians and its international partners with the way the initial preliminary results were declared added to the speed of the car. In recent weeks there have been more voices being shouted out what seemed like easy answers forced the elected president to resign right now and replace him with a transitional government that the traditional elite and their parties would pick to rerun the elections forget about elections in the constitution entirely and allow that government to run the country until recovery has occurred or declare Haiti a war to the United Nations and given the incredible historical weakness of its institutions and its economy and the disaster's further decapitation of much of the Haitian governmental and economic structure even some friends of Haiti seem sympathetic to that outcome. We believe there's a crisis group and I believe strongly that all of those roads lead nowhere except to greater disruption instability and conflict and for the Haitian people misery. Haiti needs what's been lacking since the earthquake which is an end to the politics of partisan self-interest and the adoption by all parties and all political leaders left and right pro-proval and anti-proval of a principle of national reconstruction and national unity based on the rule of law and the constitution. Perhaps just perhaps in the last few days there may be a growing realization that not only is Haiti in danger of losing a one time only five to ten billion dollar contribution from international donors for the future of its children and its grandchildren but the independence that it fought 200 years ago to win for its citizens. In December as you heard the international community convinced President Proval and summation leaders to accept an independent review of the first round presidential voting by the OAS and its verification panel produced what you might call a GPS for that out-of-control Haitian SUV. It basically said that the initial results were fraught with abuse and that the actual two candidates for the second round were Milan Manegat and Michel, sweet Mickey Martili, the latter with no government experience in his background whatsoever but clearly according to the panel the choice of a sufficient percentage of the elect of the electorate to reach the second round. President Proval's candidate Jules Celestin was found in the review to fall from second to third place. That report was presented to President Proval and by him to the CEP and only yesterday if we're reading the newspapers is there some indication that the recommendation might be accepted. I emphasize might. If it is accepted then perhaps Haiti will sidestep the worst disaster and potentially and this gives us greatest great concern a far greater degree of bloodshed that's possible if they don't accept that. Let me be clear that there's an ongoing review process you've heard of the disputes by the CEP coming from individual candidates both presidential and parliamentary and those have to be resolved and hopefully will be by the end by the end of this week and it's also essential that the CEP and here President Proval suggested in his turning the report over to the CEP that they take the OAS recommendations and findings as a basis as well for disputes that had to be resolved. OAS lawyers as you've heard are assisting the process. Again it seems to us that all Haitian leaders should speak out to have the conclusion be to permit the holding of a second round in accord with the recommendations of the OAS is the least bad option available to Haiti in the time period required for a new president to be inaugurated before President Proval completes five years in office. However the OAS panel did more than simply make findings with respect to the outcome of the first round and there has not been a lot of focus on this it issued a set of recommendations with respect to how the second round should be run in order to ensure that you don't have the same outcome as you had in the first round. We published a report in October the end of October on the elections on what was coming down the road there are copies out there many of those recommendations are part of the OAS recommendations now they are still valid and if they're not put into effect I'm afraid that the second round could well be a replica of the first to some degree that includes to the degree possible reform CEP at the very least a new president which would be a key factor in rebuilding public confidence in the next round it would be enhanced that confidence would be enhanced if all party leaders including the two runoff candidates were to agree that whoever wins will reach out to his or her opponent in the runoff and seek professionals from all parties to form the next government of national reconstruction that also would be the best way to convince donors to fulfill their commitments to help put Haiti's hopes back on the road to recovery its infrastructure institutional and physical rural and urban to reconstruction and its devastated economy to recuperation here let me just note in in relation to the the comments from the World Bank true I think that Haiti you can say in the relief phase did much better and and that one should not expect it to move faster than Aceh etc the problem is is that Haiti all of your examples Haiti had began at a far worse stage than any of those examples even World War II the educated population in Germany and Japan prior to the World War II Haiti didn't have that Haiti had 80 percent of its population living in poverty it had institutions which are weak it had a police force which was just beginning to become respected it had serious questions about security and an economy that was at the very least according to say Paul the most unequal in the hemisphere in terms of genie coefficient and any other measurement that you want so it has a far greater distance to travel to achieve recovery and I agree with you that there's still a huge potential but it begins with having a government with whom the international community can partner and with whom the people of Haiti can be confident so many of our recommendations for the second round are as the OES issue the remaining ID cards 400,000 people lost their cards in the earthquake perhaps 225,000 received them significant numbers still don't have ID cards the ones who did receive them didn't find their names on the voting lists that needs to be changed they need to be posted on the communes so that the voters can verify their vote polling places provide the list of political parties for revision provide adequate training to poll workers remember poll workers are being trained the night before the elections I mean that just simply is a sure formula for confusion and disaster and there needs to be a massively enhanced supervisory structure with international monitoring from day one right through to the signing of the tally sheets and the tabulation of voters right now I would urge the US and the international community to essentially ensure that you've got international monitors at every at every polling place there are 1500 around the country were 1500 around the country 11,000 voting tables there needs to be monitors along with Haitian monitors and you need to enforce the constitutional restrictions on the use of government resources in the electoral campaign and sanction all violators and halt the public carrying of weapons by individuals during the electoral period these are some of the things along with a post-election hopefully constitutional reform to deal with some of Haiti's major problems that we believe are necessary we don't have to go into how did Haiti get here but most of these recommendations were not put into effect before the first round I'll end by simply saying that Haiti still needs to forge a political consensus and complete the electoral process and together with the ihrc and the international community and the opposition political parties and other sectors they really do need to come together for the good of the country and forge a new path to a new government and do a new future for Haiti well thank you for inviting me I must confess that I do not share the optimism of my previous panelist and I don't share that optimism because I think the political situation is so complicated and so much in flux that I do not see in the immediate future the government that will be perceived by the majority of Haitians as legitimate and ultimately as capable of dealing with the fundamental problems of the country now why do I say that I mean I say that because of what has happened with the elections and the post electoral process if we look at the elections of late November they were as we all know quite bad they were badly organized and they were fraudulent there was a very low rate of participation so that indicates that the vast majority of Haitians I think didn't give a damn to put it crudely about the electoral process there is great disenchantment not only with the current government but with all the political class including those who are in fact in the elections and there is great disappointment and actually to put it even more crudely most Haitians are fed up not only with the domestic partners but also with the international partners and there is no great optimism about the future when you talk to the average Haitian and actually when you talk also to some of the privileged sector now why can we look at the political situation and say that in fact it is indeed not fundamentally different from the one that existed prior to the earthquake remember the day of the election all the candidates except jude celeste the candidate of the governing regime decided the elections were so bad that they were going to count they should the election should be cancelled 12 hours afterwards because two of the candidates realized that they may have a shot at the second round then they decide the elections were not that bad then the cp announced the results and clearly sweet makey was not happy with the results and they probably are incorrect who no one knows really uh in spite of the os report what that 20 or 22 percent of the Haitian population voted for it's impossible to know with accuracy so and this is to a large degree acknowledged in the os report that elections were really very bad that they were lost votes and that a significant portion of the electorate who might have voted in vote because there was disorder at midday so the elections were really a fiasco now what happens after that i think exacerbates the situation because the constitution is violated left and right by every single participant uh now when president prevail as for the os report this is something that clearly comes from an extra constitutional process now the os gives its results and what is very surprising is that the difference between the now number two and the now number three is 0.3 percent so why would jude celestin accept to desist at this particular moment that is a real enigma uh and why would michelle martelline the first instance of the cp result desist too so and that has not been resolved we've heard yesterday from certain members of unity that uh uh mr celestin was going to step down well he doesn't at all seem clear to me that he will step down i don't particularly think that he has an interest to step down until the cp is done with the phase of disputes now there is another element that has intruded even more so in Haitian politics and that's the role of the international community and i think they're very public and very loud uh signs that have been put out uh really undermine the previous policies in some fundamental way i mean one has to remember that when it prevailed was the darling of the international community for a very long time and suddenly nowadays clearly the fundamental rift between when it prevailed and the international community and the question is whether they're very public i'm talking about french ambassador american ambassador uh mr mulay saying that the Haitian government has to essentially agree with the os if that is not going to be counterproductive in Haiti as we know there's such a thing as mounage and mounage in politics essentially means that you avoid the obstacles by saying yes and then you say no and then you say yes and the process goes on and on and on and i think we are very much at this juncture uh it is not clear that in spite of the considerable pressures that are put on prevale and celestin that this would lead to the desired results now assuming that the international community is no longer prepared to accept the second round that is not the second round between michelle martyly and mirlan maniga there are certain questions that to be answered who is going to be president of Haiti during that time is it going to be when it prevailed or not is when it prevailed going to have a bluff and say on february 7th well bye bye what does international community do at this point if that is that that is not an impossibility so that's a fundamental question then assuming that prevale would be president and that we prolong the mandate to may 14th would the cep be the same cep running the second round that remains unclear and more importantly if you have a second round between sweet micky and mirlan maniga do we have any guarantee that in the post electoral phase the loser will accept the results that remains very very unclear to me now there was also the role of the cep the cep could again blame our own age that is to say it could ultimately decide well we will look at the os report we'll accept part of it and we will say that there's a statistical tie in other words second round with three candidates so i'll clear what the international community would do now and i'm not sure if the international community is absolutely sure that it wants a second round just with marty lee and maniga this is a question that we may have answered later on today if in fact the system desist and if in fact the os has a very strong resolution pushing the Haitian government further now when we have the second round the question is whether we are going to get an irrespective of whether you have two whether you have three whether you're going to get a legitimate government and the government that is strong enough to push for the fundamental reforms that Haiti needs and that again that seems very unclear i don't think you're going to have a very strong government because you also have to deal with the parliament and it's unlikely that you are going to have harmony between the two bodies the infighting may probably start the very day after the post electoral process in terms of who's going to be prime minister and from which side of the political spectrum that prime minister is going to come from so again we have fundamental issues now there could be a good theater that ultimately uh people say well in some sectors of Haitian society and prevail himself and the cep elections are bad we are canceling the elections i doubt that at this particular juncture this is going to happen giving the pressure of the international community but given the twists that we've seen in Haitian politics nothing is impossible this is a consideration that has to be taken into account now once you have a government the government is going to have to deal with the very high expectations of the population and the population is as i have said very tired with the current conditions in Haiti the population is so tired with the current conditions that they want fundamental change but it's not clear when you look at the candidates whomever you are talking about that they offer a programmatic alternative the Haitian leaders are to some extent and to put it very bluntly prisoners of the international community and of the flow of assistance the planning of the economic development of Haiti is no longer really in the hands of Haitians who a large degree whether we want to say so politely or not Haiti you know has all of the disadvantages of a trusteeship without the responsibility of those who are doing the trusteeship so this presents real problems for the country now when you look at the second round clearly Michel Martelly will run a very smart campaign presenting himself as the candidate for change will probably if he's in the second round continue to do so but the intrusion of Jean-Claude Duvalier into the political picture may generate some unexpected consequences because Michel Martelly has very clearly stated that he has no problem with Jean-Claude Duvalier in fact he may even ask Jean-Claude Duvalier to be an advisor what would that do in terms of the electoral consequences Madame Manigua will probably present herself as the person who has the experience who has the knowledge and she probably will run as and many people have heard it already say so as the model of the country is going to take care of the country the question whether is whether she has in fact the capacity to reach out to the youth of the country and this is a big question and this is where Michel Martelly I think has a considerable advantage that he can reach out in a very weird way to the very same constituency that supported Aristide from the opposite spectrum of politics finally if Celestin there is a third round if Celestin is in that third round I think that Celestin will have to rebrand himself and it may well be that what has been happening the last two or three days is very much part of that rebranding in other words Celestin presenting himself as the candidate of change no longer prisoner of in itay opposed to prevale etc etc while getting the support of prevale and in itay so that could be the beginning of that so we need to wait maybe another 48 hours you know exactly what's going to happen with Jude Celestin with the electoral council before we can really assume that there is going to be a second round without and not on your second round but who is going to be in the second round but the politics of the situation is really very much the old politics that we've had that is to say what I have called the politics of the belly politics in Haiti is a matter of conquering state office to enrich yourself that has not fundamentally changed the political class that we have now is very much a political class that has been in the running the show for the past 30 or 40 years you don't really have new characters except maybe if you look at the figure of Maltese but on the other hand is linked to political groups that are not that fundamentally different from the old ones so we are in a state I think of paralysis and I'm afraid and this is where it is really a very tragic scenario that the opportunity that was presented in a paradoxical way by the earthquake to fundamentally change Haitian politics fundamentally address the issues of poverty fundamentally address the issue of concentrating all the resources of the country in progress have not been dealt with and this is an opportunity opportunity that has ultimately I think been wasted I'll conclude by hoping that I am absolutely wrong about that prognosis because if I'm right the future doesn't look better than the than the past thank you well I thank all of our speakers for their comments and attempts to look into the future we certainly have diverse views I think what we can do here we do have a fair amount of time for Q&A and what I'd like to do is we have a mic yes we have a roving mic today so if you do wish to ask a question I would ask several things one is that you identify yourself and your organization and two that you keep your question fairly short and just please ask one question at a time so maybe we'll take the question and questions and pairs to start off with so Liz there's one up here and one back there good morning I want to thank all the panelists for their really instructive and informative observations my name is Charlie Martel and I was working with the United States Senate till Monday and I start with a legal non-profit tomorrow called the Constitution Project so I am kind of a tweener I spent a week in Haiti in October and a number of the remarks had a great deal of resonance particularly those of Dr. Fatan and Mr. Adams and I want to ask a question about some good things I saw and some troubling things that tie into your remarks we worked with a group of young Haitians and we saw some of the a lot of the skepticism about politics that you observed of the 20 people we worked with only one was even thinking about voting I showed them the identification card for my dog and they laughed they said in this country people don't have these cards so there was enormous skepticism for a lot of the reasons that you observed and a complete absence of faith that the political system was workable because of the captivity that you noticed but a lot of them said when I asked them what we need they talked about what you said Mr. Adams they said we need jobs and these people were working they were optimistic about what they could do at the local level they had enormous level of country and faith so you had this cynicism about politics but enormous faith and energy in themselves so my question is how do you fuse that how do you fuse the good things in in the youth that I worked with I mean I remember coming away thinking if this is the future of these guys are the future they got a shot but they're up against so much with the political problems how do you turn that positive energy uh and overcome those political problems how do I guess how do you empower those people okay I'm just right back here my name is Marlene dog fail right now I'm working with the water international we're doing some project in Haiti um 12 years ago I used to work in the humanitarian crisis in Haiti for both people so I have some idea how we work that's what's going but right now I find out what I was listening to Mr. Fulton it was really the most realistic thing we could hear about Haiti that's the reality so I wonder and I'm going to ask the panel what they have what they are thinking and doing for to reach the population because the population is just like an offstage of the political situation and it seemed like nobody really understand what's going on because the people is not really worried about political thing political situation is about the baby as Mr. Fulton said so did somebody think about people really the population resources for them not about really political uh actors in Haiti okay panelists please feel free to jump in okay on the job agenda I think there is some agreement among both the government and the development partners that after housing and rubble the creation of jobs is the first the third priority or you know in parallel with the other ones the US the IDB the bank have worked together in terms of creating at least four new economic zones and one of them is pretty well advanced some and would create I think about 22,000 jobs initially initially so this problem is very much in our mind and is very high in our agenda we're doing a lot to move on that agenda but you can't just do it from our side in the business environment the establishment of rule of law are absolutely essential for investments to set in Haiti and the second thing is cholera cholera epidemic is not just a health problem it's a major obstacle to the creation of jobs of the installation of new of new companies tour there is no tourism in a country which has cholera and tourism is said to be maybe the second business opportunity in the country after apparel but even apparel if you are a Korean or or a Japanese or whoever wants to invest in Haiti you don't know the country but you think oh do I want to send my staff into a country where cholera still has an epidemic status so we have to do three things number one we have to deal with the cholera as soon as possible we have to improve the business environment and we have to help the government establish the rule of law the second question is how to reach the population and how to deal in this political transition in some ways Haiti is a little lucky that the interim commission for the recovery of Haiti was established before this crisis because somehow in that forum where Haitian society is represented with half of the members it's a relatively it's an environment a forum relatively insulated from this political crisis and the committee has met during the crisis projects have been approved and are moving on in spite of the crisis although of course when the implementing implementing agency is a ministry the effects of the crisis in the ministry are now apparent but somehow this interim commission served us all well and served the population well during this interim time maybe I can just add a few words to that agree agree with you the youth are a target audience that we have to address both through education and and through employment and the education system in Haiti as you know is is is in very poor shape it's it's essentially private any Haitians most Haitians who get advanced degrees any kind of college degrees leave the country there are not many opportunities there that will attract well-educated Haitian to stay and that has to change I mean one way of changing that is is indeed to strengthen the government not just in the political sense that we've been discussing here today but also in a technical sense Haiti lost I think something like 17 percent of its government workers were killed in the earthquake and and the ones who are working at five o'clock in the evening were probably the more dedicated ones instead of the no shows a number of others who had visas just took off by some estimates as much as 40 percent of government workforce left and to rebuild that to train them I was talking to the bank the other day about this there's a lot of money from donors to go and strengthen various institutions and where we've already done this like in the central bank in the ministry of finance it's shown good results but there's no overall plan for civil service reform and and and and that's we're putting that on the agenda and hopefully you know you need to raise salaries you need to have civil service tests you need to have other things to to make government employment attractive and then and then hopefully retain bright bright Haitians in government service women the birth rates in Haiti have shot up since the earthquake the the the fairly healthy economic growth Haiti had before the earthquake was eaten up by you know their per capita GDP went down because of population growth even though it had slowed somewhat then and basically when women are educated in our employable their birth rates drop and and and that would be a good thing for Haiti to happen Haiti has a lot of disabled they had a lot of disabled even before the earthquake the earthquake added to that if you've been there it's not a very handicapped friendly country and we have some some funding to to try to change on so do others so there are target groups that that need to be reached and and on this question of sovereignty you know I think the IHRC mechanism is a good mechanism that protects the interests of the government there also and donors and including NGOs NGOs can participate in some of them do because once you go through the IHRC process you get the government permits as part of your plan and I think it's been a good institution and it was a little slow to staff up it's it's picked up its pace now and I think going forward it's doing a good job in coordinating complex things like rubble removal health housing they they've recently done some very good planning in that regard so I think I think that's a good institution I'll stop here now and see if anybody else wants to add to your yeah I think what is critical in Haiti is the creation of a strong state with the capacity to do what it says it's going to do and we don't have that it was already weak before the earthquake and now it is obviously even weaker and this is not simply a Haitian problem it's also the problem of the international community in so far as the programs that we've had for the past 30 or 40 years I really emphasized channeling resources through NGOs and that inevitably has undermined the solidity of this state as people who work in the government and in particular those who are competent they move to the NGOs they have better salaries they have the opportunity to travel they have the opportunity to drive nice cars etc so so I think the NGOs cannot be in fact the platform for the development of Haiti they can be there to help but you need a strong state in particular in terms of its economic capacity and its legal capacity one of the issues that we see for instance with the earthquake is that no one knows who owns what and this is not just a legal matter it's really a political matter and who's well connected ultimately owns that piece of land that's the reality so you need to change that and that again links links to the political situation so when we are talking about the reconstruction of Haiti we really are talking about the construction of a new state and the capacity of that state to reach to the population and to begin to think about bridging the gap between the very few people who are indeed privileged and the vast majority and in my mind to do so the prime sector is really agriculture that has to be in my mind the fundamental driving force of the Haitian economy the upper real industry those sectors they will arrive in a different way but I think agriculture in particular food production for Haitians is absolutely critical otherwise in the very near future we will face again food riots the cost of food is going to go up in a political situation that is already volatile and I'm afraid that this is a recipe for serious trouble a couple of things one is that it does seem to me that the IHRC provides a mechanism which perhaps has not been used thus far to make some of these transitions so that every grant and every project the IHRC approves it seems to me should carry within it an element of transition from whoever is running it NGO to the state so that one portion of that grant and project should be aimed at building state capacity and the second is that one portion of that project should be aimed at decentralization ensure that it doesn't all stay in Port-au-Prince and I think the three quarters the economic quarters is important but beyond that when you're giving a grant for major construction infrastructure the portion should be for decentralization the other is that that if there's if I have a criticism of the the process of reconstruction it's not so much that that you haven't moved a million three out of the tents and into permanent housing it's that the up until today there's still no resettlement housing strategy adopted by the IHRC and the entire community which you're then following and that has not been communicated to the people inside the camps which would give them the kind of certainty that at some point down the road this is where I fall and this is where my future lies and I think that that needs to be done as urgent as soon as possible and the others the transparency and communication from the IHRC out so that those 20 young people know what has been done and what the future might hold for them in terms of jobs and finally you mentioned we haven't really talked about women but the fact is is that the earthquake and the process since the earthquake has been one where the increase in sexual abuse increase in threats to women and you talked about the increase in terms of birth there's also an increase in maternal mortality and Haiti began as one of the countries with the highest level of maternal mortality in the hemisphere I mean Haiti and Honduras and and and Bolivia and it does seem to me that that needs to be a stronger priority in everybody's mind as you move forward Marlene I don't think we answered your question on on communication if I can just say there's sort of two forms of communication in Haiti there's there's a radio and there's the rumor mill and we have found had a good deal of success at fighting cholera by using the radio and cell phone messages that have actually changed behavior of people for the better and there's a lot of rumors that went around about cholera you know you could catch it sitting next to somebody you can't basically and other things and and so there's been some success there so I think those tools can be used can be used more going forward to communicate to people because the rumor mill can be can be very very wrong unfortunately Marlene we're going to have to move forward to give others a chance we have one question from someone watching on the internet that I want to ask and we have a question right back here that we'll pair up for the next round and this one is from an individual affiliate with the club Madrid and it links on something that I think Mark Schneider just mentioned so I would pose the question more to Mr. Abrantes and Mr. Ambassador Adams very succinct what is being done to ensure the recovery process supports Haiti's institutional strengthening and then could you ask your question now good morning my name is Angela Bruce Rayburn I'm from Oxfam America I was just wondering at the base of all of this discussion is there any opportunity for the international community to consider just social protection for families if 80 percent of the population is unemployed that means that there are thousands of people who cannot feed their children every day because they don't have any money and I'm just wondering in terms of the way we think about things in the US is there an opportunity for some kind of structure that allows people to be able to access food just on a just I don't know one meal a day anything so that people don't have to put their kids to bed at night hungry this is something that I wonder about a lot thank you okay yes let me first on the building in the institute rebuilding the institutions in terms of the World Bank specifically because of our specialty we have focused in rebuilding capacity in the ministry of finance in the internal revenue service in the central bank which are the core of the economic and financial policies of the country and indeed we did actually build 500 500 posts workstations for the staff we have been able to recover the databases of all the civil servants and the database of all the retirees to be able to start paying the civil servants again and pay the pensions again fortunately the central bank was not completely washed away so they had fewer needs we are all in agreement in the IHRC and Ambassador Adams has just talked I think the reform of the state will be in the first range of the discussions with the new government and I think that we all think alike in that that purpose I'd also like to address the question of the social protection social protection programs exist in Haiti the major one is the school feeding program in which the US Spain the you the bank collaborate the bank alone is feeding 75,000 kids a day with one warm meal at school but this is complemented by other other countries so it's much wider there's also a very widespread series of programs which is called cash for work which basically provides a minimum income for families in difficult situations or which have been displaced in camps the question on these are two the number one is identification is that difficult there's no actually registry of these people so that you can I shall distribute these programs without massive fraud and the second thing is the sustainability midterm you can do this for a year or two but then who's going to put the bill to continue these programs are easier to create than they are to this continue thank you yeah let me just just add to that I mean after the after the earthquake USAID fed four million people in the first three months that was distorting the economy somewhat you know but this this sort of free donor food so we've cut that back and and now we're feeding only about 1.6 million mostly children school-aged children small children lactating mothers the disabled HIV infected people orphans and that sort of thing for the rest we are giving out food vouchers and doing and doing cash for work so that so that normal economy functions there rather than than one that's heavily distorted by by donor aid there are other there's a social cluster that's run by UN agencies that addresses other other inequities it's not perfect but but I think I think it's doing better some surveys show that malnutrition has dropped somewhat since prior to the earthquake but there are still gaps out there that need to be addressed just because you just mentioned that that point it seems to me that it's it's very important in terms of the feeding program to recognize that the cycle and and I know that USAID has already identified the with his famine early warning system that April May and June are likely to be months where Haiti is going to require more than it currently is with respect to food assistance and and therefore it seems to me that that the what you just mentioned figuring out a way to ensure that more of the need is met by Haitian farmers and Haitian product agricultural production should begin now and the only other thing about social protection is that you know Haiti the remittances from Haitians outside the country continue to be fundamental for people to survive in Haiti and what I remember the World Bank did initially was looked at the question of whether conditional cash transfers like the brazilian bossa familia etc could be in in stated in Haiti without regard to the weakness of the and my understanding was that it could and I'm curious as to where where that is relative to building on sort of the pattern of remittances but upping the level of assist number of families that would receive on the remittances what we saw was that was a big jump but to much higher levels than the year before after the earthquake and then it started to normalize and it's now about the same level as before on the Bolsa familia we did send our teams there and the conditions for a program like that are not in on the ground because of the registering and the roster of people but what we're doing now is actually creating those registers that would permit such program to be installed in the near future. Okay I see a question here and in the back right there. Good morning my name is Alfred Toussaint with Nova Technology Partners based in rest in Virginia. First of all thank you for this great panel and also thank you for all for those of you that are working on Haiti related projects and initiatives. One of our Haiti business development practice client is a global furniture company that Ambassador Adams somewhat referred to earlier. They will be hiring somewhere in the order of three thousand Haitians in the next couple of years or so on in the industrial park near Capayicien so away from Port-au-Prince. My question is about the leapfrog scenario that Mr. Bermontes introduced earlier. The question is how can Haiti increase the likelihood of that scenario given A we have a new government that's coming in and B we have Dr. Patton's pessimistic but realistic outlook. Okay and the other question is right back here. Good morning my name is Jean-Michel Voltaire I'm with the Justice Department. Most people who know Haiti knows that corruption is the disease that is that is destroying the country and we all want to have a state a strong state but the state has to be responsible and accountable to the people. Is the international community ready this time to transform Haiti into a responsible state where anti-corruption would be the key the essential elements of all of the programs? Okay Mr. Bermontes maybe the leapfrog question? Yes I mean the leapfrog question is the responsibility of the leadership of the country. Whoever gets elected either has the will and has the the charisma has the will to do it and has the charisma to bring the people along. These two things are necessary not only that you want to do it you also have to be able to bring the nation behind it because some of these reforms may hurt some interests and therefore the you know progressive leader has to be able to bring the population behind and not be boycotted or ousted because of the reforms he needs to do and those have to do with you know establishment of the rule of law the improved business environment without that you cannot actually improve the situation of the foreign investment or even national investment for that sake. On the corruption yes it's a lot I've been talked about it but if you compare with what happened with 206 in the past three or four years a number of important laws and agencies have been put in place the anti-corruption agency the law regulating procurement which are key pieces of such anti-corruption or good governance set up the auditing institutions have been put in place do they function well not yet are they in place yes they are our budget support operations that we regularly provide the government with all include step by step advances in those agendas the last one for instance had very clear triggers in terms of what was the proportion of government contracts which had been had to be signed under the new procurement law and reviewed by the procurement commission it also included measures to improve the transparency of the transfers from the government to the electricity center sector which you know is a big black hole therefore you know we will we are in all of our operations we try to tighten and improve and reinforce the governance structures but it takes a little time to do if I can just comment on that I think one of the one of the big challenges I mean the whole rule of law area is fragile there Haiti needs many more police than they have the police that were trained before the earthquake have a pretty good reputation and I think are doing fairly well we need to greatly increase their numbers though over the next few years and there is training going on we we we're training about 700 additional police every nine months and we're going to pick up the numbers there the the prisons are a human rights problem in many cases and we are Canadians just finished building a new prison United States is going to build a new women's prison and we're going to refurbish two others but we also then need to train prison officials and set up a better a better structure there the hardest part I think in the rule of law area is the judiciary is getting getting kind of really justice through through courts and through through using the law and that's going to be a challenge because while there are some technical parts of that the vast majority of work is really arm twisting to get to get people and frankly in Haiti the people who have money like the current system because it works in their favor so I think that's going to be a real challenge going on okay Mark and Robert you have just on that on that last point I think that that Ambassador Adams indicated quite accurately that the judiciary and I would say prosecutors are the sort of the the the greatest gap in terms of building a Haitian judicial and justice sector that operates for the people um and there though there is one thing that's very important which is that two years ago the parliament did pass at the government's request the creation of a conseil supérieur de la magistrature with the authority to set standards for judges and vet existing judges against those standards if they didn't meet them retrain them or if they were corrupt remove them and that is really the vehicle that is available to the next government to move forward and that's one I think one of the the greatest failures of the current government there was the failure to name the people to that council and to move forward using it as a way to reform judiciary one additional thing I mean corruption is not just the government this it's the system because you have a fusion between private and governmental officials and it feeds on itself you know if you want to do business in Haiti there are certain things that everyone knows in Haiti that you have to do period and those are again you're moving around you are you know not debuyé as we say in Creole so that's very much a systemic issue to just concentrate on the government which is important to concentrate on misses the other part and the two have to be mutually supportive and this is precisely why it's difficult to have a judiciary that has the capacity to enforce the rules it's not just because of the government but as the ambassador said there are certain interests that benefits from the crisis and that benefits from that very Byzantine way of doing business which is not that Byzantine if you are inside the process itself okay we have do we have a question in the audience we have okay we'll take this question right back here Liz but first we have one from someone viewing online question is can anyone suggest immediate things that can be done to bolster food sovereignty issues which would improve life in the provinces I asked this because of the point that Robert Fatone made and I would just add on to this that in 2009 the government of Haiti issued a report that said every 10 percent investment in agriculture creates 40,000 jobs and I'm just wondering if from a World Bank and US perspective one do you accept that assessment of the Haitian government and is job creation in the agricultural sector realistic in view of of investing in it and the next question please hi my name is Lea Pillsbury and I'm with the Department of State and an office that works on UN issues and my question is related to the UN peacekeepers who are in Haiti and I'm wondering if you guys can comment at all on both how you think that they're doing now and what role you'd like to see Manusta playing as the country rebuilds in the future thank you I'll start on on both those briefly yeah I mean I mentioned earlier agriculture is is an area where I think we can greatly increase incomes in Haiti 60 percent of Haitians are farmers sort of these are small one-hectare farms very inefficient Haiti is never going to be be what it was two centuries ago an agricultural powerhouse but and currently they import about 50 percent of their food but you can you can do some import substitution particularly in beans rice there are a few export crops that that can can be done mangoes shade coffee perhaps cacao some people say citrus if some people say sugarcane although I think we think cacao and mangoes are better but the farmers need better roads they need farmer cooperatives they need inputs and so there's some legislative and other changes that need to be made to really maximize farmer but it's it's not that hard on the relative scale of things to to to increase farm income rapidly and and and certainly we want to do that have Haiti produce more food food security they they are part of the global food security program we monitor that because Haiti had had the highest malnutrition the hemisphere before the earthquake so that is on our radar range I'm talking about manusta you know I think manusta has done a terrific job down there it's staffed largely by troops from from South America the head of manusa manusta Edmond mule is is terrific and and they do a lot of good stuff they have gotten of course a bad rep because it's claimed they brought cholera to Haiti there's there's no definitive proof that that happened but the UN has recently hired a group of four independent epidemiologists who I think are all from Central and South America to do an unbiased look at this and try to come up the our own CDC took a look and could not establish that that doesn't mean it didn't didn't happen but and frankly Haiti was ripe for cholera Haiti is perhaps never had cholera in its history and so it's introduction by any means would spread rapidly because there are no natural immunities the good news on cholera and this is probably the reason it's dropped out of the headlines and the press is the fight against it is is going I think pretty well there was a massive international effort coordinated by the ministry of health there and also with UN agencies paho the United States has contributed a lot of money and basically the the mortality rates have been dropping new cases have been dropping cholera is very easy to prevent if you if you basically drink clean water clean chlorinated water it's also very easy to treat if you get treatment early enough and so we think the mortality rates start about 10% of those who got serious hospitalized cases now down to about 2% and we think we can drive them closer to 1% which is which is doing pretty well there just to clarify there was a bit of a nuance in the question it wasn't food security yeah it was food sovereignty which I believe would be Haitians being able to feed themselves basic staples and I know that this has become a very large issue in Haiti in large part because of the amount of food Haiti must import now and has no control over the prices and I know oxfam has done a lot of work on this and looking at the deleterious impact of subsidized cereals and rice and so on coming into Haiti Mark yeah I mean there's one area where I think that there's some action that the United States could take it's unlikely that you're going to be able to remove in the next several months the subsidy that the U.S. government provides to rice farmers in the United States but there's no reason why in Haiti the U.S. government could not support a subsidy for Haitian farmers that would be equal to that in order to enable them to boost rice production and the artivity in other areas rice continues to be one of the major areas of import and I'm told that people who know this much better than I do that the way that it can be structured would not be a violation of WTO and so that would be one area the other I think the Tom indicated several of the other areas where we're Haiti in the agricultural area could do much more the only other point that I would make in terms of in terms of cholera is that they're now as a result of the massive response really there's I think it's 256 cholera treatment centers that have been established across the country and I would simply urge that as the hopefully the disease is contained that you don't lose the benefit of that infrastructure and that there are plans underway to expand the those cholera treatment centers into a community health clinics that would be available to deal with the normal public health problems facing the people in Haiti. Yeah on agriculture when we are talking about food sovereignty we're not just talking about food obviously because we are talking about the whole infrastructure that needs to be restored and you're talking about irrigation you're talking about the provisions of roads to the pasons you're talking about small markets where they can so it's not just a question of food it involves all kinds of other investments that would have backward and forward linkages with the rest of the economy so I think it's a huge thing that I think should be the my the the privileged sector now on minousta I think that in Haiti there is great disenchantment with minousta for all kinds of reasons the question obviously is if minousta has to go and eventually at one point it will have to go what will be the replacing organism and that remains very unclear is the Haitian government going to recreate an army and if you recreate an army what kind of army what kind of resources would be given to the army so you have all kinds of questions that remain unanswered but there's a very strong and increasingly so nationalistic sentiment feeling that minousta is an intrusion into Haiti and that the sooner the better when they exit but the reality is is how do you how do you ensure some form of transition period and what kind of police or army is going to be created and the fear obviously that if you recreate an army you are back to very nasty forms of politics because if we haven't had a coup I mean from within Haiti it's because we haven't had an army just I mean there is in fact on the question of the army in how do you move the transition when minousta ultimately downsizes and is removed there's the actual plan for the Haitian national police provides for the different elements whether it's Coast Guard or different capabilities that would permit hopefully at some point the HNP without creating an army to provide security for the Haitian citizens the other point is that economically you really can't create dual structures in the security sector in Haiti and finance it with the the resources that a very poor country has you'd be duplicating procurement management recruiting all of the things that Haiti doesn't can't afford but you can have a police structure that fulfills the functions of border control Coast Guard etc and also that avoids the kind of potential political threat that the army in Haiti has had in the past just two quick comments on on agriculture as you know in Davos this week there will be a session on Haiti and there was an economic paper prepared for that meeting and I encourage you to follow up on it when it is published I'll guess next week or even this week still and they are a little more optimistic on agriculture than ambassador Adams is they do believe is probably the second largest opportunity for growth in the country they don't talk about this self sustaining or sovereignty issue they do think is that they have an export they have a capacity to export some kind of niche products and high value products and that that should be the direction of the agriculture there the bank itself has been doing a lot in community driven development projects in the rural areas and this means actually offering two things one is giving the small farmers the infrastructures the access roads the markets and so forth to keep to make them more competitive and number two our next phase is to actually associate them into cooperatives so this that this problem of small scale is at least diminished and they organize themselves and co-ops and share resources and share capacity and then finally introducing these co-ops into the food into the market chain so promoting contracts between these co-ops and the supermarkets and so forth so we're trying to do a lot with community driven projects to to help the small farmer get into the modern agriculture society and into the market thank you okay and at this point Mr. Abrantes has to leave us to keep another engagement but we'll soldier on here the gentleman back here two rows in the back on the eye we had a question earlier do you still have your question okay before you ask yours we have one directly for Ambassador Adams from Patrick Hickey of the U.S. Government Accounting Office and he asked I'm in trouble he asked very specifically in addition to the U.S. 1.15 billion pledged at the donors conference by the U.S. we also made available 406 million in reprogrammed funds is this 406 million subject to the IHRC and Haitian government and is it subject to review that's a good question let me let me just sort of summarize the funding because it is a little complicated as Patrick probably knows since the the January 12th earthquake the United States government has spent 1.1 billion in humanitarian relief this was largely in the emergency phase some of that was to reimburse the U.S. military and others who who who went down there the 406 million in reprogrammed funds really sort of part of our FY 10 budget whether that went through the IHRC or not dependent on whether it was funding an old program a pre IHRC program and and it was added to say our existing agriculture or other programs or whether it was a new program it was a new program we did we did we did run it through the IHRC then in addition to that money the secretary at the March 31st pledged an additional 1.15 billion for new money for reconstruction and so far we've spent 332 million of that in in in the last year the last calendar year so this is 2.656 billion towards relief and recovery we also have the FY 11 regular appropriation coming and so forth so there is there is a pretty big pipeline still of money which is a good thing but you know the question of Haiti Haiti is going to need large-scale assistance for the next decade in reality and and so it's it's kind of every year we're going to need another bite of the apple and I think as we as we draw down the supplemental funds 2013 will be an important budget year for us to go back to the Congress down the road there was you know when when there's a donors conference like the one in New York where you come up with these these big numbers I think it does create false expectations I mean donors conferences want to create hope let the people of Haiti know they're not abandoned but at the same time people think they should see it sooner rather than later so it's a balancing act and I think we have to be realistic about Haiti I am overall optimistic and let me just explain why if you take a look at Haiti and the Dominican Republic about 40 years ago they were at the same place in fact Haiti was was a bit ahead of the Dominican Republic economically the Dominican Republic as you know has has taken off Haiti has gone the other direction and when I talk to my development economist friends and say what was the difference I get all kinds of answers but the best answer I get is that the Dominican Republic got slightly better dictators and I tell this story because you don't need perfect government to advance economically we'd like we'd like that it would make it easier to probably make it quicker but Haiti can can advance without the best government in the world without the best human rights record in the world and and without other things without cleaning up all of its corruption so you know if you look at it that way the United States became the richest country in the world by having an annual growth rate of 1.7 percent from the dawn of the industrial era in 1820 to the present and that's what you need is kind of that growth sustained and compounded year after year and if we can get that in Haiti Haiti will will be fine um and I think that's the trick here so sorry for the long-winded answer oh thank you very much uh with that would you like to ask you a question sure yeah I'll ask it um my name is Skyler Badnak I work for a nonprofit organization named Build On we build primary schools in southern Haiti and it's we've been doing it for the last five years and I was in Haiti for the earthquake so I've been doing a lot of thinking about the country and one of the things that I was thinking about is the returns on investment um and I think about that because I think of the the 15 million dollars that went into the election I think that many of us are not happy with the return on that investment uh so my question to all the panelists is if you were to invest your personal money not US government money not your organization's money but your personal money into the country what one place would you put it to ensure your best return on uh economic investment or your your political investment or your social investment do they actually have to commit a some just one just one okay mark why don't you start sure um first it's an unfair question because the government has a responsibility in fact to do things which don't necessarily produce an immediate return on investment if you build a road farm to market that may be absolutely essential for building agriculture down the road similarly in terms of education that you may have an impact on the economy but again it may take a long time I guess if I were to put my money tomorrow I'd put it on girls education I would put it in agriculture I would I would create capital um Haiti has uh the banks are washed with capital they don't lend I would create new banks for micro lending and other things um and we are doing that in fact mortgages from the middle class people can afford it um helping the small shop owners who had their entire inventory wiped out by the earthquake to rebuild it and get back into business I think uh I think those things would probably not bring me as much personal profit but I think they would do the most good in Haiti okay um let's take the two questions here on this side um very close proximity wait wait for the mic it's right behind you thank you hi good morning um thank you very much for your very insightful presentations um my name is Kislin Jamalishegistar and I'm an attorney of Haitian descent um and um I just returned from a long-term contract in Haiti that ended up just a couple of weeks ago and my question is this I mean I think that there are a lot of people of goodwill at the table and one of the things that President Obama said many years ago that struck me as I thought it related to Haiti was the fact that you shouldn't question the goodwill or the love of the country um of the person who's sitting across from you and I think that even when it comes to the international donors I believe that those who are involved in Haiti want to see the country prosper even if it's a question of making it um a platform for future investments and I think there's nothing wrong with that and I think on the other end that the Haitians are also very patient people say that well Haitians would like to see results faster but I I don't know that there are many more patient people in the world Haitians take know that it takes time for things to happen and they are willing to see it happen I think what might be missing is a conversation with the people that we're trying to help stakeholder outreach and I'm not quite sure that I see a willingness yet on the part of the different actors whether international donors or the government to actually engage the people that we are purporting to help and actually not only get their buy-in but also keep them updated and make them understand why we are where we are and why things are not progressing as fast as they are so my question is is there a strategy and how important is that strategy um by all the different entities that are working on Haiti to do stakeholder outreach in a way that not only people become aware of what you're doing and why but also they can't help you find the better not the best but the better solutions better than those that have been implemented thus far thank you okay and the second question please my name is Philip Wern I'm a member of the Haiti support group we seek to amplify the views of progressive civil society organizations in Haiti mostly in Europe but in North America to some extent too I just like to follow up on what the ambassador said these are your exact words ambassador people who have money like the current system you were referring to the judiciary I think in that instance but does that not apply to a much broader extent in Haitian society um basically you know Paul Collier the UN political officer in Haiti they say Haiti's a failed state but failed for who it isn't failed for the people who live up on the hill I think they've got the state they want and Dr. Fatton sort of referred to this they've they've got the state they want and I think in basically changing Haiti surely we have to really challenge them it perhaps refers back to what you said Dominican republics had a better class of dictator Haiti's had a very poor class of economic and political dictate dictatorship and if we do not do that and I I see some I share a lot of Dr. Fatton's real real issues here if we do not do that I see a lot of money pouring into Haiti now reconstruction money that is just reinforcing those people they are getting the contracts they are the people who basically have the political connections to claim they own the stuff that has no the catastrophe does not tell us what land is owned etc etc they are the people asserting themselves and I think there's a real fear is there not a real fear could there be a real fear that we are just reinforcing those structures through these massive amounts amounts of money going into Haiti now and how do we change them they're looking at me so those are both good questions let me deal with the first one first on we have funded NDI and others to do outreach to kind of create you know help people local people get organized to speak to their government and get the things they want out of it there is a you know Americans are very good at this pressuring your congressmen and writing petitions and all that Haitians aren't any right the the the target the government the Haitian government is hard for them to hit now one way to do that is through the political process but Haitians don't have as much faith in the political process they don't have much faith in their government they have much more faith in NGOs for example polls show so that's that's something that needs to be developed I think the decentralization will help when the center doesn't work in a number of countries I've worked in doesn't work particularly well you go you go create decentralized you help mayors who want to want to solve their towns problems you empower them get them resources and that's the big gap right now they don't have resources but but you know in theory they're going to get them soon and as they solve problems they get more political power and move up and that's the way it's supposed to work and and hopefully it'll work in Haiti plus you know in our country and most other countries the services that really count you know your police your water your fire those you're all locally provided and they're much better provided locally than they would be from some from the big national federal government and Haiti's no exception that they need more local government so I think you need both you need you need to decentralize government but you also need them to train people how to how to how to interact with that and there are some efforts there but they there need to be more I don't think there's an overall plan although there is a lot of money set aside for decentralization and and I think there's strategies being worked on as we speak on the economic thing you know you hear that there's the 20 families that run Haiti or the 12 families that run Haiti or the 15 I don't know how many there really are block economic progress and need to be broken and I don't think it's that simple some of these families are investing in progressive ventures and I think the trick there will be basically you know and others others defend their rice bowl Haiti has the highest container shipping costs in the Caribbean like five times the average because the port is kind of got five concessionaires who don't want to give up their their rice bowl and it's those kinds of economic dominance in little areas that stymie other people they raise they raise the cost of food far more than than us food subsidies for example and and and you need to to knock down especially those kinds of barriers that that prohibit economic growth electricity is a mess because it's poorly managed needs to be privatized the management of it privatize the management of the airport privatize the ports probably build a new port and these are going to be things that require independent regulators new laws and a lot of political will to to put through in theory the government has accepted the need to do this and the IDB and others are working on proposals and and ways on doing it but that's something that has not moved very far because of this government impasse and and that needs to be brought up higher on the agenda as we move forth Paul Collier has written a very good paper on on on the economic opportunities in Haiti and I don't think he's as pessimistic as you implied there so does that answer both your questions all right okay Mark and Robert do you have comments on these questions also okay I think one of the fundamental issues is whether the system has reached a point where it has become so irrational that even those out of the top have to change their ways and what I'm meaning by so irrational that if you are a member of the elite if you are sick you're in deep doo doo you have to exit you have to go to Miami you have to go to Cuba you have to go to the Dominican Republic the the other thing if you've been lately in progress simply driving it took me two hours to go to the airport this is completely irrational more importantly what you have is the demographic conditions that have changed the nature of the social system see I come from one of the privileged groups when I grew up neighborhoods of wealthy people were completely surrounded by trees by beautiful other houses etc this is no longer the case there is no isolation that can continue you are and I was talking to people and what name names but they say we are surrounded by them there is fear which made it to irrational outcomes there is also the reality that people exit I mean people from the at the very top they spend their weekends you know in the Dominican Republic or even further up in the mountains in few see further up or they go to the beach far away from so and and they feel in a weird way in spite of the fact that they have a very good life material life they feel besieged so the question is whether you can continue to live that way you have security you know now you have compounds gated communities Haitians in general don't like that even from the wealthy people so the question is where the system has reached a point of crisis that is so intense that from a structural perspective people have to change their ways whether they like it or not so in a weird way this is really the kind of optimistic scenario that I have that we reached a point of such decay social moral economic that we can't go further down so so my pessimism is really now informed by some sort of structural optimism if you wish but on the other hand and again this is where my pessimistic self comes back immediately after the earthquake there was a moment where you thought well maybe this is going to do it that people from the top they are going to I mean people from the top were in the streets they were dying the same way they were blooded they were helping people they had never met they slept in the street for two or three days there was a feeling that maybe something would change unfortunately a few months afterwards all reflexes are resurfacing ultimately the question is whether that structural problem that faces not just poor people but those at the very top compels everyone to start to really think about what the heck they are doing and how they can reach out to one another so that is in a weird way my the optimistic sense that I have and maybe that will lead to a resolution of the political crisis etc but when you look at the long travail of Haitian history it's a big question Mark Mark before you jump in Ambassador Adams has to run off to a very important meeting we thought we would lose him about an hour ago he's managed to hang in here and could you just express your appreciation for all the work he's doing and his answers thank you and now Mark will give you the last word on responding to these two questions because I think that that that Robert just gave you the the real answer which is that Haiti has to come to a point where the past cannot be pro-lawed through the future and that the elite in Haiti have to recognize that they are on this island that they are neighbors of the people who are in Cité Soleil and they have to act that way and all I want to do is help them so I'd like to see enforcement of the law for everyone I'd like to see them pay their taxes customs taxes first equal to what they're supposed to pay and I'd like to see that when they have to go to court that they in fact have to go to court and they simply can't pay their way out of it and one of the first examples that goes back to we really haven't mentioned this is I would like to see Duvalier go to court have the victims be in court place the charges against him for what the repression that occurred and the human rights abuses that occurred and the torture that occurred when he was president and then I'll feel much better okay well on that hopeful scenario I'd like to mention before we break and thank our speakers the last two here that this may in fact be the last Haiti working group meeting that will occur in this particular space as some of you may know I mean if you don't I want to tell you that the United States Institute of Peace will be moving during the month of March to its new headquarters new building the one that's down there right off of Constitution Avenue as you take the bridge into Virginia it has the roof that I'm told from the air looks like the wings of a dove and we will be holding future meetings at that site and we hope that we will see you there when you get notice of the next meeting I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank not just for this meeting but for all the work she's done for all the meetings that we've had Liz Panarelli Liz would you stand up please Liz Liz does a tremendous job and it could have snowed 12 inches and she'd have been here this morning and could we thank our speakers Mark Schneider and Robert and thank you all for coming