 Good morning. Welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. My name is Carl Meacham, and I'm the Director of the America's Program. I'm very pleased that everyone could join us today here for my first Statesman's Forum. I'm very happy to have the Prime Minister of Haiti, Mr. Laurent Lamotte, with us today. Since the Prime Minister spoke at CSIS last July, many changes have occurred in Haiti. Perhaps most notably, October saw the opening of the Caracal Industrial Park. The industrial park was built under the direction of a public-private partnership between the Haitian government, the South Korean private sector, the U.S. government, and the Inter-American Development Bank. The intention is for the industrial park to create over 20,000 jobs by 2016. If successful, this project will help in efforts to decentralize the Haitian economy away from Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. The Caracal Industrial Park project highlights the current government's efforts to attract foreign direct investment and show that Haiti is open for business. But as the title of today's speech suggests, many challenges remain. Corruption is still a problem in Haiti. Governance, reforms, and increasing the effectiveness of government institutions are important initiatives that are in progress. And while Haiti has named the electoral council needed to organize long-delayed elections, a date has yet to be given for these elections. But despite these challenges, prospects continue to improve for Haiti in 2013. To address some of these challenges and highlight the successes we have the Prime Minister today, we're very happy to have him. As many of you are probably aware, he became the youngest Prime Minister in Haitian history when he was confirmed in May 2011 after briefly serving as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Prior to that, he gained widespread attention serving as the co-chair for the Presidential Advisory Council for the Economic Development and Investment of Haiti with former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Everyone should have received a handout with the Prime Minister's full bio, so let me stop there to allow us plenty of time for his remarks and the Q&A session. But before we begin, I just want to mention a few housekeeping matters. Today's session is being webcast live and recorded so it can be placed on our website following the event. So please use the microphones that will be passed around by our interns during the question and answer period. And when asking questions, please identify yourself and your affiliation. Last, once again, I want to thank you all for joining us today in this very important discussion. And with that, Prime Minister, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. Thank you for hosting me today. This is my second visit to CSIS. Carl, thank you very much for organizing this event. We had a great working relationship with Steve Johnson, and I'm sure we'll continue to work well together. I'm in Washington this week for a special education summit conveyed by the former PM, Gordon Brown, who is working as a UN Special Envoy on Education. And as you know, education is a cornerstone of the Maritalia Lamar administration. Before I get into the details of my speech, I was not going to address this issue that is on everyone's mind and is now considered as a recent success. As you know, the President finalized the formation of the Electoral Council, and we are waiting for that council to convene and to be sworn in to be able to provide the date of the election, as you mentioned in your inaugural remarks. We are working to have elections before the end of this year as election is essential to a well-functioning democracy. So we are committed to it, and in order to get to the election, we had to go through several huge steps, time-consuming steps, before we get to where we are today. So we're very happy that this Electoral Council was formed, and we're very happy to move forward on that. Over the past nearly two years since taking office, President Martelli has been hard at work. Most of you are familiar with the long litany of generally negative description that prevailed in journalistic accounts about Haiti. I will not repeat them tonight, but it is true that negative descriptions are recurrent, and more so since the earthquake. The reality is that we inherited a problem that is not at all easy to fix, and addressing it will take many years of dedication, many years of resolve on our part, and by future governments. I'm not here, however, to dwell on the past, but rather to focus on the future. So let me tell you that in just 23 months of government, we've made significant advances considering our starting point and the great challenges that we're facing on a daily basis. I will share some of the gains we've made, but before I do, I want to tell you that we are not pursuing isolated initiatives. We're working from a blueprint that we call the strategic plan for the development of Haiti, which has established long-term goals for year 2030, sort of a master plan. Under the terms of this strategic plan, we are focusing on four major pillars or action areas. Those include one, territorial rebuilding, two, economic rebuilding, three, social rebuilding, and four, institutional rebuilding. For each one of those areas, we've developed specific programs aimed at addressing specific development challenges. In the next few minutes, I'd like to share with you some of our success as we pursue the goal of our vision for 2030. Number one, education. At the outset, let me note that our commitment to fundamentally transforming Haiti's educational system so that we can soon count on an able workforce that can make our country more competitive. We have begun at the very bottom of the system addressing the basic problem to access, access to education. When we took office, approximately half a million children had no access to education. Taking into account that our constitution mandates basic education and our belief that the only way to overcome poverty is through the eradication of illiteracy in Haiti. We launched a program called SUGO, Universal Free Schooling Program, whose overall focus is to promote access to free basic education to all of Haiti's children in the 10 departments. Specifically, the program aims to facilitate access to free basic education to children aged 6 to 12. Provide free basic education in public schools by waiving the school fees, creating 800 new public schools, and recruit up to 8,500 new teachers. We are pleased to announce the results so far. 1.3 million children aged 6 to 12 will be positively affected by the program of free education by 2013. We've so far have recruited thousands of school teachers and are training them. We've set up a database to facilitate the management and monitoring of the program. New managers have been recruited to strengthen program coordination. New classrooms have been rehabilitated. In 2013, we'll be teaching 300,000 older people to read and write. To establish sustainable funding for education initiatives, we have put in place new legislation that is expected to raise up to $100 million a year. It includes a surcharge on phone calls and remittance, and also taxes on sin taxes and different other taxes in order to raise the necessary amounts to fund our education system. 23 million is earmarked for teacher training as part of the administration's effort to elevate the overall quality of learning, equipping our children with the tools to become self-sustaining, productive participants in the New Haiti and the modern world. Infrastructure development. Since taking office, our government has invested heavily in strengthening critical infrastructure, the backbone of economic development. Today, hundreds of miles of new roads link our cities and Haiti's other regions. We are building over 735 kilometers of roads, which also create jobs for many Haitians and are helping to advance our goals for decentralization. We have constructed two new airports, have refurbished the Port-au-Prince Airport and are working on finalizing the construction of the Cap-Haitian Airport again supporting our vision for moving development away from the capital to populate and develop Haiti's other regions. By 2015, we hope to have a total of seven new airports in the country. Our tourism future looks bright. Haiti's tourism infrastructure has grown significantly and continues to expand. We have a number of new luxury hotels that have just opened, such as the Royal Oasis, which opened in December 2012, the best western that opened this month, and more coming. In order to have tourism development, it's important to have hotels, nice hotels to receive them. And I invite all of you to come to Haiti. We have comfortable hotels, we have beautiful beaches, we have hospitable people, and people that want to do better. The country wants to do better. The country wants to move forward. And of course, in order to do so, we need the support and solidarity of all of you, the international community, world leaders, and the government is doing its part in order to move Haiti forward in the right direction. Social programs. One of the stark realities facing Haiti is the vulnerability of people to extreme poverty. Our goal is to live as many people as possible out of poverty to set up a social safety net that will guarantee acceptable living conditions for most Haitians. We believe that we are laying down the initial foundations toward achieving that goal through a social assistance program. In Creole, the name for our new social assistance program is called Help the People. Our goal is to assist more than 5 million people, 5 million of the most vulnerable, the most needy citizens by the end of the term of President Maitali. This encompasses the elderly, the physically and mentally challenged, impoverished mothers, struggling students and others. This is a program that ranges from conditional cash transfers to non-conditional cash transfers to emergency cash transfers to the elderly and disabled, to hot meals and subsidies for students and farmers. This is the largest, most structured social assistance ever implemented in Haiti. Already, millions of dollars have been directed to the program, with a million people benefiting to date. Our goal, as I said, is to reach 5 million people by the end of this term. Under this program, action is underway to regularly transfer cash to a first group of 25,000 handicapped and people that were hurt during the earthquake and 25,000 elderly Haitians in need. This is a small token of what should be done, but this is a beginning and this shows the government resolve and leadership into that sector. As part of a plan to assist 100,000 destitute mothers this year, more than 57,000 have already received cash transfers. Over 22,000 students are receiving subsidies while 60,000 farming kids are being distributed to farm workers in rural areas. More emergency coupons after the two disasters were distributed. Nearly half a million hot meals are being distributed. We have mobile kitchens that are going into the poorer district assisting the poorest of the poor. Many of them spend days without having access to a decent meal and this in 2012 is not acceptable. We will do what we can with the means that we have to take care of our own, to take care of the voiceless, to take care of those that have absolutely no financial means and are in financial distress. We understand that the long-term strategy, the mid-to-long-term strategy is to create an environment of job creation for them to get them out of the poverty cycle. But while we get there, we must have a mechanism to support them with the means that we have and this is what we're doing right now. This government is committed to social reforms and is committed to investing in the poor. And we are committed to lifting as many Haitians as possible out of the condition of extreme poverty. Today, over 50% of the population is living in extreme poverty. And the new social assistance program is an important step toward establishing that much-needed social safety net. As Carl mentioned, before corruption is still a problem in Haiti. Not only in Haiti, but in many other countries in the world, especially challenging in developing nations. Underlying all that we are doing to modernize Haiti and build a stronger, more resilient economy is the commitment of this government to fight and end and do what we can to reduce corruption in the country. Combating corruption, however, is an enormous challenge faced by all countries in the hemisphere. In the case of Haiti, corruption has the potential to undermine our process of recovery and to interfere with the consolidation of democracy. Our administration has taken a firm stance on this problem and is establishing policies and procedures to prevent it. We're working diligently to achieve transparency in all contracting practices and to ensure that Haitians are not victimized by dishonesty or bribes. To ensure foreign investors feel confident about investing in our country, this government has moved decidedly towards the implementation of a national strategy to fight against corruption. Already, the government-sponsored Anti-Corruption Unit, ULCC, has piloted efforts that led to the arrest and prosecution of those involved in the misappropriation of some education funds that amounted to about $250,000 of which $100,000 have been recovered. The ULCC is now working on 150 presumed corruption cases and will soon issue reports on investigations that are nearing conclusion. Our administration is providing full financial, logistical, political support to the Anti-Corruption Unit. We have increased their budget by 40% and are ready to provide additional resource to facilitate the creation of a new Anti-Corruption Task Force. To help improve governance and guarantee accountability, we have called on the unit to work closely with national and international anti-corruption watchdogs, such as the Local Chapter of Transparency International. When we took office in 2011, Haiti ranked 175th on the Corruption Perception Index. We've gained since then 10 points and we now occupy the 165th place. This is still not acceptable. We're working and we're doing what we can with the help of many international partners to try to improve Haiti's score on the Perception Index of corruption. Aligned with that goal, in my role as Prime Minister, I personally have instructed all Ministers, Secretary of State or State Fund Managers to declare all their personal assets to relevant authorities to the ULCC this to prevent any illicit enrichment. Our Anti-Corruption Stands underscores how serious we are about creating a new Haiti. A new Haiti where all Haitians find themselves, find a place for themselves, a place to be proud of. A new Haiti where investors can come, invest freely and make a profit. A new Haiti where local investors invest and can make a profit. A new Haiti that's business-friendly. A new Haiti where people want to do good for the population, where people can find jobs, where to have a society that's more just. So we understand that to bring investment, to provide corruption. And we're doing so. But it's not something that's going to happen overnight. It's going to be a process and that process has started. Direct foreign investment is the strategic platform for significantly improving Haiti's business environment and creating the long-term jobs our people so desperately need. The success of our efforts for Haiti to be open for business can be seen in the number of successful projects now underway. These include the 617-acre, 257 million caracal industrial park recently completed in Northern Haiti. This project, underwritten with funds from the US government is an excellent example and IDB also is an excellent example of what can be achieved through partnerships between the public and the international institutions. Caracal is aligned with our plans for decentralization. At the same time, it's a show piece for job creation. Our government has committed to creating over 60,000 jobs in the Northern area and the park's anchor tenant SEA will be generating 20,000 new jobs and has already created 1,500 jobs so the work is underway. A second tenant in Caracal is a Haitian company, Pintu Karahib a third business D-class apparel is a Dominican Republic company and others are we negotiating with others to have new tenants in the park. This park, we have a lot of hope will be a success and will be a job creator. A second industrial park expected to create about 350 jobs is being developed in the Northern part of Port-au-Prince. More Nakabri with an investment totaling about 58 million completion date of January 2014 and will provide housing for industrial workers and clinics, schools, sports centers and about 3,000 housing for the people. You know it's exciting to me to see so much development in progress all over Haiti. It's challenging and it's exciting. Over the last 12 months Haiti's Interministerial Commission on Investment approved 11 new hotel projects totaling 161 million. As I said before if you come to Port-au-Prince today you will find much better hotel accommodations. You will find new hotels existing hotels are expanding and you will find hotels are opening in other cities and most of all you will feel the energy moving towards status quo to a country that's wanting to develop. You're starting to feel the energy happen where the country is moving on the right path of development. By hiding hundreds of needed hotel rooms these projects give impetus to our vision for Haiti as a top tourist destination in the Caribbean. As importantly the construction of these hotels will create 1600 direct jobs and 6500 indirect jobs. The largest investment is a 47.2 million dollar 7-unit project by Haiti Hotel Corporation. And more hotels are coming, the Marriott is coming, that's an investment with Digicel. We have a fusion between El Rancho Hotel which was an existing hotel and Villacreal that should be a very excitement investment as well. The Royal Oasis is a success story right now. So if you take where we were three years ago right after the earthquake where there was everything was destroyed in terms of hotel accommodation to where we are today we are in much better shape today than we were three years ago and that we were even before the earthquake. And the goal is to continue a low path to recovery to build a more resilient country. The Marriott and Digicel will build a 173 room hotel in Tugeot area of Port-au-Prince. So we're not only open for business, we're also open for tourism as certainly we don't get the credit for that. But Haiti has one of the nicest beaches in the Caribbean. Some of the nicest islands around Il Havash is certainly a gem it's the pearl of the Caribbean and it's you know when you go there you will see that it's paradise so I invite you all to come to Haiti and see for yourself. As I said in the beginning of my presentation a few days ago President Martelli finalized the formation of the Electoral Council. One of the most important goals of this government is to work toward the consolidation of democracy. Regular and fair elections are an important part of this long of the long term progress and process. We have been committed to seeing parliamentary and local elections go forward and have done our utmost for that to happen. However, things take time and we have to give time to time in Haiti. And we have and we've achieved it and now we're going to continue to support the financing of the elections and everything that's necessary for that to happen this year. To achieve all the goals that we set forward our government is committed to the establishment of institutions that efficiently perform the job of organizing and implementing a credible electoral process. Our government work very hard toward establishing this council so that elections so that Haitians can soon elect new senators, new mayors and new local representatives that are democratic institutions can work toward the approval of legislation that is vital to the development of Haiti. Even though we come from a great distance from where we started to where we are today we inherited a nation shattered by the devastating earthquake. We have a lot of work still in front of us. Step by step however we will complete the journey to our goal of bringing Haiti as an emerging country into the global economy achieving emerging nation status as a prosperous and self-sustainable country. We are committed to it we are dedicated to it and we will do everything that's in our power for this country to rise again. Thank you. Thank you very much Mr. Prime Minister for those remarks. I'm going to open it up now to some Q&A. As mentioned before, I want you to identify who you are. I'm looking for brief questions, not long statements. So I'm going to go first right here in the middle. I am a program analyst at the National Institutes of Health. I wondered if you could address this administration's prioritization of health care and if you could talk about some of the inroads that you've made there in that sector. Could you be a little louder? Sure. I apologize. My name is Stephanie Benam. I work at the National Institutes of Health and I was wondering if you could talk about this administration's prioritization of health care and any inroads that were made in that sector. The health care sector has been one of the most challenging sectors for us. Outbreak of cholera, the destruction of most of the hospitals after the earthquake. We've had vaccination campaigns for children that were on the way. So this particular sector, however, is one of the sectors that's moving most positively from the earthquake to today. We have several hospitals that are being built. We have a trauma center that we are wanting to build in the next few months. We are working, the cholera numbers have gone down significantly compared to where they are and we're working with the CDC on vaccination campaigns that are having a very positive effect. So, generally it's been a sector that's moving. We started renovating the emergency rooms of the no return hospital. We completed the bid on the general hospital in Port-au-Prince in the next few months. We're going to start the building with the help of the USAID and the French Development Agency. So it has been, of course, a great challenge in order to with all the priorities that we've had on top of the cholera that came to our country to bring changes into that sector. But we've progressed significantly. And this is one of the sectors, of the leading sectors in terms of health. Thank you, Mr. Minister, for being here again. I'm glad you mentioned your campaign against corruption because there hasn't been pretty news in the papers about some of the comments made by a former presidential adviser, Richard Morse, about things going on. But the one thing you didn't mention in your otherwise excellent overview was the state of security in the country. I think the question is still there. It'll be there, of course, until UN approves another resolution. But it's been a point of contention over recent years. And the task of completing the police force, as I understand it, will be done by 2014. Would you comment on the link between security and your goals of tourism and foreign direct investment? Thank you. Excellent question. We have put this development plan 2012-2016 that calls for an increase of police officers to have more officers on the streets. And we understand that the UN forces they're not there eternally. They were there during an emergency period. We are working diligently so that we can increase our force while Ministry is reducing theirs. So that plan calls for increase of police. It calls also for a career plan a career plan for police officers. We've taken great strides into improving the country's security. Right now, according to several institutions like for example the UN ODC we have a crime rate of 8 for every 100,000 people which is equal to Long Beach, California right now for violent crimes. The kidnapping rate has significantly decreased. The homicide rate has significantly decreased. The police are better equipped now. We are working to have a special task force within the police which is a work in progress which would have sort of a reinforced SWAT team if you want to address specific problems when the regular police officers are outgunned that group could intervene. So where we were before to where we are today there has been great improvement into the overall security of the country. And we're going to continue to work on that because as you said corruption is one security is another. Rule of law is a third. There is many priorities that we have to address. But we've been addressing the security situation and the situation in the country. The security situation is much better today than it was certainly 12 months ago but still. Thank you. Mr. Prime Minister you've been very vocal about fighting corruption in Haiti. However, the general perception is that you're presiding of a very corrupt administration. The recent departure of the finance minister coupled with the declaration of Mr. Moss, former advisor and cousin of the president's administration. What are we going to do about this? Are we going to take significant steps to resolve corruption? Also you mentioned that you are business friendly. Your government is business friendly. We have the situation of a company like Hytel struggling to come back to business. Are you willing to work with companies that had problems in 2008 to try to create more jobs in the country? Thank you. That's a very good question. I thank you for it. I cited some of the steps that we've taken against corruption and I don't think this administration, like I said corruption is a problem not only in Haiti but in many developing countries. And it's what you do about it in the last three months. We're going to continue we're prosecuting 152 cases of corruption. We're going to continue to do so. We've increased the budget of the entire corruption office. We're putting more officers on the streets in order to fight the problem. But we understand that it's a problem that's not going to go away overnight. This is a problem that's going to pile up. I'll just read the comments in the comments. I commented on this same article that Mr. Morris commented on. It's one case. It's one case of one person that he was alluding to. That person is going to be put on their investigation to find out the allegations that Mr. Morris was saying. How do you say that innocent until proven guilty in that sense? So we have to investigate the case. And then if guilty, then we'll take the necessary actions. The point is, we're not denying the existence of corruption in Haiti. We're not denying that. What we're saying is, it exists. What are we going to do about it? What have we done about it so far? In terms of that, we're working with the local chapter of Transparency International. They've presented 22 cases that were identified. Three of them, three of the cases, people have been there in jail now. For example, the former mayor of Patreonville, he's in jail. And we're going to continue putting pressure on that. So simply because it's the right policy for the country. But it's not something that's going to, it's not going to disappear overnight. It's going to be a process. Now, seeing that Haiti is open for business about the Hytale situation, we are open to any company that does business in Haiti. So whether it's Hytale and any other company, we are open to resolving any company's problems. In the specific case of Hytale, there was several issues. One of the issue is a very large debt to the government that was unpaid. So taxes, the license fee for the telecom license also was unpaid. So the government had to do what any governments do when there is no taxes paid for a certain period of time. So it's not against Hytale or against any other company. What we want, we want to have a business environment where the investor comes, he opens the company, he pays his taxes, and then he operates, creates jobs, that's what we want. So we don't have any particular issue against one or another company. What we want is to have an environment that everybody can work in as well as pay your taxes. I'm with the red tie right here. That's you. Yes. Striped. Thank you. Sure. Am I on? Yeah. Ernie Preig, Chairman of Haiti Democracy Project, Mr. President, welcome back to Washington we met during the first visit. As you know, we've had election observer teams for six elections, including 10 and 11, and we're planning to organize another initiative this time. Your objective will be a thorough assessment of the performance of the new electoral council in having fraud-free elections. And my question is, in addition to the electoral council, will your government be taking specific steps to ensure a free and open election this time? The short answer is absolutely. We'll do whatever we can, because without having a fair process, the vote of the people are not respected. We want the vote of the people to be respected, and we want the winners, the true winners, to come out. That's the only way to ensure political stability in the country. Mr. Prime Minister, in the beginning of your presentation, you have said that you built schools in Haiti. Can you please tell us how many schools did you build already? Where did you build them? And why don't you show one of them in your slide? Talking about corruption, Mr. Prime Minister, is it true that you and President Martelli have pressured the Minister of Finance to resign? Is it true? The Minister of Finance, like I said, in any country, in any government, you have ministers that come in, ministers that go out. So that minister was working based on the government plan. She was given tasks to follow with results to achieve, and she decided to resign. So just like in any government, somebody resigns, we have to replace the person, and we did so the same day. And like I said, we have a lot of respect for that minister, however, she's not in the government anymore. We move forward to having a new, very competent new minister. Now, in terms of the schools, the Minister of Education is here. He can get into the details as to how many schools where they were built, et cetera. So I'll give you the floor in a little bit to describe that. But anyways, in order to put 1.2 million people in schools, you need to have schools to put them. Thank you. Okay, thank you Minister. Thank you Minister. And good evening everyone. And now I need to take the translator. I'll just do that. Thank you Minister. Good evening everybody. Good evening everybody. And you have the center square, hold and say it. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Why don't you say it for… Why don't you do a sentence and then he'll translate. so we can do it together. Trying to go at the same time. Exactly. So why don't you start slowly and he'll fill you in? For the simple case of the central plateau, concerning the central plateau is one of the ten departments of Haiti, 20 schools are being built, primary school, secondary school, many of the schools are being built, and I believe that the cost of building a high school is one million dollars. The cost of building a high school is one million dollars. And for primary schools, depending on the environment, the middle school, six or nine classrooms. Schools from six to nine rooms. That's across. Schools are being built across the country. Just give me your email address and I'll send you all information related to that. Thank you. Thank you. The lady over here in the front. Good morning, Prime Minister. My name is Perpechua. I'm with Search for Common Ground and I'm also a member of the Haitian diaspora. My question for you is, we all know the toll that the rice subsidies of the early 90s had on the agriculture sector of Haiti, and also the impact it had on the migration towards Port-au-Prince away from the provinces. My question for you is, does the government, does the current government have any plans to reform or revamp the agricultural sector in order to help decentralization? Thank you. We need to be able to be self-sufficient and feed our population. As you said, in the 90s, in the 80s, we used to do so. However, because of a change of policy, we basically are a net importer of rice today. Haiti consumes close to 400,000 tons of rice per year, and we produce locally 25% of that, about 100,000 tons in change. Out of that, we have losses that account for about 8% to 10% of that. So it is critical, and we're working towards improving our production from 100,000 to 200,000 to double the production. As we're working on that, we also realize that because of how critical rice is to the daily nutrition of our people, we wanted to make a short-term policy of reducing the price of rice by having agreements with large rice producers to compensate for the complement between the 100,000 and the 300,000 because we import 300,000 was to lower the price. As we're working on increasing production, reducing price. As you know, the Haitians are very price-sensitive, extremely price-sensitive, I would say. The price of a pound increases by 10 cents, and you have thousands of people that cannot afford the extra in order to feed themselves. So we're working on a structure of price to reduce as much as possible the price to increase the access as we're working on improving the rice production in the country. Also, we're working with farmers in order to purchase some of the productions that they're producing, and then that's part of the social safety net program. We buy from some of the rice agricultural farmer associations and then we distribute to areas that are in the red zone, which is that are suffering from food insecurity. So that's a program that we started that we are completing. And of course, you know, I mean, Haiti's, in order for us to stimulate jobs, most of the jobs there in the agricultural sector. So this is a sector of priority for this government. The woman with the teal top here, Kaki. Kaki, can you go? Thank you. Thank you very much. Prime Minister Lamotte, to pick up on the very first question. Could you identify yourself, ma'am? Oh, excuse me. Yes, I am Kate Dixon, and I am with the Pan American Health Organization, the Deputy Director's Office. And we have been working hand in hand with your government at the Ministry of Health and Dinepah, the Department of Pudable Water and Sanitation, to really support your government in the elimination of cholera so that it does not remain on the island of Hispaniola. We would like to very much congratulate your government in its leadership and its vision in establishing the plan of action that you developed for $400 million. Now, what we would very much request in terms of the governance to maintain that initiative is that you would encourage Minister Guillaume of Health to establish an inter-departmental steering committee led by the government so that we can continue to support and mobilize international donor support towards the objective of investing in water and sanitation in the country, which in turn will improve the productivity of your workers and tourism. So, governance question and a request that this be allowed to be moved forward so that we can continue to support you and your government in that regard. So, thank you. Well, thank you very much for the positive comments. As I said, this was a sector of great progress and also we need to do more. And what you suggested is definitely going to be and we need it not only in the health sector, we need it in every sector, which is better coordination of assistance, whether it's in education, in health, in social services. And this is we have on the between the 8th and 10th of May the donor coordination, the new donor coordination mechanism that will be discussed to improve the efficiency of the aid going to Haiti because as you rightly pointed out, the plan, you know, the health plan was developed by the government, so it was country led and then the results should be country owned as well. So, and we're going to do this for every sector and providing you with the exacts in terms of steering committee, in terms of where we want it, how we want it, according to a plan of action that everybody, you know, agrees to everybody signs off and then we move forward. So, I will definitely transmit that information that request to the minister and I'm sure it's going to receive a positive feedback because again, we have a lot of countries that want to help and one of the challenges for our country has been to how do we coordinate the aid into implementation because a lot of time the aid stays and then doesn't, you know, when it comes to implementation, it doesn't get implemented in the schedule that everybody wants. So that's one thing that we've been working favoritiously at solving as to implementation of the efficiency of the assistance as there is a lot of energy, a lot of goodwill for Haiti, a lot of people want to help, you know, whether it's in different sectors. So this new mechanism will specify the priority projects, will specify based on the national development plan of the country and will clearly specify the priorities of the government and from there move the country forward with better aid coordination. All right. So I see that there are many questions out there. A member of my staff came up to me to tell me that the prime minister has graciously told us that he can go on a little bit longer. So I think I'm going to do three more questions and then we're going to wrap it up. The gentleman here in front, yeah. My name is Dr. Patrick Richard and I'm a professor at Uniform Services University. Also affiliated with Hopkins and George Washington University, but I'm not here on behalf of the U.S. government. I want to congratulate you for really trying to invest in human capital in Haiti. And I'm referring most specifically to some of those, the safety net that you're trying to build also by investing in education and so on. Have you given any thoughts or any guarantees or any safeguards to make sure that the next government doesn't do away with those programs? Well, we recognize the need to, like I said, take care of our own. Because a lot of times past governments felt that it was not their responsibility to take care of the poorest. It was NGO's responsibility. It was for other governments' responsibility. So we recognize that need to invest in the poorest of the poorest sometimes people because it's unacceptable. It's simply unacceptable in 2012 to have mothers not being able to eat for two days, for example. So the government needed to give some type of response to that. Although the response, we would want the response to be wherever there is that issue. We have a limited response because we have little means for the response. So we will continue with these programs while we continue also to attract investment and to push for wealth creation strategies and on top of continuing the social safety net. And we also believe that it would be the right thing to do. The humane thing to do is for any government in Haiti feels that taking care of mothers that go hungry, of elderly, of victims, you know, that don't get accompanied find some type of sometimes of help. In the United States, for example, what we're talking is not foreign. In the United States, you know, you have food stamps for people. In Haiti, you don't. And if you look at where there would be more need for it. So now you do on a limited basis. We want to extend it and we feel that that any government that will come, we hope would continue with this type of social programs. And these programs, they're not only unique to Haiti. If you take a country like the Dominican Republic, they have over 2 million people on conditional cash transfer programs, non-conditional cash transfers, on food vouchers, et cetera. So as Haiti is, you know, we have 52 percent of our people living in extreme poverty. This was a problem that we could not ignore. Because we want to have a society that's more just. There's a lot of inequalities in the society and very little opportunities for people that don't have any means. And for people, you know, the opportunities, they're a lot of the time restricted to a small group of the society. So we have to open up that group. And that's why we're talking about giving better access to credit. That's why we're talking about education. That's why in our facility, we are supporting some of the college students. It's to put people in a better position than they were before, with the means that we have, of course. As you know, we have very limited means, but we have the will, the dedication, and we are committed to that. Woman in green, please stand up. Maureen Tapp, Morales Congressional Research Service. I had just two quick questions regarding rule of law and human rights as related to the trial of former dictator, Jean-Claude Duvalier. And the first is the president, Martelly had spoken in the past about a possible pardon for Duvalier as a means toward national reconciliation. And UN officials have called for a Truth in Reconciliation Commission instead, or have suggested one, so I wanted to know what the government's stance was on a Truth in Reconciliation Commission. And then the other is just that the UN Human Rights Specialist in Haiti recently said that despite assurances from the highest level that the executive branch would not interfere with the judicial process, that in actuality that was not the case. So I wanted to know if the government has made any changes in how they're handling the case since then, and whether or not your government has accepted the UN offers or other international offers of help in prosecuting Duvalier. Well, thank you for the question. In terms of human rights, this government has, we take it very seriously. One, we have a minister in charge of human rights, in charge of all the issues that surround it, and we are committed to that. In terms of the trial of Mr. Duvalier and Haiti today from where we were coming from before, today we have most of the former presidents living in the country. In the case of Mr. Duvalier, there is a case going on right now, and if you follow the latest news, Mr. Duvalier himself had to go and answer questions from judges. This is an ongoing case. This is also a case where, as prime minister, the judiciary is an independent body and they are prosecuting a case. And they have all the latitude to prosecute the case as they see fit. There will be no political interference in the case in order for the outcome to be based on whatever decision the judiciary takes. And we left it with the ongoing case right now. So we'll see what comes out of it. But at the end of the day, in order to have true democracy, you need to respect the separation of powers. So in either way, when the parliament has its prerogative, the executive has our prerogative and the judiciary has their prerogative. So the Duvalier case is a case where we showed... we're not talking about a pardon for Duvalier. What we're talking about is allowing the case to go forward and the outcome to be whatever it is with the judiciary. Last question, the gentleman in the back. Very enthusiastic gentleman in the back. Thank you, Mr. Mincham. Mr. Prime Minister, my name is Albert Decadi. I'm an attorney and I represent the Haitian Make an Intellectual Property Association and the Green Investment Group. I have one request from the Haitian community. You've been to the DC area a couple of times, but we would like you to give us some time as the Haitian community to come and talk to us as well. My questions regarding your four pillars that you discussed. You did not go into one of the biggest problems that I think Haiti has is environment. What is the government plan to address the deforestation of Haiti and plans to actually start that process? Second, aside from building schools, we would like to hear what kind of infrastructure are being created in those schools for these kids to be educated in the 21st century, such as access to computers, access to labs, and maybe to distance learning as well. I know the Haitian community here has a lot of professors, has a lot of professionals that could be contributed to, say, the universities of Haiti through long-distance learning. What kind of infrastructure are being planned in that environment to make those things possible? Thank you. Thank you very much. On the first point, I'm going to tell the ambassador to organize the visit with the community so that I can come and have an exchange with you as I enjoy to do that, to get your perspectives and your contribution to the development of our country, because what we all want to see as Haitians is a country that all of us can be proud of, those that support the government and those that oppose the government. Our goal is to have an inclusive society, is to have an inclusive approach, and for that, we need the input of all, whether you support Martelly Lamotte or whether you don't. So on the environment, the president has declared that this year was the environmental year. We have significant challenges in the deforestation that cause all types of, that cause a ring to create flooding and natural disasters. We have over 98% of the country that's deforested and simply it goes back, it goes back to economic reasons and survival if you want, because then the people are cutting the trees and they're cutting the trees to do charcoal and the charcoal is, so basically it's a chain event that leads to deforestation, that leads to overpopulation in cities, that leads to demographic explosion. So it's a chain of events. So in terms of the environment itself, we are working on different projects. One of them is with Professor Mohammed Yunus and Richard Branson to take a swat of land and start the deforestation there. We're working to build the Basse Versa, I don't know how you translate that. Water sheds. Water sheds. Water sheds around the country in order and as well working on unclogging some of the drainage system in Port-au-Prince is all clogged, for example. We're working as we speak right now to unclog it and the dredging of the Port-au-Prince is to allow, when there is a rain, you breathe in flooding in the town. Right now it's a little rain. Any rain you have flooding and people are greatly affected by that. So the Minister of Environment is currently working on a plan to curtail some of the settlements that are happening on protected areas of Port-au-Prince, Mon l'Hôpital, for example. As you know, the mountain is almost all filled with townships, so we're building a demarcation in order for the construction not to continue and would cover all the wall. So deforestation, you know, it's a significant challenge that we're tackling. Water shed. And also a general policy to educate the people. So we're looking at also substitution to charcoal in order to provide to the people to cook. But that's, it's a very challenging topic, but one that we're actively working on. And also I invite you to, those of you that are interested, of course, the government has, on Wednesdays, every two Wednesdays, we have our council of government that's projected live on the internet and live on TV. I think we probably, I don't know, many other governments that do their council live on TV. And you can see some of the strategies that are being used. For example, last time we had an environment action plan as to what the Ministry of Environment was doing, how it was doing it, where it would attack first, what it would do for some of the different challenges that you cite there. So this is an excellent source of information as to what the government is doing and having the information from the government itself and with pictures as to the progress reports of what's happening on the ground, which is significant. In terms of reconstruction, we are rebuilding, the country is a huge construction site now. We have, from the communal projects, we have 170 communal projects planned, we have 103 that are being done right now. In terms of reconstruction of public buildings, we are rebuilding 10 of them right now, building roads. In Port-au-Prince, we are, of course, we renovated the airport. We are, we did 15 sports centers for youth to have areas to play. When we took over, we had 1.5 million people living, basically almost 50% of the residents of Port-au-Prince were homeless and living in camps. Today, 80% of them have been relocated and their rights respected because we had rental subsidies for them. We have a situation, you know, we're installing in country-wide over 7,000 solar lamps in order to provide lights in areas where light never existed before. The electricity company is fixing their substation and distribution lines to provide more power. We went from 8 to 18 hours. And my objective, and the objective of any government is to provide 24-hour-day power. That's, that should be basic. But when I said it, a lot of people, you know, took that side and tried to say that we're making unrealistic promises. But if you're a country, if you're a state and you cannot have an objective of providing 24-hour-day electricity, then you're doing something wrong. The objective needs to be to provide it now. And we want to do it as soon as possible. So all this, you know, all this that we're talking about is not easy and will not happen overnight. So I want to point that out and I want to also point out that we are working day and night, day and night, to make Haiti a better place. Make Haiti a place for all Haitians to be proud of their country. Thank you. Well, I want to thank the Prime Minister. I want to thank the Prime Minister for coming, for choosing the America's program here at CSIS. It was an enlightening session. Thank you all for coming. Thanks for your applause at the end. I was going to hit, but you did it on your own, so it was a good session. Thank you. Thank you.