By Clément Paule
Translation: Davina Durgana
Passage au crible n°20
The International Conference of Donors for Haiti has taken place on March 31st, 2010 in New York. 9.9 billion dollars have been promised, mid-term, for the reconstruction of this Caribbean state. While the damages caused by the earthquake on January 12th have been valued at 7.9 billion dollars, which is 120% of the Haitian GDP (Gross Domestic Product), this diplomatic event has been considered a great success. Commentators have first of all emphasized the success of the financial mobilization, much better than was anticipated, and which covers the bulk of the estimated needs by the Préval Government. Many analyses have brought to the foreground the participative aspects of a process that equally implicates bilateral and multilateral donors as well as NGOs (non-governmental organizations), the Diaspora, the private sector and local authorities. From this point forward, the issue resides in the effective use of the assembled resources and the coordination of the multitude of actors implicated at varying degrees in the reconstruction of the country. Hence, the creation of institutional mechanisms is necessary in order to guarantee transparency and responsibility – accountability – in the use of international funds.
> Historical background
> Theoretical framework
> Analysis
> References
Over the last few decades, Haiti has seen many catastrophes of large magnitude, provoked above all by the combination of hydrological and meteorological phenomena. Among the most recent catastrophes, cyclone Jeanne caused thousands of deaths in 2004, notably in the region of Gonaïves – a town situated 150 kilometers north of Port-au-Prince. This same zone was devastated by four successive hurricanes in August and September of 2008, which caused about 800 deaths. These drawbacks have affected more than 800,000 people and have caused considerable damages, valued at over 1 billion dollars in damages.
The country was brought under international attention because it is considered to be a fragile state, truly failing – failing State – which could potentially destabilize the Caribbean region. The tense relations between Haiti and its Dominican neighbor, the question of migration – the Haitian Diaspora is estimated to have almost 2 million people – and environmental questions comprise recurring concerns. The persistent precarious nature of Haitian socio-economic indicators, combined with fluctuating and unequal international aid that is situation-dependent has driven donors to diagnose the failure of their successive development programs. These last years, bilateral and multilateral actors have met many times to coordinate their strategies towards Haiti, occasionally of political crises – the military coup of 1990, the ousting of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 – as well as natural disasters. Therefore, a conference of donors to Haiti was held on April 14th 2009 in Washington, a little after the hurricanes and the hunger riots of 2008.
1. Diplomacy of catastrophes. The occurrence of natural disasters and technical incidents of great magnitude has historically made Haiti the object of mobilizations of international solidarity towards its disaster victims. It seems as though states and intergovernmental organizations invest more and more in the field of action that provides a lot of visibility – truthfully, to make a scene – of their interventions in consistently in the most publicized disasters.
2. Rationalization of aid systems. The reconstruction of Haiti has revived many debates on the best practices of bilateral and multilateral donors. In this case, the instruments and institutions that are in place tend to complicate rather than resolve difficulties that seem political, but they have been identified as simple technical problems, such as coordination or effectiveness of these programs.
Certain actors, among which are local and international non-governmental organizations, have criticized the omnipresence of the United States on the ground nearly 20,000 American military members have been deployed – as well as in diplomatic negotiations. The location of the donor meeting and the roles played by the Clinton couple appeared to have been an example of the symbolic illustration of this investment. The fact that the American Secretary of State co-chairs all of the successive sessions – at the side of President René Préval and of the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon – translates into their narrow control on the unfolding of the conference. This is what has incited criticism, such as the New York Times notably reporting that a European diplomat ironically referred to this event as the Bill and Hillary Show. To this end, however, one must recall that former President Clinton intervened in his capacity as the Special Envoy of the United Nations in Haiti – a position that he has held since May 2009 – after having been an actor in the reconstruction of South-East Asia following the tsunami. However, the modalities of aid have created behind-the-scenes tension, the Haitian government worries about being sidelined in the State Department projects that have been put into action unilaterally.
The organization of the conference also revealed the contradictions and the inconsistency of European Diplomacy. In effect, the European Union has provided the most important contribution to the reconstruction, currently almost 1.6 billion dollars – of which 243 million dollars are promised by France. This figure is clearly superior to American aid – 1.15 billion – or Canadian – 390 million. And yet, the European representatives do not seem to exercise a proportional impact to this amount, far from it, in fact. On this subject, it is important to recall that Catherine Ashton – the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs – was very criticized at the time of the catastrophe ; the diplomat did not show up in Haiti immediately after the earthquake, unlike her American counterpart, Hillary Clinton. Since January 19th, Michèle Striffler, European deputy and permanent rapporteur for humanitarian aid, deplored the less visible action of the European Union, with regard to the ostentatious intervention of the United States. Additionally, Ashton, disparaged for her diplomatic inexperience, had to face the competition of the Spanish President of the Union, who is very active in Haiti. The High Representative must be equally composed in light of unilateral announcements, such as the unexpected actions of certain member-states, such as when France proposed for example an international conference on January 14th. The European countries can seem scattered and sometimes divided in their aid efforts, notably where they had to send many hundreds of police officers to reinforce the MINUSTAH or Mission of the United Nations for Stabilization in Haiti at the end of January 2010. Even more, if France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands accept to provide personnel, Germany and the United Kingdom will, in return, refuse to join the operation. Finally, it seems however to qualify this dysfunction in the measure where Haiti does not represent the same stake for the European Union that it does for countries that are concentrated with a strong Haitian Diaspora such as the United States or still Canada.
More generally, the conference is marked by the interest that the participants are accorded for good use aid that will henceforth be efficient, coordinated and transparent. The victimized State must first be placed at the center of this system that will be requested in vain by successive Haitian governments. And yet, this aspect tends to reverse the persistent tendency of donors to channel assistance funds by non-governmental organizations – since the middle of the 1980’s – in order to by-pass a State actor that has been determined corrupt and incapable. In this instance, they are equally permitted to exercise their pressure on recalcitrant governments: such as the embargo decided upon by the United States in 1991, after the coup against President Aristide, which forbade all assistance. But the new Interim Commission for the Reconstruction – Interim Haiti Recovery Commission – is co-presided by the Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and the Special Envoy of the United Nations, Bill Clinton. The opening towards Haitian actors stays therefore limited and full of suspicion. As for local associations, some consider themselves excluded from the process. Finally, the international funds administered by the World Bank must gather the contributions of multiple donors. This upcoming coordination is presented as the key to good governance that must be applied to the aid system. In this way, it is clear that this rationalization looks to counterbalance the heterogeneity of the international public action already, which from now on is ongoing. These initiatives risk nevertheless a clash of realities put in place and again towards the existing competition between the different international actors, competition, which has already impeded the reform of the United Nations for many decades. In many ways, the reconstruction of Haiti could consequentially soon seem to the world plane as a test, in terms of collective action.
Buss Terry, Gardner Adam, Haiti in the Balance: Why Foreign Aid Has Failed and What We Can Do About It, Washington D.C., Brookings Institution, 2008.
MacFarquhar Neil, “Haiti Frets Over Aid and Control of Rebuilding”, The New York Times, March 31, 2010.
Maguire Robert, “Haiti: Towards and Beyond the Donors’ Conference”, USIP (United States Institute of Peace) Peace Brief, USIP, (17), April 8, 2010.
