Hopeful Haiti

EU and US humanitarian groups likely to pledge more than $2.7bn at international donor conference
Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 31 March 2010 16.45 BST

The Haiti president, René Préval, speaks as former US president Bill Clinton (far right), US secretary of state Hillary Clinton (far left) and UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon (second left) look on. Photograph: Peter Foley/EPA

Donors will today pledge billions of dollars for aid to Haiti, with the emphasis on working through Haitian state institutions rather than aid agencies.

About 120 countries and international organisations will meet at the United Nations in New York to agree a recovery plan following the January earthquake which devastated the capital Port-au-Prince, killing more than 200,000 people and leaving 1 million homeless.

Haiti’s president, René Préval, will request $4bn (£2.6bn) over three years, including $1.3bn for humanitarian relief over the next 18 months. The recovery plan includes decentralisation and building up anaemic agriculture.

The total quake damage to the Caribbean nation, the western hemisphere’s poorest, is estimated to range from $8bn to $14bn.

The European Union and a coalition of US-based humanitarian groups have signalled pledges of more than $2.7bn for relief and reconstruction efforts. President Barack Obama has asked the US congress for $2.8bn. The US effort will focus on agriculture, energy, health, security and justice.

Donors said the bulk of funds would be funnelled through the Haitian state – known in aid jargon as capacity building – rather than the myriad aid agencies and non-governmental organisations which operate in Port-au-Prince.

Pre-quake aid traditionally skirted Haiti’s state because of corruption and inefficiency but that stunted the government, trapped the country in a cycle of dependency and left poverty unresolved.

“The international community is co-responsible for [the] weakness of Haitian institutions and the Haitian state,” said Edmond Mulet.

“We’ve always worked not with the government or through the government, because it has been too corrupt, too weak. But if we don’t address the situation we will have a peacekeeping mission in Haiti for the next 200 years.”

Robert Zoellick, head of the World Bank, said donor money should flow through the Haitian government budget – with monitoring to minimise waste and corruption.

“This time we have a chance to do things differently but it requires a partnership for the long haul,” he told Reuters. “This will require a commitment on both sides – for the Haitian authorities but also for the donors. On the side of the international agencies we need to co-operate, not complicate.”

The donor conference – chaired by Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary general – will flesh out the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, an initial 23-member body tasked with co-ordinating aid flows. It will be co-chaired by Bill Clinton, the former US president-turned-UN Haiti envoy, and Jean-Max Bellérive, Haiti’s prime minister.

New York Times
March 31, 2010
Haiti’s Founding Document Found in London
By DAMIEN CAVE

There is no prouder moment in Haiti’s history than Jan. 1, 1804, when a band of statesmen-warriors declared independence from France, casting off colonialism and slavery to become the world’s first black republic.

They proclaimed their freedom boldly — “we must live independent or die,” they wrote — but for decades, Haiti lacked its own official copy of those words. Its Declaration of Independence existed only in handwritten duplicate or in newspapers. Until now.

A Canadian graduate student at Duke University, Julia Gaffield, has unearthed from the British National Archives the first known, government-issued version of Haiti’s founding document. The eight-page pamphlet, now visible online, gives scholars new insights into a period with few primary sources. But for Haitian intellectuals, the discovery has taken on even broader significance.

Haiti's Declaration of Independence, discovered in the British National Archives.

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By, Jessica Leeder
Jacmel, Haiti — From Monday’s Globe and Mail Published on Sunday, Mar. 28, 2010 10:08PM EDT Last updated on Monday, Mar. 29, 2010 10:45AM EDT

A grassroots security movement at Pinchinat is trying to protect women and children, who are vulnerable in the dangerous and poorly lit camp
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Deux mois après le séisme qui a frappé Port-au-Prince et ses environs, le moment de l’urgence immédiate est révolu, et le buzz médiatique s’est estompé. Celui de la réflexion sur les premières leçons à tirer de cette crise sur le plan humanitaire peut donc s’amorcer. Car, il s’avère crucial – pour le peuple haïtien comme pour l’avenir -, de procéder à cet examen.

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LE MONDE | 15.03.10 | 12h31  •  Mis à jour le 15.03.10 | 12h31

With Haitian Schools in Ruins, Children in Limbo
New York Times, March 6.

By DAVID LUHNOW
Wall Street Journal March 3, 2010

Ilia Alsene, seen selling food in Port-au-Prince

Photographer: Julie Platner

Business for Ilia Alsene, one of Haiti’s ubiquitous “marchands”—or merchants—who sell food and beverages at curbside stalls here, is a lot worse since the country’s devastating earthquake. But Ms. Alsene doesn’t blame the quake so much as the international relief effort that followed.

“I have fewer customers now because they are handing out free food down the street,” says the 52-year-old, pointing to the nearby Champs de Mars plaza where aid organizations regularly hand out food to tens of thousands of people camped there in tents.

After the Jan. 12 quake, which killed as many as 300,000 people, the world launched a massive relief effort to bring food, water, medicine and other supplies to needy Haitians. The U.S. alone has spent more than $665 million, official figures show.

But only a tiny fraction of that money is being spent in Haiti, buying goods from local businesses. Worse, the aid is having the unintended consequence of making life harder for many businesses here, because of competition from free goods brought in by relief agencies. The damage to Haitian companies is making it harder for them to get back on their feet and create the jobs the country needs for a lasting recovery.

Alex Zamor’s drinking-water factory is operating again at near full capacity after suffering damage from the earthquake. But he still hasn’t rehired 200 employees at the factory because sales are so weak. He blames free water handed out by the relief effort.

“Of course we welcome the relief, but nobody wants to buy water if there’s free water on the streets,” he says. Mr. Zamor says international relief agencies should be sourcing more of their products for the relief effort from Haiti itself. “We should be helping Haitian companies instead of companies in Florida,” he says.

In most disaster relief, only a tiny fraction of aid money goes through the local government. And as little as 5% of the budgets of humanitarian agencies is spent locally in the countries they help, according to Peace Dividend Trust, a Canadian nongovernmental organization.

“Every dollar that is spent locally is a dollar spent twice, because it will help create the jobs that Haiti needs to recover,” says Marlene Otis, the Haiti country director for Peace Dividend Trust.

In Haiti, two presidents: Sarkozy and Préval

Curieux déplacement de Nicolas Sarkozy en Haïti mercredi 17 février. C’était la première visite d’un président français dans cette ancienne colonie qui se libéra en 1804 de la tutelle française. M. Sarkozy y est resté moins de quatre heures. Pour effacer les plaies du passé et préparer l’avenir. Le chef de l’Etat a annoncé un plan d’aide de 270 millions d’euros sur deux ans (hors annulation de la dette haïtienne de 56 millions d’euros). L’objectif est de placer la France à l’approche de la conférence de New York du 31 mars, qui doit décider de la reconstruction d’Haïti, et d’éviter que le pays ne tombe sous la coupe des Etats-Unis.

Dans ce pays dévasté par le tremblement de terre du 12 janvier, le faste républicain avait été à peine adapté. L’on a maintenu les apparences de l’Etat tant bien que mal. Pour ne pas encombrer l’aéroport de Port-au-Prince, la troupe présidentielle est partie sans avion de presse, les journalistes sélectionnés ayant été logés dans l’avion de rechange du président de la République. Les appareils de la République, de faible autonomie, ont dû faire escale aux Açores, car il aurait été incongru de se ravitailler à Port-au-Prince.

Haiti: What to Do with a Nation of Amputees
By Tim Padgett / Port-au-Prince Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010
From Time

More than a month after his crushed left leg was amputated just above the knee, Gedeon Ralph Mary, 23, still cries. Not from the physical pain, which has long since subsided, but the agonizing thoughts of the outcast existence amputees so often face in Haiti. “Look at it!” says Mary, who survived a pancaked building in the Jan. 12 earthquake, as he throws a blanket off the bandaged stump of his limb inside the University of Miami’s Medishare tent hospital at Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture airport. “People are going to think I’m a freak. I wanted to be an electrical engineer. How will I ever get a job now?”

In most countries today, even developing ones like Haiti, the answer would be: Get a prosthesis. But in the western hemisphere’s poorest nation, where prosthetics are primitive when they exist at all, that’s easier said than done. It looks even harder after the earthquake, given the overwhelming demand for artificial limbs: of the 250,000 people injured, doctors estimate as many as 100,000 are amputees. And that doesn’t count the victims who will probably need limbs amputated down the line because of wound infections. Outside the Medishare tent ward, Florida orthopedic surgeon Dr. Albert Volk watches a teenage girl limp by on crutches and shakes his head. “An open tibia fracture, with the bone exposed,” he says. “Chances are in six months she’ll lose the leg below the knee.”

Read more here.

Haïti, la tectonique de la misère

FÉVRIER 2010 – LE MONDE – diplomatique

Une conférence internationale sur l’aide à
Haïti – où le bilan final de la catastrophe
du 12 janvier pourrait atteindre cent cinquante
mille morts – se tiendra en mars à
New York afin de coordonner les efforts
pour faire face aux suites du séisme et préparer
des actions à long terme. Avec ou
sans la participation du mouvement social
haïtien ? Car les «pays amis» n’ont pas
toujours joué un rôle positif dans l’île.

PAR CHRISTOPHE WARGNY

LE SÉISME qui a frappé Haïti aurait tué près de cent cinquante mille personnes et jeté plus d’un million de réfugiés dans les
rues et les rares espaces vierges de constructions. Haïti, une histoire habitée de fléaux. Pas aussi naturels qu’il y paraît. Un gros
orage peut y faire mourir plusieurs personnes et isoler un quartier. Détruire, à Pétionville, une école et ensevelir cinquante
enfants. Submerger un ferry de quatre cents places, lors d’une tempête modeste, noyant plus d’un millier de passagers (1). Un
cyclone y fait des centaines de morts ; le même tue quatre ou cinq personnes à Cuba ou en Floride.

Le pays a connu en 2008 quatre ouragans, qui ont notamment englouti la ville des Gonaïves, déjà frappée en 2004. L’Etat, chaque fois, s’est montré déficient, inerte ou corrompu. Un Etat qui compte sur les organisations non gouvernementales
(ONG) pour assurer le minimum social et sur les Eglises, pentecôtistes et autres, pour garantir la résignation. Un Etat champion
de la sobriété. Parmi les cent pays les plus peuplés du monde, il est celui qui, en 2003, dépensait le moins pour les services
publics. Haïti, champion de la rigueur sociale ! Les mots et les images disent à quel point cette carence pèse.

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