Emperors’ clothes
By Dan Whitman
Good news: December 29 no one was injured as the Central Market in Port-au-Prince burned down. Bad news: the market burned down. January 6, another fire – this one probably from arson – downed the Marché Public de Tabarre, J-B Aristide’s old neighborhood. Is this not misfortune enough?
Haiti hardly has an excess of textiles or prête-à-porter, let alone extras to shed, in yet another episode of its friends’ incompetence. Deborah Sontag’s December 23 article in the New York Times calls for response, and consideration for sidelining the bitter-enders who once again have trivialized and mismanaged Haiti’s people and problems.
March 31, 2010, Secretary Clinton convened a “donors’ conference” in New York, where billions were pledged – but never spent – to restore an already fractured country after the earthquake of January 12. To date, 7.5 billion have been “disbursed” (assigned to contractors) but only a fraction actually paid out. The United States dithered for over a year to commit $65 million for housing, but to date only contracts have been signed, and little work commenced. With the paltry results and 200-350,000 Haitians still in temporary camps, three years of dilatory and ineffectual chatter may now be enough. One billion dollars remain in the U.S. Treasury unspent, and $500 million of Global Red Cross funds (want to send another ten dollars to them over SMS, as you did in 2010?)
Doctors without Borders spent 58 percent of its $135 million on overhead. Only one percent of all humanitarian aid (10 percent of $2.2 billion) was entrusted to the government of Haiti. The U.S. spent six times more money ($1.2 billion) on temporary housing, than the only $315 on permanent housing (“disbursed,” not spent!)
By summer 2010, the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC), chaired by Bill Clinton and Haitian then Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, raised only 10 percent of the amount pledged to it. It was disbanded a year later, after just six meetings. The Haiti Reconstruction Fund, to be administered by the World Bank, never really got off the ground either.
The Clinton Bush Fund, the William J. Clinton Foundation, the American Red Cross fell short of their goals. So did Catholic Relief Services. Oxfam said in early 2011 that the IHRC and non-profits were equipped neither with staff or technical capacity. Why weren’t Haitian voices heard?
In 2010 Secretary Clinton’s Counselor took it upon herself to cut off funding for Haiti’s education sector, saying the United States would concentrate on four areas of reconstruction and development. Howls of protest erupted from Haiti’s diaspora community, but they were stiff-armed and disregarded. After three years of lost opportunity – and donor fatigue all over – may we now ask why?
Haitians reside in a dysfunctional country, but they are not clueless. Refusal to hear them is hurtful, and materially wasteful. Dabblers with bizarre developmental theories should not be entrusted forever to address a nation’s despair. It would be time to remove and name and holders of these purses. Better yet, stop the pretense and just announce that foreign donors have no real intentions of reconstructing this broken nation, and remove unfulfilled IOUs from the table. Haitians would do better for themselves, without the empty promises of their bungling partners. Let January 12, 2013 be a time for exposure, and reversion to Haitians themselves of the tools and resources of their reconstruction.
Time to call out Haiti’s faux friends, and put them back on the rack. Two former U.S. presidents took the mantle of these various endeavors, ignored Haitians’ efforts to provide planning input, and now after three years should be judged on the results.
Dan Whitman teaches Foreign Policy at the Washington Semester Program, American University. He served as Public Diplomacy officer in USIA and the Department of State for 25 years.
