PART TWO
This post is a follow up on my earlier write up on the recovery planning process in Haiti. I was in Haiti from May 11 to 17, conducting fieldwork with faculty from the Department of Public Administration at Florida International University and the Department of Social work at Arkansas State University on a collaborative research project in Port-au-Prince. This project has received a National Science Foundation Rapid Grant to document and assess the mobilization and use of community capacities for immediate shelter needs, among socio-economically diverse communities in Port-au-Prince after the January 12, 2010 earthquake. Based on observation of events on the ground in Port-au-Prince and conversations with multiple stakeholders, from within the State, non-government organizations, and the local community during our May trip to Haiti, here is what I understand about the current situation and direction of recovery planning processes in Haiti:
1. In my last post, I wrote that the post-disaster donor driven recovery planning and PDNA process had contributed to undermining State authority and capacity to an extent. During this trip however, my strong overarching impression was that though there are internal and external tensions, conflicts, influences, and inherent weaknesses in the Haitian State, plus our own critiques of how the PDNA process was designed, now that the Haitian government has got the funding (or the pledge) from international donors the dynamics are different. The Haitian State is pursuing its own agenda, albeit within framework for funding flows as decided by the international donors and the State in New York in March 2010. In short, though overall governance and planning capacities might be weak, the Haitian State understands the bigger game and is increasingly playing it their own way. Not surprisingly conflicts are emerging with international groups like the UN, which does not like what the State is doing (eg. evicting temporary camps from certain strategic areas in Port-au-Prince, without giving people alternatives, and using the UN to do the evictions). This is only one of the conflicts, there are other signs of tensions as well with multiple international players. In other words, the State may be weak with limited resources and capacities, but it knows how play with (and within) the rules to get what it wants in terms of dealing with international groups.
2. The change from planning for the PDNA and preparing for the donor conference to a post-pledge scenario has also changed the location of power within the State. During the PDNA process, the Ministry of Tourism under Patrick Delatour (and his Steering Committee) who was charged with planning for reconstruction and recovery, was at the center of all activity and power - the go to place for every NGO and stakeholder interested in this process. Now this power resides within the offices of the Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive (located in old US embassy next to La Saline Boulevard) and the very powerful but low-key Ministry of Interior and Territorial Collectivity headed by Paul Antoine Bien-Aimé (considered by some the future President of Haiti). This is because, these are the two State entities charged with the decision-making and implementation process. While the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, co-chaired by the Prime Minister, will channel the funds from international donors and be the decision making body, the Ministry of Interior will play a critical role in approving and overseeing any development/reconstruction project implemented within Haitian territories. As for recovery planning, this is now headed by Yves-Robert Jean, Director General, Ministry of Planning and External Cooperation, which I believe is subsumed under the Prime Minister's office. A visit to the various Ministry offices makes this change in power dynamics amply evident. While Patrick Delatour's office is now an oasis of calm - with hardly any visitors in a stark contrast to pre-PDNA times just a few months back - the office of Paul Antoine Bien-Aimé is crowded, difficult to access, and buzzing with activity and people. For researchers like us, these are very significant changes because all information on recovery planning and implementation will now have to be accessed from these two departments. And my impression is that it may be more difficult to access the very closed Ministry of Interior for information.
3. The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), located at the old US embassy near La Saline Boulevard, is a key entity in Haitian recovery, by the virtue of it being charged with controlling the funds from the international community. There was some tension between the Haitian State and international donor groups regarding who would control these funds. The Haitian State wanted international monies to be channeled through the Ministry of Finance, while the international community was vehemently opposed to that idea. The final compromise was the IHRC. The IHRC is a decision-making body, not for implementation. My understanding is that it has two branches. First is the Funding Branch that is headed by the World Bank and will control the Trust Fund where donor monies will reside. Second is the Secretariat, the analysis and the policy arm, headed by a Board co-chaired by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and international representative Bill Clinton. The Board currently has 24 members, 12 Haitians and 12 non-Haitians (members of international donor groups). The list of Secretariat Board members can be found on HaitiReWired. Every proposal for reconstruction and recovery in Haiti by any national or international group will now have to go through the IHRC Board. The IHRC Board will decide whether a proposal can go forward, unless the President who has veto power vetoes it. Once the Board approves a project, the World Bank will release funds for it through the funding arm. There is however growing frustration within the IHRC regarding the slow trickle of funds from international donors, which limits the speed of recovery planning and implementation. This frustration was articulated by Yves-Robert Jean, Director General, Ministry of Planning and External Cooperation during his interview with us – who explained that they are yet to see much of the $10 billion that was pledged in New York and that they came back from New York to harsh reality. Brazil is one of the few donors who have released funds - $50 million – that are being used to set up and support the administration of the IHRC. The staffing of IHRC administration (about 40 new people) has been contracted out to McKinsey and Co. who is vetting qualified personnel for both the branches.
4.The IHRC structure has created some tension between the Haitian State and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) who are not too thrilled with the idea of dealing with the IHRC bureaucracy (it is still not clear how this process will work in practice) and more importantly want to control of how and where they spend their own dollars. Most INGOs are clearly frustrated by State bureaucracy and lack of transparency and information. No one really knows what the government policies are for various sectors, and how things will be implemented, and there is no clear channel of information. Under the current system, INGOs will have to wait till their projects are approved by the Board even if they are being funded by INGOs own funds. In theory, having a single entity like the IHRC approve all incoming proposals does make some sense because it could lead to better co-ordination and eliminate duplication – a growing concern in post-disaster situations where multiple organizations often land up in one geographic location or one sector (like health), concentrating recovery assistance in one area and overlooking others. At the same time, I am skeptical how this will work out in practice. There are clearly many vested interests within this Board. For example, the Business Sector Representative (a voting member of the Board) – Dr. Reginald Boulos – is the President of the Haitian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and a powerful Haitian economic elite with own business interests in Haiti that will surely influence his vote. With a diverse group of economic and political interests that make up this Board, it could become a bottleneck in the reconstruction process.
5. There is quite a bit of behind the scenes political jockeying going on within the State between various Ministries. Every Ministry wants to protect its turf and get a piece of the reconstruction pie especially with their current enhanced powers under emergency decree. Because the country is under emergency for 18 months, the Haitian government has it own budget. The Ministries are using their emergency degree to do budgets and get funding for as many projects as they can within these 18 months without having to go through Senate approval. In short, these 18 months have given the Haitian government a window of opportunity to pretty much do what it wants without public scrutiny. So policies that were in the works prior to the earthquake are being aggressively pushed through. For example, there is a flurry of activity and push for rapid privatization in Haiti. Under the Ministry of Transport, Public Works & Communication headed by Jacques Gabriel, that controls energy, water, and communications in Haiti, the national telecommunication company for last 50 years – TELECO – was privatized in the past few months. The government now owns 40% of the stake, the rest is held by private interests, and the company is now called NASCOM.
6. While there was much talk of decentralization, in practice things are moving in the exactly opposite direction. Power and resources post-earthquake are increasingly concentrated in Port-au-Prince. All decision-making and control of funds is happening at the national level in Port-au-Prince, with local municipalities and provincial governments completely out of the loop. The population that had left Port-au-Prince for rural areas and other towns immediately after the earthquake has returned with a vengeance. The provinces did not have the resources to hand the sudden influx of population. According to some estimates the post-earthquake population of Port-au-Prince is now higher than that before the earthquake, and Port-au-Prince is expanding even more rapidly than before.
7. Public trust in the Haitian State is at an all time low to non-existent. Local communities have stopped looking to the government for any kind of assistance and are instead taking matters into their own hands. For example, debris management has been very poor in Port-au-Price. With limited capacities in terms of equipment at the Center for National Equipment (CNE), the government entity charged with debris removal, the CNE concentrated on removing debris from the main transportation arteries and roads and important government sites, not from neighborhoods and houses. After waiting for months for the State to remove debris from their homes, people are now hiring daily wage laborers to remove debris. Most of this debris is being dumped on the streets, both un-cleared and recently cleared streets, causing terrible clogs and traffic jams on Port-au-Prince’s busy road network. In short, debris is still on the roads and blocking traffic. Roads are extremely crowded now with very heavy traffic in contrast to the light traffic we saw just one week after the earthquake in January.
8. In terms of housing, there is no clear policy or planning. Local communities are fending for themselves in terms of basic services like water, sanitation, and energy. My impression is that while there was a lot of talk about doing something prior to the hurricane season, the scope of this issue is so large and complex, that the State has pretty much withdrawn from the arena of housing before they even began. Camps are everywhere, set up on any available open space. In most camps now there is a Camp Committee that represents the camp. Although there is some debate on whether these committees are really representative of the households living in the camp. Also, it is not quite certain what the committees actually do.
Since my last visit in January 2010, my overall impression is that the number of temporary camps in Port-au-Prince is much higher and the camps itself are much larger. But there are also small neighborhood camps. The small neighborhood camps (50-100 households) seem to fare better because they are managed by local community leaders. I believe this is partly because the scale of the small camps is conducive to organizing and managing. Overall, smaller camps are organizing themselves better, are more unified under their community leaders (which is probably easier with less number of households), and are better able to arrange for their own water and other needs and distribute them equitably. In the large camps of 10,000 or more people there are multiple communities and groups. This has created a situation where there are tensions and conflicts between groups for limited resources. Aid organizations seem overwhelmed by the scale of the needs, and the facilities in large camps (sanitation, water) seem limited because the camps are too big. The camp at Delmas 33 is the largest with about 70,000 households and an average of 5 people per household.
State involvement in temporary shelter camps has primarily occured to dismantle camps that were located in certain strategic areas where the State (or the local economic elite) did not want them. Camps such as the one next to the National Police headquarters, the one in the National Stadium, and the one on the Petionville Club golf course were demolished (without provision of adequate alternative shelter). The State is also highly uncomfortable with the presence of a large camp (In other words a huge disgruntled mob) right across the National Place in Champs-des-Mars. The President and the Minister of Interior are personally involved in trying to get people from this camp to move to other temporary shelter location sites, which the State has identified outside of Port-au-Prince. These alternative sites are far from Port-au-Prince center, located in places like Croix-des-Bouquets outside Port-au-Prince metropolitan area that are ill-equipped to handle this sudden increase in population.
The Haitian government has conducted some housing damage assessment, though this seems to be mostly in neighborhoods that comprise legally own properties, and not in squatter areas, that make up the larger percentage of housing in Port-au-Prince. We saw houses marked with the words MTPTC (Ministry of Transport, Public Works & Tele-Communication) written in Green (all clear), Yellow (need reinforcement), or Red (destroy).
Overall, I don't think that the Haitian government wants to or has the capacity and resources to tackle the complex and messy arena of housing in Port-au-Prince because it would mean dealing with a whole host of problems and issues around land titles and conflicts over urban land. This is a humongous task, which is especially difficult to accomplish in a low-trust environment like Haiti.
9. Finally, there is a lot of current discussion that centers around what the State or international groups are doing or not doing in terms of funding, planning, and recovery implementation to help the Haitian people. What is missing in this discussion is the recognition that post-earthquake recovery in Haiti has become a means to push the country more rapidly towards privatization and neo-liberal policies. The limited capacities of the Haitian State has meant that government approach to recovery has become laissez-faire by default. The way recovery in Haiti seems to be panning out is that the State will be mainly involved: a. in channeling recovery funds from international donors; b. privatization of national companies; and c. approving reconstruction policies, projects, and contracts. In terms of housing, government officials explained that they will try to set up some kind of funding mechanism for private property owners that would give them access to capital to rebuild their homes. For squatter areas, they will invite proposals from non-profit groups to fund and build social housing. This means that the the Haitian government is clearly depending on private non-profit, international organizations, and local community groups to come forward with funding and solutions for housing recovery in the formal and informal sectors. In short, except for the selection of sites for temporary shelter camps, the State will not be directly involved in long-term housing recovery. Instead permanent housing recovery will be a privately managed, privately implemented, and privately funded enterprise.
PART ONE
This post is an update that I wrote to my planning colleagues recently, and am uploading it here for the benefit of anyone else who might be interested in following the recovery planning process in Haiti. I have been following this process as best as I can from multiple events and sources in Boston. The Minister in charge of recovery planning in Haiti, Patrick Delatour, was in Boston for a talk at MIT a couple of weeks back. The Boston University team (including myself) that had travelled to Haiti in January, in an advisory capacity to the Haitian government, went to a breakfast meeting with him and then later heard his talk at MIT. I was also at a University of Massachusetts Workshop on Haiti in early April, and got a chance to connect with individuals from the Haitian diaspora in Boston. Boston has the third largest Haitian diaspora after Florida and New York. From what I am hearing and gathering from these multiple events, and from Haitian colleagues and the diaspora, this is what I understand of the recovery planning process in Haiti till now:
1. When the Boston University interdisciplinary team first went to Haiti (just one week after the quake), we observed a willingness among Haitian government officials to think out of the box on Recovery Planning in Haiti - a National Vision for rebuilding and planning in Haiti that was based on the country's watersheds. This was outlined by Leslie Voltaire in a meeting with us. Leslie Voltaire is the Haitian representative to the United Nations, and is also charged with co-ordinating recovery planning in Haiti with Patrick Delatour. Our impression was that Haitians did not lack for creative ideas, but just did not have the time during those initial hectic (many were still in shock from losing friends and family) days and weeks after the earthquake to sit down and think their ideas through and put it down on paper. So this is what the BU team did for them, we took the ideas they proposed and drafted a concept paper, which the Haitian Prime Minister took with him for the first donors meeting in Canada.
2. The donors wanted the Haitian government to conduct a Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA). Based on this assessment, the donors would then decide the amount of money the Haitian government needed for rebuilding - the PDNA would be the justification for the dollar amount commitments from the donors. So the PDNA process was presented to the Haitian government as a task the Haitian State needed to undertake before the next donor meeting in March.
3. As my colleague, Enrique Silva, City Planning faculty at Boston University, explained at the University of Massachusetts workshop, the PDNA was designed like a pyramid, led by the Prime Minister and high ranking Haitian officials, with low-ranking officials taking care of day to day tasks. It was divided up into sectors (Food, Health, Agriculture, etc) - with each sector reporting to the top. The process put a premium on the State's capacity to collaborate & co-ordinate. This was very challenging with government officials already over-taxed with taking care of immediate post-disaster needs in the country (the State had also lost many employees who died during the quake). From the very get go, because the PDNA was designed to meet donor requirements, it created an emphasis on cost. So the process was:
- Driven by the goal to leverage the PDNA document to argue how much money should be given in March. Each sector was driven by how much it could get for something particular.
- Driven by the Haitian State's assessment/fears of risk, of not being prepared in front of donors, of not being able to get what it wants.
4. Because the PDNA process divided everything into sectors, the initial tiny efforts in trying to get everyone to come together around a national vision has evaporated. The sectoral process meant that everyone went back to protecting their own turfs, and getting as much as possible for their own sectors. It has also resulted in a process where the sectors did not talk to one another. There was no horizontal co-ordination/communication between the sectors, since everyone was reporting to the top through a hierarchical vertical chain of communication. So for example, shelter strategy and economic development have a lot of overlap, but there is no conversation between the two. The result is that the product - the PDNA document - is a pretty document, but has a lot of limitations. There is no national vision anymore. This was especially evident during Patrick Delatour's presentation at MIT - my own impression was that it showed a very fragmented planning process with no understanding/attention towards a larger holistic & strategic vision for the country.
5. Most Haitian's whom I have spoken to, think that there was a lot of useful information and some important planning/policy suggestions that came out of the PDNA process, but do not believe that this document will be used to inform policy. They believe that the document has already served its purpose, which was to get donor commitments. From my own point of view, it is clear that the planning process is following the funding trajectory/the money. Haitians tell me bluntly, that the Haitian government will do what the donors want them to do - period. The general diaspora impression is that no-one is sure of who is in control of the recovery planning process, and that recovery in Haiti is a donor driven show with Bill Clinton at the helm.
6. There is also growing criticism that grassroots groups have been shut out of the planning process. Grassroots organizations - church based groups and local non-government agencies - are a critical part of Haitian society. With very limited State capacities to meet the needs of the Haitian population, these organizations step in to fill much of the vacuum left by the State in areas of housing, food, sanitation, health, etc, before and after the quake. My Haitian colleagues believe that grassroots involvement in the planning process would mean that the Haitian State would have to share some of its power with these organizations, which the State has historically been averse to.
7. Moreover, my impression is that there are two narratives coming out of Haiti. The first narrative is what the international community (donor, NGOs, academics like us, diaspora) is hearing from the Haitian government - all the right and wonderful things that they plan to do to rebuild Haiti - what the Haitian State wants to project internationally. The second narrative is from Haitians working on the ground in Haiti - they report a completely different reality. Of things going back to 'business as usual'. While the PDNA was going on, the Haitian government was dusting off the planning projects that it could not implement prior to the earthquake (with no relation to the PDNA), and auctioning them off to local economic elites. Since the PDNA process was a guarantee to international donor funds for project implementation, there was a rush to grab projects/a piece of the reconstruction pie. This reality is not really hidden from donor groups, but the international community at large does not get to see or hear about this.
8. Lastly, there has been a lot of criticism of the Haitian State regarding their inability - their sluggish and inept efforts - to meet immediate post-disaster needs in Haiti. While there is a certain element of truth in this, at the same time how could the government really focus on immediate recovery when their efforts and energy was sucked out by the PDNA process. While the Haitian State is weak (there is a long history of international exploitation of Haiti, and economic, social, and political reasons behind it), at the same time the post-disaster donor driven recovery planning and PDNA process has also contributed to undermining State authority and capacity to an extent. And this is what I saw reflected in the recent project presentation by Patrick Delatour. With all its focus on the PDNA and donor funds, the Haitian State has not really thought about recovery planning in Haiti till now, and are only now beginning to think about it. So they may now have access to international donor funds, but they are absolutely unprepared to deal with the massive and complex planning and implementation process the State now needs to undertake in Haiti. In short, we will see a lot of chaos in the coming months...possibly years.
Just a Reminder
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