Haiti Earthquake: Two Years Later, Where Did The Money Go?

To see where the enormous sums of humanitarian aid directed to Haiti
 after its catastrophic earthquake in 2010went, a good place to start
 is the ocean harbor. That's where the island's shore meets the rest of
 the world. And the best place for that is here at the seaport in the
 nation's capital: Port-au-Prince, near the earthquake's epicenter.
 There, at this moment, a gigantic"supermaritime" cargo ship calledthe
 Sarine is off-loading more than five metric tons of rice that has just
 arrived from Miami.
 If you think of the rice as post-earthquake assistance money -- the
 individual grains asdonated dollars -- you might getsome idea about
 what's happened since the earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010. Not to mention
 a sense of where the individual rice grains (or the dollars) have
 gone.
 And, like the grains of rice aboard, the dollars mount into the
 hundreds of millions; even billions. According to some reports, the
 United States government, American individuals,families and
 humanitarian groupsdonated approximately $3 billion. That's just from
 America with a total of something like $12 billioncoming from all
 donor nations for funds to be disbursed.
 Still, somehow, no one seems quite sure precisely how many grains --
 or dollars -- we're talking about. The accounting seems to have a
 sliding scale that can move hundreds of millions of dollars one way or
 another. At the time of publication, President Bill Clinton, the UN
 Special Envoy to Haiti and the co-chair of overseeing the nation’s
 re-construction forthe last two years, hasn't responded to repeated
 requestsby GlobalPost regarding specific aid and cash donation
 figures.
 Where those billions went following the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that
 left a government-estimated figure of 220,000 people dead -- and at
 least 1.6 million more homeless -- remains a confounding mystery.
 Inside of the recoveryeffort, however, are unquestionable successes
 along with the failures. And, to be fair,because the money came in so
 quickly and in such great volume, much of it has been wasted or lost
 like so much ricespilling on the docks. Or stolen, like the sacks of
 rice from herewhich will end up in Haiti's black market for food.
 The situation grows complicated...fast. And the metaphor here of this
 crane off-loading rice by the metric ton packs a still larger and
 morecomplex metaphor, according to aid experts, about this
 country'shistory along a still-active fault line of aid, politics and
 blame in the aftermath of the quake.
 As for this specific ship, the Sarine, it has a double-steel hull and
 is roughly 330 feet long. And now, pulled up to the quay in
 Port-au-Prince, the "grabbing box" from a huge off-load cranereaches
 down into the vessel's hold, and, like the hand of God, lifts another
 half-ton or so of rice out -- hundreds of thousands of individual
 grains ofrice. Then the loose rice is dumped into a white, V-shaped
 steel hopper whose nozzle sits inside a small hut on the
 Port-au-Prince waterfront.
 Using gravity, the hopper directsthe rice into 25-kg (55-pound) white
 plastic bags, with blue stars on their fronts and the words "AMERICAN
 RICE" written on their sides. After that -- using a sewing machine --
 the top of each bag is sealed.
 As I watch, over and over -- bag after bag after bag -- a man running
 the V-shaped hopper turns to me. He rubs hisbelly.
 "I'm hungry," he says in French.
 "Well," I respond, "why don't youtake some rice for yourself? There's a lot."
 The man flashes a grin back, andshrugs. "Yes," he says, "that's
 possible. But I'm not that kind ofhungry."
 The rice bags move from the factory along an assembly line to waiting
 trucks which will travel deeper into Haiti to feed a nation still
 suffering from hunger on a vast scale.
 But the economy of rice in Haitisays everything about the condition
 the country is in. The US government subsidizes and"donates" ton after
 ton of rice in Haiti and in so doing has through the last several
 decades completely undercut Haitian rice farmers and left them
 destitute and migrating into cities where they live in hovels that
 were destroyed by the quake.
 As recently as the early 1980s, Haiti was producing just about all of
 its own rice. Now more than 60 percent is imported from the US, making
 it the fourth largest recipient of American rice exports in the world.
 That was before the quake and now with donated rice coming in as well,
 Haiti is even more awash in rice while American agribusiness makes
 billions of dollars every year through generous government subsidies.
 There is perhaps some bitter irony here that the subsidies were
 promoted in large part by President Clinton to help his home state of
 Arkansas, the largest rice producing state in the US, thereby
 crippling a sector of the economy in Haiti where Clinton has worked so
 tirelessly to help with the recovery.
 "You might say it is a perfect metaphor for what is wrong with aid to
 Haiti," says Marc Cohen, a senior researcher for Oxfam, one of the
 largest non-government organizations (NGOs) in the world, which raised
 approximately $106 million for a three-year response in Haiti and
 finds itself struggling to deliver the aid effectively.
 "Instead of bringing subsidized rice in on ships from Miami, we could
 be helping Haiti grow rice in its own fields," adds Cohen, who worked
 for many years in Haiti with the International Food Policy Research
 Institute and studied the broad economic impact of US rice subsidies,
 or"Miami rice," as it is known here.
 Cohen was part of a team at Oxfam America that this week delivered a
 scathing report on how reconstruction in Haiti was proceeding at a
 "snail’s pace," leaving half a million Haitians still homeless two
 years after the quake. It urged the Haitian government and donor
 countriesto accelerate the delivery of funds for reconstruction. It
 applauded the initial emergency relief effort, but said the
 Haitiangovernment and donor countrieshave failed to come up with a
 coordinated strategy to rebuild the country and house the more than
 500,000 people still living in tents and under tarpaulins without
 access to running water, a toilet or a doctor.
 According to recently published reports by Oxfam, the UN, the US
 Government Accountability Office and international aid experts
 interviewed by GlobalPost, billions of dollars of aid were pledged to
 Haiti's reconstruction, but promises of funding have not translated
 intomoney on the ground. Accordingto the UN report, as of the endof
 September 2011, donors had disbursed just 43 percent of the total $4.6
 billion pledged for reconstruction in 2010 and 2011.
 Officials heading up USAID's efforts in Haiti say they are frustrated
 by the political and practical realities that slow the pace of
 reconstruction. They point to costly and painful failures such as the
 lack of preparedness for the cholera outbreak which still looms over
 Haiti. But they also point to hard-fought successes particularly
 in agriculture, where the average salary of a farmer has risen from
 $600 a year to$1,100 a year through improved irrigation and
 infrastructure which have resulted in higher yields.
 Elizabeth Hogan, Director of HaitiTask Team for USAID, told
 GlobalPost, "Fixing Haiti is not something that can be done in the
 short term. It requires Haitians to take ownership of fixing their own
 country and their own problems with the support of the international
 community and increasingly private investment."
 A "star-crossed" history
 Haiti is a formerly French colonial island nation occupying alittle
 less than half of the Caribbean island originally called Hispanola
 (the other half of the island, the Dominican Republic, is a former
 Spanish colony).
 Haiti's capital and gravitational center, Port-au-Prince, is said tobe
 named for the French sailing ship, Prince, which pulled into
 theisland's harbor in 1706. The islandsoon became a critical stop in
 the slave trade in the Americas, with Port-au-Prince being one ofthe
 most popular hubs. The colonial overseers grew rich, exporting sugar
 and coffee to the world.
 Because of this history of slavery and repression, some Haitians
 believe their island is cursed. By 1793, and due somewhat to the slave
 trade --not to mention a wide-ranging naval war between Britain and
 France -- a British ship called the HMS Hankey, sailing out of West
 Africa, arrived in Port-au-Prince, carrying with it some West Africans
 and some British citizens who had been unsuccessful in colonizing a
 West African island called Bulama. They were also carryingsomething
 new.
 It was ultimately discovered to be a virus called Yellow Fever, and
 Haiti was its first New World landfall. The virus killed thousands
 around Port-au-Princebefore the ship sailed for Philadelphia to join a
 convoy forsafe passage back to London. (At Philadelphia, Benjamin
 Rush, anoted physician of the age, surmised the boat carried some new
 form of "pestilence" after more then 10,000 Philadelphians died within
 weeks; he ultimately ordered the ship burned to the water line during
 its trip home.)
 This is the star-crossed history of Haiti. It is a nation blessed
 bylocation: it has rich farming soils,a lovely and temperate tropical
 climate and a stunningly resourceful island populace. It has periods
 of prosperity and hope that are recent enough for many Port-au-Prince
 residents -- and the millions wholive in the diaspora -- to remember a
 time when it was aplayground for rich tourists andwhen it confidently
 produced most of the food it ate.
 But its geographic location makes Haiti uniquely prone to cataclysms
 such as tropical storms and hurricanes, while what is known in
 geological terms as the "Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault system," a
 ragged edge that runs along the North American and Caribbean
 tectonicplates, has triggered a string of earthquakes over the
 centuries.
 Still, perhaps owing to the island's difficult past, it remains one of
 the most hopeful places imaginable. Most of the people living there
 have historically had very little in the way of resources, and have
 been ruled and controlled by a small wealthy few, which means any good
 that comes non-wealthy Haitians' way tends to be celebrated.
 By 1804, due to several slave uprisings, the poor natives overthrew
 French rule and became the first free nation in Latin America. Like
 other new democratic successes of the Atlantic World, the Haitians
 discovered self-determination. They also discovered debt, saddled with
 a French demand for 150 million francs (more than $20 billion in
 today's terms)to compensate the colonial power for its lost territory.
 Haiti created home-grown problems, too: despots, self-interested
 rulers and military coups. Eventually people with names like Duvalier
 and Aristide and Cedras would become world famous for a power-lust and
 greed that has defined Haitian leadership. On three occasions in the
 last century, the US military intervened, including the 20,000 US
 troops deployed in 2010.
 And along with political upheaval came regular hurricanes, mudslides
 and earthquakes, with international aid often "pledged" but few
 Haitians ever really seeing it. This exploitation by mercantile forces
 of seemingly beneficent empires combined with the squandering of aid
 amida culture of corruption is the very history of the country, and
 the contemporary reality in which Haiti finds itself.
 In the year following the 2010 earthquake, things were no different.
 In fact, of the $1.14 billion allocated to Haitian Rebuilding and
 Relief in 2010 by the US Congress, according to the US Government
 Accountability Office (or GAO), only $184 million had been actually
 "obligated to projects" at the end of 2010. Today as the guys with the
 green eyeshades get more deeply involved, it becomes clear that in the
 wake of the Haitian earthquake of 2010 the US government began to pay
 itself back for its humanitarian graciousness as much as it actually
 helped the people of Haiti.
 Of the original $1.4 billion allocated by Congress, accordingto a most
 recent GAO report,$655 million in funds was reimbursed to the
 Department of Defense (which, admirably, spent its own money to put
 ships offshore, drop food and medical aid to those who neededit, bring
 in troops to secure the airport at Port-au-Prince and provide
 emergency medical services).
 Another $220 million went to repay the US Department of Health and
 Human Services (which gave goods, food and grants to Haitian evacuees
 for food and shelter); $350 million went to disaster assistance
 (anumbrella term that includes everything from medical care
 tosanitation); $150 million to the USDepartment of Agriculture (for
 emergency food and forward-thinking agricultural programs in Haiti);
 and $15 million to the Department of Homeland Security for Immigration
 fees and aircraft fares for the lucky few Haitian refugees brought
 tothe United States.
 Expanding the picture doesn’t change it. The UN Special Envoy for
 Haiti reported that of the overall $2.4 billion pledged by theUN for
 humanitarian efforts in Haiti, 34 percent (or $864 million) of those
 funds were given back to donor civil and military organizations, 28
 percent (or $672 million) was laid out to UN and non-governmental
 humanitarian projects such as housing and health-care, 26 percent
 (or$624 million) was given to contractors for things like
 road-building and infrastructure, and 5 percent ($120 million)
 wasgiven to various international Red Cross/Red Crescent societies.
 Not that the people of Haiti didn't benefit from all this moneyand
 assistance. But, really, over the last two years, the effort to assist
 post-earthquake Haiti has mostly benefited -- or at least subsidized
 -- the aid and relief institutions and private corporations that
 nominated themselves to help Haiti in its 2010-based time of need.
 "In the end," says Robert FattonJr., professor of government and
 foreign affairs at the University of Virginia and a son of and
 authority on contemporary Haiti, "if you read the reports -- the UN
 Report and so on -- you’ll see that actual Haitians got less than 1
 percent of all the American money pledged."
 In other words, Fatton explained,"99 percent of [the US money spent]
 went back to the US military, the State Department, NGOs and
 contractors. The money was clearly intended for Haiti, but it ended up
 returning to the same place it came from."
 
 Wisdom of Solomon 2:10
 Let us oppress the poor righteous man let us not spare the widow nor
 reverence the ancient gray hairs of the aged.
 
 Ecclesiasticus  13:19
 As the wild ass is the lion's prey in the wilderness so the rich eat
 up the poor.
 
 Ecclesiasticus  13:20
 As the proud hate humility so doth the rich abhor the poor.
 
 Ecclesiasticus  29:9
 Help the poor for the commandment's sake and turn him not away because
 of his poverty.