Tuesday
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.
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Sadly, it's not uncommon for money delivered to be less than what was promised. In the wake of major disasters there is always huge pressure on countries and institutions to pledge funds, but in most cases a significant proportion of the pledges never materialise. This can be due to pledges being made in haste, without full consultation or due process to see if funds are actually available; made for political reasons and never intended to be expended; or allocated for elements which turn out to not needed or which have a lower cost than anticipated, such as in-kind donations or items whose value might be lower in the recipient country markets. Gaps may also arise due to differences in accounting for pledges compared with accounting for actual expenditure, and because many ‘non-traditional’ donors are not (yet) fully tracked through the UN. This is unfortunate, but a reality of life. It is good to be aware of this ‘promise gap’ and to manage the expectations of the affected country and people. Advocacy can be helpful to ensure the promise gap is as small as possible, especially when focused on cash commitments or untied aid (i.e. aid not tied to a requirement to import relief goods from the donor country, which can distort markets in the recipient country or force ineffective and/ or inefficient spending).
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