Haiti aid examined: “working with” rather than “working for”.

The motives behind the assassination of the Haitian president remain obscure. But many Haitians say corruption, which intensified as billions of dollars flowed across the country after a devastating earthquake more than a decade ago, was certainly a factor behind his death.

However, at the same time, Haitian specialists say that lessons have been learned about foreign aid. Perhaps the first is that Haitians’ ingenuity and local knowledge are more useful than top-down assistance designed to serve the interests of the donor state.

Why did we write this?

Has the billions in aid left Haiti in a worse situation? Some who know the country say that when top-down assistance was replaced by cooperation that led to the resilience and ingenuity of Haitians, conditions improved.

“I compare the kind of help that generally came to Haiti after the earthquake with a series of ‘aftershocks’ that have led to further emptying of services and ministries, increased corruption, deteriorating security and, ironically, even increased violence against women,” says Mark Schuller. Haitian expert at Northern Illinois University.

“But that’s not the whole story,” adds Professor Schuller, author of a 2012 study chronicling how official development assistance and NGO work often undermined Haiti’s progress. “When the human drive to do has been replaced by a focus on working with them, and when the approach is one that focuses on coordination and cooperation with Haitians, it has shown that it can work,” he says.

When Jean-Baptiste Vania moved a huge bowl of spaghetti into a fish stock on her plot of a thriving homeless camp in Port-au-Prince, she was already thinking beyond her own ordeal.

It was January 2010, and a few days earlier, the mother of a family of 17 had lost her home in the Haitian capital in a devastating earthquake that hit the Caribbean island nation when it was already in the slump: the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It has always been considered a failed state.

Within seconds, as many as two million Haitians were displaced, and several million more were left without basic services or a source of income.

Why did we write this?

Has the billions in aid left Haiti in a worse situation? Some who know the country say that when top-down assistance was replaced by cooperation that led to the resilience and ingenuity of Haitians, conditions improved.

But here was Mrs. Vanya in the homeless camp which, before the earthquake, was the gardens of the prime minister’s residence. As she steamed in her soup, she was not only determined to feed her family, but imagined how she could step up assistance to feed “many desperate souls,” as the human serendipity around her described her.

In the days following the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, I thought of Ms. Fania, and the many resilient and determined Haitians I met to cover the aftermath of the earthquake.

The assassination resulted in many stories and much analysis of the decade since the earthquake, with the broad conclusion that the influx of about $13.34 billion in international aid between 2010 and 2020 did not leave Haiti in better, and perhaps worse, condition than it was before the horrific earthquake.

The motives (and actors) behind Moyes’ assassination remain a mystery. But many Haitians say corruption, which intensified as billions of dollars flowed across the country, and the way earthquake aid focused power among a few hostile elites, were certainly factors that led to the president’s violent death.

However, at the same time, Haitian specialists who are not from Polyana say that while they agree that much foreign aid has worked in insidious ways to make matters worse, they also see where major progress has been made.

They say lessons have been learned. Perhaps the first is that when you replace “top down” with “take advantage,” conditions improve. In other words, international aid was more effective when it was designed to cooperate with Haitians and establish their ingenuity, know-how, and knowledge of the terrain than when it was delivered from above and designed to serve the interests of the donor country.

Back to Ms. Vanya: If, instead of just feeding her and her extended family, foreign aid agencies and NGOs take advantage of her resilience, willingness to serve, and local knowledge, the mountains of aid have a better chance of doing good.

Melanie Stetson Freeman / Staff / File

A schoolgirl makes her way around the debris of a fallen building in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in November 2010, about 10 months after the devastating earthquake. The influx of billions in international aid is seen as intensifying corruption in the country.

“I compare the kind of help that generally came to Haiti after the earthquake with a series of ‘aftershocks’ that led to further emptying of services and ministries, increased corruption, deteriorating security and, ironically, even increased violence against women,” says Mark Schuller, an anthropologist and Haitian expert. at Northern Illinois University and is also president of the Association for International Haitian Studies.

“But that’s not the whole story,” adds the author of “Killing With Kindness,” published in 2012, which tells how official development assistance and the work of NGOs often undermined Haiti’s progress.

Professor Schuller says: “When the human drive to do has been replaced by a focus on working with them, and when the approach is one that emphasizes coordination and cooperation with Haitians, it has shown that it can work.”

As examples of this kind of success, he cites the Spanish government aid agency that works closely with local utilities and health activists to provide water and sanitation to large camps for displaced people and to the capital’s poor Cité Sole district; USAID collaborates with local health agencies and advocates to tackle the HIV/AIDS crisis and reduce infection rates

Many experts stress how not only foreign governments have deepened Haiti’s problems through top-down intervention, but many major international NGOs have taken a similar approach that has devalued local expertise and contributed to the decline of the Haitian nation.

Studies have revealed, for example, that only 1% of foreign aid after the earthquake went to ministries or agencies of the Haitian government – while 99% went to NGOs. While some key ministries such as health were already out of service initially due to the earthquake, heavy reliance on international NGOs has only exacerbated Haiti’s deinstitutionalization, experts say.

“People cannot understand how Haiti deteriorated into such catastrophic conditions, but it is important to realize that the way foreign actors have interacted with Haiti really lacks basic humanity,” says Elie Abel, director of the Haiti Project and associate professor at the New York Global Justice Clinic. at the university.

What some organizations have learned over the past decade is that ultimately foreign participation is a factor of progress only if the guiding principle is cooperation, not “top-down, one-way streets,” she said.

In the Global Justice Clinic’s work with Haitian rights advocates supporting workers in the emerging mining industry, for example, Professor Abel says, “We start from the ground up that the people closest to the problem are in a better position to come up with solutions.”

Mary Knox Merrill / The Christian Science Monitor / File

Five days after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake caused massive destruction in Haiti in January 2010, life is beginning to return to normal at a bustling outdoor market in the Pétionville neighborhood of Port-au-Prince.

Many Haitian specialists say that the US focus on working with Haiti’s ruling elites – supporting and supporting Mr. Moyes even as he became increasingly dictatorial in the two years before his death and relied on the country’s violent gangs to stay in power – further weakened Haiti. .

Professor Schuller has little positive to say about US aid to Haiti, noting that it is aimed first and foremost at furthering US foreign policy interests: for example, he says, offering quick solutions that stabilize the population and avoid mass immigration by Haitians to USA. on the coasts, but it does little to meet Haiti’s long-term needs.

Many critics say the United States is compounding past mistakes by insisting that Haiti go to elections before the end of the year to fill the political power vacuum left by Mr. Moyes’ assassination.

“Free and fair elections are not possible in Haiti today, and the US doubling of elections will only perpetuate the problems that have accumulated under Moyes,” says Professor Hubble, who has lived in Haiti for six years.

At a congressional hearing last year, she said three main factors make hasty elections more of a problem than a solution: insecurity and increased gang control in recent years, an incomplete voter identification system, and a widespread lack of confidence in the legitimacy of elections.

Many Haitians and experts on the ground say elections any time soon are meaningless and could actually add to already high levels of violence, given several factors: Government branches are empty, and there are deep divisions over how to fill them; Before his death, Mr. Musi was ruling by decree. There is no functioning parliament; The chief justice died last month after being diagnosed with COVID-19.

Instead, many in Haitian civil society are calling for a transitional government to focus on urgent humanitarian needs and stabilization of Haitian society before national elections are held.

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Professor Abel advocates listening to the fledgling Commission for the Haitian Solution, a group of more than 100 civil, religious and labor organizations that calls on Haitian society to focus first on an inclusive national dialogue aimed at finding solutions to the country’s great problems.

“It would be a real effort to build consensus,” she says, “bringing all the actors in Haiti and based on that idea that those closest to problems are best suited to come up with solutions.”

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