What Was Haiti Like Before the Earthquake?

1. What Can Be Done to Build a More Resilient Haitian State?Charles RiesFUNGLOBE, Santo DomingoApril 7, 2011

2. What Was Haiti Like Before the Earthquake? • Poorest country in Hemisphere • More than half the population lives on less than $1 per day • Per-capita GDP down 1/3 in past 30 years • Wide income inequality and rural–urban disparities • Difficulties finding common ground • Historically predatory state • Fragile democracy • Fractious political system • Weak parties • Resistance to change across political spectrum

3. The January 2010 Earthquake Was Devastating • Hit the most densely populated regions • Killed about 250,000, injured 300,000, and left 1.3 million homeless • Severely damaged infrastructure • Acute problems layered on chronic ones

4. Earthquake Exposed Underlying Weaknesses • Poor governance largely responsible for severity of devastation • Lack of capacity to plan against, prepare for, and respond to likely disasters • Lack of systems and resources to facilitate rebuilding

5. Haiti Does Have Advantages to Draw On • Unlike other fragile states: • Not part of troubled region • No intractable ethnic or other structural divides • Large, skilled, economically supportive diaspora nearby in North America • Preferential access to U.S. market • Improved political stability and modest economic growth in recent years

6. Haiti Does Have Advantages to Draw On • Unlike other fragile states: • Not part of troubled region • No intractable ethnic or other structural divides • Large, skilled, economically supportive diaspora nearby in North America • Preferential access to U.S. market • Improved political stability and modest economic growth in recent years But Haiti’s government has been unable to develop and implement effective plans and policies

7. RAND Study Addresses Strategic Planning Gap • Designed to help Haiti as it plans policy and institutional reforms, and international donor community as it determines how to support Haiti • Determined core state functions and public services requiring improvement • Governance and public administration • Justice and security • Economic policy and infrastructure • Education and health care • Donor cooperation • Identified main challenges • Evaluated plans since 2004 to strengthen institutions and improve public services, and prior efforts to address problems

8. Criteria for Recommendations • Highest priorities • Achievable within 3–5 years • Fiscally sustainable • Commensurate with administrative capacity • Mutually coherent

9. Summary of Overarching Findings • Haitian government and donors need to prioritize • Current plans are too ambitious and wide-ranging • A more narrow, focused, coherent set of priorities is more likely to be realized

10. What Are the Governance and Public Administration Challenges? • State effectiveness constrained by: • Limited financial resources • Inadequate human resources • Lack of management systems • Challenges cut across all government activities • Some changes require legislation and constitutional amendments • Need better functioning political bodies

11. Recommendations for Governance and Public Administration • Give civil service reform highest priority • Establish standards and procedures for hiring and firing • Create system for merit-based promotions • Provide incentives for good performance • Provide enough donor funding to implement reformulated strategy for administrative reform • Major donors should use influence to promote political reforms

12. What Are the Justice Challenges? • Lack of management systems • Laws not applied • Prison conditions horrific • About 80% of prisoners in pre-trial detention • Relations between Haiti National Police (HNP) and prosecutors and judges poor • Post-quake rise in property disputes and no means to resolve

13. Recommendations for Justice • Create and implement comprehensive system for managing cases that links police, prosecutors, judges, and prisons • Create special pretrial detainee review mechanism to resolve large number of cases of illegally prolonged detention • Establish a property-dispute resolution mechanism • Expeditiously complete system for registering births, deaths, and providing identity cards

14. What Are the Security Challenges? • Volatility and limited ability of state to assert authority • Lack of consistent government commitment to police reform • Low level of institutional development in HNP • Progress has been made • Recruiting, training, vetting • But HNP still unable to respond to internal security threats without external assistance

15. Recommendations for Security • Continue to place high priority on ensuring public security • Precondition for recovery • Keep UN peacekeepers for at least next five years • Reduce international military, police presence gradually • Focus on building HNP administrative capacity • Need resilient police organization, not just more officers

16. What Are the Economic Policy Challenges? • Primary economic challenge is generating economic growth • Per-capita GDP less than 1/4th the average for Latin America and Caribbean • Haiti is poor in great part because of the difficulty of doing business • Business registration process one of most complex and lengthy in world . . . and relatively costly • Registering changes in title for property is even more onerous

17. Recommendations for Economic Policy • Streamline tax system • Eliminate “nuisance” taxes that raise little revenue, such as the business license tax • Create basis for increasing tax revenues in future as economy recovers: increase property taxes; expand VAT • Eliminate business regulations that retard expansion • Implement “one-stop,” simplified registration procedures for businesses • Eliminate notary fees on property transactions • Accelerate process of transferring title

18. What Are the Housing and Infrastructure Challenges? • Only about 30,000 transitional shelters built • Many people likely to remain in tent cities through 2011 • About 5% of rubble removed • Poor infrastructure an obstacle to economic growth and public well-being • Policies constrain container port capacity • 13% of national budget for electric power subsidies

19. Recommendations for Housing and Infrastructure • Accelerate removal of rubble • Eliminate restrictions on the operations of private container ports • Ensure electric power availability for businesses and homes through: • Full cost-recovery pricing • Decentralized distribution, billing, and collection

20. What Are the Education Challenges? • Government does not provide universal education • Most children attend parochial or private schools • Schools often poor quality • No oversight, quality control • Education is expensive • Enrollment rates, levels of educational attainment low • 2008 hurricanes and 2010 earthquake exacerbated weaknesses • More than 80% of school buildings in Port-au-Prince destroyed

21. Recommendations for Education • Government should focus on regulating, not providing, education • Subsidize private-school teacher wages so they are on par with those of public-school teachers • Help close gap in quality between private and public schools • Subsidies should be conditioned on school being accredited and charging minimal fees • Help expand access

22. What Are the Health Care Challenges? • ~40% of Haitians, particularly in rural areas, lack access to health care • Many health care facilities have old or broken equipment • Lack of doctors and nurses • Prior to earthquake, health sector received largest amount of foreign aid • Government failed to coordinate, regulate, and oversee plans and activities of donors and NGOs

23. Recommendations for Health Care • Government should focus on ensuring quality of and access to health care, not providing health care • Shift operation of state-run health centers and hospitals to NGOs and other private institutions • Government should use performance-based contracting to ensure more equitable provision of health services

24. What Are the Donor Cooperation Challenges? • Earthquake triggered massive increase in promised resources • $10 billion pledged, including $5 billion short term • Many donors, large sums of money present significant administrative burden for government • Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) created to manage aid flow • Slow start • Unclear whether IHRC will succeed in shaping donor priorities

25. Recommendations for Donor Cooperation • Make IHRC effective by agreeing all major donors will: • Submit project concepts to IHRC for coordination • Adapt them according to Haiti’s and other donors’ plans and preferences • Strongly support Multi-Donor Trust Fund • Encourage NGOs to support state-building • Coordinate donor political engagement