'It's terrible to look at it this way, but out of crisis often comes real change'

ANALYSIS:Policymakers are trying to work out how to rebuild a corrupt and destitute country, writes ALEC MacGILLIS

EVEN AS rescuers are digging victims out of the rubble in Haiti, policymakers around the world are grappling with how a destitute, corrupt and now devastated country might be transformed into a self-sustaining nation.

Development efforts have failed there, decade after decade, leaving Haitians with a dysfunctional government, a high crime rate and incomes averaging $1 a day.

The levelled capital, Port-au- Prince, must be rebuilt, though, promising one of the largest economic development efforts ever undertaken in the hemisphere.

It will be an effort “measured in months and even years”, US president Barack Obama said on Saturday in an appeal for donations alongside former presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush. Those who will oversee it are thinking hard about how to use that money and attention to change the country forever.

“It’s terrible to look at it this way, but out of crisis often comes real change,” said C Ross Anthony, the Rand Corp’s global health director. “The people and the institutions take on the crisis and bring forth things they weren’t able to do in the past.”

The early thinking encompasses a broad swath of issues.

Policymakers in Washington are considering whether to expand controversial trade provisions for Haiti and how to help fund the reconstruction for years.

The rule of law needs to be strengthened, particularly on matters of immediate concern, such as property rights, inheritance issues and guardianship in hard-hit neighbourhoods.

Development officials agree the recovery effort must build up, not supplant, the Haitian government and civil society, starting with putting Haitian authorities at the centre of a single, clearly defined plan to rebuild Port-au-Prince and its environs in a far sturdier form.

“National disasters, as awful as they are, you want to seize those moments, use that awful, awful opportunity to strengthen the ability of national and local authorities to act for the benefit of their citizens,” said Jordan Ryan, assistant administrator of the UN Development Programme.

There is, to an extent, a development framework in place from efforts under way before the earthquake involving the Obama administration, the UN, a huge network of international aid groups and a Haitian government that, despite corruption, was viewed as more reliable than any in years.

The US budgeted $292 million (€203 million) in assistance to Haiti this year, including food aid, infrastructure funds and money to fight drug trafficking. Last year the Haitian economy grew by 2.5 per cent, despite the global recession.

Gerald Zarr, director of the US Agency for International Development in Haiti from 1986 to 1990, said even more must be done to involve the Haitian government. Too often, Zarr added, understandable distrust of local authorities has led the US and the UN to work mostly through the many aid groups in Haiti.

“Haiti’s going to have to change and, if they do, we ought to make a commitment to stick with the government of the day to keep the institutional development going.”

Others aren’t so sure. Putting more faith in Haitian authorities can be done only if there is a crackdown on corruption, said Stuart W Bowen jnr, who has witnessed the tension between local empowerment and wasted aid money as special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

The US has spent $800 million in Haiti in five years, he said, with little to show for it.

“Certainly, at this stage, the delivery of aid should be direct and not through the government,” he said, “and that process should be maintained for a while, until there is a sense of stability . . . to make sure that the government delivers the aid well.”

Because non-governmental organisations will play a central role for years, development veterans say, it will be up to the UN to ensure that their efforts are co-ordinated, as was done after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

William Loris, director general of the International Development Law Institute in Rome, points to the role of the rule of law.

“You’ve got to figure out what is the state of the rule of law in Haiti and what are the strategies for improving on it,” Loris said. “It’s really critical that this not get lost. You’re working on a mountain of injustices unless there’s justice at the bottom of the heap.”

The international community is already wrestling with one major factor hanging over Haiti’s economic future: its crushing foreign debt, which has required the nation to pay more than $50 million a year in debt service.

On this front, too, some progress had been made, with the International Monetary Fund announcing in July that Haiti’s reforms had qualified it for $1.2 billion in debt relief out of the more than $1.9 billion it owed.

On Friday, France contacted the Paris Club, the informal group of financial officials representing the world’s wealthiest nations, to discuss speeding up relief.

Creating a new economy will rest on more than sacks of food and aid dollars, which is why others say the US should revisit trade policies with Haiti.

In 2006, over the protest of American textile manufacturers, the US granted tariff exemptions to Haitian-made apparel and, after seeing middling results, in 2008 eased restrictions on using fabrics from certain low-cost countries. By 2009, more than two dozen Haitian companies employed 24,000 people making T-shirts, men’s suits and more.

James Roberts, a former US foreign service officer in Haiti now at the Heritage Foundation, has called for revisiting the “really destructive” US tariffs on sugar to encourage growers in Haiti.

Some experts say that the answer is a rice revival. Until the 1980s, Haiti grew almost all the rice that it ate but, in 1986, under pressure from foreign governments, including the US, Haiti removed its tariff on imported rice. By 2007, 75 per cent of the rice eaten in Haiti came from the US, according to Robert Maguire, a professor at Trinity Washington University.

The result in Haiti was a neglect of domestic agriculture that left many of the country’s farmers, still the majority of its population, unable to support themselves, fuelling waves of urban migration and environmental degradation.

No one is expecting controversial trade policies to be taken up overnight, but the broader rebuilding effort needs to begin as soon as the initial rescue is over, said Mark Schneider, a former USAid official now with the International Crisis Group.

"If you don't start it now, something will take the world's attention away from Haiti." – ( Washington Postservice)