Some of the advice for how Haiti
ought to rebuild after the earthquake sounds hauntingly familiar. There
are echoes of the same bad development advice Haiti has received for
decades, even before the nation faced its current devastating situation.
To avoid repeating past failures, we would be wise to review how
previous aid models led down the wrong path.
Twelve years ago, Grassroots International released a study entitled "Feeding
Dependency, Starving Democracy: USAID Policies in Haiti." Offering
an in-depth examination of USAID development policies in Haiti, the
study concluded that official aid actually damaged the very aspects of
Haitian society it was allegedly trying to fix. The aid was undermining
democracy and creating too much dependency.
The study was particularly critical of the development community for
making Haiti into a net food importer when it had been nearly
self-sufficient and, in fact, a major rice producer. Despite, or because
of, years of aid programs and structural adjustment policies imposed by
international financial institutions and donor countries, the study
found that Haiti's food dependency was actually increasing. This
disturbing result was partially caused by subsidized food aid programs
that fed transnational agribusiness corporations but didn't help
Haitians grow food for their families.
Sadly, much of that 12-year-old study could have been written today.
Making Matters Worse
As recently as 2007, a USAID agronomist told Grassroots International
that Haiti's small farm sector simply had no future. This was a callous
prognosis for the nation's three million-plus small farmers (out of a
population of 9 million). In a nutshell, USAID's plan for Haiti and many
other poor countries is to push farmers out of subsistence agriculture
as quickly as possible. Farmers that might otherwise be supported to
grow food are frequently engaged as laborers in work-for-food programs.
Rather than pursue innovative programs to keep rural food markets local
and support food sovereignty, misguided aid programs encourage farmers
to grow higher-value export crops such as cashews, coffee, and, more
recently, jatropha for agrofuels.
USAID policies seek to make optimum use of Haiti's "comparative
advantage" - namely, its abundant cheap labor - by funneling displaced
farmers into low-wage assembly plants in the cities or near the border
with the Dominican Republic, a strategy critically examined in the FPIF
article Sweatshops
Won't Save Haiti. Among other consequences, this strategy is
resulting in staggering levels of rural-to-urban migration, leading to
dangerous overcrowding of Port-au-Prince. Passed by the U.S. Congress in
2006, programs such as the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity Through
Partnership Encouragement Act (HOPE) have lured transnational companies
to Haiti with offers of no-tariff exports on textiles assembled in
Haitian factories to capitalize on this pool of laborers.
Export-driven aid and development policies were a bad idea before the
earthquake; they are a terrible idea now. Development agencies
currently face a choice. In the name of rebuilding Haiti, will USAID and
other large donor and aid agencies pursue this same formula over the
coming years? Or will they take a different tack that puts Haiti's
vibrant network of civil society organizations at the center of
rebuilding efforts?
Development Rut
The record of the last dozen years is not a pretty one. Food aid in
Haiti rose steadily from 16,000 metric tons of imported rice in 1980 to
more than 270,000 metric tons by 2004. This 17-fold increase is one
example of the shift from at least partial food self-reliance to almost
total food dependency. The main cause of this shift was international
development policies that emphasized free trade and export agriculture
over food sovereignty.
The impact of misguided USAID and other development policies also
produced significant rural-to-urban migration (nearly 4.5 percent
annually), as displaced farmers flocked to the cities in search of work
in the assembly plant/maquila sector. Despite the promises of
the HOPE initiatives, unemployed farmers found far fewer jobs than
imagined and at even lower wages than hoped. Worldwide competition for
these assembly plants remains fierce, and many investors have found more
attractive places than Haiti to set up shop. Casting further gloom on
this sector is the current slowdown in the global economy. Fewer
assembly plants may be necessary, and the destruction of Haiti's
infrastructure makes it unlikely that plants would relocate there.
In the period from 2003-2009, Haiti's foreign debt rose from $1.2 to
$1.5 billion. International lenders insisted on balancing budgets even
if that meant cutting essential social services. During almost the same
period, the United Nations stationed a force of 6,000-9,000 peacekeepers
in Haiti known by its acronym, MINUSTAH. These peace-keepers have
received mixed reports. Even before the earthquake many Haitians
described their situation as a military occupation. The Platform of
Haitian Human Rights Organizations (POHDH), a Grassroots International
partner, has documented numerous human rights abuses by MINUSTAH
personnel. A cautionary note about current militarized aid comes from
wary Haitians quoted in the media: "We asked for 10,000 doctors and
nurses; we got 10,000 soldiers." Some post-earthquake development plans
rely on continued foreign troop presence, raising concerns about ongoing
dependency and social unrest.
Haiti's ecology continues to deteriorate, demonstrated by the
tremendous loss of life and soil in recent hurricanes. Forests barely
cover 2 percent of Haitian territory. Between 1990 and 2000, the UNDP
reports that natural forest cover declined by 50 percent. Misguided
development policies and practices can turn natural disasters like
hurricanes and earthquakes into humanitarian catastrophes. An already
weakened government that had privatized everything from building roads
to teaching children has found itself ill-equipped to emerge from
natural shocks. Bad policies have also undermined the ability of
Haitians to overcome the spike in food prices in 2008, when many hungry
families rebelled. Policies advancing food sovereignty are few, although
we note the Herculean work of many Haitian popular and nongovernmental
organizations in strengthening the ability of Haitian small farmers to
grow food for their families and local markets.
There are other hopeful signs. While many aspects of Haiti's reality
have stayed the same since Grassroots International published Feeding
Dependency, Starving Democracy in 1998, others have changed for
the better. Some aid agencies, such as CARE, took to heart many of the
findings in the study and altered the way they provide aid. For example,
in 2007 CARE gave up $45 million in annual federal funding because, as
it said, "American food aid is not only plagued with
inefficiencies, but also may hurt some of the very poor people it aims
to help." Others expanded partnerships with Haitian social movements and
utilized local expertise to inform their programs.
Holistic Alternatives
Camille Chalmers of Grassroots International's partner, the Haitian
Platform to Advocate Alternative Development (PAPDA), suggests concrete
ways to turn around the appalling performance of international aid. Most
fundamentally, instead of traditional agency-to-agency aid that turns
Haitians into "aid recipients," earthquake rebuilding needs to be a
people-to-people effort that transforms Haitians into protagonists of
their recovery.
Chalmers notes that this reconstruction can't be conceived of as
simply rebuilding damaged physical infrastructures. He suggests, for
example, working holistically to overcome the 45 percent illiteracy rate
through an effective and free public school system that respects the
history, culture, and ecosystems of Haiti. A new public health system is
essential to bring together modern and traditional medicine and offer
quality, affordable primary services to all of the population.
Sustainable development is dead in the water without reversing the
environmental crisis and replenishing Haiti's depleted watersheds.
Likewise, Haiti's damaged soil is begging for models of agroecology and
food sovereignty, based on comprehensive agrarian reforms that respect
ecosystems, biodiversity, and the needs and culture of small farmers.
The reconstruction of a new capital city has to be based on a
different logic. The Port-au-Prince that emerges from the ruins should
feature public transportation, biodiverse public parks, urban
agriculture, and popular arts. Such a humane and balanced urbanization
should respect ordinary workers and vendors as true wealth creators,
And finally, recommends Chalmers, Haiti must once and for all cut its
ties of dependency with Washington, the European Union, and others.
Development policies based on the "Washington Consensus" ought to be
abandoned, including militarized aid such as the MINUSTAH soldiers. True
peacekeepers, in the form of people-to-people solidarity brigades,
would instead be a great help.
A holistic rehabilitation and development plan of this nature will
require much more than money. It would require a reversal of policies
that run counter to healthy, sustainable development. The Haitian
government should resist outside efforts to pry open the economy to
imports and to balance Haiti's budget by cutting health and education
spending. In the agricultural sector, Haiti needs to emphasize
environmentally friendly food sovereignty so that Haitian families can
eat food they grow in fields that hold soil. A virtuous circle of
support can allow both the governmental and non-governmental sectors to
grow strong together.
Most importantly, this work must be led by Haitians themselves. To
keep the development industry honest and advocate for exactly this kind
of long-term, holistic aid grassroots organizations must steer Haiti's
development agenda through the challenging decades ahead. Only then will
Haiti fully escape its impoverishing dependency and build a strong
democracy.
Foreign Policy in Focus