NIGEL FISHER ADDRESSES THE PRESS ON PROGESS IN HAITI

As we approach the second anniversary of the 12 January 2010 earthquake, I would like to address the dominant narrative of failure and lack of progress in Haiti that is widely prevalent.

In this introduction I will look at the context of earthquake and impact of the cholera epidemic – and at the progress made as well as the tremendous challenges still facing the country and people of Haiti.

For Haitians, 2010 will long be remembered as the year of multiple crises – the year of the earthquake and the displacement of 2.3 million people; the year of the cholera epidemic; a year of political instability and election-related challenges.

But beyond these images, the devastating impact of the 2010 crises further highlighted decades of chronic political instability lack of basic social services and economic opportunities that left so many Haitians in deep poverty and chronic vulnerability.

The Haiti Recovery Fund    One way to gauge the performance of the HRF is to compare the contributions received and its approval and funds disbursement performance to that of other post-disaster and post-conflict multi-donor trust funds.  When comparing the performance of seven such funds after their first year of operation with the performance of the HRF in this regard, we note that the HRF – with US$335 million -received the largest sum of funding for its forts year of operation, outranked only by the Iraq Reconstruction Fund.  By the nd of its first year, the HRF Steering Committee had allocated 71 percent of the total funds received. Only the Iraq and East Timor Trust Funds had a faster approval rate. Although in terms of disbursements neither performed as well as the HRF, which ranks third in terms of project disbursements in the first year of operations with 14 percent of approved funds disbursed to recipients. [Text from HRF 2010 progress report]

Before January 12, 2010, Haiti was already the poorest country in the Southern hemisphere:

• 75% of Haitians earned less than $2 a day
• 70% did not have stable jobs
• 85% of schools and hospitals were private, charging much more than the average Haitian could afford to pay. This resulted in more than 50% of children being denied an education.
• The great majority of the population (70-80 %) had no access to electricity and relied on charcoal and wood for cooking.
• Only 5% of the roads were in good condition.

The earthquake exacerbated pre-existing levels of extreme vulnerability. It also severely affected the response capacity of the Government of Haiti and its partners: the government lost thousands of civil servants and most of its key infrastructure was destroyed. 102 United Nations personnel perished and many more suffered terrible personal losses.

Despite these very difficult circumstances, the humanitarian response was one of the largest ever mounted and continues to help survivors of this tragedy – the most destructive urban natural disaster in recent history – rebuild their lives and their country.

A number of large-scale recovery projects were launched in 2010 and many more in 2011, and their impact is starting to be visible. 

Some numbers:

Post-earthquake displacement:  Public sector bilateral and multilateral donors have committed or disbursed approx $2.4 billion for the humanitarian response to the January 2010 earthquake, the cholera epidemic, hurricane and storm preparedness and response, and the food insecurity facing the most vulnerable Haitians.

In July 2010, there were 1.5 million Haitians sheltered in camps, regularly provided with clean water, food, medical care. Many of them had access to latrines for the first time.

• Today there are under 550,000 people left in camps – a drop of 2/3, which represents real progress.

But still a huge caseload. As  housing and resettlement programmes accelerate, many hundreds of thousands of camp dwellers still have life-saving needs at a time when humanitarian funding is decreasing and too many partners are closing essential operations – cleaning latrines and waste removal from camps, for example – as their funding runs out.

Cholera: As you know, more than 6,700 Haitians have succumbed to the cholera epidemic so far and  almost 500,000 have been infected.

If we can take any encouragement, it is that:

• National cholera response and alert systems are now in place in a country that had no such infrastructure before the cholera outbreak.
• The monthly case load has dropped from a 84,000 high in November 2010, to 19,000 in April of this year, to 13,500 in October.
• The case fatality rate has also dropped markedly, to just over 1% today. This still has to be brought down further.

The epidemic will continue into next year, albeit at a reduced rate and resources will continue to be needed for prevention, treatment and longer term measures to improve water supply protection and sanitation. 

Early recovery and development

At the New York Conference, held on March 31, 2010, 55 public sector donors made pledges in support of the Government of Haiti’s Action Plan for Recovery and Development to the amount of $4.60 billion in aid for Haiti in 2010 and 2011 (in addition to approximately USD 1 billion in debt forgiveness).

• To date, 88 percent of these funds – that’s about $4 billion – have been either disbursed (43 per cent) or committed to specific programmes and projects (45 per cent).  

This is a lot of money in Haiti, a country with an estimated GDP in the 2010/11 fiscal year of $8.6 billion.

I would like to put it into some kind of context: $4.6 billion promised for two years, for the poorest country in the hemisphere, a country of almost 10 million people, which requires regeneration on every front.  $4.6 billion over two years. Let’s average that out to an annual $2.3 billion average.

New York City has a population of 19.4 million – about twice that of Haiti. What is the New York City operating budget for 2012? It is $69.5 billion – exactly 30 times more than that annual $2.3 billion average committed to Haiti. 

There has been much criticism of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission about what it has not done. But what has it done?

During the first 18 months of its mandate (April 2010-October 2011), the IHRC approved 89 priority projects – for a total budget of $3.2 billion, covering key priority sectors, such as transport and infrastructure, public administration, debris removal, education, energy, health, housing and urban development, job creation, water and sanitation and cross-sectoral projects.  More are in the pipeline.

There has been uncertainty about the future of the Commission, but last Friday both President Martelly and PM Conille made clear their desire to renew the mandate and to work with parliament to do so.

Recovery/development examples

It is a myth that no reconstruction has take place in Haiti. A number of key reconstruction projects are underway.

> Just yesterday, the Northern industrial park project was launched. There is already sufficient investment in place to assure 20,000 new jobs and with additional investment now being sought, the aim is to increase this to 60,000 jobs.

> President Martelly’s new Investment Commission is also seeking to tackle the legal and bureaucratic impediments that currently make investment in Haiti so difficult.

> More than 400,000 people have been employed in labour-intensive jobs, including rubble removal, irrigation works and and community infrastructure development.

If we look at housing:

• Post-earthquake, nearly 414,000 houses have been subject to damage assessment.
• More than 21,000 houses have been repaired.
• Almost 100,000 transitional shelters have been built, with another 11,000 on track to be completed in December. This means that in 2011, almost 7,000 transitional shelters a month have been completed, building on the 31,000 completed by end-December 2010, one year after the earthquake.
• If I can make a comparison: in Aceh, one year after the tsunami, just over 6,000 transitional shelters had been built – compared with 31,000 in the first year in Haiti.

How about debris removal?

• Much earthquake debris remains. BUT, almost 50% of it has now been cleared – that means 5 million cubic metres of debris have gone.  That is much faster than the rate of removal of debris at the World Trade Centre site after 9/11. 
• Again, compare with Aceh: there, it took five and a half years to remove 1.3 cubic metres of debris and waste.

Road infrastructure:

In a small country, 200km from north to south and from east to west, with hardly 5% of its roads covered in hard top before the earthquake, some 430 kms of roads have already been constructed or rehabilitated since the earthquake, necessary infrastructure for economic recovery.

Education:

Only half of Haiti’s children were in primary school before the earthquake – that’s about 1 million children. Already there are now more children in Haitian schools than before the earthquake, and the ongoing “Back to School Campaign” aims to push the numbers up even more. 

• 1.1. million school children are receiving a midday meal every day.

• Over 650 schools have been repaired.
• 75% of children of families still living in the camps are going to school – that’s higher than the national average, and these children are from the poorest families.

Important efforts in the health sector are enabling the reconstruction of dozens of hospitals and health centres and training of medical personnel.

Agricultural production increased in 2010 and again in 2011; new agricultural credit facilities and micro loans are reaching tens of thousands of rural Haitians.

…..

I could go on, but my point is: however justified criticism is that aid disbursement is slow or that reconstruction should be moving faster – and it will never be fast enough for Haiti’s long-suffering population – the narrative of failure and lack of progress goes too far.

And bear in mind that what we face in Haiti today is not just a task of rebuilding after a major earthquake. It is about rebuilding an entire country whose basic economic and social infrastructure was effectively broken well before the earthquake – I gave you the data at the outset.

Some last comparisons again:

The 7.2 magnitude Kobe earthquake in Japan in 1995 claimed the lives of 6,400 and left 300,000 homeless. With all the resources available in Japan, it still took seven years for the population, income levels and industrial sector of Kobe to recover to pre-earthquake levels.

In 1998, Hurricane Mitch took the lives of an estimated 8,000 people. It took approximately four to five years for full recovery in the various countries affected, countries much more well-endowed than Haiti, Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere, is starting from a much lower base than any of these countries.

In closing, let me make my point again:

Of course Haiti faces enormous challenges today – of improving governance and public sector reform, of developing its social infrastructure, of housing, of strengthening its police force and rule of law institutions, of economic growth and job creation, of creating better conditions for investment, of cholera, continued displacement and food insecurity.  

But to suggest that no progress is being made is to paint a false picture.

It creates a narrative of failure which will drive attention and support away from Haiti at a critical time – still possible a turning point – in its history.

We cannot give up on Haiti.

Thank you.