What Can Be Done to Build a More Resilient

Haitian State?

Charles RiesFUNGLOBE, Santo Domingo

April 7, 2011

Haiti Briefing 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

Haiti Briefing 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

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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

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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

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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

Haiti Briefing 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

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Criteria for Recommendations

• Highest priorities

• Achievable within 3–5 years

• Fiscally sustainable

• Commensurate with administrative capacity

• Mutually coherent

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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

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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

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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

Haiti Briefing 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

Haiti Briefing 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

Haiti Briefing 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

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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

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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

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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

Haiti Briefing 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

Haiti Briefing 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

Haiti Briefing 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

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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

Haiti Briefing 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

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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

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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

Haiti Briefing 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