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HAITI: Donors Exceed Aid Target, Debt Relief Next Goal, Group Says

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jul 20 2004 (IPS) - Donors have pledged 1.1 billion dollars – 160 million dollars more than requested – in new aid over the next two years to cover yawning gaps in Haiti’s budget, begin restoring basic services, and hopefully jumpstart the Americas’ poorest country after years of stagnation.

The announcement, which came at the end of a two-day pledging conference at World Bank headquarters here Tuesday, marked a significant success for both the conference sponsors, including the United Nations, the bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and for the government of interim President Gerard LaTortue.

”We are grateful to all those who have pledged”, said Haitian Finance and Economy Minister Henri Bazin at the concluding press conference. But he added that donors must ensure they will disburse the money effectively, so that it ”will allow us to do what we want in a timely fashion”.

That caution was echoed by Oxfam International, which praised the donors for offering more than had been expected but warned, ”Donors must now ensure their promises become reality – the aid pledged must not be delayed through bureaucracy, but immediately be delivered”.

Oxfam also complained that a significant portion of the pledges were for loans rather than grants, which ”will do nothing to ensure faster, deeper debt relief for Haiti, but, in fact push it into further, unsustainable debt”.

Other civil society groups stressed that the new government must do more to ensure grassroots organisations participate in Haiti’s rebuilding.

The country’s external debt currently totals more than 1.2 billion, almost five times the value of its total annual exports. World Bank Spokesperson Caroline Anstey told reporters after the meeting that the bank and others were considering a number of different ways in which both Haiti’s bilateral and multilateral debt might be reduced, but that no decisions had yet been made.

This week’s pledging conference followed a six-week process of meetings and consultations involving the government, the private sector, donors and representatives of Haitian civil society that resulted in a needs assessment, entitled the ‘Interim Cooperation Framework’ (ICF) that set specific targets for funding some 20 priority sectors between now and September 2006, some seven months after an elected government is supposed to take power.

Over the next two months, the ICF calls for the creation of 44,000 new jobs; the collection and disposal of 50 percent of the garbage that piled up in urban areas; the upgrading of 500 slum dwellings in the capital Port-au-Prince; and the doubling of the number of hours per day in which electricity is operating, to 12.

If those goals are met, the political credibility of the interim government – which was hastily installed after a U.S. government aircraft flew the last elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, into apparently involuntary exile at the end of February – may increase among some of Aristide’s supporters who have been alienated by both the manner in which he was forced out of the country and by the interim government’s refusal to date to bring any of them into positions of authority.

Aristide’s Lavalas Party, which is by far the largest in Haiti, has been particularly strong among the poor majorities of Port-au-Prince and other major cities, and a major challenge for the interim government, which is dominated by technocrats – some, like LaTortue, former international civil servants – and members of Haiti’s traditional elite, is to gain their confidence.

After Aristide’s exile, the United States, France and other nations sent peacekeeping troops, which were confined, mainly to Haiti’s urban areas, leaving much of the countryside in the hands of rebel forces and former members of the military that was abolished by Aristide in 1995.

As a result, many Lavalas leaders – who in many cases staffed the only governmental positions in their towns and villages – were forced to flee and have not been replaced. The U.S.-led force was replaced by a U.N.-authorised force headed by Brazil late last month, but it too has confined itself mainly to urban areas.

With an estimated per capita income of only 351 dollars in 2003, Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Half of the urban population has no access to safe water; life expectancy averages only 53 years; and the incidence of HIV/AIDS is estimated at five percent.

The World Bank and other donors clearly see LaTortue’s government, which will hold power until about two months after elections currently scheduled for December 2005, as a ”two-year window of opportunity to put in place some real social, political and economic reform”, as Anstey described it Tuesday.

But to implement such reforms and maintain a minimum of public support or acquiescence the government will need much more money from donors than Aristide, who resisted many of the reforms favoured by donors, received.

That is why both the government and the donors were pleased with the conference results. With 440 million dollars already committed from government receipts or existing projects, the ICF called for 924 million dollars in additional funds through September 2006.

The World Bank itself pledged 155 million dollars from its concessional arm, the International Development Association (IDA); the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), 260 million dollars; and the European Commission, 325 million dollars, all in grants.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell announced Washington would contribute 120 million dollars in new aid, while Canada pledged 135 million dollars. A number of European countries, led by France, which had worked closely with Washington in facilitating Aristide’s exile, also made new commitments on a bilateral basis.

World Bank and Haitian officials stressed they are committed to full participation of local communities and grassroots groups in both designing and implementing projects that will be funded by the assistance. Compliance will be overseen by a coordinating committee consisting of representatives of donors, the government and civil society, which will meet on a semi-annual basis.

Participation is a major concern of Oxfam and other development groups, however, who note the ICF process itself did not effectively engage local grassroots organisations, ”which often have the closest links to whole communities and their specific needs”. As a result, according to Oxfam, many local groups boycotted the donor conference.

Other NGO critics here were harsher in their assessments of the conference, accusing the ICF as having been designed primarily by the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) with almost no input from Haitians themselves.

”International donors are risking complete failure by putting money into the hands of an undemocratic, unconstitutional regime that has no legitimacy, and in a climate of impunity and rampant human rights abuses”, said Melinda Miles of the Quixote Centre.

Anstey, however, insisted the plan was ”very much a Haitian (plan), not a bank-driven or donor-driven plan”.

”This was a needs assessment which was completed in six weeks”, she said. ”We did as much as we could in a six-week period. As we go forward, there will be extensive consultations throughout the process”.