[CCIH-Haiti] Donors pledge $5.3 billion for Haiti reconstruction and transformation

[MartinRS at aol.com]

Donor governments and international institutions pledged generously at a  
Wednesday conference in New York to support the reconstruction and 
development  of Haiti. Here are reports from both the Washington Post and the New York 
Times  about the pledges which exceeded targets, but also expressing 
concerns about  whether the pledged amounts will actually be paid, and 
productively used.
 
 
$5.3 billion pledged over 2 years at U.N.  conference for Haiti 
reconstruction
 
By Mary Beth Sheridan and Colum Lynch, Washington Post Staff Writers,  
Thursday, April 1, 2010; A09 
 
UNITED NATIONS -- The international community pledged $5.3 billion  
Wednesday for earthquake-shattered Haiti over the next two years, launching an  
ambitious effort not just to rebuild the hemisphere's poorest nation but also 
to  transform it into a modern state. 
 
The amount exceeded by more than $1 billion the goal set ahead of a  
conference co-sponsored by the United Nations and the U.S. government. In all,  
countries, development banks and nongovernmental groups pledged nearly $10  
billion for Haiti in years to come. 
 
"This is the down payment Haiti needs for wholesale national renewal," said 
 U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. He emphasized, however, that donors 
must  deliver on the promises of cash, something they have sometimes been slow 
to do. 
 
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton noted that nearly 50 countries  
made pledges, twice as many as contributed to rebuilding the area hit by the  
2004 tsunami in South Asia. She announced $1.15 billion in U.S. funds for 
the  nation-building effort in Haiti. 
 
The reconstruction plan calls for building ports and hundreds of miles of  
new roads, resurrecting Haiti's withered agricultural sector, relocating 
people  from the crowded capital and establishing an efficient bureaucracy in a 
country  that never had one. 
 
Clinton warned that if the aid effort proves slow or uncoordinated, "the  
challenges that have plagued Haiti for years could erupt, with regional and  
global consequences." She evoked the possibilities of a stream of boat 
people,  increased drug trafficking and the spread of drug-resistant diseases. 
 
In the past two decades, billions of dollars in foreign aid have been sent  
to Haiti, with limited results. Money was stolen by corrupt Haitian 
bureaucrats  or wasted on uncoordinated projects by development organizations. 
 
The architects of the new Haitian nation-building effort -- including the  
U.S. government and international development institutions -- say they will 
try  to do things differently. 
 
The plan calls for an Interim Haiti Recovery Commission -- co-chaired by  
Haiti's prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, and former president Bill Clinton 
--  to oversee the reconstruction with the assistance of scores of foreign  
technocrats, including officials seconded by the U.S. government. It will al
so  have a watchdog office to discourage corruption. 
 
The commission, which is to be in place for 18 months, will provide a sort  
of scaffolding for the creation of a senior Haitian bureaucracy, officials 
said. 
 
Haiti's already-weak government was devastated by the Jan. 12 earthquake,  
which killed an estimated 17 percent of the country's civil servants and 
leveled  all but one of the ministry buildings. 
 
The donor conference, held in a wood-paneled hall at the United Nations,  
thrust the Clintons into perhaps their most prominent international role 
since  Bill Clinton's presidency. They both sat on the dais, flanking Ban and 
Haitian  President René Préval. 
 
The Clintons have taken a deep interest in Haiti since a post-wedding trip  
there in 1975. Haiti was high on Bill Clinton's foreign policy agenda when 
he  was president, with U.S. troops restoring Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the  
presidency after a coup. 
 
"My job in the next 18 months is going to be to try to connect the inside  
and outside forces in a way that maximizes the input and the impact of all 
the  players, [and] minimizes the frictions and transaction costs," Bill 
Clinton told  the U.N. gathering. 
 
The commission will work with a multi-donor trust fund administered by the  
World Bank that will raise and track funds for Haiti. The U.S. 
contribution,  which Congress must approve, is focused on four areas: agriculture; 
health;  security and governance; and infrastructure, particularly the 
development of  clean energy sources. 
 
It is unclear whether Washington will give any money directly to Haiti's  
government, whose tax revenue has dried up since the earthquake. Its leaders 
are  seeking $320 million this year to close a hole in its budget. 
 
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary 
 Fund, pleaded with countries to provide cash to the Haitian government, 
warning  that otherwise it would print money to pay its bills. That could send 
inflation  soaring and "will destroy all the forecasts we made today," 
Strauss-Kahn said. 
 
Congress has been leery about direct payments because of the Haitian  
government's history of corruption and dysfunction. 
 
*******************************************************
 
 
Skepticism on Pledges for  Haiti 
March 31, 2010, New York Times, By NEIL MacFARQUHAR 
UNITED NATIONS — An international effort to finance the reconstruction of  
Haiti attracted billions of dollars in pledges at a conference here on  
Wednesday, but the very size of the outpouring raised questions about whether  
the commitments would be met and how fast the financial support could help 
salve  the needs of the Haitian people.  
“Now it comes down to implementation,” said Ban Ki-moon, the United  
Nations secretary general. “We must make sure that Haiti gets the money it needs  
when it needs it.”  
The pledges, from 59 nations or international organizations, add up to  
nearly $5.3 billion over the next two years, and a total of $9.9 billion for  
three years or more, Mr. Ban said. It was unclear how much of that 
constituted  new money and how much had been allocated before, but Haiti itself had 
sought  initial pledges of $3.9 billion, and Mr. Ban set the target at $11.5 
billion  over the next decade.  
The United States was among the largest single donors, with Secretary of  
State Hillary Rodham Clinton committing to $1.15 billion on top of the more 
than  $900 million already spent.  
“Aid is important, but aid has never saved a country,” Mrs. Clinton said,  
noting that the Haitians would have to do the work with the help of the  
international community.  
Haitians remain skeptical because millions of dollars were pledged in the  
past for hurricane relief, but only a fraction was actually paid.  
Donors said the scale of this disaster — a magnitude-7 earthquake that  
flattened Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas on Jan. 12 — was different.  
“All those others did not come after an earthquake, an earthquake that  was 
a shocking and brutal event for the rest of the world,” said Bernard  
Kouchner, the French foreign minister, in an interview. Indeed, some of the  
smaller pledges came from far-flung countries like Mali, which said it would  
give $200,000, and Montenegro, which pledged $10,000.  
Yet anger mounts among Haitians who hear about billions in aid while  
hundreds of thousands of them still struggle for earthquake relief.  
Georges B. Sassine, a Haitian businessman with a delegation presenting  its 
own reconstruction plan, said that his countrymen were waiting to hear that 
 things were moving, that “x, y and z are going to start now.” It was a 
message  echoed by members of the Haitian diaspora, nongovernmental 
organizations and  others, a cross section of society allowed to address the 
gathering; even for a  United Nations conference, it was a wide array.  
The money is supposed to be funneled into a multinational fund supervised  
by the World Bank, and then doled out through projects agreed to by an 
interim  reconstruction commission consisting of Haitians and the largest donors. 
Former  President Bill Clinton and the Haitian prime minister, Jean-Max 
Bellerive, are  to lead the commission.  
Aid experts point to the lack of adequate shelter, a critical issue for  
safety and public health, as a sign that the sluggish aid response in some  
sectors must speed up, particularly as hurricane season approaches.  
“There is mud and dirt everywhere, and a plastic sheet and a tarp is not  
going to do it,” said William G. O’Neill, a Haiti expert at the Social 
Science  Research Council in New York and a periodic consultant for the United 
Nations  mission. “That just didn’t sink in for some reason.” Donors should 
have started  shipping temporary houses months ago, he said.  
The speed at which the world’s attention can shift was underscored at a  
news conference by a sudden raft of questions about possible new Security  
Council negotiations over Iran sanctions.  
Despairing the change in focus, Haiti’s president, René Préval, cracked,  “
Do I need to develop a nuclear program for Haiti so that we come back to  
talking about Haiti?” 
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