Brook­ings Institution

In a pre­sen­ta­tion to the National Coun­cil of Churches’ work­ing group on Haiti, Eliz­a­beth Fer­ris out­lines why the recov­ery and recon­struc­tion efforts since the Jan­u­ary 2010 earth­quake have been dis­a­point­ing, and points out what needs to be done to improve the sit­u­a­tion mov­ing forward.

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Thanks for the oppor­tu­nity to be with you today to talk about your efforts to sup­port recov­ery and recon­struc­tion from the dev­as­ta­tion of the 12 Jan­u­ary 2010 earth­quake. You’ve asked me to give a short overview of some of the burn­ing issues in the recov­ery effort to serve as back­ground to your devel­op­ment of advo­cacy strate­gies both in the United States and in Haiti.

In a nut­shell: the recov­ery process is not going well and recon­struc­tion has barely started. Too many peo­ple are con­tin­u­ing to live in extremely pre­car­i­ous con­di­tions. About 1.3 mil­lion dis­placed per­sons are liv­ing under tents and tarps in about 1300 set­tle­ment sites. On the finan­cial side, more than seven months after the earth­quake, the 22 top donors from the Haiti Donor’s con­fer­ence who pledged $5.997 bil­lion for 2010 and 2011 had dis­bursed $538.3 mil­lion by August, about 20% of the amount for 2010 and less than 10% of the total amount pledged for the first two years. And the Haiti Recon­struc­tion Fund has so far only received $66.8 mil­lion. After every major dis­as­ter, there is a gap between the amounts pledged and the amounts actu­ally received, but the gap is par­tic­u­larly large in the case of Haiti. The sheer scale of the dam­age and the unprece­dented flood of funds in the days fol­low­ing the earth­quake gave rise to a hope that this time the recov­ery effort could move more quickly. But not only has that not hap­pened, the recov­ery efforts on the ground have been slower than usual – slower than for the 2004 tsunami or the 2005 Pak­istan effort.

Why are things mov­ing so slowly in Haiti?  The polit­i­cal will of the donors seems to be high and the UN and NGOs have sent expe­ri­enced and skilled staff to the coun­try, but par­tic­u­lar dif­fi­cul­ties in four areas are imped­ing Haiti’s recov­ery: gov­er­nance, dis­place­ment, hous­ing and vio­lence.   Prob­lems in these four areas didn’t sud­denly emerge after the earth­quake – rather they are rooted in Haiti’s his­tory.  While they are par­tic­u­larly cru­cial now, they have always been prob­lems.  The four chal­lenges are all inter-related – when peo­ple are dis­placed, it makes it harder for them to vote; poor hous­ing con­tributes to vio­lence, etc.  Unfor­tu­nately, there are no easy solu­tions to any of them.

http://www.brookings.edu/speeches/2010/0909_haiti_recovery_ferris.aspx