Norton High on Haiti's Plans for Decentralization but Sees Failure to Link NGO's to Ministries

Norton High on Haiti's Plans for Decentralization but Sees Failure to Link NGOs to Haiti's Ministries

Washington, D.C. - Back from a trip to Haiti, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said that she found Haitians energetically digging their way out of the earthquake rubble; President Preval placing a top priority on education but faced with a $320 million budget deficit and no revenue to fill the gap; and the government bureaucracy estranged from the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), who are leading the recovery efforts there. Haiti's budget is $1 billion.

In Port-au-Prince last week, Norton and Senators Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) met with President Rene Preval and First Lady Elizabeth Preval in a small, newly constructed building near the collapsed Grand Palace, where Norton had met with Preval as a member of a Congressional Black Caucus delegation that visited Haiti in 2008. The two senators and Norton also met with members of the Ministry of Social Affairs, including Minister Yves Cristallin, and NGO staff. They later visited a crowded orphanage. The following is Norton's essay conveying her impressions of her visit to Haiti.

Notes from Haiti

"The situation of poor people in Haiti is critical," President Preval told us. The President said that his priorities are education, health care, and jobs for Haitians where they live. In a departure from past developments, he said that the country's development plan focuses on decentralization, rather than on rebuilding by concentrating services in the capital.

Some in the delegation were particularly interested in adoption and learned that a small adoption backlog was cleared by the U.S. within five days after the earthquake and that 700 children have been granted humanitarian parole to complete adoptions in the U.S. President Preval appeared more interested in education and in providing for the greater number of children in Haiti. Elizabeth Preval, who was educated at George Washington University here, said that improvements in education translate into well-being for the country. Preval told of two children he had "adopted" after they approached him on the streets. He ended up "adopting" one of the boy's mother too. His point was that many children who need help have parents. The other was a seven-year-old who was working to support his mother and siblings.

Education appears central to Preval's view of development. He believes that education will empower Haitians to rebuild their own country. The president said that many think of development as "roads or electricity," but it is people who must support development. Yet, in Haiti, there is no universal public education. Almost 80 percent of the schools are private and of very poor quality. For children who go to school, half of a family's budget will go for education. Today only 600,000 Haitian children out of 3 million get some education. However, Preval believes that schooling is so important to Haitian families that placing schools throughout the country will be the critical factor in his plans for decentralization, away from crowded Port-au-Prince. Half the schools in Port-au-Prince were destroyed by the earthquake.

Preval believes that building schools can jump-start reconstruction itself. Thus, a decentralized school system could not only be key to decentralization, but also to establishing universal education and rebuilding the country. Yet, even if schools were built immediately, there would not be enough teachers. Only a small number of qualified teachers serve in a very few elite schools. Many teachers have the equivalent of a seventh grade education. It occurred to me that a teachers-without-borders, patterned after doctors-without-borders, might be a way to quickly staff schools with people willing to teach.

***

The meeting with the Ministry of Social Affairs was especially revealing. Minister Yves Cristallin was unusually candid about the failure to build capacity within government as NGOs lead recovery. He said that nothing was being done to provide social services, that social services were held in "contempt", and that only three percent of Haitians had any social insurance. There is no retirement, and old people must get along as best they can.

UNICEF, OAS, and other international organizations are trying to identify children and reunite them with their families, but the Minister complained that each international organization wants to do things its way and they repeat one another's efforts. For example, "they ask the same questions of Haitians instead of forming a task force or using one form." Each Haitian needs identification documents. Later, I was told by a USAID staff person that complaints about failure of NGOs engaged in recovery to work alongside the Haitian government are widespread. At the same time, the government lacks personnel and capacity of its own to assist the international organizations.

In the end, however, Haitians must be engaged in rebuilding Haiti if they are to operate their own reconstructed government. NGOs are filling an immediate and vital need. However, one of the most important insights from the visit is the necessity to build Haiti's government capacity, as well. The best hope for ending the estrangement of the Ministry from NGOs, who are giving necessary assistance, may lie in the leadership of former President Clinton, who, I believe, would understand this issue. I intend to write him and send along this report.

***

We asked to be taken to an orphanage that would reflect the conditions of orphaned children in post-earthquake Haiti. The most heartrending part of the trip was our visit to Rosa Mina Orphanage - heartrending because the children, from infants to about 10-years-old, seemed happy and anxious to engage us - despite hot and stifling conditions. Small children initiated "high fives" with us and rushed to be picked up. A woman held a two-year-old, who could not hold his head up, as if he were an infant, but she felt that with help, his late stage development could be corrected. The situation of children, whether fortunate enough to be in a crowded orphanage or on the streets, appears desperate.

***

There was reason to believe that Haiti was finally, if slowly, on its way when I visited in 2008. Since then, HOPE III giving Haitians preference to import apparel here, has given rise to factories, some of which survived.

The effects of the setback from the earthquake are palpable, but the people are engaged and hopeful. Focus on children is a humanitarian imperative. Preval's view of a nation decentralized from Port-au-Prince, built around schools with an emphasis on education and human capital, is achievable. The cautionary note from our visit is the necessity to create a true partnership between the ministries and the NGOs, who are leading the recovery in order to assure a governmental capacity to carry nation-building to completion.