As Haiti struggles to recover from the devastating January earthquake, former Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis said at an event at the United States Institute of Peace that in order for Haiti to build back better, the process must start within Haiti itself. The USIP event “Is Haiti Building Back Better?” held on October 29, 2010 focused on the challenges that have developed in the nine months since the January 12th earthquake.
As Haiti struggles to recover from the devastating January earthquake, former Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis said at an event at the U.S. Institute of Peace that in order for Haiti to build back better, the process must start within Haiti itself.
“These are very important things about building back better,” Pierre-Louis said. “The Haitian state should overcome its weaknesses in areas like human resources, education and organization.”
The USIP event “Is Haiti Building Back Better?” held on October 29, 2010 focused on the challenges that have developed in the nine months since the January 12th earthquake. Many reconstruction efforts have stalled, people are coping with a cholera outbreak and—amid all these difficulties—Haitians are planning to hold national elections on November 28. At the event, Pierre-Louis discussed these issues, how things have changed since she was in office from 2008 to 2009, and her outlook on Haiti’s future.
USIP’s Robert Maguire, chairman of the Institute’s Haiti Working Group and a former USIP Jennings Randolph senior fellow, also discussed Haiti’s outlook, and Robert Perito, director of USIP’s Haiti Program, moderated the discussion.
USIP’s Haiti Working Group holds regular events and discussion forums to bring together officials, experts, practitioners, policymakers and other interested parties to discuss developments in Haiti and in U.S.-Haitian relations. USIP is committed to use these forums to support the country’s recovery efforts following the January 12th earthquake.
“Meeting any one of these current challenges would test any government,” said Perito, as he introduced the former prime minister. “Meeting all three of them at the same time will require considerable assistance from the international community.”
Past Haitian governments ruled as dictatorships, and today the government is not present in many parts of the country, Perito added. The Haitian government has not been able to resume the majority of government services especially as many government workers died and all but one of the government ministry buildings were destroyed in the earthquake, Pierre-Louis explained.
Pierre-Louis discussed briefly the government’s efforts before the earthquake and those that are currently underway. She talked about the need for international investment, the need to create jobs and the need for permanent housing. She said it is also important that Haitians transcend their views of government before the earthquake and begin to think of it in a new way—including government officials who in the past worked for their own interests rather than for the benefit the country.
“We will have a new government, and I myself call for a change of paradigm in Haiti,” said Pierre-Louis, currently a resident fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Institute of Politics. “All the major symbols of this country and of the state were destroyed and collapsed in what between 36 and 42 seconds. About 20 percent of the work force and civil servants died.”
Pierre-Louis said while she was prime minister she helped create the Haiti Tomorrow project following the hurricanes in 2008, and she is hoping that the program will resume. The project was first backed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which aimed to provide jobs, import less foreign goods, develop small businesses and export more Haitian-made goods.
She said following the earthquake the financial response from the international community was unprecedented. Pierre-Louis’s own house collapsed and it was a month before she could rent a new place. She said most people could not afford to rent and so they ended up in the tent cities. Credit is difficult to come by in Haiti and many people save for their entire lives to build a home. She said Haitians must also cope with a nonexistent education system since 65 percent of schools and 95 percent of the universities collapsed in the earthquake.
“The action plan of the government, the rebuilding effort, should go on in four major areas,” Pierre-Louis said. “This action plan document has a lot of good intentions. You know a good way of looking at things—territorial, economic, social, institutional efforts of rebuilding, because the president (René Préval) said that in 30 years Haiti should be an emerging democracy. So, a lot of good intentions, but at the same time we are still waiting for the plan—the operational plan.”
Pierre-Louis said she sees the nepotism and dishonesty of government workers as something that is directly linked to the quality of life of the Haitian people, and generations of poverty. She said it is her hope that there will also be government reform through the rebuilding process.
Maguire said he began thinking that the earthquake might provide Haiti with opportunities to change the way the country has functioned. Perhaps a new system could be adopted which could put less resources into Port-au-Prince and more into building outside the capital city.
Maguire said he’s thought a lot about the historical changes that have occurred in Haiti—including the shift from an agrarian society to a more urban based population in the late 1970s. He said that perhaps this imbalance could change as a result of the earthquake. For decades certain services—like education and health—were not readily offered outside of Port-au-Prince. This caused people to relocate to where those services were provided, which meant going to Port-au-Prince. He said this demographic imbalance, where most of the population is in Port-au-Prince, is not something that can be supported long-term. Building up additional areas of Haiti economically and socially will provide more jobs and allow for a better quality of life in rural areas, he added.
“Invest in that agrarian society; invest in those small and medium enterprises that are in the agrarian area,” Maguire said. Pierre-Louis agreed, and said only when Haitians transcend these urban and rural classifications and unite to make all parts of the country better will Haiti build back better.