Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Haitians want a bigger say in post-quake reconstruction
LONDON (AlertNet) - As donors gather in New York to pledge hundreds of millions of dollars for reconstruction in quake-devastated Haiti, many local groups feel they have been shut out of the action plan their government will present on Wednesday.
A total of $11.5 billion is needed to rebuild the impoverished country’s shattered infrastructure, economy, institutions and social services and to protect it from future disasters, the international community and the government estimate. The aim of this week’s conference, which will be attended by almost 140 nations, is to raise close to $4 billion for the coming 18 months.
The Action Plan for National Recovery and Development of Haiti, which will guide reconstruction efforts over the next 10 years, states it is a Haitian proposal because “key sectors of Haitian society were consulted”, including communities living abroad, mainly in the United States.
Yet some of the country’s largest non-governmental organisations (NGOs) say discussions with Haiti’s civil society were limited.
“The plan concocted in the name of the people without their participation will be presented in New York this week,” said agronomist Jean-Baptiste Chavannes, founder of Haiti’s Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), which was set up in 1973 and has more than 50,000 members.
“There is nothing we can do before this meeting,” he said, adding that “the Haitian social movement must mobilise to ensure its voice is heard” from now on. “We cannot allow the government - which does not have the confidence of the people - to make all the decisions on building the country.”
Samuel Worthington, who will represent U.S. aid groups at Wednesday’s meeting, told AlertNet that Haitian NGOs complained at a meeting last week they had been given a copy of the government’s plan at the last minute and asked to validate it, which they felt unable to do.
“Since then they have recognised there are many good things in the plan, but they have not had a sense of ownership,” said Worthington, who heads U.S. NGO umbrella body InterAction.
TIGHT TIME FRAME
The need to make decisions on reconstruction quickly after the Jan. 12 earthquake - which killed possibly more than 300,000 people and left about 1.3 million homeless - has made a thorough consultation process difficult.
“In an ideal world, more time would have been required to have much deeper and much more consultation,” said Bruno Le Marquis, deputy director of the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), who has been coordinating the pledging meeting with the U.S. State Department. “Given the time frame that was set for this particular conference, a lot has been achieved.”
Meetings with different sectors of Haitian civil society were held through March to elicit feedback on the government’s reconstruction strategy. And donors at Wednesday’s meeting will hear from the country’s private sector, NGOs, municipal authorities and diaspora, as well as from a U.N. initiative to gather the views of Haiti’s poor.
Anne Hastings, chief executive of Sevis Finansye Fonkoze (Fonkoze Financial Services), the country’s largest microfinance institution, participated in the gathering for the private sector and said her organisation feels fully engaged in the relief and reconstruction process.
With 41 branches around the country, Fonkoze is a major partner of international agencies, including UNDP, in implementing cash-for-work programmes which enable earthquake survivors to earn money. But Hastings told AlertNet the international community does often overlook existing institutions.
For example, it has been criticised for doing so during relief operations. Oxfam said in a report last week that the United Nations held coordination meetings in English, rather than French or the local language, Creole, and AlertNet was told that, on one occasion, five mayors who wanted to attend an aid agency meeting to discuss shelter were not allowed in because aid workers said they were not ready to talk with them.
ALTERNATIVE VISION
Local NGOs are determined to buck this trend and to promote an alternative model of development for Haiti - one based on social inclusion, political decentralisation, environmental sustainability and support for food production - which they plan to firm up soon at a national assembly.
MPP’s Chavannes says Haiti’s movement of small-scale farmers will organise a major debate in the first half of May to decide on its position. In the meantime, he adds, the urgent need is to provide seeds to avert a hunger crisis in rural areas, while another key priority is to create jobs in soil conservation, reforestation, the provision of drinking water and road construction.
Some international aid groups are also making efforts to understand the views of the people they are trying to help.
A survey of 1,700 Haitians commissioned by Oxfam found jobs are the most pressing need, followed by schools and homes. Respondents also said they had little confidence in their government’s ability to lead the reconstruction on its own, saying it should work jointly with Haitian civil society or a foreign partner.
And British-based charity Tearfund plans to set up temporary schools and provide funding to help people, including street vendors, restart their businesses after talking with more than 1,000 men, women and children in badly hit areas west of the capital.
Aid consultant Emilie Parry, who has worked with Haitian grassroots organisations since the 1990s, says community-based groups offer an invaluable network for reaching out to the poorest people.
“The need is so great, the challenge is so great that you need to utilise all of the resources available here,” she said.
The United Nations and the government will launch a website on Wednesday aimed at enabling the public to keep track of how much money has been donated by whom, and how the funds are being spent (currently available in English and French only).