Michelle Loubon

Haiti needs US$11.5 bil­lion to help the coun­try re­build af­ter the dev­as­tat­ing Jan­u­ary 12 earth­quake. This fig­ure was de­cid­ed up­on with the help of the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment led by Pres­i­dent Rene Preval, the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and the Pre­lim­i­nary Dam­age and Needs As­sess­ment (PDNA). Ma­jor donors are set to dis­cuss the re­quest for an ex­treme­ly ex­or­bi­tant sum at a March 31 New York con­fer­ence.

The doc­u­ment said, "The mon­ey breaks down like this: 50 per cent for the so­cial sec­tor, 17 per cent for in­fra­struc­ture in­clud­ing hous­ing, and 15 per cent for the en­vi­ron­ment and dis­as­ter risk man­age­ment."

Clos­er home, the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies dis­cussed the is­sue of Haiti and the dire need to re-es­tab­lish the ter­tiary sec­tor.

The dis­cus­sions on Part­ner­ing For Sus­tain­abil­i­ty: The Ur­gency of Haiti were led by cam­pus prin­ci­pal Prof Clement Sankat and host­ed in con­junc­tion with mem­bers of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Uni­ver­si­ties and Re­search In­sti­tu­tions of the Caribbean (UNI­CA) at the In­sti­tute of Crit­i­cal Think­ing, on March 15. Af­ter the de­struc­tion, sta­tis­tics de­rived from Eu­ro­pean Union of­fi­cials said 300,000 Haitians were killed and about 70,000 bod­ies re­cov­ered. An­oth­er 300,000 were in­jured and 1.5 mil­lion ren­dered home­less. More than 500,000 peo­ple were dis­placed to sec­ondary towns. The most up-to-date sta­tis­tics said that an­oth­er 218,000 sur­vivors are liv­ing in makeshift camps in Port-au-Prince and face grave risk from flood­ing and land­slides.

Among those who raised the ques­tion of for­eign monies reach­ing Haiti was Prof Nor­van Gir­van, pro­fes­so­r­i­al re­search fel­low, UWI Grad­u­ate In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, St, Au­gus­tine, in his in­tro­duc­to­ry re­marks. The top­ic was A Call To Ac­tion For UNI­CA to part­ner with Haiti For the Re­build­ing of its Ter­tiary Sec­tor. He said Preval had on­ly re­ceived US$7 mil­lion in cash sup­port. "At the Cari­com Sum­mit that had just end­ed in Do­mini­ca, Pres­i­dent Preval is re­port­ed to have said hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars al­leged­ly raised for Haiti, the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment it­self had re­ceived on­ly US$7 mil­lion in cash sup­port. The Cari­com Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed their fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to Haiti will be pro­vid­ed as di­rect bud­getary sup­port," Gir­van said.

Fund­ing ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion

Ze­ro­ing on funds for the ter­tiary sec­tor, Gir­van said the up­com­ing donor con­fer­ence in Haiti at the end of the month would pro­vide Cari­com and UNI­CA with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to vig­or­ous­ly pro­mote the needs of the ter­tiary sec­tor in the al­lo­ca­tion of aid funds. Gir­van said the Re­gion­al In­dica­tive Pro­gramme and the Na­tion­al In­dica­tive Pro­gramme for Haiti un­der the Eu­ro­pean De­vel­op­ment Fund could al­so be tapped in­to.

He said an­oth­er source, which was of­ten over­looked, was the Petro­caribe Cred­its Caribbean states re­ceive un­der the Petro­caribe Agree­ment. "We're each Caribbean gov­ern­ment to as­sign just one per cent of its cred­its for the ter­tiary sec­tor, then this has the po­ten­tial of mo­bil­is­ing sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars of fast-dis­burs­ing fi­nance for this pur­pose."

Gir­van said some of Haiti's needs were press­ing and mid­dle term. He ad­vised UNI­CA that its plan­ning should en­tail be­tween five to 10 years.

"It is the na­ture of the ter­tiary sec­tor the most crit­i­cal needs are long-term, re­quir­ing sus­tained ef­fort and com­mit­ment." He said the con­struc­tion, and not the re­con­struc­tion of the sys­tem, was need­ed.

Re­mind­ing the par­tic­i­pants, "We are all Haitians," he said. "A unique op­por­tu­ni­ty presents it­self to craft a sys­tem that is ap­pro­pri­ate to Haiti's cir­cum­stances and cul­ture and needs as Haitians de­fine it."

He re­mind­ed UNI­CA it has the ad­van­tage of ad­dress­ing Haiti's mon­e­tary and re­lat­ed needs by virtue of its shared his­to­ry, ge­og­ra­phy and topog­ra­phy.

"UNI­CA, con­sist­ing of its sim­i­lar in­sti­tu­tion, nat­ur­al and so­cial en­vi­ron­ment, is unique­ly po­si­tioned to sup­port Haitians in this task." He urged UNI­CA to be ever vig­i­lant about the de­vel­op­ment of the ter­tiary sec­tor and its mon­e­tary in­jec­tion. Gir­van said, "We have heard re­ports Haiti has the largest num­ber of non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGO) on the ground (10,000) and the aid is not reach­ing many peo­ple on the ground. "There is a clear and present dan­ger that the cat­a­stro­phe may be­come the oc­ca­sion of a new kind of re­coloni­sa­tion or in­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of Haiti." He sound­ed a warn­ing knell, "We (Cari­com, UNI­CA) must en­sure this does not hap­pen in the re­build­ing of the ter­tiary sec­tor."

Gir­van: Where is Haiti's mon­ey?

Touch­ing on Haiti's ter­tiary sec­tor needs, in­clud­ing the fi­nanc­ing of stu­dents' ed­u­ca­tion, re-es­tab­lish­ing of uni­ver­si­ties and lab­o­ra­to­ries, Gir­van asked–where is the mon­ey for all of this to come from?

He begged the ques­tion about the ad­e­quate dis­tri­b­u­tion of Haiti's re­sources. "We hear about hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars be­ing raised for Haiti. But it is not clear who is get­ting this mon­ey and how it is be­ing used." He cit­ed an ex­cerpt from As­so­ci­at­ed Press. "Each Amer­i­can dol­lar (US gov­ern­ment mon­ey for Haiti) rough­ly breaks down like this: 42 cents for dis­as­ter as­sis­tance, 33 cents for US mil­i­tary aid, nine cents for food, nine cents to trans­port the food, five cents for pay­ing Hait­ian sur­vivors for re­cov­ery ef­forts, just less than one cent to the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment, and about half a cent to the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic."

Donors con­fer­ence

An ex­cerpt from AP said, "The plan goes be­yond the im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ties of post-quake re­con­struc­tion and looks at the mas­sive eco­nom­ic and gov­er­nance chal­lenges Haiti faces if it wants to be­come a ful­ly func­tion­al state. "The earth­quake has cre­at­ed an un­prece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tion, am­pli­fied by the fact it struck the coun­try's most pop­u­lous re­gion and its eco­nom­ic and ad­min­is­tra­tive cen­tre. "Com­piled with the help of 250 Hait­ian and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts, the study put the dam­age from the quake at a mas­sive US$7.9 bil­lion, or a mas­sive 120 per cent of Haiti's gross do­mes­tic prod­uct."

The re­port al­so said: "More than 70 per cent of those loss­es were sus­tained by the pri­vate sec­tor and US$4.4 bil­lion worth of dam­age was done to schools, hos­pi­tals, roads, bridges, build­ings, ports and air­ports." The re­port al­so not­ed the sum was on­ly a ball­park fig­ure and es­ti­mat­ed the to­tal re­con­struc­tion of the "sick man of the Caribbean" ranged be­tween US$8 bil­lion and US$14 bil­lion. On Tues­day, a re­port said the Clin­ton Bush Haiti fund had raised US$37 mil­lion from 200,000 donors, in­clud­ing Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma who do­nat­ed US$200,000. from his No­bel Peace Prize award. The In­ter Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank said it would re­lin­quish US$479 mil­lion in loans to Haiti and the EU said it would pledge US$1.35 bil­lion in de­vel­op­ment aid.