Josette Colin discusses how her earthquake-damaged home was made habitable again by USAID/OFDA-funded Pan American Development Foundation teams in the Simmond-Pele neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Photo Credit: Kendra Helmer, USAID

Thomas C. Adams serves as Haiti Special Coordinator at the U.S. Department of State, and Mark Feierstein serves as Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The government of Haiti recently addressed the double bind their country often faces when the international media covers the development that is occurring in Haiti, identifying either how development is slow in coming or that the development that is occurring is harmful. We anticipate an upcoming AP article may reflect this same perspective. Haiti is working tirelessly to overcome adversity that existed even before the earthquake and to begin to build a stable and sustainable foundation for economic prosperity and societal stability.

Like many other Haiti donors, the United States government has been a proud partner of the government and people of Haiti. We have approached our work in a fundamentally different way. We have followed the lead of the government and people of Haiti, and we have sought for our development assistance not only to provide aid, but long-term sustainable investment as well. Our investments fall into four areas prioritized by the government: agriculture, health care, infrastructure and rule of law/security. And, while the assistance the United States is providing today is not always immediately apparent, the investments we are making will be lasting.

Haiti has a long way to go. Yet, there are successes. We want to share a few that sometimes go unreported.

  1. More than 1.1 million Haitians have moved out of temporary tent camps. The U.S. government, through USAID, has worked with the government and people of Haiti to repair damaged homes, build transitional shelters and provide rental support. These efforts alone have benefited more than 328,000 people.
  2. The government of Haiti ensured more children are attending school, paying the tuition of 850,000 primary school students and enabling 142,000 new students to attend school this past year alone.
  3. In the North, one of the poorest regions of the country, the government of Haiti is leading one of the largest and most ambitious regional development efforts in the country’s history. Haiti has lead the U.S. government, the Inter-American Development Bank, and businesses — including domestic and foreign — to invest in the future of the region. The Caracol Industrial Park, for example, began operations at one factory in April. A modern power plant that provides electricity to the Park’s factories and surrounding communities is up and running. There is a new vocational training center, a modern university provided by the Dominican Republic, and an improving community-based health care system. An airport expansion, construction of a new settlement with more than 1,280 hurricane and earthquake resistant houses with electricity, potable water, and flush sanitation in every home, and engineering drawings for a new container port are underway. These projects are part of Haiti’s vision for a more prosperous and stable future that harnesses the economic potential of Haiti’s impoverished regions, which the Haitian government put forward, and which donor partners and development experts endorsed.
  4. With more than 60 percent of Haitians reliant on agriculture for income, the United States has expanded agricultural programs, deploying the strategy of Feed the Future, the U.S. government food security initiative. To date we have worked with more than 9,700 farmers, introducing improved seeds, fertilizer and technologies. These efforts have resulted in a 118 percent increase in rice yields, 368 percent increase in corn, 85 percent increase in bean yields, and 21 percent increase in plantain yields. Our goal is to support 100,000 farmers in our three geographical regions of focus.
  5. The U.S. government, through USAID, is funding the services of an experienced management firm to help improve the commercial and operational sustainability of Haiti’s electric utility in Port-au-Prince. In a country where only 12 percent of the population has legal access to electricity, the firm is also seeking to expand services to another 60,000 active customers by next April, which will increase the active customers in Haiti by a third. Since November 2011, the USG has been rehabilitating five electrical substations in Port-au-Prince, ensuring that available power in the system reaches households and businesses. To date, the U.S. government has signed contracts in the energy sector worth $52 million that are in different stages of implementation, half of which focus on the Port-au-Prince area.

The U.S. Government Is Working in Partnership

Dozens of countries, multilateral organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and private sector entities are supporting Haiti. Together, we all pledged more than $12 billion in March 2010 in humanitarian and recovery funding over 10 years — a testament to the wide-spread commitment Haiti’s partners share to its future prosperity. The United States pledged $1.15 billion or about 12 percent of the total funds. The government of Haiti and its partners are striving to ensure each dollar invested yields maximum results and complements, rather than overlaps, with other investments. The U.S. government development strategy can be found at: www.state.gov/s/hsc/. In addition to direct assistance, the United States funds efforts in Haiti through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank. We are the largest donor in the health and agriculture sectors; the IDB is the largest donor in the education sector, as well as one of the lead donors on water, sanitation and hygiene programs (WASH). Today, because of coordination with the government of Haiti, the IDB and the government of Spain, more Haitians have access to clean water than before the earthquake — yet there is still much more progress that needs to be made.

The U.S. Government is Focused on Productive Infrastructure for Haiti’s Renewal

If you don’t look closely, numbers can be deceiving. The United States used existing funds from 2009 and 2010 and redirected existing programs to jumpstart recovery assistance, rehabilitate the electric grid and upgrade neighborhoods and health clinics before emergency supplemental funds were made available by Congress. Infrastructure projects don’t begin or get completed overnight, and with good reason. So while the United States is on track to disburse all $475 million we committed to housing, energy and ports, disbursements for these types of complex projects are slower. To build a new port, power plant, hospital or housing complex — all of which the United States is in various stages of implementing — in a collaborative, responsible manner requires feasibility studies, consultations and planning with relevant government entities and communities at the local and national level, environmental studies, and plans for staffing and operations and maintenance. For Haiti to become an economically prosperous nation, we need to support sustainable projects. To do so means providing assistance in a deliberate manner.

Disbursements of U.S. Development Assistance to Haiti
$ in thousands for all items

Humanitarian Relief Assistance
Available funding through 03/31/2012: $1,289,024
Obligations: $1,289,024
Disbursements: $1,289,024
Percentage of available funding disbursed: 100%

Recovery and Reconstruction Assistance
Available funding through 03/31/2012: $1,891,743
Of which is the March 2010 New York pledge: $1,170,196
Obligations: $1,129,985
Of which is the March 2010 New York pledge: $649,842
Disbursements: $988,320
Of which is the March 2010 New York pledge: $463,102
Percentage of available funding disbursed: 48%
Of which is the March 2010 New York pledge: 40%

Total
Available funding through 03/31/2012: $3,180,767
Obligations: $2,419,010
Disbursements: $2,277,345
Percentage of available funding disbursed: 72%

You can see how we are investing in Haiti by going to www.foreignassistance.gov and for information on specific contracts you can visit https://www.fpds.gov/fpdsng_cms/.

The U.S. Government is Committed to Transparency and Accountability

The State Department and USAID regularly provide information to the public and consult with Congress. In the last nine months alone, we have held more than 50 briefings for Members of Congress and their staffers, submitted strategies and reports, and have made ourselves available to answer inquiries via letters, emails, phone calls and meetings. And, for U.S. development projects, USAID provides Congress with a progress report every two weeks.

Importantly, we consulted extensively with the government of Haiti and other stakeholders in Haiti in the design of our assistance strategy, to ensure it reflected the priorities of Haiti. As part of this process, we have shared how much funding is available for investments in each sector and the impact the government of Haiti could anticipate from these initiatives. In the North, we have built community kiosks in different townships to share information in French and Creole about the investments the United States is making to receive feedback and remain accountable to local communities. Our commitments are public and tangible, supported by performance benchmarks that allow the people of Haiti and U.S. taxpayers to hold us accountable for our successes and failures.

We have also taken great strides to make the contracting process more transparent and accessible, especially to Haitian-owned companies. Online, any one can readily find the scope of work and information about the projects, excluding company’s business confidential information, to ensure full and open competition for contracts (by avoiding competing companies knowing the costs structures of their competitors).

We are working hard to ensure the United States is the best partner it can be to the government and people of Haiti, while investing the American taxpayers’ resources wisely and sustainably. Our goal is to continually improve our processes and programs, maintain the integrity of our investments, work in a coordinated manner with all stakeholders, and above all else measure our impact by whether the lives of Haitians are improving.