CGD MECGD
CGD Media Citations about Haiti’s Earthquake
Let Them Leave
Why migration is the best solution for Haiti's recovery.
BY MICHAEL A. CLEMENS | JANUARY 27, 2010
Long before the calamity in Haiti, many Haitians and their families benefited from working
abroad, and many, including me, have suggested allowing more Haitian immigrants into the
United States as a way to help the country's economy recover.
It might seem strange that the best solution to Haiti's woes lies outside its borders, but
migration and remittances have been responsible for almost all of the poverty reduction that
has happened in the island country over the past few decades. They have done enormously
more good than any policy intended to reduce poverty inside Haiti during that time. Any
poverty-reduction strategy for Haiti going forward that does not include what has been
Haitians' most successful poverty-reduction strategy to date is not a serious one.
This idea is a no-brainer if we take a minute to look at the numbers.
First, Haitians have already emigrated in droves. There are around 535,000 Haitian-born U.S.
residents at the Census Bureau's last count, out of roughly 1 million in total living abroad.
The vast majority of Haitians who have escaped poverty have done so by leaving the country.
Pick any reasonable poverty line for Haiti; the vast majority of Haitians above it no longer live
there. In a study I did with Harvard's Lant Pritchett, we chose a bare-bones poverty line of $10
per day (measured as a living standard at U.S. prices). That's total destitution -- just a third of
the $30 per day that the United States considers "poverty" for a single adult. Eight out of 10
Haitians above that line currently live in the United States.
Most of this represents the effect of emigration on poverty. Only 1 percent of people in Haiti
live on more than $10 per day, and there is no evidence that most Haitian emigrants come from
the extreme tip-top of the income distribution, so very few people who emigrated would have
an income that high if they had been forced to stay home. A typical low-skill male Haitian in the
United States earns at least six times what he could earn in Haiti. And all of this just accounts
for Haitians in the United States. Include the roughly 100,000 more who are in Canada and
Western Europe, almost all of whom live on over $10 per day, and it's even starker: The vast
majority of Haitians who escaped poverty did so by leaving Haiti, not as a result of anything that
happened in the country.
What about Haitians who did not emigrate? A limited number of these have emerged from
poverty, but many were lifted out of poverty by remittances from abroad. They, too, should be
included in any accounting of the effect of migration on poverty. Dilip Ratha, a top expert on
remittances, estimates that a full accounting would show that Haitians abroad send home $1.5
billion to 1.8 billion per year or higher. That is much more than all the foreign aid that Haiti
receives. The middle of Ratha's range suggests that remittances account for more than one
quarter of Haiti's GDP. This is conservatively low because remittances have a multiplier effect
on local GDP.
Living standards in Haiti have not improved in the last 30 years. They've gotten much worse.
According to the World Bank, the annual income of the average person in Haiti, measured as a
living standard at U.S. prices, steadily declined from $2,400 in 1980 to roughly $1,200 just
before the earthquake. It is certainly even lower now.
The poverty inside Haiti would almost certainly be much greater without remittances.
Economist Manuel Orozco has shown that remittances to Haiti are primarily spent on the most
basic necessities of food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. Because remittances are impossible
by definition without emigration, and cover at least a quarter of people's income in Haiti,
emigration must have substantially reduced poverty for those back home.
What all of these numbers mean is that the large majority of all poverty reduction that has
occurred for Haitians -- whether outside Haiti or inside Haiti -- has been caused by international
migration and remittances. Foreign aid has had little or nothing to do with it. The numbers do
not allow any other reasonable interpretation.
Why, then, is migration seen as a sideshow as donor countries discuss how best to help Haiti
rebuild? Their first step should be to leverage the force that has most helped Haitians in the
past. The United States has agreed not to deport any Haitians for a limited period, but it has
only been deporting about 1,000 Haitians per year for the past decade. The suspension of
deportations will make very little difference in how Haitians are living abroad and sending
money home.
The United States has another option for helping Haitians. I propose a new kind of U.S. visa for
Haitians and poor people around the world, a Golden Door Visa. This would formally recognize
that one of the unwritten goals of immigration policy is global poverty reduction. The Golden
Door Visa would not necessarily mean more immigrants. Instead, the United States could
reallocate visas within the current levels to include people from the world's poorest countries
who are most in need of opportunities. This small adjustment to U.S. immigration policy would
have a big impact by improving the lives of poor immigrants and those who remain in their
home countries through remittances.
We can do a back-of-the-envelope calculation of what additional migration could do. Suppose
the United States lets in 100,000 Haitian immigrants, which is the number that currently arrives
over a span of five years. First, this would dramatically raise their incomes and raise essentially
all of them out of extreme poverty. Second, this would increase the size of the worldwide
Haitian diaspora by 10 percent. If the new migrants remit like earlier migrants did, this would
mean roughly $150 million to 180 million every year in additional remittances for Haiti (and
because things are so much tougher in Haiti now, we could expect new migrants to remit more
than migrants have before). The Guardian reports that as of today the United States has
committed a one-time total of $167 million in aid. Remittances recur year after year, and unlike
aid, almost the whole amount of remittances goes directly into needy families' pockets.
Of course, migration alone is not "the answer" for all Haitians. Unfortunately, one big answer
for all Haitians does not exist. As donors discuss what to do for Haitians going forward, it should
be with extreme humility. Billions of dollars of aid have yielded very little poverty reduction
there to date. Aid and other measures, such as improved access to U.S. markets, are worth
continuing, of course, but they are unlikely to have dramatically different effects in the near
future than they have had for the past two generations.
Migration, on the other hand, has clearly and demonstrably lifted many Haitians out of poverty.
It should be an important component of the portfolio of assistance for Haiti. Many people react
with fear to statements of this kind, thinking that "more" Haitians is synonymous with "every"
Haitian, and that a flood of Haitians would sink the countries they would move to. But the
numbers of Haitians moving to the United States has been so small -- just 2 percent of all
immigrants to the United States -- that even a substantial increase would hardly constitute a
flood.
I discussed these very issues further in a blog post, published the day before Haiti's tragedy,
and it is certainly tragic that it took such an event to put the problem on world leaders' agenda.
Michael A. Clemens is a research fellow at the Center for Global Development and an affiliated
associate professor of public policy at Georgetown University.
Don’t Drop Haiti’s Debt
February 1, 2010
So says David Roodman at the Center for Global Development:
…the practical question for citizens, officials, politicians, campaigners, and other players is
whether to push for that. On a few days’ reflection, I say no. I would go so far as to describe
such pressure as harmful.
Why? For starters, the benefits of debt relief over the next few years, however done, will be
tiny…That’s why cancellation does little good in the short run. It is not a coherent response to
crisis. Meanwhile, there are other ways to help Haiti much more, in responding to the crisis and
in rebuilding. Looking at the recent history of humanitarian aid, the people who compile the
Humanitarian Response Index judge that many official donors could do a much better job. Isn’t
this the time for activists to harvest the lessons of history and hold public and private aid
agencies accountable? My colleague Michael Clemens has called for a “Golden Door visa” to let
more Haitians come to the United States (or other rich countries) to work. Prying the door open
a hair more would swamp the economic value of debt relief.
Interesting. David’s model is that there is a fixed quantity of bureaucratic and media attention
available for Haiti and that one shouldn’t use it up by focusing on lower priority items. He may
be right, but he may not: an alternative view is that one should seize on a simple focal issue and
then once you have people’s attention, broaden the scope of political pressure. This isn’t just
relevant for Haiti but also, eg, the Bjorn Lomborg criticism of doing something about climate
change - which, put simply, is that it’s distracting because the world has higher priorities.
I would like to see a public choice model of such trade-offs. Perhaps Tyler Cowen will oblige.
Meanwhile here is Felix Salmon on why you shouldn’t give money to Haiti.
Want to Really Help Haitians? Let Them Leave
By Michael A. Clemens on behalf of Foreign Policy magazine.
Updated January 29, 2010
Long before the calamity in Haiti, many Haitians and their families benefited from working
abroad, and many, including me, have suggested allowing more Haitian immigrants into the
United States as a way to help the country's economy recover.
It might seem strange that the best solution to Haiti's woes lies outside its borders, but
migration and remittances have been responsible for almost all of the poverty reduction that
has happened in the island country over the past few decades. They have done enormously
more good than any policy intended to reduce poverty inside Haiti during that time. Any
poverty-reduction strategy for Haiti going forward that does not include what has been
Haitians' most successful poverty-reduction strategy to date is not a serious one.
This idea is a no-brainer if we take a minute to look at the numbers.
Michael A. Clemens is a research fellow at the Center for Global Development and an affiliated
associate professor of public policy at Georgetown University. To continue reading his column in
Foreign Policy, click here
To help Haiti's earthquake victims, change U.S. immigration laws
By Michael A. Clemens
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Troops. Food. Medicine. Money. Solidarity.
So far, the American response to the tragedy in Haiti has been exactly what you'd expect, and in
the immediate aftermath of the earthquake that ravaged the nation on Jan. 12, such rapid
assistance is precisely what is needed. But over the long term, there is another step, one that
may be less obvious or popular, that we must take. It would vastly improve the living standards
of the Haitian people, and if we had taken it earlier, it could have lessened the death toll of the
quake.
We must let more Haitians come here. In fact, it's time to consider an entire new class of
immigration -- call it a "golden door" visa, to be issued in limited numbers to people from the
poorest countries, such as Haiti. It could be permanent or temporary, but that's less important
than its core purpose. Our immigration law has traditionally had three primary goals: reuniting
families, supplying employers and protecting refugees. But part of America's greatness is that in
letting people come, the nation has pursued a fourth, unwritten goal: extending opportunity to
those born in places without it. A golden door visa would simply recognize in law what the
United States has done since its founding.
No human act can blunt the force of an earthquake, but the Haitian people's profound loss was
not fundamentally caused by movements of the Earth. The reason that tens of thousands of
people are dying in Haiti is, put simply, because Haiti is poor. Poverty means shoddy
construction materials, lax enforcement of building codes, abysmal emergency response and
low stocks of food and medicine. The earthquake shook the ground; the catastrophe came
because most Haitians are poor and vulnerable.
Why are so many Haitians so vulnerable? Asking why people are poor is different from asking
why a country is poor. Some have blamed Haiti's poverty on culture or religion; others cite the
country's history of slavery and colonialism; yet others decry government corruption or
decades of unfocused foreign aid. There are no simple explanations. The one thing we
understand is that Haiti has been destitute and will continue to be so for a long time.
We do know, however, why many individual Haitians are poor. For a large number, there is a
clear reason: Many have been willing and able to leave Haiti for American shores, but armed
agents of the U.S. government have forcibly stopped them or deterred them from trying. If they
had not been stopped, virtually none of them would have been as poor and vulnerable as they
were on Jan. 12.
In research I conducted with economists Claudio Montenegro and Lant Pritchett, we compared
how much Haitians earn in the United States vs. Haiti. A moderately educated adult male, born
and schooled in Haiti, typically enjoys a standard of living more than six times greater in the
United States than in his homeland. In other words, U.S. policy wipes out more than 80 percent
of a Haitian's earning power when it keeps him from coming to the United States. This affects
everything from the food he can buy to the construction materials he can afford. The difference
has nothing to do with his ability or effort; it results purely from where he is.
After the earthquake, the Obama administration quickly suspended the deportation of Haitians
already residing illegally in the United States (a population estimated at 100,000 to 200,000) for
18 months. That's a wise and welcome step, but an insufficient one. The United States has
deported only around 1,000 Haitians per year recently, so a brief halt will make a limited
difference in who lives where. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emphasized Thursday that the
new policy will not apply to Haitians seeking to come here now. "Our ordinary and regular
immigration laws will apply going forward, which means that we are not going to be accepting
into the United States Haitians who are attempting to make it to our shores. They will be
interdicted. They will be repatriated."
Yet Haitians willing to emigrate today would typically experience vast and immediate increases
in their standard of living and security -- a goal the administration no doubt supports. That is
why so many have been willing to leave Haiti, braving ocean blockades and other risks, even
before the quake. Between 1982 and 2009, the U.S. Coast Guard stopped 114,716 Haitians on
their way to the United States, forcing them to go back, and such unsuccessful attempts must
certainly have deterred an even larger number from even trying to leave. Last March, 51
percent of Haitians polled told Gallup that, given the opportunity, they would leave their
country permanently.
I am not suggesting that, if some of these people died in the earthquake, U.S. immigration
policy is responsible. But it would be just as ludicrous to contend that we could not foresee very
bad things happening to people forced to live in extreme poverty. Life in destitution is a brittle
existence. There is no extra money to buy good building materials, invest in quality schooling or
take preventive health measures. So when shocks arrive, as they must -- an earthquake, a job
loss, a sickness -- problems become calamities. Such consequences are predictable. For this
reason, the United States is complicit in the agony many Haitians are now suffering.
After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005, one of the
principal ways its victims helped themselves was by leaving. Katrina prompted one of the
biggest resettlements in American history. Who would have blocked Interstate 10 with armed
guards, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to suffer in the disaster zone, no matter how
much assistance was coming in from outside? We wouldn't have done that, because it would
have made us collectively responsible for their continued suffering. Why then, in the thoughtful
debate that has emerged over how best to aid Haiti and help its citizens help themselves, are
Americans still quiet about this sinister face of our immigration policy?
Of course, a natural disaster by itself is not a sufficient reason to eliminate restrictions on the
movement of Haitians. International migration has complex effects: It can shape societies, labor
markets and electorates. And disasters such as Haiti's earthquake are aggravated by countless
political, social and economic forces, in their locales and beyond. But even taken alone, U.S.
immigration law has a huge impact on poor people all over the world. We should consider this
when debating immigration reform as well as aid and development.
Currently, we allow a trickle of about 21,000 Haitian immigrants, on average, to enter the
United States legally each year; most of them are able to come only because they are lucky
enough to have a relative already here. What evidence do we have that we could not absorb
triple that number, or even more? For years, we have been accepting close to 1 million
permanent immigrants annually from around the world, with no lasting effects on the earnings
of the average American worker. And while most economic studies find that such immigration
may have lowered the wages of U.S. high school dropouts by a few percentage points, many of
those dropouts are immigrants themselves, already earning far more than they would in their
country of origin. A high school dropout in the United States earns an average of $24,000 a year
-- about seven times the wages of a typical Haitian worker.
Beyond permanent immigrants, 498 Haitians entered the United States in 2008 on temporary
seasonal worker visas, known as H-2 visas. Even in a time of economic crisis, the gigantic
American economy could welcome many times that number of temporary Haitian workers.
Guest workers help our economy grow and recover by giving employers greater flexibility in
their hiring and investment decisions, particularly in hard-hit sectors such as textiles,
transportation and construction.
Meanwhile, those workers would do more good for themselves and their families than any
amount of aid could do for them. And people remaining in Haiti would benefit enormously.
Haiti already gets close to $2 billion per year -- about a third of its income -- in cash remittances
from its citizens living abroad. That's nearly 100 times as much as generous Americans have
donated to Haiti via their cellphones. And unlike foreign aid, remittances go directly to families.
The earthquake in Haiti has laid bare the consequences of our restrictive immigration policies,
particularly their effects on desperately poor people overseas. Countless Americans have been
moved by the images and stories from Haiti, and have showed their solidarity and generosity
with their wallets. A golden door visa to America, whether temporary or permanent, would
have a larger and ultimately more lasting impact on the lives of the world's poorest, in Haiti and
beyond.
Michael A. Clemens is a research fellow at the Center for Global Development and an affiliated
associate professor of public policy at Georgetown University.
White House Eager to Project Image of Competence in Relief Efforts
By MARK LANDLER and HELENE COOPER
1/21/2010
WASHINGTON — At 5:52 p.m. on Jan. 12, President Obama was in the Oval Office when aides
told him of the calamitous earthquake in Haiti. By 8:30, the president had ordered an
aggressive relief effort. An hour and a half later, the deputy national security adviser convened
an emergency meeting in the White House Situation Room.
How do we know all this?
Because, as part of a remarkable public relations campaign, the White House released a threepage “ticktock,” a newspaper term of art for a minute-by-minute reconstruction of how
momentous events unfolded.
The release included a link to a Flickr photo of a meeting on Haiti the next day in the Situation
Room, presided over by Mr. Obama, as well as a list of foreign leaders he had telephoned. (At
2:23 p.m. on Jan. 13, for example, he placed a call to President Felipe Calderón of Mexico.)
The ticktock was one of a torrent of news releases, briefings, fact sheets and statements that
flowed out of the White House in the days after the earthquake, a media campaign that
illustrates two truths about the Obama administration: its deftness at catering to a nonstop,
Internet- and cable-television-driven news cycle, and its determination to project competence
and resolve in dealing with a heartbreaking tragedy, in implicit contrast to the way the Bush
administration struggled through Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
The administration and the military have set up a busy communications operation with 25
people at the American Embassy and in a cinder-block warehouse at the airport in Port-auPrince, Haiti’s capital. They have left little to chance. In addition to the daily e-mail messages
and briefings, White House officials have sent reporters a video of American search teams
rescuing a Haitian woman from a collapsed building, while a crowd gathered and chanted,
“U.S.A.!”
“We’re out there and aggressive,” said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman who was
dispatched to Port-au-Prince by Mr. Obama to help manage the public relations campaign.
There is some evidence that the campaign is working. The Associated Press and The
Washington Post reported details from the ticktock in articles that spoke of Mr. Obama’s
resolve to help Haiti and avoid a repeat of the dilatory White House response to Hurricane
Katrina. (It is no surprise that the White House understands the importance of the ticktock,
given that news organizations publish such articles after major events or decisions and knock on
the doors of officials for the minute-by-minute details.)
The White House has won praise for its Haiti relief efforts, which have included Mr. Obama’s
pledge of $100 million in aid and the deployment of 10,000 troops to Haiti, and a promise of
more. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton cut short a trip to the South Pacific and rushed
home so she, too, could visit Haiti. In addition to Mr. Vietor, Mr. Obama has sent a senior
national security aide, Denis R. McDonough, and his director of scheduling and advance, Alyssa
Mastromonaco. (Officials say she is there as a “fixer,” and not to plan for a visit by the
president.)
Mr. Obama’s swift response, analysts said, headed off echoes of Hurricane Katrina in the news
coverage. “Once you set a tone that this is not a priority, it’s very hard to change that,” said
Martha Joynt Kumar, an expert in White House communications at Towson University. “All of
the issues play into that narrative.”
Still, the hurdles to getting the story out are high. There is little cellular service outside Haiti’s
airport. To reach reporters in the field, the staff at the airport command center must call
editors in the United States and have them relay messages to reporters. Most Haitians get their
news by radio, and for the first few days after the quake, there were only two radio stations
broadcasting in Port-au-Prince. (Now there are 12.)
The administration is reaching out to Haitians as aggressively as to Americans. Mrs. Clinton,
after meeting the Haitian president, René Préval, waited for Haitian radio reporters to start
their tape recorders before she delivered her remarks.
“We are here at the invitation of your government to help you,” Mrs. Clinton said. “As
President Obama has said, we will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead.”
Disasters can be opportunities for presidents to show competence and compassion. By that
measure, even former President George W. Bush’s supporters acknowledge that the handling
of Katrina was a blow to the administration’s reputation. The nightly news was dominated by
images of destruction, and Mr. Bush’s praise for Michael Brown, then the director of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency — “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” — shows
up on many lists of public relations fiascoes.
Before Katrina, the Bush administration was seen as neither a standout nor a slouch in the art
of disaster response.
John Simon, a disaster relief specialist with the Center for Global Development, said the Obama
administration’s response had been appropriate, given the level of the devastation in Haiti,
even though some had criticized the Americans for being overbearing and trying to take over
the effort.
Mr. Simon, who was responsible for the Bush administration’s response to the Asian tsunami in
2004 and the earthquake in Pakistan in 2005, recalled that the Bush administration was
criticized when its initial response to the tsunami was to offer $15 million.
“The thing is, 15 was never meant to be the final number,” he said, adding that the
administration was adhering to a policy that calls for first determining the need before
allocating funds. The Bush administration later bolstered the aid to $350 million, and sent Colin
L. Powell, then the secretary of state, to the region to assess the damage. A few months later,
when the earthquake in Pakistan struck, the Bush administration came in strong, and quickly.
“We immediately said, within 24 hours, that we were doing $50 million at a minimum,” Mr.
Simon said. Coming out early with a statement of support, as the Obama administration did,
“gives people assurance,” he said.
The Bush administration also sent daily updates to reporters during the response to the
tsunami and the Pakistan earthquake, Mr. Simon said, including fact sheets on the numbers of
people rescued and airlifted, and the amount of food and other aid that was dropped into the
area.
“It’s important to give people a sense that you’re making progress,” he said. The lesson of the
tsunami, he said, was, “If you don’t manage the media, then you end up spending time
responding to the media instead of responding to the disaster at hand.”
Haitian ‘Whirlpool’ Draws U.S. Back to Country Napoleon Lost
By Bill Faries, Jan. 21
This article was also picked up by BusinessWeek
U.S. troops bringing humanitarian aid to quake-ravaged Haiti have another mission: trying to
prevent the hemisphere’s poorest country from becoming a failed state, sending immigrants
and drugs spilling across the region.
“There is a natural humanitarian crisis that tugs at our conscience, but there is also a fear that
instability could lead to massive waves of immigrants,” said Robert Pastor, who served as
former President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser for Latin America. “Haiti is a longterm crisis.”
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urged Haitians on Jan. 16 not to try to
escape the earthquake disaster by taking to the sea for Florida. In the 1990s, a surge of Haitian
emigrants fleeing political turmoil led to bodies and makeshift boats washing ashore along the
state’s eastern coast. Neighboring Dominican Republic has kept its border closed to Haitians
who aren’t in need of medical aid, the government said.
Haitian President Rene Preval’s offices and homes were destroyed in the Jan. 12 temblor,
which also killed the head of the United Nations Mission that has provided 9,000 troops and
police since 2004. The UN is bolstering its forces even as 11,000 U.S. soldiers and sailors arrive
on the island or on ships offshore to help with rescues, aid delivery and reconstruction.
The U.S. is committed to helping Haiti “today, tomorrow and for the time ahead,” Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton said during a Jan. 16 visit to Port-au-Prince.
Haitian Whirlpool
U.S. attention has been drawn repeatedly to Haiti over the past century amid periods of
political and economic instability in a country where rebellious slaves faced down Napoleon to
achieve independence from France in 1804.
“We’ve been drawn into Haiti like we’re in a whirlpool,” said Pastor. “After we leave we find
ourselves at different points on the rim, thinking we’ve escaped, only to get drawn right back
in.”
Even before the earthquake left more than 100,000 dead and 1.5 million homeless, Haiti’s
1,125 miles (1,810 kilometers) of shoreline, “poorly controlled seaports, numerous clandestine
airstrips, and weak democracy” made it attractive to drug traffickers, a 2009 State Department
report said.
Haiti seized $21 million in property and assets tied to drug-trafficking in 2008, the report said.
So-called go-fast boats head to Haiti from South America transporting cocaine, which is moved
overland to Port-au-Prince and concealed on cargo and coastal freighters destined for the U.S.
and Europe, according to the report.
‘Haven for Threats’
“States that don’t control their territory or who don’t have legitimacy are susceptible to
becoming a haven for threats,” said Peter DeShazo, director of the Americas program at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Look around the world at places
where weak states have existed -- Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and, at one point, Colombia.”
A century after Haiti won independence, U.S. Marines sent by President Woodrow Wilson
stayed for two decades until 1935. The bloody dictatorship of the Duvalier family from 1957 to
1986 sent thousands of Haitians fleeing abroad. In 1994, a military junta stepped down after a
delegation led by Carter and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell said the U.S.
Army’s 82nd Airborne was in route to restore ousted President Jean- Bertrand Aristide.
Loyal Gangs
In 2004, the UN rushed troops to Haiti to quell violence by armed gangs loyal to Aristide, who
was forced from office during his second term earlier that year. A UN Security Council
resolution then authorized 6,700 military personnel and more than 1,600 civilian police to
bolster security in Haiti, with Brazil providing the biggest contingent of troops. Aristide remains
in exile in Africa.
The U.S. provided $652 million in aid to Haiti from 2006 to 2008, more than was contributed by
any other country, according to the Washington-based Center for Global Development. That
support has built roads and homes, trained counter-narcotics agents and judges and provided
more than 60,000 vaccinations to children.
Under Preval, Haiti was making progress in fostering economic growth and stability, DeShazo
said. Yet even before the magnitude 7.0 temblor struck last week, the country had been
struggling from the impact of four hurricanes that swept across it in 2008, killing about 800
people.
‘On Track’
“Things were getting on track,” he said. “But to have all these natural disasters thrown at the
country when it was just starting to recover is a shame.”
The quake will cost Haiti at least 15 percent of its $7 billion gross domestic product, Pamela
Cox, the World Bank’s vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean, said in an interview
with Bloomberg Television. Haiti’s population of 9.6 million has a per capita income of about
$560, according to the World Bank.
Haiti had been scheduled to hold legislative elections on Feb. 28 and a presidential vote in
November. Both may be delayed, Pastor said.
“Elections require administrative capacity and that was always taxed in Haiti to begin with -now it has been obliterated,” he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Bill Faries in Buenos Aires at wfaries@bloomberg.net
Barriers Abound in Helping Haiti
KEVIN CARMICHAEL, 1/21/2010
In early January, 2005, three weeks after a tsunami in the Indian Ocean battered Thailand and
many of its neighbours, Jan Egeland, the head of the United Nations Emergency Relief Fund,
appeared to undermine his own efforts to raise funds for the crisis by reminding donors that
they also had a responsibility to continue to stand by the rest of the world's poor.
"The world needs to agree that it is as terrible to starve in Darfur, Sudan, as it is to starve on the
beaches of a tsunami-stricken nation," Mr. Egeland told an assembly of representatives from 70
donor countries in Geneva.
A pure pitchman might have tried to keep his audience focused on the issue at hand. If only
international reconstruction efforts were so simple.
The gathering that Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon is set to host on Monday in
Montreal will begin the gruelling and often confusing business of marshalling the international
community's resources to rebuild a devastated neighbour.
Mr. Cannon will be working with the loosest of templates. There's no set-in-stone process for
these things, and no central organizing authority. By hosting the initial meeting, Canada stands
to inherit a central role in a project that will take years to complete.
Despite the absence of structure, nations always manage to come together to commit billions
to the rebuilding effort, usually at a donor's conference within a few months of the disaster.
With the help of organizations such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development
Bank, governments as disparate as France and Brazil will settle on a rebuilding plan for Haiti
that - hopefully - will avoid duplication and overlap.
Along the way, the process will likely expose regional jealousies and conflicting world views. In
the case of Haiti's neighbours, it's easy to imagine the governments of the United States and
Cuba clashing on the proper course for the country's future. But if there's one thing that will
link the Haiti reconstruction effort with all that have come before, it's the touchy subject of
spending the public's money. Inevitably, someone like Mr. Egeland will have to cajole countries
to make good on their pledges, and to keep in mind that there are millions of others in need.
"Most countries mean what they say when they pledge," said Clay Lowery, a former senior U.S.
Treasury official who was involved in organizing several reconstruction efforts, including in Iraq
and Afghanistan. "It becomes more difficult the further they get away from the crisis because
that initial support starts to compete against other needs, which aren't anticipated at the time
of the pledge."
But before donor governments can renege, they first have to be given a target toward which to
pledge.
That number doesn't exist yet, although rough estimates could start to emerge by the time Mr.
Cannon gathers with Hillary Clinton of the U.S., France's Bernard Kouchner, Brazil's Celso
Amorim and about a dozen other foreign ministers next week for what the host is calling a
"crucial" plenary session that will lay the ground for an eventual leaders conference on the
reconstruction of Haiti.
The early estimates on the cost of a Haitian reconstruction effort will surely test the resolve of
this emerging partnership, as many of the countries, including the U.S. and Canada, are facing
hefty budget deficits after pumping tens of billions into their economies to reverse the global
recession.
Leonel Fernandez, President of the Dominican Republic, has estimated it will take $10-billion
(U.S.) over five years to put his country's neighbour back on its feet. Jeffrey Sachs, director of
the Earth Institute at Columbia University, wrote in The Washington Post that "one could
imagine" annual disbursements to Haiti of $2-billion to $3-billion over the next five years.
"There aren't a lot of countries that have room to increase aid," said Scott Gilmore, executive
director and founder of Peace Dividend Trust. "There is going to be a lot of robbing Peter to pay
Paul."
Experts caution against attaching a dollar figure to the reconstruction effort too soon. The
authoritative estimate eventually will come from the World Bank. It will be a few weeks from
the date of the earthquake before the Washington-based lender sends an assessment team in
order to ensure its economists don't get in the way of the relief effort, said John Simon, a
visiting fellow at the Washington-based Centre for Global Development and the former senior
director for relief, stabilization and development at the U.S. National Security Council.
But the lack of a solid figure for rebuilding doesn't prevent Mr. Cannon from taking steps to
increase the chances that pledges are met.
One thing he can do is ensure Brazil and other Latin American countries are part of the process,
said Andrew Thompson, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation
in Waterloo, Ont. Their growing wealth makes them important players, yet their ongoing
struggle with poverty makes them better able to relate with Haiti's government, Mr. Thompson
said.
Countries and institutions have also become more rigorous at keeping track of who is falling
behind on their pledges. This doesn't guarantee full payment, but at least it brings
accountability and should be applied to the Haitian rebuild, Mr. Simon said. "Holding people to
account doesn't happen as much as people like," Mr. Simon said. "But what exactly is the
recourse? At the very least, it should be public so people can draw their own conclusions."
Some Frank Talk About Haiti
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, 1/20/2010
On my blog, a woman named Mona pointed to Haitian corruption and declared: “I won’t send
money because I know what will happen to it.” Another reader attributed Haiti’s poverty to
“the low I.Q. of the 9 million people there,” and added: “It is all very sad and cannot be fixed.”
“Giving money to Haiti and other third-world countries is like throwing money in the toilet,”
another commenter said. A fourth asserted: “Haiti is a money pit. Dumping billions of dollars
into it has proven futile. ... America is deeply in debt, and we can’t afford it.”
Not everyone is so frank, but the subtext of much of the discussion of Haiti is despair about
both Haiti and foreign aid. Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster, went furthest by
suggesting that Haiti’s earthquake flowed from a pact with the devil more than two centuries
ago. While it’s not for a journalist to nitpick a minister’s theological credentials, that implication
of belated seismic revenge on Haitian children seems defamatory of God.
Americans have also responded with a huge outpouring of assistance, including more than $22
million raised by the Red Cross from text messages alone. But for those with doubts, let’s have
a frank discussion of Haiti’s problems:
Why is Haiti so poor? Is it because Haitians are dimwitted or incapable of getting their act
together?
Haiti isn’t impoverished because the devil got his due; it’s impoverished partly because of debts
due. France imposed a huge debt that strangled Haiti. And when foreigners weren’t looting
Haiti, its own rulers were.
The greatest predation was the deforestation of Haiti, so that only 2 percent of the country is
forested today. Some trees have been — and continue to be — cut by local peasants, but many
were destroyed either by foreigners or to pay off debts to foreigners. Last year, I drove across
the island of Hispaniola, and it was surreal: You traverse what in places is a Haitian moonscape
until you reach the border with the Dominican Republic — and jungle.
Without trees, Haiti lost its topsoil through erosion, crippling agriculture.
To visit Haiti is to know that its problem isn’t its people. They are its treasure — smart,
industrious and hospitable — and Haitians tend to be successful in the United States (and
everywhere but in Haiti).
Can our billions in aid to Haitians accomplish anything? After all, a Wall Street Journal column
argues, “To help Haiti, end foreign aid.”
First, don’t exaggerate how much we give or they get.
Haiti ranks 42nd among poor countries in worldwide aid received per person ($103 in 2008,
more than one-quarter of which comes from the United States). David Roodman of the Center
for Global Development calculates that in 2008, official American aid to Haiti amounted to 92
cents per American.
The United States gives more to Haiti than any other country. But it ranks 11th in per capita
giving. Canadians give five times as much per person as we do.
As for whether aid promotes economic growth, that’s a bitter and unresolved argument. But
even the leading critics of aid — William Easterly, a New York University economist, and
Dambisa Moyo, a banker turned author — believe in assisting Haiti after the earthquake.
“I think we have a moral imperative,” Ms. Moyo told me. “I do believe the international
community should act.”
Likewise, Professor Easterly said: “Of course, I am in favor of aid to Haiti earthquake victims!”
So, is Haiti hopeless? Is Bill O’Reilly right? He said: “Once again, we will do more than anyone
else on the planet, and one year from today Haiti will be just as bad as it is right now.”
No, he’s not right. And this is the most pernicious myth of all. In fact, Haiti in recent years has
been much better managed under President René Préval and has shown signs of being on the
mend.
Far more than most other impoverished countries — particularly those in Africa — Haiti could
plausibly turn itself around. It has an excellent geographic location, there are no regional wars,
and it could boom if it could just export to the American market.
A report for the United Nations by a prominent British economist, Paul Collier, outlined the best
strategy for Haiti: building garment factories. That idea (sweatshops!) may sound horrific to
Americans. But it’s a strategy that has worked for other countries, such as Bangladesh, and
Haitians in the slums would tell you that their most fervent wish is for jobs. A few dozen major
shirt factories could be transformational for Haiti.
So in the coming months as we help Haitians rebuild, let’s dispatch not only aid workers, but
also business investors. Haiti desperately needs new schools and hospitals, but also new
factories.
And let’s challenge the myth that because Haiti has been poor, it always will be. That kind of
self-fulfilling fatalism may be the biggest threat of all to Haiti, the real pact with the devil.
U.S. Disaster Relief to Haiti
The U.S. government has mounted a large-scale disaster response to the tragic earthquake in
Haiti, sending thousands of humanitarian workers, soldiers, and emergency supplies. And as the
mission transitions from emergency response to rebuilding, America's response will draw from
experience responding to other tragedies-- from Hurricane Katrina to the Indian Ocean
tsunami. We explore lessons learned.
Guests
John Simon
Visiting Fellow, Center for Global Development; former Senior Director for Relief, Stabilization
and Development for the National Security Council (NSC); and former Deputy Assistant
Administrator, United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Listen to John Simon on The Kojo Nnamdi Show (1:45-25:30)
What If Haiti Can't Be Saved?
by Reihan Salam
January 15, 2010
After the devastating earthquake that has leveled Port-au-Prince and led to the deaths of tens
of thousands, the Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of offering temporary
protected status to illegal immigrants from Haiti. The logic behind the decision is compelling.
However strongly one might object to the fact that well over 100,000 Haitians are living illegally
in the United States, deporting them now would be worse than cruel. Plagued by violence and
poverty for most of its history, Haiti has been brought to the edge of anarchy. Sending Haitian
workers home isn't exactly a death sentence. But it is troublingly close.
Temporary protected status is meant to last 18 months, during which time we can hope that
some semblance of order will be restored. Even then, however, it's not clear that the Haitians
who've been given a reprieve will be able to find decent jobs at home, let alone the kind of jobs
that will allow them to support large extended families. Mark Schneider and Bernice Robertson
of the International Crisis Group have argued that recovering from the earthquake will take at
least a decade of intense effort. Somehow, Haitians living in the United States, and the over 9
million Haitians at home forced to endure lawless chaos before and after the earthquake, will
have to find a more lasting solution.
There is something about the power of grisly televised images that brings out the best in
Americans. The United States government has performed admirably in Haiti so far, just as it did
during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. Yet there are
miserable corners of the world where cameras and correspondents are few and far between,
and Haiti has been one of them for at least the past 15 years. Many have already said that
America's callous indifference to Haiti's slow-motion collapse over this long and painful period
is a national embarrassment. Given the deep problems that Haiti faces, however, it's not clear
what the United States could have done that would have proven more effective than Bill
Clinton's 1994 humanitarian intervention, which, like so many armed interventions, ended in
failure and retreat. Perhaps the best thing we could do is go beyond temporary protected
status and, working in concert with the European Union and other affluent countries and
regions, give Haitians an opportunity to build a better life elsewhere.
In 2008, economists Michael Clemens and Lant Pritchett, both affiliated with the highly
innovative Center for Global Development, published "Income per Natural: Measuring
Development as if People Mattered More Than Places." Rather than measure a country's GDP
per resident, they devised a new statistic called income per natural, "the mean annual income
of persons born in a given country," including migrants who've left their native country in
search of economic opportunity. So while the American-born Johnny Depp doesn't contribute
to U.S. GDP per resident while residing in France, he does bump up its income per natural. As
you might expect, poverty levels look very different for national residents and naturals, and the
authors offer Haiti as a prime example. Clemens and Pritchett argue that income per natural
demonstrates the tremendous power of international migration as a poverty-fighting tool.
Moving from one country to another can dramatically improve your life chances, even without
expensive investments in education. Incredibly, over a quarter of Haitian naturals who live on
more than $2 a day, a global measure of extreme poverty, live in the United States. It is hardly
surprising that thousands of Haitians risk their lives to settle in the United States and the
Dominican Republic and many other countries besides.
There are literally dozens of countries across the world that are what Pritchett, in his
provocative book Let Their People Come, calls "zombies." In the Old West, cities abandoned
when the local gold mine dried up were called "ghost towns." Zombies are essentially ghost
towns that you can never leave. The economic opportunities are all gone, but barriers to
migration are just high enough that people are forced to stay put, almost as though they were
walled in a penitentiary. Though we all want to believe that Haiti and countries like it can
eventually become as rich as successful as the U.S. or South Korea or Botswana, the sad fact is
that some countries have been handed a raw deal by virtue of climate, resources, and the
scarring effects of a cruel colonial history. It is possible that Haiti can't be saved. But that
doesn't mean that Haitians can't save themselves, provided we start breaking down the walls
that have kept them hemmed in.
It should go without saying that the United States will not offer temporary protected status to
illegal immigrants from every country in the world plagued by poverty and violence. The
demand for the opportunity to work in the United States is overwhelming, and the economic
downturn has not put Americans in a generous mood. But if we're serious about helping
Haitians, we have to do something more than text $5 to the relief effort.
Reihan Salam is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the co-author of Grand New Party.
How Generous Are We to Haiti? Two Bucks a Person.
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF, JANUARY 15, 2010
I was delighted that the White House denounced as “utterly stupid” the Rev. Pat Robertson’s
suggestion that Haiti had suffered its earthquake because it had made a “pact with the devil,”
and as “really stupid” the comment by Rush Limbaugh that Americans shouldn’t donate to Haiti
because their tax dollars already go there. But I think Limbaugh’s comments reflect a current
that many people think even if they don’t articulate, something like this: Those Haitians have
screwed up their country, and we already pour money into their economy. We have our
troubles at home, we have our needs, so why should our hard-earned dollars go to support
Haitians who don’t help themselves. We’ve already been generous, and it hasn’t worked.
First, a fact check. The United States contributes $2.32 per American to Haiti each year. That’s
much less than other countries do, even though Haiti is in our hemisphere and has historic close
ties to the U.S. For example, Canada contributes $12.13 per person to Haiti annually, and
Norway sends $8.44. Other countries that contribute more, per capita, to Haiti than the U.S. are
Luxembourg, Sweden, Ireland, France, Switzerland, Spain and Belgium. True, there are more
Americans, so collectively our aid amounts to more than one-quarter of the pot in Haiti, but
that’s only because we’re such a big country. Given the per capita sums, we have no right to be
bragging about our generosity in Haiti.
That data comes from the Center for Global Development, which has a nice discussion on aid in
Haiti.
Now it’s true that Haiti has had lousy leadership and lousy governance. But doesn’t it seem
rather unfair to tell a kid he’s not going to get his broken leg set because his country has a
legacy of bad leaders?
Another point: while the immediate focus has to be relief the long term need is development in
Haiti. Critics of aid are right that there are real concerns about aid dependency, and Haiti is one
of the places we can see them. And in theory Haiti should be more promising than some other
poor countries in the world, because of its location. There should be ways of parlaying Haiti’s
status as an island nation close to the biggest consumer market in the world into manufacturing
opportunities. Paul Collier, the former chief economist at the World Bank, investigated Haiti’s
possibilities for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon a year ago and reported back that the best
hope for Haiti was to encourage manufacturing (of garments, for example) aimed at the US
market. That is indeed something that we should be pushing for the medium term, and one risk
is that the focus on all the poverty and instability — and the insecurity that is likely to become a
big problem in the coming weeks — will discourage the investment that is needed.
Haiti also needs investment in human capital, such as education, so that it can develop its
business sector. And it needs help with population growth (as I noted in this article and video I
did from Haiti a year ago). Obviously the first need is to set broken bones, provide clean water
and dig people out of rubble. But let’s not forget the steps that can get Haiti on a better track
for the longer term.
For those interested in helping Haiti, by the way, readers have sent in excellent suggestions in
response to my last blog post. Go for it.
Is Pentagon’s Haiti Mission a Model for a New Security Role?
By ANDREW C. REVKIN, JANUARY 14, 2010
In tonnage, the United States Navy says its battle fleet is larger than those of the world’s next
13 biggest navies combined. One of the largest vessels, the Carl Vinson, is seen below in Navy
footage in its first deployment in nearly five years — to the earthquake zone in Haiti instead of
a war zone.
I predict you’ll see a lot more scenes like this in years to come, as the developed world
increasingly realizes that anyone interested in national security has to act to foster global
resilience, particularly in places where natural hazards and deep poverty are superimposed.
Haiti is a prime example — just look at the shake map for this quake — but it’s just one of
dozens. With or without any added push from global warming, sub-Saharan Africa is now
known to be prone to astonishing super-droughts, and the population is projected to double by
2050. Military planners have expressed concern that climate change adds another layer of risk
in many such regions.
There’s been a growing awareness in the Pentagon and State Department that substantial
benefits can accrue from an expanding role for military forces in humanitarian work, disaster
response and “stability operations” that, among other things, can improve north-south
relations in turbulent regions. The military role in the response to the 2004 tsunami is a case in
point.
In 2007, when the Navy rolled out new strategic goals, General James T. Conway, commandant
of the Marine Corps, explained the idea this way in congressional testimony:
The basic premise of our newly published maritime strategy is that the United States is a force
for good in the world — that while we are capable of launching a clenched fist when we must,
offering the hand of friendship is also an essential and prominent tool in our kit. That premise
flows from the belief that preventing wars is as important as winning wars.
In my first post after the election of President Obama, I proposed four priorities for the most
important leader of the human species that could be carried out on a tight budget (and then
Dot Earth readers identified 10 more). The first two on my list related to the Pentagon, which
has some of the most massive resources on the planet and by far the world’s biggest research
budget.
Can you identify any down side should Mr. Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
and Pentagon leaders continue deploying military might in ways that could foster health, trust,
cooperation and prosperity?
Some researchers do worry that if the Pentagon activities simply displace efforts previously
carried out by other agencies, there could be substantial risks. Read this Center for Global
Development paper, “The Pentagon and Global Development,” for some background.
Postscript: Here’s a fascinating video freshly shot by filmmakers Brent and Craig Renaud for The
New York Times on the environmental damage that has made Haiti particularly prone to
flooding and other natural hazards:
Here’s a set of before and after images from Google:
Here’s gripping, ultimately heart-lifting, video from Anderson Cooper and his CNN crew:
Earthquake threatens to stall Haitian progress (1/14/2010)
Haiti's Outlook had been Improving
By Ken Dilanian, 1/14/10
WASHINGTON — In recent months, things had actually begun looking up in Haiti, the Western
Hemisphere's poorest and most crisis-prone country.
A United Nations peacekeeping mission had made it safe enough that the U.S. softened its
travel warning. Free elections produced a president. After four devastating hurricanes and
tropical storms killed 800 people in 2008, former president Bill Clinton led a U.N. donor
conference last April that pledged $324 million in new aid, some of which had started to trickle
in. A few new tourist hotels were planned.
"It is biblical, the tragedy that continues to daunt Haiti," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton said in Hawaii. Clinton, who canceled a trip to Australia, said she would return to
Washington to help oversee U.S. relief efforts. "It is so tragic. ... There was so much hope about
Haiti's future, hope that had not been present for years. And along comes Mother Nature and
just flattens it."
The scope of the devastation is still emerging, but it's clear that whatever economic progress
Haiti had made recently will have crumbled along with the key buildings in the capital.
A country of 9 million people, Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.
As a French colony, it imported African slaves to harvest sugar. Nearly a half-million slaves
overthrew French rule, and Haiti declared independence in 1804. It has been racked since by
violence, instability and poverty.
"Haiti was a country that was founded on slavery and oppression," said Ruth Levine, president
of the Center for Global Development. "Since the mid-1700s it has been ... a microcosm of
virtually every development problem."
Haiti's per capita income is $790, compared with $10,200 for Mexico and $47,440 for the U.S.,
according to the International Monetary Fund. Significant aid from wealthy nations has helped,
but not as much as it could have, Levine said.
Even so, Haiti watchers had become optimistic of late, said Johanna Mendelson Forman, senior
associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former adviser to the
U.N. mission in Haiti.
"Tuesday at 4 p.m., people would have said things are turning around," she said. "This was the
poorest country in the region, but the business community saw that this was their chance to
move ahead."
Then, the earth moved.