One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. The first-ever UN technical-assistance mission was to Haiti in 1949, and its purpose was to prepare a comprehensive framework to advise the government to promote economic development and fight poverty. Sixty-two years later, after hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, Haiti remains one of the poorest countries on Earth. Haiti has been receiving food aid from the international community for fifty-five years. It is time to try a new approach. We recommend putting human rights at the center of all efforts to help Haiti help itself.

A human rights–based approach rejects the notion of charity and focuses on how best to help the state meet its obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill the rights to shelter, food, water, education, and access to health care and other basic rights essential to leading a dignified life. Framing reconstruction and development in Haiti as a human rights issue will:

• support efforts to strengthen the Haitian state;
• enhance accountability and transparency;
• fight corruption;
• synchronize donor and NGO efforts;
• promote decentralization;
• create greater understanding of the root causes of poverty/underdevelopment; and
• encourage the active participation of Haitians, especially those in rural areas and in the vast urban slums who have literally gone unrecognized by the state, the moun andeyò, “outside people.”

Put simply, adopting a rights-based approach will help the government of Haiti and the IHRC address multiple priorities simultaneously. Moreover, the UN has adopted a rights-based approach for all UN agencies and funds, as have most of the major international development NGOs and bilateral aid agencies. A rights-based approach will also support the “Rule of Law Compact” currently being developed by MINUSTAH (the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti) and the government of Haiti.

The Haitian Constitution and international law require the Haitian state to guarantee fundamental economic, social, and cultural rights. The Haitian state, as the primary “duty bearer,” must develop laws, regulatory frameworks, oversight bodies, and policies to provide education, shelter, access to health care, and social security to Haitians. The state must also dedicate its maximum available resources to realize rights. The Haitian state, however, has not fulfilled these obligations for many decades. It has “outsourced” its duties to the private sector, which goes largely unregulated, with predictable results. For example, the collapse of the private school La Promesse in Pétionville in November 2008, fourteen months before the earthquake, killed over eighty children. La Promesse and many other schools were built in dangerous areas because zoning regulations were not enforced, building codes were not applied, and inspections or oversight by relevant ministries (Education, Public Works) was totally absent. This must end.

A rights-based approach focuses on increasing the capacity of the Haitian state to deliver public services and oversee those actors, state or private, who are engaged in their delivery. The goal should be to responsabiliser l’état: enable the state to take up its essential responsibilities toward citizens and do its job. This means providing resources, expertise, and advice to state officials, helping them to establish systems that deliver public goods and services. Increasing state capacity also means ensuring that laws and regulations are enforced and that agencies are held accountable for their performance, with sanctions for those who do not meet required standards.

The state is primarily responsible to Haitians, who are the primary “rights holders.” Accountability is a means, not an end in itself, however, and greater accountability will generate increased transparency and decreased corruption. Since corruption has been the main impediment for donors to provide funds directly to the Haitian state, a rights-based approach will help break the vicious cycle of diverting support from the state to NGOs, which only keeps the Haitian state weak and at the mercy of the “Republic of NGOs.” The state, however, must show results: greater enjoyment of rights, as a quid pro quo for receiving this support.

A rights-based approach to reconstruction and development means that the citizens of Haiti will have a voice in reconstruction and development at every stage. For too long, most Haitians have been ignored, overlooked, and even discouraged or prohibited from participating in governance. Their desire to be heard came through loud and clear in last year’s nationwide consultation that resulted in the Voix des Sans Voix survey, whose results Michèle Montas eloquently presented to the donors conference held in New York on March 31, 2010. “Listen to us for once,” Haitians from all walks of life pleaded.

Protesting and criticizing are not enough, however, and a rights-based approach will improve the quality of the demands made by Haitians so that their claims yield positive results. The capacity of the Haitian state to respond to these demands must also be enhanced: this is the essence of rights-based reconstruction and development.

Let’s take access to clean, safe water as an example. The right to water is recognized under international law and is directly related to the right to life, food, shelter, and education. On September 30, 2010, the UN Human Rights Council recognized the right to water and sanitation as legally binding in international law on all nation-states. This affirmation followed the July 2010 UN General Assembly Resolution (A/RES/64/292), where 120 countries found that “the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation is derived from the right to an adequate standard of living.”

In Haiti, 20% of school-age children are prevented or impeded from attending school because of the time and energy they must spend every day fetching water, often unclean and unsafe, for their households. Girls, once they reach puberty, often stop attending school for lack of access to clean and safe sanitation facilities. Even before the quake, access to water was on the decline in Haiti; one study showed that the decrease was 7% from 1990 to 2005.  This is a grave violation of international human rights laws, which require the state to show that it is making progress in guaranteeing rights instead of regressing.

The state is the primary duty bearer to guarantee the right to water, but in Haiti the relationship between the state and the private sector is completely upside down. NGOs and private companies dominate distribution and access, and they are largely unregulated and uninspected by the state. This is literally a deadly combination: outsourcing responsibility without oversight. The state exerts limited oversight over the many private water companies whose large delivery trucks ply the crowded streets of Port-au-Prince and other cities. The government’s Service Nationale d’Eau Potable (SNEP—National PotableWater Service) is so weak and underfunded that it actually turns to NGOs for help, and the NGOs decide whether or not they want to help SNEP. NGOs even occasionally donate some of their funds to SNEP in places like Port-de-Paix.

The quality of the water sold is dubious. Haitians have a saying: “Nou achte dlo pou lajan, men se maladi nou achte.” (“We pay for water but all we buy is disease.”) Yet access to clean, affordable potable water is a state responsibility under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, article 24(2), which Haiti has ratified. Eighteen out of nineteen water sources tested in Port-de-Paix were selling contaminated water. The poor in Haiti—meaning the overwhelming majority of the population—pay more in both absolute and relative terms for water.

The Haitian state must have a legal framework, regulatory bodies, and a strategy with goals, timelines, and benchmarks to increase the accessibility, affordability, and acceptability of water. All relevant international development and reconstruction projects should focus on how to increase the capacity of the state to achieve this goal. Data on access, costs, and water purity must be gathered and analyzed and form the basis for government action. Reliable data is a cornerstone of a rights-based approach because you cannot improve what you cannot measure.

Since NGOs and private companies will remain engaged, they must be licensed and inspected and penalized if they fail to meet minimum standards. Like the state, these entities are “duty bearers,” with international legal obligations to protect, respect, and fulfill the right to clean water. The population must be consulted regularly to ensure that their views and concerns are taken into account. The IHRC, international financial institutions (World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank), and bilateral donors must coordinate their assistance and ensure that their support generates greater enjoyment of the right to water.

Donors also have a responsibility under international law to help Haitians enjoy their rights. This duty is enshrined under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which Haiti has not yet ratified but whose ratification should be a priority for the new government. Since Haiti remains so dependent on foreign aid, the duties of donors and NGOs, in general, and the IHRC, in particular, to help achieve the progressive realization of rights, are pronounced.

As former president Bill Clinton said in a speech to aid groups in Haiti on March 25, 2010, “Every time we spend a dollar in Haiti from now on we have to ask ourselves, ‘Does this have a long-term return? Are we helping them become more self-sufficient? . . . Are we serious about working ourselves out of a job?’” These are the right questions, and a rights-based approach will help provide the right answers. By focusing on strengthening both the Haitian state’s capacity to deliver and the Haitian citizen’s capacity to demand, the international community will help end the over sixty years of dependence that has prevented Haiti from developing a true democracy, a vibrant economy, and a society that enjoys all its human rights.

^*This section draws on an excellent study completed before the earthquake entitled Wòch nan Soley: The Denial of the Right to Water in Haiti, by the New York University School of Law Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, Partners In Health, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, and Zanmi Lasante (2008).

As we near the three week mark of the earthquake in Haiti several themes have emerged.

First, the international outpouring of support for the victims is unprecedented.  One news outlet reports that more then 50% of US households have made some kind of contribution to the relief effort.  Fundraisers in Africa, Asia and Europe have raised money from all classes of society.  Private businesses are involved.  Ralph Lauren, for example, has a full-page ad in this past Sunday’s New York Times that features a shirt in the colors of Haiti with the Haitian coat of arms, all proceeds going to the relief effort.  Universities, high schools and grade schools have been holding “Haiti teach-ins” where the history, culture and now even the geology of Haiti are discussed and students engage with experts on how best to help Haiti.

Second, the need is also on a scale and level of complexity that has challenged even the most seasoned rescue and relief teams.  Port-au-Prince was vastly overcrowded, the most densely populated slums built precisely in the most precarious zones.  How to bring, literally, life’s necessities to such an already poor population with an infrastructure that was overburdened even before the quake has proven to be much more difficult than previous disasters in Asia or Africa.

Third, the huge amount of assistance pouring into Port-au-Prince severely strains not only the weak pre-existing physical infrastructure.  Haiti’s government had limited capacity before the quake and has much less now.  Some key officials were killed and many official buildings, including the Presidential Palace, the Parliament and the Supreme Court – all three branches of government –  have been damaged or destroyed.

Fourth, there has been a massive flight from Port-au-Prince to the countryside.  While this will help relieve the congestion of the capital, the capacity of the rural countryside and provincial towns to support a sudden increase in desperately needy people is nearly non-existent.  For example, the city of Hinche in the Central Plateau of Haiti received approximately 30,000 people and food was virtually running out.  It took an emergency convoy led by the World Food Program accompanied by the French Ambassador on Friday, Jan. 29 to temporarily relieve the crisis.

As we look forward beyond the immediate emergency phase, the list of priorities is staggering.

1. Coordination of assistance must improve.  The UN cluster program is a good start with relevant agencies taking the lead, but not exclusive, role on protection, water, food, sanitation and health care.
2. Aid must reach rural Haiti and provincial towns so that the host population is not driven to desperation and those arriving from the capital have an incentive to stay put and not return.  This means quick impact projects in agriculture, road-building, tree planting and clearing irrigation canals that also create jobs and put cash in  people’s pockets.  Schools must reopen and teachers found.
3. Access to credit, seeds and fertilizers must be increased; tanker loads of rich alluvium topsoil from several dredging projects in the US should be delivered to Haiti. Wind and sun, which Haiti has in abundance, should be harvested using increasingly cheaper technology.  Just as Haiti jumped the” land-line” phase of telecommunications and went right to the cell phone, it could skip the fixed power-grid phase and go right to the more nimble and green emerging power generation systems, including bio-fuel.
4. Haitian National Police should be deployed to Internally Displaced Person’s camps, accompanied by UN police, to provide protection and security to their residents, especially women and children.
5. Seasoned managers and technocrats from Haiti’s large Diaspora should be enlisted to return for six months to one year to work alongside Haitian counterparts in key government Ministries like Finance, Planning, Agriculture, Education, Health, Interior and Justice. This will help manage the need to absorb and use effectively the massive flow of aid.  Introducing a new culture of public service, accountability and oversight will take time where government all too often was either absent or preying on the population. The time to start is now.
6. A Civilian Protection Corps (which is called for by Article 52 of the Haitian Constitution of 1987) should be created.  The Corps would employ a large chunk of Haiti’s youth,  especially those in the poorer sections of Port-au-Prince.  It is crucial to give them a chance to make a positive contribution to rebuilding Haiti and to draw them away from the gangs who are reconstituting themselves after the escape from the National Penitentiary of several convicted gang leaders.
7. The ports of Cap-Haitien, Miragoane, Jeremie, Port-de-Paix, Les Cayes, St. Marc, Jacmel and Gonaives should be repaired, expanded and reopened, as necessary.  These were at one time viable port cities with decent jobs and commercial links with the US, Europe and the Caribbean.  The need for shipping clerks, stevedores, accountants, lawyers, and export-import businesses would expand and attract talent from the capital while allowing for a better dispersion of jobs and opportunities across the country.
8. Urban planners, especially from the Diaspora, should start now a plan for “Port-au-Prince: the next 250 years.” Zoning regulations, building codes, traffic engineering, new affordable housing, sewer and sanitation systems (especially the delivery of potable water), child-friendly schools (with a focus on safe latrines for girls), all need to be designed and construction started once the rubble is cleared.  Again, this is also a job-creation tool.
9. The Haitian justice system should establish an emergency panel to resolve any property disputes/claims.

The list could undoubtedly double, but an already overwhelmed population, government and international donor community should not try to do everything at once. Rebuilding Haiti out of the ashes and debris of Port-au-Prince will be a marathon, not a sprint;  Haiti will need substantial support and attention for years.  Yet it is crucial that decisions made now be the best ones possible, otherwise the risk is that Haiti slides back into its former dysfunctional self with dire results for its people.

William G. O’Neill
En route to Haiti
1 Feb 2010

The earthquake that hit Haiti on 12 January 2010, while unprecedented in scale, underscores what the 2008 hurricanes revealed about the state’s incapacity to protect its people. An earthquake of 7.0 on the Richter scale would cause damage in California or Japan, so a much poorer country like Haiti was bound to suffer dearly. Yet the utter devastation of huge swathes of the capital could have been mitigated, even in Haiti.

First, barely one year before the earthquake, a geologist at the University of Havana noted that a large earthquake on the fault line running near Port-au-Prince was highly likely. He urged the government and population of Haiti to take precautionary measures to prepare for a large quake. Second, right after the La Promesse school collapse in November 2008, the mayor of Port-au-Prince stated that over half of Haiti’s buildings “were shoddily built and unsafe.” Once again it was noted that Haiti has no national building code; no inspectors visit construction sites or punish contractors for diluting cement or other shortcuts to increase profits at the expense of safety.

Yet on my most recent trip to Port-au-Prince last December I noted that on the hillside across the valley from the Hotel Montana, now in ruins, the steady march of squat, gray cement houses across and up the mountain had continued since my previous visit in 2007. These buildings, perched on a steep slope with no electricity, roads, sewers or any type of city service, defy any rational land use or urban planning. Yet no one was stopping them.

So the deadly mix of lax enforcement, no planning and scant prevention that led to thousands dying in the 2008 hurricanes and 98 kids being crushed to death in one school in 2008, has meant that tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people, have been killed. While it would be grossly unfair to blame the Haitian state for all of these deaths, surely with some preparation, some heeding of the warning last year that a quake was imminent and preventing on-going construction in precarious zones, some, even many lives, could have been saved. This was a disaster waiting to happen.

What to do? Once the emergency phase is over, Haitians, with strong support from the international donor community, must finally strive to build a state worthy of its people. Politicians will have to end their selfish “winner-take-all” approach. Citizens will have to demand that their public servants actually serve the public interest and deliver the necessities that are their right like clean water, food, adequate shelter, education.

Donors must work with the state and not rely so heavily on non-governmental organizations. This is real “nation-building” and we cannot shy away from the task. Haiti has been called a “Republic of NGOs” with more NGOs per capita than any country on earth. Some are excellent, many not so wonderful; some perform functions that should primarily be the state’s responsibility. This cannot continue.

Finally, as the devastated capital smolders, attention to rural Haiti must become a top priority. Haiti remains essentially an agricultural country with potential to produce much of the food it needs plus tropical fruit and coffee for export. Port-au-Prince became bloated since the Duvalier era, holding 10 times as many people as it was designed to accommodate. The countryside held no possibilities, denuded hillsides where tropical rains washed away topsoil, made farming even more difficult. So people flocked into shantytowns that filled those hillsides and port-side slums with those fragile structures. Tragically, many of their inhabitants are now dead and more will surely die in the coming days. The past must not be repeated, however, so the Government and donors must focus on rural development that would give people choices and a future outside the capital.

A government accountable to its citizens, public officials ready, willing and able to serve the public, politicians working for the public good and open to compromise, and a better balance between the capital and the rest of the country—all would constitute a revolution in Haiti. The Haiti that emerged from the first revolution in 1804 was badly warped over the ensuing 200 years. The best way to honor those who have died in this latest disaster would be a new revolution creating a new Haiti worthy of their sacrifice.