U.S. Assistance to Haiti and Current Events Approaching the Fifth Anniversary of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake
Thomas C. Adams, Special Coordinator for Haiti
Elizabeth Hogan, Acting Assistant Administrator for the Latin America and Caribbean Bureau (USAID) via Teleconference
January 8, 2015
MR. RATHKE: Welcome to everyone joining the call. Again, my name is Jeff Rathke. I’m the Director of the Press Office here at the State Department. And we have with us two senior officials to talk today about Haiti. They are Tom Adams, the Haiti Special Coordinator at the Department of State, and Beth Hogan, the Acting Assistant Administrator of USAID in the Latin America and Caribbean Bureau.
Now, this call will be on the record, and there is no embargo. You also – many of you will have seen a fact sheet that was issued earlier today by the State Department on Haiti and U.S. assistance to Haiti over the last five years. So we would draw your attention to that. It is also posted on the State Department website in case you have not seen it already. So with that, I will turn it over to our two officials and they will make some introductory comments, and then we will turn to your questions.
So I’ll go to Tom Adams first, the Haiti Special Coordinator.
MR. ADAMS: Hi. Good afternoon and thank you all for your interest in Haiti. I think Haiti is a very difficult story to tell. When people have asked me over the last four years to explain something in Haiti, my first answer is usually, “It’s complicated.” And it’s certainly complicated today. Haiti faces a lot of challenges that continue to hinder stability and development. But it has made progress in a number of areas, and we want to talk about those and about the U.S. contribution to it. I’d also be glad to talk about the current challenging political situation there. And my colleague, Beth Hogan of USAID, will be glad to go in more depth about U.S. assistance to Haiti.
After the earthquake, I think a lot of you may recall that over half of all American families texted money for Haiti. Congress also responded generously. They’ve appropriated over $4 billion for Haiti since the earthquake. A good portion of that, about 1.3 billion, went to initial relief efforts. All of that has been disbursed. Of the remaining $2.7 billion for longer term reconstruction and development, we’ve disbursed about 66 percent of that, about two-thirds of that, or some 1.8 billion.
It has been a challenge to implement certain parts of our assistance package, but I think overall we’ve seen some real good results in job creation at Caracol, in health, in security, including building the capacity of the Haitian national police. We have also faced some challenges of supporting new home construction and developing a new port up north and getting more local Haitian organizations to be direct recipients for funding, and Beth can talk about that.
With regard to the current situation politically there, there is – has been this political gridlock for really several years now. But there are intense discussions going on, which we hope will result in an agreement on holding elections next year. President Martelly I think has courageously proposed ways of unblocking it, and we are pushing all sides to reach agreement.
I’ll stop here and turn it over to Beth. But again, we look forward to your questions.
MS. HOGAN: Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be with you today. As Tom mentioned, the United States Government and the United States people were extraordinarily generous in terms of its response to the Haiti earthquake. And as Tom mentioned, the first year was focused specifically on the crisis situation on the ground and the immediate recovery requirements. But even in those very early days, we were setting the stage for the longer term development investments that we needed to make to help Haiti turn the corner and be able to secure a more stable, long-term development objective and increase financial resources from their own country.
And so we’ve been working across a portfolio of four pillars, if you will. We focused first and foremost on energy and infrastructure; secondly, health and education; thirdly, economic growth and agriculture; and fourth, in democracy, institution building, and human rights.
And so that makes up the portfolio writ large. And as Tom alluded to, we have seen successes across that portfolio. That’s not to say that everything we have tried has succeeded, but certainly our successes have far outweighed our mistakes, if you will. We have seen incredible gains in the agricultural sector with 70,000 farmers increasing their yields – some up to 300 percent of some certain crops, and therefore increasing their incomes accordingly. In the – also in the agricultural sector, we have partnered with some major companies like Coca-Cola and a Heineken subsidiary, BRANA, to invest in both mango production and sorghum. And so again, we have reached just in sorghum alone 18,000 farmers, and in mangos another 25,000 farmers who are now exporting mangos to Whole Foods in the United States. So that part of the program has gone very well.
Also, we’ve seen significant improvements in the health sector; again, Tom alluded to that a moment ago. We’ve seen just in the last six years since the last health demographic survey was conducted that the malnutrition rate for children under five was cut in half, so that’s really a substantial and a significant event. We’ve also seen a great uptick in the percentage of children getting vaccinated. We’ve seen increased access to modern contraceptive technology by women. And again, on almost all things that the health demographic survey measures, we’re seeing positive developments.
The same is true in economic growth. We have seen – we have invested in new businesses. We have seen those businesses – those are small and medium size businesses, I should state. We’ve seen those businesses go forward to create sustainable, permanent jobs. We are looking and have found private investments from the United States, and particularly the diaspora community, to invest in those businesses, and I think we’ve got several very exciting examples of things that are working. Again, not everything works, but our successes far outstrip our failures in that regard.
And then when it comes to the democracy portfolio, we haven’t been as successful, quite frankly, because a lot of that depends on the Government of Haiti taking certain actions. And we were, I think, greatly optimistic about how far and how fast they would be able to go over the last five years. Nonetheless, they have taken very important steps forward in passing an anti-trafficking bill, an anticorruption bill, but there’s much more that needs to be done, particularly on the reform of the justice sector.
Having said that, we are continuing to work on providing legal assistance to those in need and to – tackling one of the most difficult problems in the justice sector, which is pretrial detention. Eighty percent of the people who are in prisons are in prisons awaiting trial, and many of those people have served sentences that would have exceeded the time that they would have had to serve if they had been convicted. And so in three of the five areas, or geographic spaces in which we are working, we have seen pretrial detentions – or the time it takes to get a case to go to court – go from one year on average down to four months on average.
So we know that even under the old criminal procedures code we can have some progress, but to really have significant progress, they need to pass a new criminal code. And we’ve helped them develop one, and now it’ll be up to the new government to pass it.
I think I’ll stop there because there’s lots of other examples that I could provide to you, but I think we’ll wait and take your questions and see which direction you want to go.
MR. RATHKE: Okay. At this point, operator, I’d ask you if you could remind everyone how to register for a question. That would be helpful. And then we’ll turn to questions.
OPERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press * and then 1 on your touchtone phone. You’ll hear a tone indicating you’ve been placed in queue. You may remove yourself from queue at any time by pressing the # key. Once again, to ask a question please press * and then 1 at this time.
MR. RATHKE: Okay. And Operator, we are ready to move to the first question, please.
OPERATOR: Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald, please go ahead.
QUESTION: Yes, hi. Good afternoon. I have questions for both Tom and Beth.
Beth, two questions for you. Do you – when you’re looking back over the last five years and USAID’s plans and what they wanted to do, especially in the area of housing, do you think that they were overly ambitious? And secondly, do you have any sense today that should another earthquake arrive, are the buildings that have been built or just the ones that withstood the last disaster – how is the country in terms of being able to withstand that?
And then for Tom, does the U.S. have a position in terms of Monday? Monday we can see a situation where there is no extension of the terms of parliament and President Martelly will rule by decree. But does the – is the U.S. prepared to accept that, or has the U.S. put out a position in reference to that?
MS. HOGAN: Okay, thank you, Jacquie. I think I’ll start on the housing question first and then turn to Tom. Absolutely the U.S. Government was very ambitious in terms of what we expected to accomplish as far as the shelter sector is concerned. We had expected many more donors to come forward to partner with us to build new homes, new settlements, and those funds did not materialize. We have gone forward in developing shelters primarily in the north. And these are not earthquake-proof, because apparently nothing can be earthquake-proof, but they are earthquake-resistant, and that was our goal.
And what we’ve done though is we realized that we are certainly not going to be able to come anywhere close to building the kind of housing stock that Haiti requires that we shifted our strategy to focus more on housing finance and how we can unlock the potential of the financial institutions to do down-market lending to help people who already own a home expand it or for those who want to build a home get the financing that they need in special kind of packages whereby they could actually spend the same amount of money they’re currently spending on rent to spend on something that looks like a mortgage. It’s not exactly the same product as a mortgage, but that was the goal.
The government has also asked us to help them on urban planning, particularly in many of these sites in the south that have become quasi-permanent settlements after the earthquake. When people left the camps, they went to places where there was open space and they started to build homes, and suddenly, in Canaan-Jerusalem, as one example, it started to grow very, very quickly and it could be the second largest city in Haiti sometime soon. So the government is partnered with us to help do the kind of urban planning that would allow for a real grid with streets with public spaces with helping design homes that can be built there that will stand the test of time, if you will.
And so going forward, that’s where we see ourselves partnering with the government, with the private sector, with the construction community in terms of making both materials as well as financing available to those residents who have an interest in taking advantage of that.
QUESTION: Thank you.
MS. HOGAN: I think the prime minister once said, Tom – correct me if I’m wrong – that before the earthquake there was a 500,000 unit shortage in terms of housing in Port-au-Prince, and so you can just get a sense of the magnitude of the challenge that we’re working toward.
MR. ADAMS: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. I mean, basically, if you do the math, 500,000 new houses even before the earthquake, and we found that building a house was at least $30,000 to prepare the land and get electricity in there. You’re talking about $15 billion total amount of money pledged for Haiti over 2010 to 2020 is 16 billion, so I think you can understand the resources really aren’t there to do everything. But I think we have switched our strategy effectively in – at the request of the Haitian Government to support Haitians as they build houses. And if you go up to Canaan-Jerusalem, Jacquie, up north you’ll see the results of that. And hopefully, we’re trying to help the – we’re going to get ahead of the curve there.
Going back to your position on what happens on Monday, that’s an interesting question. They — as you know, they negotiated till late last night – the various parties, the political parties, the president and the senate. And our position is pretty simple. We want to see elections happen, agreement on elections, and we also want to avoid rule by decree. We think it’s better if all three branches of government are existing and functioning, and so we think there’s a fair chance that they can reach that kind of agreement by Monday. We’re certainly urging them on.
I think President Martelly took a courageous step in appointing this presidential commission at the end of November, and I think he has moved with good – in good order to implement their recommendations and we would ask all parties there to do the same, to make the necessary political compromises so that the story on the 12th is not that Haiti’s in permanent political gridlock but more that Haiti has made progress.
QUESTION: Thank you.
OPERATOR: Ms. Charles, did you have any additional questions?
QUESTION: No. That’s it. Thank you.
MR. ADAMS: Okay. Jacquie. Good talking to you. Nice story today, by the way.
OPERATOR: If there are additional questions, please press * and then 1. At this time we have no further questions in queue.
MR. RATHKE: Okay. Operator, let’s just wait a minute and see if any participants want to ask questions. So we’ll give folks a moment to register those.
OPERATOR: Just a reminder: Press * and then 1 should you have a question. And one moment, please.
MR. RATHKE: Okay. I think we’re ready for another question, if you have any in queue.
OPERATOR: George Russell, Fox News, please go ahead.
QUESTION: Hello. One issue that you didn’t mention was cholera, which has had both a health dimension in Haiti and, of course, a legal dimension in terms of the many attempts to assign some kind of legal accountability for this. I wonder if either or both of you could comment on this issue, where we stand now.
MS. HOGAN: Yeah, I’d be happy start that, and Tom can add on. Cholera, as you know, became a very critical problem in 20 – when it first broke out in 2011. In fact, in 2011 between I believe it’s January and June, there was something like 280,000 deaths from cholera. Today, for 2014, if you look at that same period of time between January and June of this year it’s 45 deaths. So clearly, the – and this is a real success story for the Government of Haiti, I have to say. Both CDC and USAID helped stand up cholera treatment centers to deal with the crisis when it was at its peak, and then over time worked with the Ministry of Health to bring cholera treatment into the suite of services that health clinics provide.
And so the overall death rate from cholera at this point is under 1 percent of those who contract it. I think it’s actually 0.8 percent, and that is considered by international standards to mean that the cholera epidemic is under control. So we’re very happy about the fact that the system is working and it’s containing the virus. However, as we know, once a country comes down with that kind of problem of cholera, it takes – it can take up to a decade to completely rid itself of that. So we have to stay very, very vigilant in terms of detecting those cases and treating those cases. But thus far, I think the Haitians have done quite well.
MR. ADAMS: Yeah, let me just add to that. I mean, cholera is an area where cases are down 97 percent from the first full year and well below the international rate considered good at 1 percent. And Haiti has had other success stories too. The Haitian National Police have a much better crime rate. There are a lot of areas where Haiti’s had improvement that I think they deserve credit for.
Going back to cholera, as you know, there’s a legal case been brought against the United Nations. We’re not a party to that case. We have asserted the immunity of the United Nations in that suit. We didn’t do this out of a lack of sympathy for the victims, but it’s just part of our treaty obligations.
MS. HOGAN: And for the record, may I come back to the numbers? Because I had some conflicting messages on numbers and I’d like to, for the record, state that the number of cases in – yeah, down 97 percent since 2011, but the number of cases and fatalities in 2014 are actually 132. And – but that is compared to 350,000 cases in 2011 with 3,000 deaths due to the outbreak.
MR. RATHKE: All right, thank you. Operator, if we have additional questions, we can go to the next one.
OPERATOR: Jacqueline Charles, please go ahead.
QUESTION: Yes, I wanted to ask you guys, too, about the Caracol Industrial Park, if you can just sort of comment on that. There was a lot of hoopla before and after it was opened. Clearly, there are not 60,000 jobs there as was touted. Do you all consider that to be a success, or how do you view the park and how it’s doing meeting your objectives?
MR. ADAMS: Sure, Jacquie. This is Tom. I’ll take that on. Yeah, Caracol, as you know, is geographically the largest industrial park in the Caribbean. And the – most of the factories that are setup there are in the textile industry, taking advantage of the HELP and HOPE Act. And while the space is large enough to ultimately accommodate 65,000 jobs, it’s going to take 8 or 9 years before they reach that kind of potential. However, it’s gotten off to a good start. In its first full year of operation, it had 1,200 jobs; it doubled those in 2013 to 2,520; 2014, it’s 5,329. And then next year with the construction of factory shells, and that’s the biggest constraint, frankly, is space for the demand – the demand’s much higher than the actual space we have there – I think it will double again.
So it’s growing geometrically each year, and I think it has been a success. And we market not only Caracol, but we market Haiti as a whole. We market the industrial plants in Port-au-Prince and at Ouanaminthe, and they have grown too. And in fact, the brightest spot in Haiti’s economic growth has been in this sector.
QUESTION: Thank you.
MS. HOGAN: Thank you.
MR. ADAMS: Sure.
MR. RATHKE: All right. We’ll give one last opportunity if anybody wants to chime in with a question. I – are there any questions in the queue, operator?
OPERATOR: Not at this point, but please press * and then 1 if you wish to ask a question.
MR. RATHKE: Okay, well that seems not to be the case – yeah, okay. I – if we have another question, we’ll take this. It will be the final question. Go ahead, operator.
OPERATOR: Peter Granitz, Foreign Policy Magazine. Please go ahead. Peter Granitz, your line is open. Did you have your line on mute? Mr. Granitz, did you have your line muted?
QUESTION: Oh, hi, hello. This is – I’m – this is Carrie Kahn with NPR. I’m sitting with Peter Grants in – Granitz, sorry – in Haiti. I just had a question about the export-oriented decision by the investors of that. There’s been some criticism that it might have been more productive for Haiti to focus more on the agricultural sector, and that to the detriment of the agricultural sector the investment was put in the export sector there. Do you have any response to that criticism, that too much was put in that industrial park, and that it could have been used – to reduce poverty would have been more helpful in the agricultural sector? Thank you so much for doing this call.
MR. ADAMS: Sure. Let me start, and then I’ll let Beth come in. We have large investments in agriculture in Haiti, as Beth has talked about, and she’s going to describe them in greater detail here. There was criticism that we were taking valuable agricultural land for the industrial park, but studies show that the uses – use for this export industry would produce 66 times more income than used for light agriculture, which it was lightly farmed land there. So certainly, the potential is greater to use for light industry.
Haiti needs a balance of industries. And one of the problems with agriculture in Haiti – I mean, Haiti’s never probably going to be a huge exporter again as they were several centuries ago. But in some key sectors – cacao, you can get mangoes at Whole Foods and others – they have some potential. But where the greatest potential is on agricultural productivity is really in import substitution. Haiti imports 52 percent of its food right now, and if it can increase its rice production and other things, which AID is helping it doing, that will have a very positive effect on their economic situation.
So we think they need a balance. And in years when there’s a lot of hurricanes or storms, Haiti loses a lot of value because it tears up their farmland. Haiti is about 97 percent deforested, and so even a good rainstorm will cause severe agricultural damage. So they also need to diversify away from just agriculture for that reason.
That said, you’re right; agriculture’s very important. About 60 percent of Haitians kind of live in the countryside and they’re connected to agriculture, so we spend a lot of time on that. So I hope that answers your question.
MS. HOGAN: Yeah. And I’d just jump in to say, to give you an order of the magnitude of our investment in agriculture between 2010 and 2013, the U.S. Government has invested over 170 million in the ag sector. And if you add our 2014 funds to that, it’s well over $200 million. And again, we’ve seen some really good results. We have seen just in the 2014 yields that yields have increased in corn by 448 percent, beans increased 95 percent, rice 139 percent, and plantains by 56 percent. And those are the crops that, as Tom just alluded to, are the things that – many of those were imported previously, and now farmers are becoming more self-reliant. So that’s a really promising note.
We’ve also focused very much, as you know that Haiti is a very deforested country, but also through our agricultural and economic activity programs we’ve planted five million seedlings and built 373 greenhouses, which are also a new source of income for farmers. And when we plant trees, we’re planting fruit-bearing trees, so there will be a built-in incentive for farmers to keep those trees as opposed to cutting them down for firewood. So we really think that Haiti now has the technology that it needs to really turn the corner on reforesting its hillsides.
MR. RATHKE: All right. Well, let me thank the – those of you who have called in today and our questioners and also thank our senior officials, Tom Adams, Haiti Special Coordinator, Beth Hogan, Acting Assistant Administrator from USAID. Once again, this call is on the record, no embargo, and we appreciate everyone’s participation. Thanks and have a good afternoon.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of State