Research for Haiti

White House Draft Proposal Discusses Taking Development Assistance Away from State (sort of)

Well, it’s about time. Both the broad strokes and the details of US development assistance, down to the specifics of what (or who) gets funded, is often a political football. Aid work, as with domestic policy work, will always be influenced by changes in the executive and legislative branches, but it should also be subject to scientific review and professional standards. But as long as development work is housed at State, I worry that that will not happen to the degree that it should. Of course, I am not certain that any single pending reform will make foreign assistance policy more evidence-based and less tainted by the ideological spin of administrations as they come and go, but it seems that some very serious reforms are under consideration, including taking aid work away away from the Department of State. That article (at Foreign Policy) discusses a draft paper (which is available at the website) that recommends moving aid out from under State:

One important section of the seven-page document would establish an interagency "development policy committee"  -- moving the responsibility for coordinating U.S. policy on development out of the State Department.

At issue is whether Foggy Bottom should have the ultimate authority over development policy or whether oversight should be done by the new interagency body, which reports up to the president.

The draft document also calls for an overall review of U.S. development strategy every four years (separate from the QDDR), and the design of country and/or regional strategies to "organize U.S. engagement and inform resource allocation."

The idea of a government-wide, independent committee to oversee development is one that Senate Foreign Relations Committee heads John Kerry, D-MA, and Richard Lugar, R-IN, also support.

However, the draft would not allow for complete independence of US AID from State. Dr. Shah, for instance, would still report to Sec. Clinton, not President Obama; and the budget would still be (partially?) controlled by the State Department. One “development observer” interviewed by the Foreign Policy blog “The Cable” stated: "We're not hugely supportive of the USAID administrator reporting to the secretary of state, but a lot of this is largely positive in terms of strategy and overall direction." (Note that this is all very much a draft, but it is interesting to get a glimpse.)

Corruption – Daniel Kaufman and Mushtaq Khan Interviewed by Owen Barder on “Development Drums”

You can read the transcript or listen to the pod cast of Development Drums’ Episode 20: Corruption which features an interesting conversation with Daniel Kaufman and Mushtaq Khan (see also) about corruption in development. This has been a frequent topic in discussions about Haiti recently.

Sadly, discussions of corruption in Haiti often focus—to the neglect of the seriousness and nuance of the topic—just on Haitian officials. This is a real deficiency in the conversation. Any serious conversation about corruption in Haiti needs to include a recognition of the role that forces outside the country have played (e.g., drug smuggling, gun running, past support for paramilitary groups, past support of opposition leaders of questionable democratic credentials, etc.) in corruption and governance problems in the country. The U.S. has come clean recently about the role the U.S. market for narcotics plays in the violence and corruption that is causing havoc in Mexico; discussions of corruption in Haiti need to include similar recognition before there is too much finger pointing.

Discussions of corruption also need to go beyond discussions of bribes and diversions of public funds. Kaufman has an interesting discussion about this here.

For me, though, the most important take home message from the podcast is that corruption should be viewed as a symptom as often as a cause of development problems. This is something I have mentioned to several people about Haiti but the point seems to fall on deaf ears, so it is nice to see it mentioned in the podcast. In the case of Haiti, it is the lack of governance capacity as much as and likely more so than corruption per se that is the barrier to development in Haiti. 

Photos of Resettlement Camp at Corail Cesselesse, Haiti on Flickr

Oxfam has uploaded some photos on Flickr of development taking place at Corail Cesseleese, the large track of land the government has set aside for new housing and urban planning. Read more about Corail Cesseleese and see maps of this large area in this previous post. If you search flickr for the phrase Corail Cesseleese

Vietnam's Viettel Invests in Haiti's Telecom Market

South-South investments are an interesting phenomenon. Here’s an article that claims that the “largest foreign direct investment after the earthquake” in Haiti is coming from Vietnam.

­Vietnam's largest mobile network operator, Viettel has signed a deal to upgrade Haiti's fixed line network in the country's largest foreign direct investment after the earthquake. Under a public-private partnership structured by World Bank's IFC, Viettel will initially invest US$59 million, and an additional US$40 million over four years, to upgrade services offered by fixed line operator Télécommunications d'Haiti (Teleco), creating a new company in which Viettel will hold a 60 percent stake and Banque de la République d'Haiti (BRH), Teleco and their affiliates will control the remaining 40 percent.

If you do a Google search on Viettel and Haiti, the articles seem a bit old, so it would be interesting to know if this is working out. It wasn’t clear to me who owns Viettel.