Research for Haiti

The Nonprofit Quarterly: Haitian Leaders Angry About Being Left Out Of Aid Decisions

The Nonprofit Newswire remarks on a recent AP story about the difficulties flood of money in Haiti is presenting for governance. The storing notes that:

U.N. and U.S. officials say they are closely monitoring NGOs that receive funds. Groups receiving money are required to report to the the U.S. Agency for International Development every two weeks detailing how they are using these funds and whether they are in keeping with their plans.

It’s not clear who the “their” is in the last sentence, nor how this reporting works. Anybody have ideas on where these reports go and if they are public?

Update: Tracking the $3 Billion and Now Private Funds

A prior post provided some early thoughts on where the money is going and where it is coming from. I know see an interesting "make a table" function at Relief Web that presents data from the Financial Tracking System (FTS) of the UN. The page and the instructions are a little confusing, but here's the table I produced (I move to the second tab some text the table generates, sorted by recipient (called "appealing agency" awkwardly fy FTS, and I hid some columns to make the table tidier, but not date was removed). The figures are updated from the prior post and it has more details (as well as fewer acronyms). Please try out the make a table function and let me know if you get something different.

I think it is urgent that larger recipient groups begin re-granting to small NGOs in Haiti, especially in the countryside, to jump start relief efforts that are focused on the planting season, on decentralizing population, and on putting people to work. This should be tracked, too, so the grants are transparent and that we know where the money is finally going and for what.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) has a Haiti Relief and Reconstruction Watch blog set up. They note that the Federal Procurement Data System has set up a special page for accessing data on US government contracts in Haiti (note: you have to set up a free account to access the data). I have not had a chance to play with it yet, but CEPR discusses what they have learned on their page. Press and advoactes will be making lots of heat around for-profit contractors (especially those that have parent companies with financial interests in Haiti, or that have had scandals in their past) receiving money for work in Haiti.

NGOs in Haiti: The Other Brain Drain?

Do NGOs and INGOs pull quality staff away from working for government? This was a point that Paul Famer made in his testimony to the U.S. Senate (see earlier post for text).

However, if INGOs rely on non-Haitian employees, how are these international staff members perceived by local professionals? Note these observations by Amaka Megwalu, a graduate student from Harvard, one this issue in Africa:

For others, particularly some non-expatriate staff, the aid industry itself is perceived as unjust.  These staff members point to significant discrepancies in salaries between expatriate and national staff even when it seems that both do similar work.  They point to a practice of systematically treating expat and national staff differently.  They note the custom of having most management positions filled by expat staff.  And they note the sometimes relatively lavish conditions in which expat staff live.

[Note similar views in a review by the Stimson Center and the Peace Divend Trust of UN peacekeeping work in many conflict zones, mentioned in an earlier post.]

People often talk about the Haitian government's weaknesses, and the need for additional staff. However, if the government cannot compete as an employer with the INGOs that are flooding into the country (and have yet to reach full strength), where will Haiti find people to run the government? One possibility is that the government and some donor nations establish a professional school for training of officials or people who can work in government. In Washington, DC the US Department of Agriculture has a night "graduate school" that serves this purpose to some degree: while the school does not offer any real degrees, entry-level and mid-level government officials can take classes to build specific skills (the school does offer some certificates, and is open to the public; some friends have taken low-cost language courses there).

Where is the $3 Billion to Haiti Going?

Relief Web has posted some tables on the amounts INGOS and donor nations are giving to Haiti. I had an analysis posted here, but the formatting was going haywire for some reason. The observations I made are now in this file.

Evaluations and Impact Analyses: Economic Impact of Relief and UN Work

A host of documents for today on the economic (and social) impact of relief work, including UN peacekeeping work, in Haiti and other counties.

1. Peace Dividend Trust puts forth a call for relief projects in Haiti to adopt a "Haiti First" policy on purchases.
2. In a somewhat similar vein is this 2005 assessment at Prevention Web.Net of the benefits of Cash for Work (CFW) programs run by Mercy Corps during its efforts in Aceh after the tsunami. The report finds that cash for work programs could be implemented rapidly in emergency situations and had the benefited individuals as well as their communities socially as well as economically. The report only studied short-term CFW programs, however, while Haiti could likely benefit from sustained jobs programs, something President Clinton has suggested several times.
3. Regarding the impact of UN operations, the first report for today is a sobering look at the impactof UN peacekeeping operations (including the operation in Haiti) on prostitution and the trafficking of women. This report, from 2009, is from MICROCON at the University of Sussex.
4. The second report on the UN is a fairly exhaustive and thoughtful 2006 study of an extensive range of concerns about the social, bureaucratic, and economic impact of UN operations in nations. The goal of the study:  "Although the body of literature related to the economic dimensions of peacekeeping operations is wide-ranging and diverse, there has been very little analysis of the extent to which mission policies and choices can affect the longer-term development of the places where they deploy. This project set out to help fill this gap by gathering data that could permit more systematic projections of longer-term impact and by analyzing how such impact might be harnessed to support the fundamental international objective of locally sustainable peace and security."  Everything from the impact of local hiring and pay scales to use of air conditioners is reviewed. The report is by the Peace Dividend Trust and Stimson Center. Fascinating stuff even if you don't always agree with their analysis.