AID FACTS ON HAITI, as of Jan 2013

This page contains nine reports. The most recent are at the bottom, the oldest at the top. For the latest in aid figures as reported by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Sept 2013, go to this web link.

1. Key Facts on Aid to Haiti, January 2013

Overall contributions for relief and recovery in Haiti:

Humanitarian aid (emergency relief, by governments and multilateral agencies):
$2.42 billion delivered, of which .8% to Haitian government

Debt relief
$996 million

Recovery aid (by governments and multilateral agencies):
* $4.5 billion promised for 2010/11. $2.38 billion delivered, of which 13% to Haitian government or agencies (caution: what is a 'Haitian’ agency'?).
* Of that, $1.67 dispensed in 2010, $707 million in 2011.
* Projected: $780 million in 2012, $3 billion for 2013-20.

The eight largest recovery donors and their rate of disbursement:
Venezuela                   $1.34 billion                24%
USA                             $1.15 billion                30%
IDB                              $544 million                60%
IMF                              $311 million                95%
Spain                           $308 million                85%
EU                               $299 million                60%
Canada                        $289 million                91%
France                         $277 million                72%

Private aid: $3.1 billion in private money for relief and recovery, of which:
* $1.14 Red Crosses
* $876 million U.S. consortium InterAction
* $100 million UNASUR (not counted as government or multilateral)
* $84 million Partners In Health
As of Sept 30, 2011, the Red Cross organizations had disbursed 48% of their donations.

2. Seven Places Where the Aid Did and Did Not Go

by BILL QUIGLEY and AMBER RAMANAUSKAS
Published on Counterpunch, January 3, 2012
This article looks at the performance of the aid and reconstruction effort in Haiti, two years following the earthquake.


3. U.S. gov't spending for Haiti recovery major projects at .8% for 2010/11

Report by U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO),Nov 2011


4. Inside the Haiti Reconstruction Fund Annual Report

By the Center for Economic Policy Review, July 26, 2011

Last Friday, as the board of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC) was meeting, the Haiti Reconstruction Fund (HRF) released its first annual report. (Note: we obtained a copy by asking one of the report’s media contacts for one; the report itself unfortunately has still not been made publicly available.) The report, which received cursory but positive media coverage, touted the high level of aid disbursement and the flexibility with which the HRF can operate, while rightly noting that the wider international community was failing to keep up. As AFP reported:

At an international donors conference held in New York in March 2010, 55 donors pledged $4.58 billion in grants in 2010 and 2011 for rebuilding the country. But as of June, donors had disbursed $1.74 billion, just 38 percent of the pledges, the World Bank said.
In releasing the report, the HRF also pointed to major reconstruction projects, such as the Neighborhood Housing Reconstruction Project as “highlights of the work done so far”.
 
A more thorough look at the annual report, however, shows that although the HRF has disbursed a significant portion of the funds raised, much of that money remains unspent in the hands of partner agencies. In fact, the World Bank, which is the administrator of the Neighborhood Housing Reconstruction Project, has yet to disburse a single dollar for the project, while the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has yet to disburse any aid that has been transferred from the HRF.
 
The HRF was established in March of 2010 by the World Bank, and validated by the Haitian government in May of 2010. With contributions of $351 million from 19 donors, the HRF describes itself as “[t]he largest source of unprogrammed funding for the reconstruction of Haiti”. A significant share (20 percent) of donor contributions has gone to the HRF. The steering committee is headed by representatives from the government of Haiti, as well as major donors who have donated more than $30 million (including the government of Canada). Although the steering committee approves funding decisions, the projects the HRF funds are all projects that have been approved by the IHRC, which has not always properly incorporated Haitians into the decision making process.
 
Disbursement Rate
The HRF annual report and subsequent media coverage has focused on the 71 percent of funds that has been disbursed to various entities, but fails to acknowledge that much of this money remains unspent. The HRF report notes that “The Trustee has transferred funds totaling US$197 million in respect of those approved projects and associated fees to the Partner Entities”, and an additional $40 million is set to be transferred. Together the $237 million is equal to 71 percent of the total funds raised. However, as the HRF notes, this money has not actually been spent on the ground, but simply transferred to their Partner Entities (the World Bank, UN and IDB). The disbursement of funds from those organizations is just $35 million, or about 10 percent of the total contributions received. The IDB, which has received $37 million in HRF funds has yet to actually disburse any of this total.
 
Despite this, the HRF press release on Friday listed a number of projects as “highlights of the work done so far”. HRF manager Josef Leitmann commented to the Financial Times:
“That’s no mean feat in an environment like Haiti where there are so many obstacles and challenges to getting things done on the ground,”
Yet these projects – even though funding has been made available by the HRF -- have not actually been undertaken. As is clear from the HRF’s own report, nowhere near $240 million has been spent “on the ground”.
 
Aid as “Accompaniment”
Last month the UN Special Envoy for Haiti released a report, “Has Aid Changed? Channelling assistance to Haiti before and after the earthquake” [PDF], which suggested aid should be evaluated based on the principle of accompaniment, and concluded that “aid is most effective at strengthening public institutions when it is channelled through them.”
 
The HRF, in their communications strategy notes that, “The HRF should be perceived as an efficient, responsive and flexible source of financing for reconstruction priorities as determined by the Government of Haiti”. The report adds that “In line with the principle of “accompaniment” as advocated by the Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, the Government of Haiti and the IHRC which it has established are very much in the driver’s seat when it comes to operating the HRF and allocating its resources.” Indeed, the HRF does appear to work much more in coordination with the Haitian government than many other organizations. 23 percent of the total budget support received by the Haitian government was channeled through the HRF. As opposed to direct budget support however, the HRF takes a more indirect route, as explained by the Special Envoy:
Budget support that is provided through the HRF is first transferred to the World Bank, which acts as trustee of the HRF; then, on approval from the HRF steering committee, to the relevant partner entity (the World Bank or the IDB); and finally, to the Haitian treasury. The partner entities do not charge fees if the contribution can be combined with their existing budget support operations.
Projects from the HRF, although carried out under the administration of one of their partner entities are then carried out on the ground by “a variety of different entities.” According to the annual report, the Haitian government is the implementing partner for 88.4 percent of HRF funds, an impressive total. The report points out that it is a “reflection of the strong ownership of the government in the implementation of HRF projects.” Yet the report also points out that “HRF’s most important partner is the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission [IHRC] which sets priorities for how HRF resources are used and is responsible for endorsing and forwarding all requests for financial support to the Fund”. Although the government of Haiti is a significant partner in the IHRC, the commission has previously come under scrutiny for the lack of Haitian input. As Penelope Chester at UN Dispatch noted:
On the same day that the Haiti Reconstruction Fund Annual Report was released, President Martelly announced plans to reform the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission, which oversees the disbursement of donor funds from the Fund. Martelly is struggling to strike a balance between Haitian ownership of reconstruction and proper administration and management of funds. A Martelly advisor said: “The IHRC itself has become this extra entity outside of the government, and that is what we need to fix.”
The advisor, Michele Oriole, went on to say, "We have to say, 'OK, this is an important forum to keep the momentum and focus on Haiti, but here is how we want it to function.'"
 
Donors Preferencing Contributions
In April, Jacqueline Charles of the Miami Herald reported on how small organizations have largely been left out of rebuilding projects. In the article, Charles noted that, “the U.S. and other donors even specify preferences when donating to the trust fund. As a result, the fund, which was initially envisioned as a place to pool resources to fill funding gaps, has little extra money for priorities like debris removal and schools.”
 

This criticism is echoed in the HRF annual report, as one of the goals for next year is to “To dissuade existing and future donors from preferencing their contributions so that the GoH has maximum flexibility to use HRF resources to finance strategic priorities.” The U.S., which is the largest contributor to the HRF, attached preferences to the entire $120 million that was given. Although the sectors for which the U.S. earmarked its donations are all important, it takes away the flexibility that is supposed to be the hallmark of the HRF and limits the ability of the government of Haiti to lead the reconstruction process. According to the Special Envoy, only about half of the $100 million that has yet to be allocated is not preferenced.


5. Has Aid Changed?

The United Nations' Office of the UN Special Envoy on Haiti has published an update to the Haiti Aid situation called 'Has Aid Changed?' The UN report is dated June 26, 2011. The report is attached below in pdf form.

Read a Center for Economic and Policy Research summary of the report of the Special Envoy here, dated June 26, 2011.


6. One Year Anniversary Statistics on Haiti Aid and Recovery

The United Nations' Office of the UN Special Envoy on Haiti publishes a periodic summary of funds pledged and spent for Haiti relief and reconstruction. The latest summary below is published on Feb 4, 2011; figures are for period ending January 17, 2011.

* US$6.167 billion was pledged for Haiti at the United Nationas Donors Conference in New York City on March 31, 2010 by governments and multilateral institutions (UN agencies, international financial institutions), for the 18 months to follow.
* Of that, $1.116B is for debt relief, approximately 40% of which dates from the years of the Duvalier tyranny. Debt relief is paid to international financial institutions.
* As of year-end 2010, $1.28B has been disbursed, 25% of the total March 31 pledges (not including debt relief) and an additional $1.57B has been 'committed.' Of the $1.28B disbursed, $234 million went to the Government of Haiti, or 18%.

Haiti Interim Reconstruction Commission (HIRC)
* Of the $6.167B pledged in NYC, $507 million was destined for the Haiti Reconstruction Fund. The Fund's disbursements are decided by the HIRC. As of December 2010, $282M has been paid by donors; of that, $193M has been allocated to projects.

Canadian funding
* During the first two months following the earthquake, Canada distributed $150 million to emergency relief agencies.
* In NYC on March 31, Canada pledged $325 million to Haiti for 2010/11 and $75M for 2012 and beyond. This promise overlaps with Canada’s pre-earthquake, CAN$555M aid budget for the years 2006-2011. Thus, the amount of new funding is difficult to discern. No comprehensive figures are provided by the Canadian government that list funds promised and disbursed by its agencies to post-earthquake Haiti.
* According to the Office of the Special Envoy on Haiti, $113M was promised for recovery and development for 2010, including $34M in debt relief. The debt relief amount was paid; less that half of the remainder was disbursed. A further $7 million was promised in October for cholera treatment. $212M is promised for recovery and development in 2011.
* The Canadian government says that its priority in Haiti is the funding of 'security', meaning training and equipping of police and prisons. Since the earthquake, Canada has announced spending in this area of at least CAN$58 million: $44M in April, $4.4M in May, and $9.5M in November. These include the construction of a training academy and a new national headquarters for the Haitian National Police. This funding is not counted among aid funding.
* Policing is the largest item of Canadian government spending in Haiti to date. According to a January 20 report in the Montreal daily La Presse, all six projects in Haiti being funded directly by the Canadian government (as opposed to funding provided to NGOs and humanitarian agencies) are 'security.' Half of these have been cancelled or postponed.
* Canada funded the November 28, 2010 election fiasco to the tune of $5.8M. That exclusionary election exercise is now proceeding to a second round.
* The two largest non-police spending items are US$19M to the World Food Program and US$19M to a hospital in Gonaives. The hospital has been promised for many years and sits as an empty field outside of Gonaives with a sign announcing a 'future' hospital to be funded by Canada.

NGO funding
The UN Office of the Special Envoy on Haiti provides information on NGO and private charity fundraising. These include:
* $1.2B has been raised by Red Cross societies for Haiti. As of September 30, $287M was spent.
* NGO members of the InterAction coalition raised over $795 million; as of end-year, $283M was spent.
* An estimated $2.7B has been raised by private charities for Haiti. The majority of that was raised by the aforementioned Red Cross and InterAction. Much of private fundraising cannot be easily tracked.

Sources:
* UN Office of the Special Envoy to Haiti
http://www.haitispecialenvoy.org/
* Haiti Reconstruction Fund
http://www.haitireconstructionfund.org/hrf/
The Fund's first six-month report, June 2010-December 2010, is here:
http://www.haitireconstructionfund.org/hrf/sites/haitireconstructionfund.org/files/lores_eng_rpt_spreads.pdf
* Disaster Accountability Project, one year report on Haiti
http://www.canadahaitiaction.ca/content/disaster-accountability-project-one-year-report-0
* Canadian International Development Agency
Haiti overview:
http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/acdi-cida/ACDI-CIDA.nsf/Eng/JUD-12912349-NLX
Latest announcement, January 11, 2011:
http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/acdi-cida/ACDI-CIDA.nsf/eng/NAT-111122552-NFQ
* U.S. charities--the Huffington Post has published a record of sums raised and spent by U.S. charities in Haiti by January 2011. Read it here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/07/haiti-earthquake-relief-h_1_n_806073.html

The above summary is compiled by Canada Haiti Action Network website editors. Please e-mail comments or corrections to canadahaiti@gmail.com. In this summary, we leave aside comment on the utility, or not, of the international spending promised for Haiti. A great many Haitians have received little or no assistance from the funds being raised or pledged in their name, and as many commentators observed on the one-year anniversary of the earthquake, reconstruction in Haiti has barely begun.

 

7. Only one-third of matched Haiti funds doled out: CIDA

By Amy Minsky, Postmedia News, November 4, 2010
Nearly 10 months after the devastating earthquake that killed more than 230,000 people and left 1.3 million homeless in Haiti, Ottawa has disbursed only 35 per cent of the funds it said it would match from Canadian donations.

Shortly after the Jan. 12 earthquake, the Canadian government announced it would match private donations to Haiti. Money poured in, and quickly surpassed the government's initial ceiling of $50 million in matching funds, forcing it to lift the lid. In the end, the government said it would match $220 million in private donations made during the four weeks following the massive quake.

But, according to the Canadian International Development Agency, only $65.15 million of that has been paid out so far. And government is even further behind in fulfilling its pledge to match private donations to Pakistan, a pledge it made weeks after the worst torrential monsoon downpours that country had seen in 80 years began.

The government has still not determined the amount of funds to be matched for Pakistan relief, although Minister of International Co-operation Bev Oda said a report detailing the fund is "imminent." There have been some complications while reviewing charities' attestations, because some small organizations partnered with larger charities that already had projects on the ground in Pakistan.

"It may feel it's taking longer, but the point is to make sure everybody's counted and nobody is double-counted," Oda said. "Our obligation is to report accurately."

But critics say the government is simply too slow. "There was a huge humanitarian outpouring," said Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae. "And I think that's very frustrating when it doesn't get put into action. I just don't think there's a sense of urgency at the heart of the Canadian government."

The process in Haiti and Pakistan might also appear slower, Oda said, because the government has implemented "additional checks and balances," after learning from previous international relief efforts.

After the 2006 Indian Ocean tsunami, "hundreds of millions of dollars were going in," but many donor countries had no idea what projects others were funding, Oda said. "Everybody had the best of intentions," she said. "But it was unco-ordinated."

Unorganized relief often ends up with a lot of wasted money, she said.

Still, the government needs to speed up the process of implementing plans in both countries, said Rae. "Of course we all want to make sure the money is well spent, but the fact is that once the spotlight goes away from the tragedy of these events, the pressure's off."

To date, government has pledged $150.15 million for humanitarian assistance in Haiti, and $400 million over two years for recovery and reconstruction.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon announced Thursday that Canada contributed $9.5 million toward the construction of new headquarters for the Haitian National Police, and $1.3 million to St. John Ambulance to develop training programs for the Haitian police.

"We need to do more," Rae said. "I think we need to have an approach where we have somebody who's clearly in charge on the ground, pushing to really move things forward.

"Because now we have a problem where we have the money piling up, but we don't have enough pressure coming from the government of Canada to move the projects forward."

 

8. Haiti's struggle for aid transparency

"To be able to judge how effectively U.S. taxpayer money is being spent in Haiti, we need to know what actually gets spent in Haiti and what gets funneled back to the U.S."

By Jake Johnston, op-ed published on Caribbean Journal, May 3, 2012

 

9. Haiti: Where Has All the Money Gone?

By Vijaya Ramachandran and Julie Walz, May 2012
Center for Global Development, Washington, D.C., Policy Paper 004, 48 pages
Report is attached here as a pdf. Find it also here.

Introduction:
Since the 2010 earthquake, almost $6 billion has been disbursed in official aid to Haiti, a country with a population of just under 10 million. An estimated $3 billion has been donated to NGOs in private contributions in addition to official aid. The United States Government alone has disbursed almost $2 billion of this total amount and has pledged over $3 billion for relief and reconstruction.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and private contractors have been the intermediate recipients of most of these funds. The Government of Haiti has received just 1 percent of humanitarian aid and somewhere between 15 and 21 percent of longer-term relief aid. As a result, NGOs and private contractors in Haiti have built an extensive infrastructure for the provision of social services. Yet, these entities appear to have limited accountability; despite the use of public funds, there are few evaluations of services delivered, lives saved, or mistakes made. Most importantly, Haitians are disillusioned with the overall lack of progress, and with the lack of transparency and accountability.

It is likely that NGOs and private contractors will continue to dominate service provision in Haiti for some time to come. In light of this fact, we recommend three options to improve the current situation. One: NGOs and private contractors carry out systematic and widely accessible evaluations of their work. Two: All actors in Haiti be held accountable by publishing data on expenditures and outcomes in Haiti. The International Aid Transparency Initiative may be the perfect vehicle for this and the United States government should require NGOs (and possibly private contractors) to report to IATI. IATI compliance might eventually be a prerequisite for receiving US funds. And three: The Government of Haiti procure services through competitive bidding whenever possible, in order to maintain service delivery while building local capacity over the longer term.

Contents
p. 1   Introduction: The Context for Foreign Assistance to Haiti
p. 4   Donor Pledges to Haiti in the Aftermath of the January 2010 Earthquake
p. 8   Who Got the Money?
p. 14 The Rise of the Quasi-Private State in Haiti
p. 20 Accountability of NGOs and Private Contractors in Haiti
p. 23 Criticisms of NGOs and Private Contractors
p. 29 The Case for Transparency and Accountability
p. 30 Policy Options: [1] Systematic and Widely-Accessible Evaluations; [2] The International Aid Transparency Initiative; [3] Competitive Bidding and Building Local Capacity
p. 37 Conclusion
p. 38 Appendix 1: Disbursed Recovery Funding to the Government of Haiti (in Million USD unless otherwise noted)
p. 39 Appendix 2: Reports Included in Survey of NGO Evaluations
p. 43 Bibliography

 

Fault Line: Aid, politics and blame in post-quake Haiti

Where did all the money go?
http://www.globalpost.com/special-reports/fault-line-aid-politics-and-blame-post-quake-haiti
The question rises up from the dust of the still-crowded tent camps and the mud of still-impassable roads and from desperate parents still struggling to feed their children. Two years after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that ravaged Haiti, less than half of the $3 billion the U.S. has committed to rebuilding the country has actually been disbursed. Reconstruction is by just about all accounts taking far too long. Why?

Haiti is a place of unanswered questions, and perhaps unanswerable questions. In this GlobalPost 'Special Report,' correspondent Donovan Webster and photographer Ron Haviv start GlobalPost on a journey through Haiti to find as many answers to this question as we can. Or at least to hear the questions that Haitians are asking of their own country and of the many donors who have promised more than they deliver.

Webster and Haviv are joined by GlobalPost correspondents Mildrade Cherfils, who is writing on the diaspora, and Jacob Kushner, who is based in Port-au-Prince. As a reporting team, they found that some reconstruction efforts are succeeding while others are failing. Most of all, they found resiliency and resourcefulness among the people. But they also found cynicism about an aid effort that seems to be enriching big non-governmental organizations (NGOs.) Haitians now call their country ‘the republic of NGOs.”

The stories they tell in "Fault Line: Aid, Politics and Blame in Post-Quake Haiti" reveal searing images and complex characters through whom truths emerge, if not exactly answers to the big question: Where did all the money go? It's a question that GlobalPost plans to keep asking through this ongoing series of reports.

'Has Aid Changed?' Un Special Envoy report June 2011.pdf743.71 KB