This report is provided in response to the “Assessing Progress in Haiti Act of 2014” (P.L. 113-162) (“the Act”), which directs the Secretary of State to submit to Congress no later than December 31, 2014, and annually thereafter through December 31, 2017, a report on the status of post-earthquake recovery and development efforts in Haiti. The requested report, prepared by the Department of State in cooperation with other U.S. government agencies, is being submitted to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Committee on Appropriations and the Subcommittees on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs of the House of Representatives, and the Committee on Foreign Relations, the Committee on Appropriations and the Subcommittees on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs of the Senate. In view of the scope of information sought by the Act, this report is broken into multiple attachments, some of which are in tabular form. Their contents are listed in Attachment A.
Five years after the January 12, 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, measured advances are being made, and there is optimism that further progress will continue in the years ahead. Much more remains to be done, and our commitment to Haiti’s reconstruction and development must be long-term. Since 2010, ongoing U.S. foreign assistance has helped Haiti make the transition from immediate disaster relief and response to a robust and sustainable long-term development plan with a primary focus of job creation and reconstruction. The U.S. government has committed $2.7 billion to recovery and reconstruction efforts, of which 81 percent has been obligated and 66 percent disbursed as of September 2014. Thanks to these resources, there are notable successes in the four core “pillars” of the “Post-Earthquake USG Haiti Strategy: Toward Renewal and Economic Opportunity”: Infrastructure and Energy; Food and Economic Security; Health and other Basic Services; and Governance and Rule of Law.
Nearly all removable earthquake rubble, almost 7.4 million cubic meters, has been cleared away and approximately 94 percent of people in displaced person camps have departed for alternative housing. Assistance from the U.S. government has provided shelter solutions benefiting more than 328,000 people – approximately one-fifth of the 1.5 million people estimated to have been displaced by the earthquake. These solutions include permanent housing, transitional shelters, housing repairs, support to host families, rental vouchers, and support to the Government of Haiti authority responsible for housing the vulnerable. A recent World Bank report notes that extreme poverty in Port-au-Prince has dropped from 20 percent to five percent, and nationwide from 31 percent in 2000 to 24 percent in 2012.
The Caracol Industrial Park (CIP) in Haiti’s North achieved much since opening in April 2012 and hiring its first workers in July 2012. To date it employs more than 5,000 people. Construction, industrial tenant agreements, and job creation are expected to continue as operations expand. Once all phases of construction are completed, the operations of flagship tenant Sae-A alone are expected to eventually create 20,000 jobs. Already, Sae-A operations are attracting other interested manufacturers to the park. The Caracol power station is supplying needed reliable electricity to the surrounding communities. Export sales for the period from January to September 2014 were nearly $58 million. Payroll for people employed in the park from January to September 2014 injected some $5.4 million into the local economy of northeastern Haiti over this period. Additional information on the progress of U.S. efforts to advance the objectives of the post-earthquake strategy including the industrial park, housing, and ports can be found in Attachment E.
In the area of Food and Economic Security, U.S. agriculture programs under Feed the Future (FTF) have introduced improved seeds, fertilizer, and technologies to more than 70,000 Haitian farmers. The introduction of these improvements coupled with the rehabilitation of irrigation canals has enabled farmers to double or triple yields of the focus crops, resulting in significantly higher incomes. On the hillsides above the productive plains where our beneficiaries invest, a watershed protection program has been implemented, bringing important environmental benefits. Fruit trees, forest trees and ground cover have been planted, and dry wall gabions have been constructed in ravines to increase water infiltration. Greenhouses have been introduced to prevent hillside agriculture and free even more land for tree planting. Working through USAID, the U.S. government also linked farmers directly with buyers, invested in the rehabilitation of rural roads and helped farmers’ access micro-credit. Women are involved along the entire value chain of agriculture and represent around 36 percent of direct beneficiaries.
The Haitian economy continues to be primarily driven by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). USAID’s Leveraging Effective Application of Direct Investments project (LEAD) uses a grant-matching mechanism to leverage private investments in Haitian SMEs identified through business plan competitions, and collaborates with the Haitian Diaspora community to channel remittances to viable social enterprises and community projects. USAID is involved in facilitating credit to SMEs through financial PPPs with most of the private commercial banks in the form of a fifty percent loan guarantee for qualified borrowers Attachment L provides more detailed information to describe the impact of agriculture and infrastructure programs on food security. Attachment J provides more detailed information on our engagement with the private sector.
In the area of Health and other Basic Services, U.S. assistance, working through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and USAID, has made significant progress to improve key health indicators. Our efforts on cholera treatment and prevention, as well as assistance for clean water and improved sanitation, have helped to dramatically lower cholera rates, which the Government of Haiti reported in November 2014 are down 97 percent from 2011, the height of the outbreak. In the realm of HIV/AIDS, access to antiretroviral treatment (ART) for eligible HIV-positive individuals in Haiti (CD4 < 350) has increased from below 50 percent in 2010 to over 70 percent in 2014. Similarly, the percent of HIV-positive pregnant women receiving ART to prevent transmission of the virus to their babies has risen from 40 percent in 2010 to 87 percent in 2014, which is one of the highest coverage rates among PEPFAR countries. With U.S. government support, Haiti is one of the few countries in the world to implement electronic medical records for HIV clinical services nationwide. Efforts are underway to expand this health information system platform to include primary care and other key programs.
Capacity building of Haitian governmental and nongovernmental institutions is a core priority of U.S. government’s health sector strategy for Haiti, and has shown promising results. While the U.S. government is currently supporting the provision of a basic package of health services, strides are also being made to improve the Ministry of Public Health and Population’s (MSPP) capacity to take on a larger role in managing the country’s health care services. Working through the PEPFAR inter-agency team, the U.S. government and the Government of Haiti have agreed upon a Partnership Framework to plan for the transition of programming and assumption of responsibility by the Government of Haiti.
To promote sustainability, CDC has linked international and local institutions so they may share best practices and lessons learned. On the technical front, CDC medical officers, epidemiologists, veterinarians, nurses, laboratory technicians, and other public health staff provide daily mentorship and long-term capacity building of Haitian counterparts. CDC has 28 positions co-located within the MSPP. The technical expertise which CDC has built has enabled Haiti to take on greater leadership of key programs, including the CDC flagship Field Epidemiology Training Program, which is now coordinated, managed, and supervised by senior staff of MSPP, many of whom are graduates of the program. Graduates of this program have played vital roles in the national responses to cholera, chikungunya, and other epidemics, and Ebola preparedness efforts.
In the area of Governance and Rule of Law. U.S. assistance directed primarily through the Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL), the Department of the Treasury and USAID works to improve transparency and accountability and combat corruption on a number of fronts. Since 2012, INL has partnered with the Department of the Treasury to strengthen Haiti’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regime. Other projects continue to increase transparency, oversight, and accountability of local governments by strengthening the capacity of civil society in target municipalities.
Assistance from the U.S. has been crucial to building capacity in the Haitian National Police (HNP). Working through INL and the Department of State’s Bureau of Political Military Affairs (PM), our programming and technical assistance are helping the Government of Haiti implement key elements of its 2012-2016 police development plan: adding new officers to the HNP, which is on a path to reach the target size of 15,000 officers by the end of 2016, building organizational management and administrative capacities, constructing and improving HNP infrastructure, and equipping the force. Beyond police development, INL has also delivered assistance in such areas as renovating the corrections sector, assisting the HNP to develop an effective counter-narcotics strategy, enhancing transparency in Haitian government institutions, and increasing the protection of human rights and vulnerable persons. Using approximately $54 million in funds, INL completed construction of three commissariats, barracks at the Presidential palace, and a pier; construction of three additional commissariats, three prisons, a range of facilities for the counter-narcotics police, and improvements at the HNP School are all underway. PM has provided support to Haitian Coast Guard to maintain and sustain their maritime fleet and professionalize their force. The United States has also sought to strengthen judicial independence and operational capacity of the courts and enhance the efficiency of the criminal justice system. The U.S. government is not, however, satisfied with the overall results of our justice sector programs to date, in particular with regard to helping Haiti to sustainably address high levels of pre-trial detention. Therefore we are re-examining our options for further assistance. For a more detailed description of engagement with civil society organizations see Attachments F and G. A more comprehensive list of U.S. government programs and projects in Haiti will be found in Attachment B, the Activities List.
Both the United States and Haiti had hoped that, four years into our Strategy, we would be further along in certain areas, such as permanent housing or justice sector reform. Further progress depends on good governance in Haiti and a sustained focus on Haiti’s development by the international community. Nevertheless, data ranging from reported improved trend lines for basic health indicators to reduced crime rates to increased agricultural yields show that Haiti has achieved significant advances in many areas of its recovery and reconstruction, consistent with the goals of our Strategy. The benchmarks and timeframes for monitoring the Strategy are documented in Attachment C, the Description of Indicators.
The January 2011 Haiti Rebuilding and Development Strategy was designed to be flexible, and with fine tuning and mid-course adjustment it continues to guide overall U.S. assistance efforts in Haiti. There have been two significant adjustments to the original strategy. The first significant change is the decision to not build a greenfield port in the North. Following a review with interagency partners, international financial institutions, the Government of Haiti, and the private sector, the original timing for the new port in the North at Fort Liberté was found to be unrealistic’ and a proposed public private partnership for its construction was deemed not feasible due to lack of interest by potential private investors. Therefore, to meet the near- to medium-term demand for port services in the northern part of Haiti and in response to a request from the Government of Haiti, USAID is redirecting port assistance to rehabilitation of the existing port at Cap Haitien.
The second significant change is the shift away from building permanent housing to a new shelter approach in order to reach more Haitians and achieve greater cost efficiencies and sustainability. Our revised approach leverages the ability of low-income Haitian households to build and improve their homes with their own resources. Going forward, the U.S. government is working with the Government of Haiti in areas of urban planning for informal communities and with local financial institutions to assist owner-driven construction in existing neighborhoods or on lots serviced by USAID or others. These changes, as well as smaller adjustments, are described in Attachment D, the Strategy Overview.
The United States is firmly committed for the long term to supporting the Haitian people as they build a more prosperous and secure future. Haiti has achieved significant advances in many areas of its recovery and reconstruction. More remains to be done, and Haiti’s reconstruction and development will continue for many years; there are no quick fixes. Attachments H, I, K, M, N and O provide additional information on the U.S. government’s engagement with Haiti.