![[Indonesia] A mother and her small child at a mass grave outside tsunami-devastated Banda Aceh. More than 130,000 people were killed and over half a million left homeless in the 26 December 2004 disaster. [Date picture taken: 10/20/2006]](https://assets.thenewhumanitarian.org/s3fs-public/styles/responsive_large_2x/public/images/200611125.jpg.webp?itok=bXAAnoKc "Some 170,000 people lost their lives in the 2004 tsunami")
Indonesia's reconstruction after the 2004 tsunami is proving to be a compass for Haiti's efforts to avoid corruption and build back better, specialists say.
Experts attribute much of Indonesia's recovery to the Aceh-Nias Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency (BRR), a centralized Indonesian government-funded group charged with making Aceh and Nias - the cities hardest hit - more resilient to disaster, while minimizing corruption.
Resemblance between the BRR and the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) is most apparent in an emerging anti-corruption office and third-party monitoring system in Haiti, but nearly nine months after the earthquake crippled Haiti's nerve centre, it is still a work in progress.
"Those who conceptualized the IHRC... referred to the Indonesian model," said Jean-Claude Lebrun, IHRC union representative. "But while in Indonesia they had to rebuild the economy of one region, here we have to completely rebuild."
To monitor the US$7.7 billion of relief money that poured into Indonesia's recovery effort, the government imposed rigorous costing standards for project proposals and set up an anti-corruption unit to monitor spending.
The benefits of implementing such measures were worth the enormous cost, said William Palitondok Sabandar, former BRR chief of Nias recovery.
Managing corruption
According to Transparency International, the poorest nation in the western Hemisphere is also seen as one of the most corrupt, ranking 168th out of 180 countries surveyed in 2009.
Haiti must focus on accounting for funds spent just as much as Indonesia did, which was ranked 137th at the time of its disaster, said Joe Leitmann, founder of the World Bank affiliated Multi-Donor Fund (MDF) for Aceh and Nias, and now head of the Haiti Reconstruction Fund (HRF), one of several sources of reconstruction money overseen by the IHRC.
The BRR established a comprehensive database with GPS technology based on the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs online Financial Tracking Service, to allow donors and the public to track assistance.
Haiti is emulating this idea through a "hotline" that will allow anonymous corruption phone-in reports, said Denis Dufresne, an IHRC spokesman.
"The anti-corruption office will fill the gaps in the system of supervision and permit the alignment of development activities with international standards," Dufresne said.
Building back better
The tsunami claimed an estimated 170,000 lives in Aceh province, on Sumatra Island, and around 1,000 more on Nias, a small island off Sumatra's west coast, but did not affect the capital, leaving the government in a position to give $2 billion in relief aid to Aceh and Nias.
In contrast, Haiti's 7.0 magnitude quake wiped out government offices, including the presidential and justice palaces. It killed 222,570, injured 300,000, and destroyed or damaged 285,000 houses in Port-au-Prince and much of southern Haiti, according to government statistics. HRF estimates $5.3 billion has been pledged to the recovery effort as of end-March.
There is little physical evidence today of the devastation wrought in Aceh, where infrastructure repair was a government priority.
"In Indonesia, we considered two scenarios. We could build back the way things were, or we could upgrade infrastructure, social services and rebuild with a vision," Leitmann said. "We costed the two, and in the end, the upgrade was pursued."
Haiti's government has applied a similar strategy.
"Because we can't go back to before January 12, we have to create something new," Lebrun said. "We are working on this through our emphasis on anti-duplication of projects, on management of expenses to avoid waste, and our philosophy that reconstruction has to be for the majority - we have to heal the nation as a whole."
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Experts attribute much of Indonesia's recovery to the Aceh-Nias Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency (BRR), a centralized Indonesian government-funded group charged with making Aceh and Nias - the cities hardest hit - more resilient to disaster, while minimizing corruption.
Resemblance between the BRR and the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) is most apparent in an emerging anti-corruption office and third-party monitoring system in Haiti, but nearly nine months after the earthquake crippled Haiti's nerve centre, it is still a work in progress.
"Those who conceptualized the IHRC... referred to the Indonesian model," said Jean-Claude Lebrun, IHRC union representative. "But while in Indonesia they had to rebuild the economy of one region, here we have to completely rebuild."
To monitor the US$7.7 billion of relief money that poured into Indonesia's recovery effort, the government imposed rigorous costing standards for project proposals and set up an anti-corruption unit to monitor spending.
The benefits of implementing such measures were worth the enormous cost, said William Palitondok Sabandar, former BRR chief of Nias recovery.
Managing corruption
According to Transparency International, the poorest nation in the western Hemisphere is also seen as one of the most corrupt, ranking 168th out of 180 countries surveyed in 2009.
Haiti must focus on accounting for funds spent just as much as Indonesia did, which was ranked 137th at the time of its disaster, said Joe Leitmann, founder of the World Bank affiliated Multi-Donor Fund (MDF) for Aceh and Nias, and now head of the Haiti Reconstruction Fund (HRF), one of several sources of reconstruction money overseen by the IHRC.
Photo: Nancy Palus/IRIN  |
| A girl at Bolosse camp for displaced families in the Haiti capital Port-au-Prince |
Haiti is emulating this idea through a "hotline" that will allow anonymous corruption phone-in reports, said Denis Dufresne, an IHRC spokesman.
"The anti-corruption office will fill the gaps in the system of supervision and permit the alignment of development activities with international standards," Dufresne said.
Building back better
The tsunami claimed an estimated 170,000 lives in Aceh province, on Sumatra Island, and around 1,000 more on Nias, a small island off Sumatra's west coast, but did not affect the capital, leaving the government in a position to give $2 billion in relief aid to Aceh and Nias.
In contrast, Haiti's 7.0 magnitude quake wiped out government offices, including the presidential and justice palaces. It killed 222,570, injured 300,000, and destroyed or damaged 285,000 houses in Port-au-Prince and much of southern Haiti, according to government statistics. HRF estimates $5.3 billion has been pledged to the recovery effort as of end-March.
There is little physical evidence today of the devastation wrought in Aceh, where infrastructure repair was a government priority.
"In Indonesia, we considered two scenarios. We could build back the way things were, or we could upgrade infrastructure, social services and rebuild with a vision," Leitmann said. "We costed the two, and in the end, the upgrade was pursued."
Haiti's government has applied a similar strategy.
"Because we can't go back to before January 12, we have to create something new," Lebrun said. "We are working on this through our emphasis on anti-duplication of projects, on management of expenses to avoid waste, and our philosophy that reconstruction has to be for the majority - we have to heal the nation as a whole."
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This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
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