Is Haiti better off without aid? | What’s Unsaid

Obi Anyadike

Today on What’s Unsaid: Is Haiti better off without aid?

 

It’s been a few weeks since the world’s richest man announced that the US would be withdrawing help to some of the world’s poorest. On an online audio stream, Elon Musk took shots at USAID.

 

Elon Musk

If you’ve got an apple that’s got a worm in it, maybe you can take the worm out, but if you’ve got actually just a bowl of worms, it’s hopeless. And USAID is a bowl of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple, you’ve just basically got to get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.

Anyadike

The effects were quickly felt. Programs shuttered overnight. Community kitchens closed. Health campaigns stalled. People who relied on aid were suddenly forced to go without. It’s irresponsible, punitive, and will cost lives, experts say. And in a country like Haiti, which has long been one of USAID’s largest recipients, it highlighted the worrying effects of aid dependency. 

 

Isabelle Clérié

It's not normal that an aid agency can stop funding, and within three months you could lose hundreds of thousands of lives. Like, that's insane, that they have that much control over, literally, people's lives. That's insane. 

 

Anyadike

At a bare minimum — if no programmes were to receive a waiver to continue — the freeze will halt some $330 million in outstanding commitments to ongoing programmes. More than 60 percent of those fund humanitarian aid and health projects. But, our guest today sees a glimmer of opportunity in the gloom.

 

Clérié

When I first heard the news, I was – honestly I was not shocked. I was not that surprised by it. But my instinctive reaction was, maybe now we can take better care of ourselves.

 

Anyadike

This is What’s Unsaid. A podcast by The New Humanitarian where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters. My name is Obi Anyadike, staff editor at The New Humanitarian. 

 

On today’s episode: Is Haiti better off without aid?

 

Isabelle Clérié thinks it could be.

Clérié

I am a Haitian anthropologist. I have a deceptively American accent. I've worked in community development for many, many years, and as an anthropologist, that allows me to be kind of a chameleon across all the sectors. So, I've worked in every sector, except health, interestingly, and I've done everything. I've done work in human rights, and I've been a vehement advocate for aid reform for many, many years as well. My early career, I encountered the USAIDs of the world, and I had a lot of questions. 

Anyadike

You know, the shock wave when the US government started dismembering USAID, what was your biggest concern when you heard about the shutdown? 

Clérié

I mean, so two years ago, I had a conversation with a friend of mine who contracts for US State Department a lot. And I asked him, like, Hey, hypothetically, if we lose all USAID funding, what happens to us? And his immediate response was, The health infrastructure falls apart. And this was specific to Haiti. That was my first concern because, from vaccines to HIV/AIDS medication, like so many things come through aid. But Haiti is in all manner of crises right now. There's been a huge decline in the health sector, like a lot of hospitals are not functioning anymore. So, arguably, our health infrastructure has collapsed. We're also not getting a lot shipped into Haiti right now. We have no flights coming in. It's been three, four months that we haven't had any flights come into the capital. So, there's a shortage of vaccines already. There's medication that's really tough to find. When I saw this, I was like, Oh my God, what are we going to do? Like this could set us back - especially with AIDS containment - this could set us back really, really badly. 

Anyadike

You said despite the impact in humanitarian terms this could have, this could be a kind of an opportunity. Do you want to explain that?

Clérié

I saw the opportunity. You know, they call Haiti the ‘Republic of NGOs,’ and for many years now, I've been observing the development sector and just thinking, it's very unsustainable for all the reasons that we already know. But, it's not even just the dependency, it's just the mindset. People are in this like, 1-2-3, I have an idea. I have to write a project, I have to get it funded, and then I have to conform to the funder, and I have to do all the reporting and everything. It's difficult to see impact in that way. So for me, I've always called out, What can we do ourselves? What can we do with what we have? But it's really difficult to step into that space, and step into that ability to think about things in that way, when you're just constantly dealing with a crisis. It's too much. Like, I've never met a Haitian who's worked at a development agency - or anybody who gets that kind of funding, like a USAID funding - I've never met anybody who does that and feels fulfilled, you know, like, Oh, we're doing the things, you know, everybody's always like, We could be doing better. It's so frustrating. We have seen these incremental changes, and you know, with the commitments to localisation and things like that. But, for me, I've always just wondered, What can we do with what we have, you know? What can we do without them? You know. And everybody's just been so scared to imagine this moment, now that we're in it. How do we recover?

Anyadike

And what would be the - sort of the - ingredients of doing it in a better way? A more fulfilled way?

Clérié

For me, the disconnect is in how the problem is defined. And I say this often, where I say, He who defines the problem, owns the solution. And so, when Western development agencies look at a country like Hai ti, they see lack. They see need. They see a problem. It's always something ne gative, right? Haiti is defined by what it is not. Their understanding of the need is not necessarily how people living in the situation perceive their difficulties, right? And so, when you go into a community and you see thatched roof houses, you're like, Oh, well this is a problem. We have to give them, you know, cement houses with indoor plumbing and electricity, and all of the things. And that's not necessarily what people aspire to, you know, like, there's rural communities that want to be able to meet their needs. All the kids go to school. They can feed everybody. They can see the doctors when they need to see the doctors. And then have a little extra for some fun, you know?

Anyadike

Why do you think that there is that kind of misunderstanding, or failure to properly analyse the issues that means that even though Haiti has been so dependent on aid, much of that aid seems to be wrong.

Clérié

I mean, there's so many things. I think...my original research was around power dynamics within development, and that's really what it was. The status quo, like the system as it is, is just not ready to distribute power in that way, where they can let people actually say, Hey, this is actually what we want, and we want to do it in this way. Like, those conversations can take place to check a box. But the actual implementation, when you come to the operationalisation of something local - like a localised initiative - it loses its way. There’s this disconnect of the perceived need versus the actual need - the understood need from the communities. So, when an agency like USAID says localisation, I'm always very confused, like, why would you even bother? Like, you are not structured. You can't do localisation. Like, the policies of your government, you can't allow people, you can't let them make those kinds of decisions.

Anyadike

Is there something specific about the type of aid - you called Haiti an NGO Republic - is it being, specifically about the structure of the type of aid that comes to Haiti?

Clérié

It's funny, because the challenges in Haiti are not unique to Haiti. Like, you see the same challenges, the same barriers in almost every country where there's international aid. But every single person I've ever met who's worked internationally, in many different countries, like for the World Bank, for USAID, for all of these agencies, they come to Haiti and they're like, It's not that the problem is unique. It's just something about the way it shows up is just very unique. The way that aid gets distributed in Haiti, honestly, is - the best word I can think of is - condescending. You know, it just makes all these assumptions about what we are not, what communities are not able to do, and what they don't understand about their lives, what they don't understand about the challenges. You know, I remember working in, I did some environmental conservation work, and so we would work in this, like, very remote area, very difficult to access. We're doing reforestation, so people would make comments like, Oh, you know these ignorant peasants who are just cutting trees down, they don't understand the problem they're creating. I was like, You think they don't understand? The problem is not deforestation. The problem is poverty. You think people are going to be worried about what happens downhill when they need to cook food for their families. They're not going to worry about that. You can't make those kinds of assumptions. 

Anyadike

Is there a problem, sort of, the historical connection between America and Haiti? The US occupied Haiti for nineteen years from 1915, is that part of the issue? 

Clérié 

Yes. When they occupied Haiti, they took over the financial institutions. It was a mess. And then we had a dictatorship for 30 years, and during the dictatorship, a lot of American corporations got very lucrative contracts. Well, not even contracts. They were just given land, basically. So, thousands and thousands of peasants were killed to clear land. And, one of the biggest catalysts to deforestation and erosion in Haiti was the fact that a lot of American - a lot of Western companies - were able to come in and just exploit our precious wood. They just unsustainably cut everything down, and just didn't replant. Just came, they exploited and left. There's been a lot of abuses in Haiti, but at the end of the day, this is our country. You know, there's some aspects of our history that we have to take responsibility for as well. I've done a lot of work in transitional justice, and right now, a lot of conversations we're having are around restorative justice. Like, how do we really talk about what's happened to us before, and how do we move forward?

Anyadike

On your LinkedIn post, when you were first talking about, Maybe this is a time to kind of ease our dependence, you said that these are kind of whispered conversations among friends. Why was it somehow kind of awkward to talk about it publicly? 

Clérié 

Well, I mean, it was a shocking moment, right? There were genuine concerns about a monumental loss of life, you know, like, there's a food distribution programme that could be very impacted, and it could affect a lot of schools. This could be really dangerous. And, you know, then some people are just upset, like, Oh, you know, I'm going to be out of a job. Somebody's out of a job. I understand that. I really do. But, you know, we talk about Haiti's history being a series of missed opportunities. How do we make sure this is not a missed opportunity, right? Because, as they say, there's opportunity in crisis. But since I said that, I'm seeing just so many conversations happening now about this. Like, Yeah, it's bad. But also, what can we do? Like, we can do something differently now.

Anyadike

How do you start? You have the conversation, and then you have to try and start doing something. And what does that look like?

Clérié 

I mean, we start to look inwardly, for one. Let's all look at each other. What do you have? What do you have? What can we do together? It's an interesting time in Haiti right now to be having those conversations, because I recently did a project where we were designing a national dialogue. And, I've been having these kinds of conversations for many years, but it was the first time that, without being prompted, people said things like, I want to talk about what we've done to ourselves as a society. Like, I want to talk about why we don't trust each other. People wanted to have these difficult conversations about the social divisions between color and class, and, in Creole, there's an expression for people who live outside of urban centers - really, it's the capital - they will say “An deyò”, which is outside, like a different country, like, it's not good. We’ve stigmatized all of these different segments of our populations, like, Can we talk about it? So, it's an exciting time right now to be having conversations around solidarity, and what that really means for us again. Because culturally, these are models we have, but they've been disappearing after so many years of dictatorships, and military regimes, and violence, and corruption, and I think the first thing is we have to have these difficult conversations about what brought us here. What were the enabling conditions for this moment in time?

Anyadike

Is this part of a broader movement, a broader rethinking, of the situation in Haiti, borne of the political crisis that Haitians are going through? Or is it a separate kind of inflection point based on the issue of: USAID has cut off its aid, what do we do now? Or is it part of an idea of reform, an idea of coming together, an idea of solidarity, around a political objective as well?

Clérié

It’s definitely the former. Like, this has been building up for a long time. You know, for the last - I mean, we could argue about the decades, but, you know, in the last - five, six years, it's just been really, really bad. And so, hopefully this moment in time will allow us to have those difficult conversations and make those reflections.

Anyadike

Can you give me an idea of what aid dependency looks like in Haiti?

Clérié

Paint a picture? A dark, dark picture. There are certain types of work that doesn't happen without aid, which is normal everywhere, right? So, everything from the Human Rights sector, to schools, to orphanages, hospitals, all of that is done through aid. Even the public hospitals get a lot of subsidies from various agencies. But people forget that the World Bank is a lender. They're not an aid agency, technically. They're lending you money. I recently read an article about the fact that agencies like the World Bank need to be abolished. And I was immediately going into the World Bank's indicators, and I was like, Okay, so the World Bank has been making these loans to Haiti. There's no progress on any of them. They're entering year three of a project cycle or something, and they're still disbursing. I was like, Why are you still disbursing money? There's no movement on some of these projects. So, why are you still disbursing money? Like, I don't...

Anyadike

And what do you make of that?

Clérié

I'm like, flabbergasted. Like, why? Why? You know, it keeps us trapped in these cycles of debt because there's not exactly a lot of revenue. You know, tax revenue is scarce here, and so it's just very confusing. 

Anyadike

You've been an advocate of community-based development as a kind of an alternative. Instead of the top-down approach, you've talked a lot about leveraging community assets, community philanthropy. What does that actually look like? 

Clérié

Yeah. I think what an asset-based approach really looks like is first, it's starting with this conversation around redefining what we think of as strengths, you know? So, when you ask people what their strengths are right now, it'll be something about their income, or their financial situation, or their jobs, or things like that. But then, when you're in a community where, like, illiteracy is a factor, you ask people, Who can read? Who can write? Who can make the best food? Who's really good with kids? These are all strengths. Let's talk about that. Like, reshape our narratives around what our strengths are, and what we bring to the table. And I think it becomes really, really powerful when people are able to think about that, and then they think, You know, we want to do this initiative, I actually have this movement. A couple years ago, there was an initiative to start a canal in the north of Haiti, and it was basically crowdfunded, but in a very Haitian way. You know, like in the community, you would see collection boxes, and people would be dropping a couple dollars at a time, you know, if anybody had loose change, they would pop it in there. And then the diaspora got involved. A lot of people started to support that, and they built the canal. It was an incredible example of solidarity. And, I think for a lot of Haitians who have been in this cycle of crises all the time, that was a really powerful thing for us to witness. It's like, Oh my God, yes, we do work together. We can do that!

Anyadike 

Right. That feels like genuine localisation.

 Clérié 

Yes, because there was no development funding for that, to build a canal to irrigate lands. There was an article that came out about it, and it was making it sound like a scandal. Because the project manager is also the owner of the hardware store that was giving all the materials, so that's a conflict of interest. And, I remember myself and some people, we were like, Wait, who else is supposed to project manage? Because when there's no liquidity in the project, and money is not really coming in, or something like that, that guy is still going to give you materials to do the work. Like, he's clearly going to show up for that. So, this concept of a Western conflict of interest is like, Well, I mean, this is Haiti. Everybody's gonna say that. You know, this is Haiti. We do it a little differently.

Anyadike

Right. I mean, Haiti is an extreme case of crisis and deep poverty. But, across the majority world, you know, there's lending circles, there's examples of community doing. Are these instruments that you want to leverage, and can be used in the absence, or as an alternative?

 Clérié

Absolutely, absolutely. So, the lending circles, we do that in Haiti, they're called “sòl.” Everybody is in a sòl. You walk through your office, every employee will probably be in a sòl.And that's how they buy their houses, and that's how they buy a car, or cover the beginning of the school year, which is always super challenging. There's so many examples, like, the most common one in Haiti would be “konbit” for the harvest. People will come to your land. They will help you harvest. And the understanding is that when it's their turn, you show up for them too. And so those kinds of things, people are talking about them more because they've been kind of disappearing just because there's been so many abuses that people are struggling to trust each other. So, they've had to pay for a lot of that labour, which has been really, really difficult. But there's definitely a lot of that kind of solidarity. And people do show up, you know. They really do. And I've seen some really incredible work in crisis, like, when there's a disaster, communities are just mobilizing, like, Okay, whose house is broken? What do they need? They'll fix up your house. They bring food. And even now, with all of the security situations, there's a lot of neighborhood group chats. They're keeping each other informed, like Gunshots were heard here, or, coming to this area. There's also been a lot of mobilisation around how to support a lot of the communities that have been impacted. So, it's like, Hey, this community, they've been displaced. They don't have places to go. You know, a lot of people have been sending money to buy food for them. 

Anyadike

So, that's aid working at a really granular level. Would you be able to talk a bit more about the impact of the gangs on people's day-to-day living?

Clérié 

Yeah, I mean, you know, I did a lot of field work, so we would be out of the capital all the time. You know, get in a car, drive an hour, two hours, three hours, take a plane, go somewhere, like we were always somewhere. I have not left the capital - within Haiti, I have not left the Port-au-Prince area - in five years. And the day-to-day is depending on where you are, in my neighborhood, there was a very strong gang. They were the ones you didn't want to get kidnapped by, because they would hold you for a month. That was just hyper vigilance every single day. Like, you have to check in before you leave your house, before you leave wherever you're going, before you get in your car, you have to check like, what road are you going to take? You can't have a routine, because if people are following you. You can't have too much of a predictable routine. You know, kids activities, everything was canceled. A lot of people left the country. So, for instance, my mother has a school that used to have almost 200 students if not more, right now, there's like 45 students maybe.

Anyadike

I mean just in terms of the impact on women in particular. Given the high rate of rape by the gangs, losing USAID funding, how is that going to affect HIV programming? 

Clérié

I had a conversation with somebody recently about this, because I was really curious. She told me that the people who were already within the programme, they're still getting medication, but they are not currently testing. So, there's not really new cases identified right now. I'm given to understand that there's a bit of a pause, but I think they're about to be able to administer medication and testing again. But, I don't know how much they have in stock for medication, for instance. That's a concern as well, so I'm not sure.

Anyadike 

Right. And, also the confusion, like no one seems to actually know what, the score is really, I mean, what? Who's got a waiver? Who hasn't? What's next? Is that part of the problem?

Clérié 

Yeah. I mean, yeah. Nobody's really sure. Like, what are they going to do, you know? Nobody knows when they can start again. Nobody's really sure if they're going to have a job tomorrow or next week. There's a lot of unpredictability. But, I know there's a lot of people that are trying to figure out really, what's the impact? How many organisations are going to be affected? So, that's data that I'm really excited to - well, not excited - but I'm very curious to see, so that we can really understand the impact and understand where we need to mobilise. I mean, there's going to be priorities, obviously, for a lot of the life-saving programming between health and nutrition, and then, you know, for civil society programming, a lot of that we're going to, I don't know, we're, I don't know what we're going to do. But I honestly believe that people are still going to show up. This might be optimistic, which is very uncharacteristic for me, but the moment feels different. Like, this is yet another crisis, but the response to it, the way that people are reflecting about it. You know, myself and my colleagues having our whispered conversations, we were like, Oh my God, can you believe this? This program that's literally done nothing, but spent millions of dollars, they're going to shut down. But it's programs that do training, right? So, anything that says capacity building? That's like a four-letter word to me. Capacity building is usually complying. It’s How do you comply to USAID funding, right? You know, that's evidently not a concerning loss at this point. These kinds of models sustain underdevelopment. You know, they...

 Anyadike

Can you explain that a bit more?

Clérié 

So, within the concept of aid dependency, right? If, for instance, you are doing food relief, and all you're doing is importing food, that disrupts markets, that disrupts local production. Like, I remember there were a couple of waves of this, where farmers just stopped producing certain crops because they couldn't get them to market, because nobody was buying them, because there was so much stuff being imported. We had a hurricane, and most of the coffee plantations, especially in the south of Haiti, were impacted, and a lot of them were actually blatantly wiped out. And, I remember I was doing an assessment of who's doing what for coffee, and I had a conversation with somebody at the World Bank, and I swear to you, she said to me, Well, you know, for the Haitian growers, I'm really more interested in them producing higher value coffee that they can export for a higher price, and then for local consumption, Haiti can just import coffee. So, most of our coffee production is consumed locally. I was like, So one of the few things we produce and consume locally that we don't import very much of, you’re just like, Okay, import that now. Wow. Okay.

Anyadike

These Western aid models, what does it really say about, you know, the narrative of benevolence from the Global North. When you're confronted with these sorts of things, what goes through your mind?

Clérié

I can answer that, I think, hopefully it'll make sense with a bit of a story. So, a little bit after the earthquake, there was a wave of cholera in Haiti, right? So, there were these UN peacekeepers who essentially discarded their human waste into a river. And, we've never had cholera in Haiti. And so, people are seeing a disease that they've never seen before. People are getting sick and dying within hours. They're terrified. They're panicking. And then, there was an agency who mobilised like, Okay, we're going to go to the epicentre of this, and we're going to set up a clinic, and we're going to just start to try to contain it from there. But they didn't inform the community. They just showed up all benevolent and hero like, Oh, we're here to help you all. So, the community tore down the makeshift clinic. They thought the foreigners were coming to just contain it in their community. And so, they panicked. And it's like, Okay, well, if you had done this in a way that makes sense for Haiti. You would have gone on the radio, because everybody listens to the radio. You could have made an announcement on the radio like, Hey, we're gonna come. This is what we're gonna be doing. This is what cholera is. This is how you protect yourself from it. That all came so much later that there had already been thousands and thousands of cases. 

Anyadike

I had a final question for you. What could the majority world look like with the USAIDs of the world out of the picture?

Clérié

That's deep. A friend of mine and I recently were having this conversation, and it was like, What does a space we own look like? What could our communities look like if we determined what they should look like? And I think when that happens, people will have closer ties. They will have more trust-based arrangements. I think a lot of what I call collective-living models, which I think is more like mutuality. They will come back. I think they will come back. This idea that aid is just like, Oh, we're here to help. But, have you heard that quote from Lilla Watson, where she talks about, If you're here to help me, don't bother. But if your liberation is bound with mine, then let's work together. Something like that. She says it much more poetically, evidently. 

Anyadike

Isabelle, thank you so much for speaking with us. It's been a pleasure. 

Clérié 

Thank you so much. 

Anyadike

Isabelle Clérie is a writer, anthropologist and the Executive Director of the Haiti Impact Group.

 

What are people afraid to talk about in today’s crises? What needs to be discussed openly? Let us know by sending an email to [email protected]. And subscribe to The New Humanitarian on your podcast app for more episodes of What’s Unsaid – a podcast about open secrets and uncomfortable truths. Hosted by Ali Latifi, and me. 

 

This episode is produced and edited by Freddie Boswell, sound engineering by Tevin Sudi, with original music by Whitney Patterson, and hosted by me – Obi Anyadike. Thanks for listening!