30782: (news) Chamberlain: Canadian comment on Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

(Toronto Globe and Mail, 19 July 07)


Donor 'Haiti fatigue' a threat to real progress

Finding the right balance between patience and urgency, in recognition that
this may be Haiti's last, best chance for progress, represents one of the
international community's greatest challenges.

By TIMOTHY DONAIS



Given its depressing history, Haiti might seem to be one of the least
likely places to look for a peace-building success story. Yet when Prime
Minister Stephen Harper lands in Port-au-Prince later this week, he will
find a democratically elected government that enjoys broad popularity and a
security situation that is vastly improved over even six months ago.
Perhaps more significantly, he will also find a tentative but growing sense
of optimism among Haitians and internationals alike that the country has a
real chance to emerge from its misery.

The key to this revived sense of hope is René Préval, the understated
agronomist who re-emerged as president in 2006. His return (he was also
president from 1996 to 2000) was an enormous stroke of good fortune. Not
only did the election of Mr. Préval, a one-time protégé of former president
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, moderate the tensions lingering from the 2004 coup
that forced Mr. Aristide from office, but it also put in place a government
that enjoys broad legitimacy both within Haiti and abroad and whose
priorities are more or less in line with those of the international
community. With Mr. Préval in power, the international presence looks and
feels less like an international occupation and more like a genuine
partnership between Haitians and the international community.

The results have been most apparent in security. Over the past several
years, armed gangs consolidated their hold over Port-au-Prince's more
notorious slums, including Cité Soleil, the poorest neighbourhood in the
hemisphere's poorest country. With Mr. Préval's blessing, the United
Nations peacekeeping mission (known by its French acronym, MINUSTAH) has
confronted these groups head-on, resulting in the arrest of 750 gang
leaders over the past six months. At the same time, Mr. Préval's
government, with international support, has made significant progress
toward re-establishing the credibility of the Haitian National Police. And
while the country remains mired at the bottom of Transparency
International's corruption perceptions index, a handful of recent
high-profile arrests on corruption charges have had a significant symbolic
impact.

Haiti has been here before. After Mr. Aristide's U.S.-led restoration in
1994, a string of UN support missions focused, ultimately unsuccessfully,
on consolidating the rule of law and respect for human rights, while the
international community ? Canada, in particular ? expended considerable
effort helping to build up the Haitian National Police, only to watch as
corruption and politicization unravelled early advances.

And despite the latest progress, the underlying obstacles to sustainable
peace-building remain daunting. Beyond the endemic corruption challenge,
Haiti's economy is moribund (its most viable industry at present is cocaine
transshipment); nearly half its children do not attend school; there is a
major environmental crisis; the gap between the wealthy and the
impoverished remains appalling; and the judicial system has proven
remarkably resistant to reform. Years of conflict, repression and brain
drain have taken their toll on state institutions.

Clearly, Haiti still has a long way to go, and the risks of slippage remain
considerable. Still, there are reasons to believe Haiti can avoid a repeat
of the 1990s.

Mr. Préval's stabilizing influence is one. While in many ways a one-man
show ? "The government definitely is Préval," Haitian Senator Rudy Boulos
says ? the President's integrity is largely unchallenged. Many see him as
Haiti's last chance to escape what scholar Robert Fatton has called
predatory republicanism, in which the absence of economic opportunity has
made the capture of governing power the primary means of acquiring wealth
and power.

At the same time, the international community has learned important
lessons, the most important of which is that abandoning the country in
exasperation in the late 1990s merely accelerated its downward spiral.
Peace-building is a slow, gradual process, requiring considerable patience
and a long-term commitment from both peacekeepers and donors. UN planners
are now thinking as far ahead as 2014. Canada also seems to have learned
the lesson ? Mr. Harper's government has committed $520-million between
2006 and 2011, and has sent the right signals about staying for the long
haul.

While a long-term commitment is a basic requirement for success, so too is
an ability to take advantage of short-term windows of opportunity. Here,
the international community's recent record is less impressive. In places
like Cité Soleil, both MINUSTAH and donors have been slow to respond to the
recent anti-gang campaign, failing to follow up the military intervention
with quick-impact development projects designed to provide immediate peace
dividends.

The international community has perhaps two more years to work with a
friendly, pro-reform government before the unpredictability of next
election cycle begins. Finding the right balance between patience and
urgency, in recognition that this may be Haiti's last, best chance for
progress, represents one of the international community's greatest
challenges. Over the longer term, avoiding donor "Haiti fatigue" and a
repeat of the peace-building reversals of the late 1990s will largely
depend on ensuring that the recent step forward isn't again followed by two
steps back.


Timothy Donais is an assistant professor of political science at the
University of Windsor.