Haiti in Crisis: What Role Can the International Community Play?

[Music] so [Music] [Music] welcome to csis online the way we bring you events is changing but we'll still present live analysis and award-winning digital media from our drakopolis ideas lab all on your time live or on demand this is csis online thanks so much for joining us today my name is dan rundy i hold the shreyer chair here at csios i also lead the americas program thank you for joining us today for this event haiti in crisis what role can the international community play before we formally begin let's take care of some logistic this this event will last approximately 60 minutes following the panelist remarks in a moderated discussion we will respond to questions from the audience we ask our audience to please submit questions by clicking on the ask live questions button on the event webpage so again everybody good afternoon i'd like to start by saying that haiti and haitians are very resilient 217 years ago haiti became the first country in the caribbean and the second country in the western hemisphere to gain independence from european colonial powers overcoming centuries of oppression and serving as an immediate inspiration for other countries in the region over the past two centuries haiti has built deep cultural social and economic ties throughout the region and the world uh haiti however has also faced many challenges in its history haiti's geographic vulnerability give us location within the caribbean sea means this island nation is regularly affected by hurricanes and earthquakes for her perhaps the most infamous of these disasters in recent history is the 2010 earthquake that killed an estimated 200 000 haitians and displaced around 1.5 million people haiti's harsh environmental realities were compounded recently by political disaster as decades of political frustration violence came to a head with the assassination of president jovenel moyes on july 7th of this year in the two months following his terrible assassination haiti has also suffered a 7.1 magnitude earthquake and weathered tropical storm grace the combination of the disasters and and the challenges of an interim government and the quick succession of these disasters have complicated relief efforts in an already complex situation without a doubt there's an urgency to stabilize the country today we have a distinguished panel of guests and we want to address the role the international community can play in supporting haiti and to bolster relief efforts our panelists will provide specific timely realistic recommendations for the international community to contribute to improve security stability and resilience in the long term while prioritizing medical food security and logistical assistance in the short term we have a great panel today each has deep personal and professional connections to haiti our first panelist is miss jacqueline charles miss charles is an emmy award-winning journalist with over a decade of experience reporting on the english speaking caribbean for the miami herald miss charles has appealed was a pulitzer prize finalist for her coverage of haiti's 2010 earthquake and was awarded the 2018 maria morris cabot prize the most prestigious award for coverage of the americas we are so pleased to have her with us today our second panelist is my friend ambassador pam white ambassador white served as the u.s ambassador to haiti from 2012 to 2015 and previously worked for usaid in haiti and in several countries in africa ambassador white had had a wonderful career in international development and diplomacy and i'm so grateful that she's made time for this our third panelist is danielle lowe founder of the danielle st low haiti women's foundation ambassador st low is also haiti's ambassador at large for women's empowerment and previously served as the executive director of haiti's chamber of commerce and industry and as haiti's minister of commerce industry and tourism it's a wonderful pleasure to have ambassador st low with us today so ms charles let me get started with you and let me turn the flow over to you please i i i'm so happy you're with us thank you and and thanks for having me i'm going to just start my comments by taking us back 11 years to the 2010 earthquake since we're talking about the international community in respect to the current disaster and i think that we need to be reminded of that disaster and some of the promises or as i wrote last year the unkept promises a decade of aftershocks and unkept promises at the miami herald where we examined you know that particular earthquake in 2010 it lasted 35 seconds and according to the haitian government the death toll was 316 000 and up 1.5 million who were displaced were also injured but we also saw over 400 000 homes and buildings that were basic that basically crumbled and initially the narrative with this current disaster on august 14th was that oh visually it wasn't as bad as 2010 but i will tell you after spending um several weeks you know in the south after the august 14th quake this quake is so much more challenging in other ways it's widespread there are towns that have been completely destroyed one of the things that we have not heard to come out of the international this international community this time around is the promises of the aid we're not hearing about billions of dollars um that is going to go toward haiti to help but it's reconstruction and i just want to remind folks that in 2010 and this is based on an analysis that paul farmer's office did at the un uh you know there was 10.37 billion dollars pledge and the analysis that farmer's office showed was that more than half 6.43 billion of the pledges committed for humanitarian and recovery assistance it was dispersed this included direct budget support from a few countries to the haitian government but less than 10 of that 6.43 billion dollars went directly to the haitian government so that challenges the narratives that a lot of people had and continue to have that the haitian government received billions of dollars from the international community after the quake and what did they do with it well less than 10 percent and and just 0.6 of the pledges went to haitian businesses and organizations and i raised this because what has come up this time around is in terms of whether or not the disbursement will be different will the promises be different and will the promises be kept and even our own country united states we have not completely fulfilled our promise one of the promises that we made was a brand new 100 million dollar hospital for port-au-prince i can tell you that 11 years after that earthquake that hospital still has not opened its doors it is still not ready we also had the 300 million dollar car called industrial park and while we did see that park open and it has provided roughly about 15 000 jobs it has been a struggle because what you've seen is sort of an absence of the commitment that was there originally so my my opening remarks are just sort of looking at the role of the international community has played and then we can continue this conversation but i think this is the context in which this current disaster the current challenges um are being met and some of the discussions that i've heard from people on the ground in terms of where do we need to go or what we need to do differently thank you thanks that's very sobering thanks so much ambassador white yeah hi everybody hi dan great to see you my friends jackie and uh danielle great to see you both also um yeah you know very interesting what jackie had to say because my first uh note that i was going to say is please please this time don't over promise uh and i think that's what we did after the quake in 2010 everything was going to be rosy i must have gone before the congress 5 or 10 or 20 times and they kept saying you know why haven't you done this why haven't you done that and on and on and on and you know haiti's not functioning perfectly and i said listen the united states government pledged about 2.2 billion dollars after the quake in um i mean the hurricane in new orleans katrina they initially got 42 billion dollars and they got an additional eight billion dollars and they weren't rebuilt and that was a city they did not have 316 000 people die in 35 seconds to really rebuild haiti better build back better they kept saying bill clinton and everybody else over and over and over you know would have taken so much more money that was pledged there's about 13.3 billion dollars plus it's a u.n i know i i think we saw maybe half of that and how much of that money actually got into the hands of the right people is difficult to say there was a tremendous effort on the ground a tremendous effort on the ground rubble was taken care of clinics were established schools were staffed you know makeover a lot of it millions of people intense all of that cost a tremendous amount of money and from when we got over sort of the recovery the initial recovery stage doing long-term development um was very difficult to know how to go forward and i do think we over promised i also think that the international community and i've learned this i learned it kind of later in my career but i learned it because it's a tough lesson to learn and that is only haitians or liberians or malians or tanzanians or whatever can really map a way forward and the more we get in the middle of that mucky muckety-muck the more we muck it up and if we don't understand the history the culture the good guys the bad guys what role the private sector plays and sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad um the intellectual side how the downside the dark side the drug dealers the the gang members the kidnappers how that all has a part to play and how we are going to listen to how haiti charts a new way forward and i think that was really missing i remember talking to some to the leaders in the in the u.s government before i went down as ambassador and they said well here's the plan and it was i said well it's a great plan but it's going to take 20 years they're like no no no we only have four so we only had four years to do in my opinion a 20-year plan and we had enough money to do maybe a quarter of it so my advice is please don't over promise again because it just disappoints everybody and everyone is going to once again point fingers that we said we would do x y z and unless we have the money to back it up we're not going to do x y z and we don't have a lot of new money going into haiti um ambassador powers was down there and ga uh promised an additional 32 million for the um earthquake recovery uh in the south but that again is not going to be a hell of a lot of money when you talk about what is needed in a rather isolated area so um i also think we should be realistic that we should focus and match um match uh realistic goals to in fact what money we know is coming in we don't give money normally around the world to governments uh because the governments have very shaky financial systems we don't trust them quite frankly we don't know where the money will go once it's in the coffer so we tend to give money to ngos i believe that the us government if i were queen uh i would try to be so much more creative and how we could get money to in the hands of uh haitian ngos that we um find do really good work and base how we give them money on their results and not how great their personnel systems are which they often are non-existent and one last word and that is we keep saying it in the u.s but we don't no one believes it but i believe it that elections do not make a democracy and i all over the world we force we did it in haiti i was there when baby doc was taken out at midnight and three days later the us government said we're gonna have an election in haiti and i was a junior nothing officer but even then i said but mr ambassador he was a good ambassador uh really how we can have elections in haiti when we have none of the democratic institutions required to have elections we don't have political parties we don't have an act of civil society we don't have a judicial system and on and on and on and he said the haitian people want elections and my opinion although once again let's ask the haitians as haitians want their voices heard that's what democracy means they want to be listened to so i think we have to be careful on charting a way forward that is very much what the haitian people want and not what we want ambassador st low thank you for being here yes uh my first word is really to thank the organizers specific you bang for this gathering this conversation and to be able to be part of this conversation with this talented panelist and i am right now in the southwest the one of the devastated area you know in the southwest i was there four years ago after matu it's like hey every time you have to come back and to deal with disasters you know and we're going to have more disasters we're going to have more violent disasters and we do we know about it and it's not a curse and it's about our geographic position but also about our vulnerability and our vulnerability because of a fail of a collab state we have to be clear about it we have a collapsed state and it's the result of an ongoing systemic crisis so we have to approach haiti challenges and now we can even say thrift in a systemic way and we should raise the question of the transformation of the whole system otherwise we will be back in three months four four years again telling the same thing and we have learned so much after the earthquake and we should both the us and haiti learn from our experiences but i really think that we should work on three tracks simultaneously otherwise we will be always in a relief momentum so while addressing the relief and we have organization we have faith-based organization we have government institutions to be reinforced but i really think that the the u.s faith-based organization and secular partners with local grassroots because they are linked they work together they pray together so they and we should really be able to reinforce their capacity to have immediate response while addressing a major major immediate issue which is security and only only a smart military cooperation i'm not saying invasion i'm saying cooperation can help us out the the rule of law for order and security in haiti and this way with uh smart cooperation with intelligence we will be able to reinforce our army and our police force and army we don't have any enemies we are not at war so our army should be there to put protect our territory against earthquake against all what we have been the one that are attacking us that our ireland is now and we need to really work on the immediate security issue that with the neighborhoods the gangs all this should be addressed with military cooperation so i really think that the u.s and i think that uh csis is setting the way having new voices the us government should have new segments of haitian society at the table mostly women in the youth and it's not a way to exclude the old actors the old boys it's a way to have everybody at the table and everybody at the table you will change the menu and we will be able to together to reinforce our government that we know that is weak but we should reinforce both civil society and government and the best way to reinforce uh government it's to help political party becomes stronger it's to see or we can regroup in four or five political parties the hundreds of political parties that we have because when i see the northern country the u.s politics is done it's managed by parties in the deal in our neighborhood caribbean country we should adopt a deal to the caribbean you know uh standards so i think many groups are collaborating many people are called that's the first time that i see people collaborating together in different groups we will never be one voice like you in the u.s we will never be one group but it's very good to see what is emerging right now in face or adversity so the u.s should find ways to support those collaborative efforts and we need think tank like csis we need the militaries we need we need whatever institutions that are strong in the u.s to work with us so that we can really move forward and address this systemic you know prices thank you ambassador miss charles can i get your reaction to some of the things that have been put on the table i thought some of your scene setting comments were very sobering i'd welcome your reaction to some of things that ambassador white ambassador st lowe put on the table well let me start with ambassador white i mean i think she she hit a lot of it on the head in terms of um the over promise um and you know what happens in these promises is that there there's this promise and then there is this i don't believe that the government can do this or you know i don't believe that this is going to happen so what you see in terms of the disbursement that it's either the same players or it's money that goes back to the beltway and we see that there's not a lot of regard that is given to haitian ngos and i remember after 2010 writing a story about that um and saying you know that a lot of ngos on the ground thought that they were going to have access to a lot of these funds and i remember talking to bill clinton about this and he was very frustrated by it because the way the mechanism was set up and and we the us was also pushing this narrative of no we need to give it to people who we trust or people that we know and and if you look at our own programs in the us government in terms of some of the reconstruction they were also riddled with problems there were corruption issues that were raised there were questions about you know why did this you know housing project that was just built basically fell apart you know weeks and months later i will tell you one of the things that i am seeing different this time around having been on the ground is that where is it after 2010 um especially from the the u.s it was this our way or the highway enforcing solutions forcing decisions on the haitian government at the time this go around when the u.s is saying no we are taking our directive from the local authorities from the haitian government i do see this and i will give you two you know two examples in 2010 i was shadowing president renee preval at the time of spending the day with him and he asked for the tents twenty thousand tents he wanted tents and the u.s uh envoy at the time literally laughed in his face and they're like no no we're not going to give you tents you know we need to get the economy going we need to let people just start to rebuild and he saw ahead he saw that if you allow people to start to rebuild you're going to have these tent cities these makeshift tenancies camps and that's exactly what ended up happening and then we saw when president marjali came in the challenge is there of trying to remove um those camps this time around you know you had a government that was saying okay we don't you know we don't want those ten cities but i think people lost sight of how those tent cities happened it wasn't because haitians got tents and tarps it was because they were allowed to rebuild and we had the us government telling the haitian government you have to provide land for housing that was that never arrived because of the whole land issues and things like that so people found that loophole that escaped so the transitional housing that was supposed to you know come after the tent cities and then they were supposed to be to step before permanent housing while there are people today who are still living in transitional housing so so you know when they talk about lessons learned i am seeing that there there are some lessons learned but the question is again are we going to see the commitment it's not just about the money but the commitment from the international community i you know i i would joke at times like you know at times you know we're treating the international treat haiti or haitian officials as if they're teenagers when in fact they might they're toddlers right on certain projects like oh no we're going to let them decide well let the decide means that you have a 300 million industrial park called caracal and you do not have a port to support this park and so while you have 15 000 jobs you have your investors there that are slowly moving across the border to the dominican republic because of all of the instability the the fuel issues the gang issues the security all of the all of these things so i think this time around international community really has to take it all the way if you're going to commit to a project it has to be all the way along with you know ambassadors saying well one of the things i'm hearing from her and that has been one of the frustrations is civil society and the lack of civil society in the discussion and you know anybody that looks at you know diplomacy closely and looks at foreign relations which you will see is that you know like the wind the relationship that that that embassies or governments have with the local actors on the ground a lot of times it's personality driven or policy driven of what's coming out of those those capitals and so the frustration for um haitian civil society for a long time is after years of being supported by the us and being strengthened by the us and the last couple of years they felt that they were basically pushed to the sides and their their voices were not heard um and so what you're saying today is today you have a country that's in crisis we all know what the problems are we all know where you're going you're going to have the political gains to try to destabilize what have you but make the extra effort to find the players the organizations on the ground that can help move this conversation forward not everybody's corrupt it's not you know it's not a hopeless situation that if you make that particular effort we can find a way um to move forward i think just to quote you know um especially on the way to head foot said last week on another paddle like everybody doesn't need to be at the table and everybody's not going to come at the table um and then finally i'll just say this you know ambassador single talked about political parties but i think as haitians we also have to take responsibility for um the disaster you know the fact that we have over 100 political parties that was not something that was dictated by the international community that was something that was created by haitians in a so-called political agreement or coalition and so while it may have been easy to create a hundred plus political parties where is there is there political will today to remove those parties and to go back to maybe four or five parties you know that we have to stop looking for those you know those doors those exit doors because there are people who benefit off of the dysfunction um and i think that while people are talking today for me the proof is in the pudding and that proof is whether or not the talk is going to result into actions and whether the players on the ground are going to be willing to give up something in order to achieve something else and that to me is the real test of haiti at this particular time in its history okay great ambassador white would you want to add anything yeah i i i i do think that to talk about any intervention any you know what what's what an outsider's supposed to do about haiti it's just got a false narrative in some ways if we cannot talk about the security in the country kidnappings are going bananas murders are off the off the charts uh corruption is everywhere everywhere in the private sector in the government sector there are other more i deeply believe they're more honest people than there are corrupt people but the corrupt people tend to be in positions of power and we're going to have to change that narrative somehow and they we don't seem to be able to do it not only do we not seem to be able to do it but we seem to support even when we know people are corrupt and stealing things and money and whatever i mean the the people that really always benefit off a disaster in haiti is the private sector they have all the land they have all the car rentals they have all the uh apartments after the earthquake apartments went they used to go for five hundred dollars a month we're at seven thousand dollars a month and no one blinked and i and i i just i i don't know how to get out of it but we kind of have to get out they have to get at the situation that we've got 60 of the country controlled by gangs and i think we ought to be very creative here the chicago atlanta los angeles has done some fantastic work with gangs let's start giving money to places that don't know from shinola i hope no kids are watching about what's going on that's a think tank term that works ambassador and start and start giving money to people who actually have had long time experience and if they we can get haitian dis people of haitian descent to come down and help that ten times better and lastly don't be fooled the united states of america's budget for 2021 to haiti is around 200 million dollars of that 200 million dollars and this is not going to change if you they would get an additional 32 million dollars for the earthquake uh fine but there's 200 million dollars that you know congress cuts that up congress says you're going to spend this much on health and this much on education and this much on whatever and the big big chunk of that money because this is what we do best and this is what congress authorizes is health women and child have maternal and child health hiv aids basic health services and so you know if anyone thinks oh we're going to build new houses for everyone in the south we're not and that's what i keep saying you got to be realistic about what it is the united states government is going to do in haiti and they should be very vocal and very specific about what our interventions are going to do in the short term we will be there with sheets we will deal with the with shelter repair kits we will be there with emergency food but we are not in the long term as far as i can tell by reading the uh the documents that i have on hand we're not going to rebuild itself so don't expect that and last but not least i do think that we you know the haitian government i'm not even sure who who that is i know there's a bunch of ministers many people say that already is not a legitimate prime minister i mean he's what we got but i don't know um if we don't seem to or the patient people can don't need to move quickly to establish some kind of a government in order that it can move forward with the international world and i also think that the role of the diaspora is not um being used or played they talk big but they they don't move big and i wonder if we can't get that to move and shake a little bit better in order to help the haitian people great ambassador st low would you like to respond to anything that's been put on the table yes i just uh like to reinforce that we need to set a new table and have other voices at the table we need to do diaspora we have haitians that are managing new york city budget we are assumed that our leading u.s think tank we have so much so many talented and committed hate agents you know they will sit down at any board at any table when it comes to help haiti progress so that's what i think the us has to be very selective about who's going to be around the table and as i said not excluding anyone but we need to need to have a new table another set another table okay let me there's several i've got lots of questions let me put a couple of my own out there they're in theory they're going to be some elections potentially in haiti what do people think about that that a good idea that's one question i think another question i'd like to put to this group is uh gang the gang there's a significant amount of gang experience not just in the united states we have gang problems in this country but i'm thinking about in the northern triangle are there some lessons to be learned from some of the experiences in the northern triangle so does anyone want to kind of take on the issue of sort of elections and does someone want to take on the issue sort of like lessons learned not just from us because we have a problem with gangs but are there other parts of the region and i'm thinking of central america where there may be some lessons learned either you want to take any you want to take those two topics on let me just say about the the gang issue in in the lessons lord and i and when i talk to to experts um on haiti this is something that they bring up over and over again is that haiti is not central america haiti is not africa as a matter of fact there's a former special envoy who said haiti is the only country where there has been multiple us invasions and they don't play baseball and what it is to say is that haiti moves to its own beat and i think that when you're looking at an issue like the gang situation in haiti you first need to understand where is this from what is the engine behind it who who are the players are are involved is this about kids looking for association is it is is it about um cops who can't get you know uh make it off of a police salary you know i i i i don't really think that there's been an effort on the part of some of the players in the international community to really understand what is driving the gang issue in haiti and i have to tell you that this is like a fairly new issue a fairly new phenomenon it's somebody who covers the caribbean i mean one of the things that that that i always you know appreciated the fact was that in haiti i didn't have to deal with the gang problems that i had to deal with in jamaica i was i it wasn't like i turned the corner and i'm going to go into a police shootout with gangs and today in haiti the gang insecurity is the biggest issue because the whole country has been reduced to a very tiny small space and you're wondering how long before myspace gets invaded by this insecurity so in order for us to address the gang problems in haiti you have to first understand the root of that problem what is driving the problem and then you have to come up with a package of response that addresses the haiti situation unique you cannot we have to stop trying to take these sort of one-size-fits-all programs that we've done elsewhere and try to apply it to haiti and finally i'll say and the programs that you have had i remember years ago we had stuff like viva rio that was invested they were in these these communities so now what happened internationally he stopped providing the funding and then it disappeared i mean that's been the repetitive story with haiti over and over again international community either brings cadillac programs to this country and then when the funding dries up they can't continue those programs or they don't let the programs work long enough so that they can see the see the results so today given that this is the most major challenge i think there has to be a serious commitment on a part of everybody that they're going to figure that they're going to try to address it and it can't just be based on the haitian police force because you have to understand today that you have a police force that is basically imploding and there are a number of issues that are impacting that force and these are not going to be the guys that are just going to go and stick their neck out but you know we gain you know leaders for the status quo you we have to be creative but we have to be decisive and it has to be based on research and not pulling things out of the air someone take on the issue of elections for me the election is and the gang security it's it's the same problem let's say we cannot have election if there is no security and there is kind of insecurity because of power struggle so yes there we have problem in the neighborhoods we are the naval resort pool and this can be addressed we in the long term in a systemic way the way i was saying but it's a struggle for power so how can we have election how can even a woman be candidate with this situation so we need to take some time and we are already in a transition as a two-year transition so that we can really solve this problem and the same way that the relief is an emergency it's urgent in the southwest the security in the gang neighborhood it's a top priority it's urgent we can't wait because people are suffering it's about red it's about people there are ordinary people living in those neighborhoods the country the south is blocked because they can't sell their products their crops super plants it's social it's economic it's psychology and it's a war on of nerves on everybody so and as i said we need a military cooperation to solve this problem and this way we can get ready for free elections and we have to be careful what can be done maybe what has been successful in central america we are not central america as jacqueline was saying and we have to be careful and that's why it is important to have haitian action for the diaspora patient in haiti to hear their voice have them think because they know how to think because they they think in your uh think tank so they can think about haiti and let me give you a simple example the u.s has put a travel warning you know number four on haiti for coffee knighted but it's not our top priority it's not our top challenge and it's not the same case as other countries we we have lost a lot of people we have lost many people in the asphalt but most people that die in haiti are people with of my age but there is only five percent of the population that is my age so we need really to be able to really think out of the box and really plan with asian people thinking local and also hear from people at local level so that we can find a solution we are not a violent country haitian are not violent people and what we are having i can say it's kind of limitation of a society that has to evolve and can't find his way so that's why the quality the collaborative effort that we are having now of youth of the protestant churches of civil society of the even the political parties support them support them in their thinking innovation from abroad coming and they're already uh involved in all these talks i've never seen so many talks in haiti about and we have one common demonic denominator is haiti and this should put us in a position to be able to find solutions we're not going to find one solution but we're going to find solutions and the u.s also should be able to see with our common partners we know our allies we know them we know the ones that are bad and that are good we should be able together to be to have a sincere conversation ambassador white yeah i i think this constant you know elections election election it's just the wrong question elections are complicated in haiti the cep is not viewed as legitimate by i would say 80 percent of the haitians the supreme court is not considered legitimate by the haitian society you can't keep pushing elections in an atmosphere of chaos it just it doesn't it doesn't the outcome is not good i mean louise was elected because the united states of america and the others in the core group said we are this has got to happen it's going to happen whether you like it or not it's going to happen now and so in the end 20 of the haitian population turned out and half of them voted for him so he he took over office with 10 percent you know of of the of the population saying yes we you we consider you a legitimate president president that is not a recipe for governance so we need to be the facilitators or the however we can do it to make sure that all these groups the youth and the women and we do not do this well but it can be done support them get them meeting places give them the money to uh organize uh campaigns or talking points or uh bigger gatherings let's try to work with the people on the ground and not push grandiose ideas but ideas that stem from from the ground up and many of them have excellent excellent agendas but i remember when i was ambassador danielle i was trying to get her i think it was like ten thousand dollars and i mean over and over and over it was like and you know she could have used it you know immediately to empower women voters and women candidates could not get the united states government to find a way of how you could support a woman's organization that was trying to organize women she didn't have the right financial you know 400 accountants or whatever and this has just got to change okay let me i've got some interesting questions um so several questions from the audience the presentation of the new draft constitution was completed over the weekend how do each of the panels see this impacting the overall stability of the country over the next six months knowing the hurricane season is not over and there are still there are still enormous needs that's one question another question is and you can pick pick from these a lack of a sense of of a common wealth cripples the haitian political elite in dealing with national slash domestic issues how can the international community help grow that vital aspect of governance and then there's a question from irex as someone who works at a large international ngo and works directly with haitians as part of my program we run a yearly fellowship that brings young entrepreneurs to the us from all over the americas for business training how can i best use my voice and position to advocate for our haitian fellows through these challenges so these are the three questions you can kind of pick and choose let me start with uh you miss charles please let me just say in terms of the constitution um you know the debate for the last two years was not about whether or not haiti needed a new constitution or whether haiti needed reforms of the constitution it was the vehicle by which the late president chose to to to to get there that is where the resistance was um and i and that is what created all of these problems and you you already had an effort that was taking place in the lower chamber of deputies to address um some of the irritants within this constitution or some of the changes and what we saw in the end was that was not even considered and this new document was written who knows where by a group of individuals who knows whom so so right there you had a document that was coming out that did not that suffered from legitimacy today we are hearing that you know discuss yes this constitution was delivered but i understand that in this accord there's the prime minister's sign there's some talk about constituents assembly uh you know clearly we've seen the results of the the the problems that exist in the constitution where today you had a president who was assassinated and you have a country where all of the institutions are non-existent they've collapsed and then there's a sort of political vacuum but you know are we going to be able to to to to find a formula that will allow for there to be adjustments to the constitution um how long is that going to take and are you going to find the support on a part of a country like the us that despite what ambassador pam white says is all about elections um you know what we kept hearing from the state department was that we've said that you know the constitution should not negate you know they wanted elections over constitutional reform but in all those rooms everybody's saying the constitute their problems in its constitution so i think that's going to be a huge challenge today right even among the opposition and others you hear them keep saying new constitutional constitutional changes but again are people going to are haitians today willing to give something up in order to get something because again the things that are wrong that feed into the dysfunction feeds into the problem there are people who always benefit from that and i say again that for me the real test of haiti at this moment when they talk about haiti haiti solutions for haiti challenges is whether or not the haitians on the ground are going to be willing to make that sacrifice in order for you to get this country in a way where we can see institutions that are strengthened that are independent and that regardless of who may be president or whatever issues there are you trust in those institutions to tackle and to take on those problems and you're not always looking for the international community to come and have my back i agree a thousand percent with everything she just said i mean i'm saying that i don't think elections make a democracy this is not u.s government policy i'm not at any way anything that i say has nothing to do with us government policy believe me but ambassador white what how about some of these questions about either commonwealth or in terms of how how should somebody like irex be supporting the voices in haiti yeah it's interesting my my daughter-in-law works at ireland uh anyway that she's great uh but i i i just don't know enough about what's going on in the ground on the ground i mean we do have a robust dg program through usaid i mean our first money bigger chunk of money you spend on health second big chunk of money is disaster preparation and and reaction to disasters and the third is about 17 million a year on government governance uh programs but i i do not know how in fact now how those programs actually are implemented on the ground and i think it's very very very difficult to implement anything with governance in a country that is in on you know the verge of collapse i i just read something that the u.n wrote about the judiciary that is pretty much non-functional and that's you know a big part of how you make any government function and how you put even people in power with no judicial system to make sure that the wheels turn round and round in any kind of honest manner i i don't know it's a huge question but i think the first thing we have to do is make sure that the haitian people's voices they've been demonstrating and they've been in the streets now for years and i i and we've got to talk to the gangs and we've got to talk to the protesters we're going to talk to the opposition we're going to do it so that in an organized manner so that something rather than nothing comes out of all this and without doing that first without laying some of the groundwork down i just don't see any possibility we can't keep doing the same damn thing we've been doing over the last 50 years and expect something different to come out ambassador st low i'd welcome your your thoughts about some of the things that put on the table myself i don't understand why the international community mostly the u.n and the ois are pushing for the constitution first we need to respect this constitution and the constitution it's written how you can change the constitution and you change it right now are we going to respect it why should we respect it if we haven't done it for so many years that's why i'm talking about this systemic crisis we have to be serious about this especially that we have a very young population that is ready to follow you know 75 percent of the population as less than 35 years old so my generation kept me kidnapping the country like that you know and i think it's a very latin way of doing things you see what i mean we have to be more anglo-saxon in a certain way we have to we are we have a constitution that is in french people have voted the constitution that they don't understand and now you have all those big debates we know that it has to be changed and the constitution also asks for a constitutional constitutional council that should have been this job so why didn't we did it put a constitutional council and i think that's those things that we have to address for my generation that we're always mixing we are confused in everything that we are doing and we do it on purpose for our own agenda so now i think it's that's why we need to have new players at the diaspora talented nation from the diaspora you know with the youth so that we can come up with solutions to a dialogue to whatever way we went to sudan but i also think that elections are key for that the constitution can be an electoral a debate for election you see what i mean we can take these two years to discuss about a new constitution but we should have a new parliamentarian to parliament in place to work on the constitutional reform we should put together as soon as election all dawn in two years we should put two together for the constitution that we have now respected you know finally and put together the constitutional court all the institutional structure are there in the constitution as i said it must be reform change but let's start respecting what's there right now great great okay so i have a question here about covid19 we haven't talked a lot about covid19 but and but covet 19 vaccinations require that people operate on the ground there's a high level of insecurity the estimates of 60 of the country under gang control and quotes how can the international community support vaccinations in times of covet at a time when there's sort of security challenges in haiti but and specifically in the region of the southern peninsula well you know covet vaccines 500 000 doses were given by um the biden administration you know in july and they were welcomed by haiti was the last country in the americas to receive vaccines but there's been no money for campaigns for outreach all the things that you need to convince people in a country that they should get vaccinated i mean we are dealing with covet hesitancy here in the u.s but imagine being in a country where you have not seen the amount of cases that other countries have seen people don't believe that the either the disease isn't real although they're starting more and more are starting to but they don't trust uh the government that is entrusted with rolling this out like they there are issues when you talk to ngos on the ground this is one of the things that they raise the fact that they cannot get money for covet vaccination campaigns in order to get these shots in people's arms and i will tell you in my own individual conversations with people that i know whether it's my family members in haiti or people i just meet on the street and i talk to what i realize is that it's you know if they haven't taken a vaccine it's because it's a lack of information or they're not sure and all it requires sometimes is a conversation with somebody and says well you know i took it here's what happened or here's why you should i mean there are people you're not going to be able to convince them at all but today there's there really is not any sort of campaign going on and you have you have a government that is cash strapped that is broke that doesn't have any money um and they have all of these you know other challenges and let's stop holding ourselves even just in terms of regular vaccinations it's a challenge in this country and now you want them to do covet vaccines which are important but if you want to move those vaccines and not have them go to waste and not wait till we have the delta variant or some other variant to come to haiti and really um wreak havoc i think that their the international community has to rethink this and says what war can they do to assist haiti beyond just sending doses of vaccine to the country yeah i mean i've had conversations about this with some of the top docs in haiti and i mean they did they were the last to get them but that's because they turned them away uh several months ago because there were no culvert cases they thought they might be lucky and dodged the bullet but of course that that's not going to happen and uh we were talking about you know the united states of america has spent billions in establishing health networks through the hiv aids money the pepfar money and so the distribution systems of actually getting the vaccines where they need to go especially the 500 000 which is the easy part it's not you know because we can do that in urban areas which are relatively easy to penetrate and we have a higher which is not high but it's higher ratio of health professionals to the population but you know getting it down where it needs to go that's a whole another question and they're gonna need more than 500 000 doses they're going to need absolutely money in order to spread this out into the rural areas so there's no doubt it's just another challenge uh that's difficult to figure out a solution to but the right net i mean that also probably will not see the death rates that we've seen in countries like ours because there's the population is so much younger as danielle was saying only five percent of the population in haiti is over 69 or something so they're relatively a very young population and i you know i i do keep saying that that is one of the three or four top challenges in haiti if it's not running wilds of the country today it's going to be running wild tomorrow but there's lots of challenges down there you have to prioritize okay so lots of challenges here i want to give you each a minute in terms of what's the what's the one message for the biden harris administration what's the one message for institutions like the idb or the oas or their friends in canada what do you got what's your one takeaway message i'd ask start with you ambassador white i think my number one message is it's going to be tough to make any progress in haiti on whether it's in the southwest or it's in port-au-prince or it's nationally if we don't get a handle on the chaos the violence the gangs the the total uh absence of authoritarian authority sorts of authorities uh in any of the sectors and we need to get together with the haitians and come up with a better more realistic cost let's not do not promise the moon this is how much money we got this is what we can do make sure that there's a there's a haitian people and especially diaspora i'm desperate to get them involved they are super smart and super dedicated they talk a lot now not the time to move uh to make haiti a better place and we've got to start vocalizing these are the four or five things that we can do right now within the next year the next two years i don't want to talk about the next 50 years or 10 years or even five years let's see what we can do to right this ship immediately okay miss charles i'd welcome your kind of what's your what's your message take away message i think i want to build on it i mean one of the frustrations for me as a journalist who covers haiti is that when you look you don't see an example whether it is a project or a town where you see you know from a to z you know the the commitment of the international community in terms of funding you know you can't say here's this town and the kids are have a better education scores because this investment was made in education people are healthier because this investment was made you know in health like we're always trying to re you know invent the me the the wheel in haiti when you don't need to i i think it was a master white says you know find some areas that you want let's just take for instance the general hospital and this is actually a real story okay one of the one of the projects or the planning discussions was we have this hospital we are investing over 100 million dollars france and haiti when you look into diaspora places like miami florida you have all of these haitian americans who are in the health care sector from nurses to nurses aid to doctors to surgeons why can't this hospital along with being a teaching hospital also be a place where you can have the diaspora be involved and be involved in the running and we run it differently and it'd be an example but somewhere along the way somebody lacked the courage to push that forward the international community wields a tremendous amount of power in haiti and or on haitians issues but it doesn't know when to use it or always uses badly i i will challenge them to be much more creative to think out of the box and let's just stop trying to do 50 things let's find a few things that work and be courageous and just do it so at the end of the day you have that example you have it's done and then you can and and and you can recreate that in in in other sectors ambassador saying that i'll give you the last word what is your what is the message for the international community what's what's our takeaway what are some actions we can take yes the message is clear we need to work on three tracks while working on relief emergency same time build resilience because while we are in the south okay but what all the north to do not will suffer from going down so we need to build the resilience of the rest of the country and create a wealth wherever we can create wealth so we definitely need to work on the three track otherwise we will miss the point and i think the us can play a key role as our closest partner our strongest partner is to have other partners to sit at the table one table and so that we can have come up with a plan a three track plan thank you everybody thank you every this has been great really appreciate y'all taking the time to be with us today we need to end it here this has been excellent thank you very much thank you thank you keep on ladies [Music] you

Channel: Center for Strategic & International Studies

Views: 514

Rating: 4.826087 out of 5

Keywords: Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS, bipartisan, policy, foreign relations, national security, think tank, Haiti, Americas Program

Id: yh79bJ-pRbY

Length: 61min 40sec (3700 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021