Today, Haiti’s international partners and donors concur with the overwhelming feeling of the Haitians that the international community’s development and stabilization efforts in Haiti have not been as successful as one might have expected. Since 1995, Haiti has received between US$200 to US$500 million in foreign assistance yearly, excluding years of exceptional events that also come with remarkable disbursements, for instance, in 2010. Several years later, Haiti has still not made any significant progress. Instead, the Caribbean nation is recording its most acute downhill run whether economically, politically, or socially.
Several of Haiti’s international partners have publicly admitted their intent to reassess their way of working with Haiti, a sentiment echoed in a recent public statement from the OAS. The US’s decision to include Haiti in a handful of countries selected to be part of the Global Fragility Act embodies the country’s own desire to reevaluate and redesign its handling of relations and development endeavors with Haiti. Regardless of what the international community decides, Haiti will need to conduct its own internal inventory of what has worked, what has not worked, and what needs to be done.
In this webinar, Think Tank Haiti, a collaboration between Université Quisqueya and the Inter-American Dialogue, will host prominent Haiti scholar and sociologist, Michèle Oriol, to discuss her recent paper “International Aid or Foreign Policy? Lessons Learned since 1990” and her findings. Drawing from her decades-long professional experience working in rural Haiti, public administration, and with international development agencies, Oriol will examine the failure of international aid in Haiti and make recommendations on what both Haiti and the international partners should do before they start to see significant results from their investments.
Oriol will be joined by Joël Boutroue, former UN Deputy Special Representative in Haiti and Kesner Pharel, Chief Executive Director of Groupe Croissance. The event will be moderated by Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, former prime minister of Haiti and will include welcome remarks by Jacky Lumarque, rector of Université Quisqueya.
We invite participants to submit questions using the Q&A function in Zoom OR to email questions to meetings@thedialogue.org.
Follow this event on Twitter at #ThinkTankHaiti and @The_Dialogue.
Please note that this event will be held in French. Simultaneous interpretation in English and Haitian Creole will be available for those who RSVP to the event online.
Opening Remarks
Jacky Lumarque
Rector, Université Quisqueya (@JackyLumarque)
Speakers
Michèle Oriol
Professor, Université d’État d’Haïti
Joël Boutroue
UNHCR Representative in Uganda, United Nations
Kesner Pharel
Chief Executive Director, Groupe Croissance (@PharelKesner)
Moderator
Michele Duvivier Pierre-Louis
Former Prime Minister of Haiti and current President, Fondation Connaissance et Liberté (FOKAL)
