Still Shaky

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Justice and Security

AP IMAGES/RAMON ESPINOSA

Brazilian United Nations peacekeepers point their weapons toward the National Penitentiary during a prisoners’ uprising in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on October 17, 2010.

Haiti’s justice system is deeply flawed. The courts do not carry out their constitutional mandates. Laws are not applied. Judicial appointment procedures are not followed. Many judges have no legal education, and some are illiterate. The criminal code dates from the early 19th century. The courts operate in French, but only about 20 percent of the population speaks French. Haiti has no functioning forensic laboratory. There is no criminal-record system, so it is impossible to know whether a suspect has a prior record or is wanted in another jurisdiction. Many courthouses are in poor condition. Legal aid barely exists. The laws do not permit plea bargaining or alternative sentencing for minor crimes. Corruption is widespread, and relations are poor between the Haitian National Police on the one hand and prosecutors and judges on the other.

Perhaps the most glaring manifestation of the justice system’s dysfunction is the situation in Haiti’s prisons. The conditions are horrific; an estimated 75–85 percent of the prison population is held in illegally prolonged pretrial detention. Many of these prisoners have never seen a judge. At least some have been detained longer than their sentences ever would have been.

Addressing prolonged pretrial detention cannot wait for significant progress in judicial reform. An ad hoc panel for detainee review should be established with the power to review cases and, if appropriate, to order releases. Arguably, Haiti’s parliament should authorize this by law, but since people are being held in pretrial detention precisely because current laws are not being obeyed, there is a strong case for authorizing such a panel by presidential decree. So that prisons do not continue to fill up with pretrial detainees, establishing the panel should be coupled with requiring that all arrest warrants be given an expiration date in accordance with procedural time lines.

Since its creation in 1994, the Haitian National Police has been given a broad range of responsibilities, including counternarcotics, border protection, maritime patrolling, certain quasi-military functions, and guarding the prisons. But in light of Haiti’s economic conditions and poorly functioning government, as well as the small size of the police force, it has never been able to perform all these tasks. The force should focus on basic policing and on building Haitian ownership of security where police interact most directly with the population: on the streets and in the neighborhoods. This approach would be an important contribution to enhancing both the capacity and the legitimacy of the Haitian state.

Beyond basic policing, Haiti will continue to be heavily dependent on the international community for security. The Haitian government, members of the UN Security Council, and the wider international donor community should acknowledge this reality and refrain from premature steps to reduce the international security presence. No country can enjoy sustained economic growth or public well-being if violence is endemic and crime goes unchecked.

AP IMAGES/DIEU NALIO CHERY

A student leaves home in a refugee camp in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on October 13, 2010. The January 2010 earthquake destroyed an estimated 110,000 homes and apartment buildings, leaving more than 1.5 million people to compete for new homes at the bottom end of the market.

Economic Policy and Infrastructure

Unless rubble is removed from building sites, reconstruction of housing and businesses cannot proceed. The removal of rubble is the most important step toward reconstruction that the Haitian government and the donor community can take. The government needs to ensure that there are sites prepared for rubble disposal, and donors should provide funds to contract with Haitians for the collection and removal of rubble. The tent cities now in use need to be replaced with something more permanent before the next hurricane season. Removing rubble now is the first step in building structures more permanent than tents.

For long-term growth, one of Haiti’s best prospects is to attract foreign and domestic investment into the garment industry. Haiti has too many people working in agriculture. The country is heavily populated, and more land is cultivated than is ecologically sustainable. Labor-intensive industries, such as garment manufacturing, can provide an attractive source of jobs and income, especially given Haiti’s competitive, low-cost labor force. To take advantage of such opportunities, the Haitian government and the international community need to do several things.

The government should eliminate unnecessary procedures involved in registering businesses and transferring property and should reduce the cost and time required for both. The process of registering a business in Haiti is one of the most complex and lengthy in the world. Registering a change in property ownership is even more onerous. The difficulties that Haitians face in engaging in economic activity have stifled economic development. The government should eliminate tax provisions that encumber growth, such as fees charged to street vendors and revenue taxes. The government should also eliminate import tariff exemptions, notably those given to NGOs. Once the economy shows signs of recovery, the government should shift the burden of taxes to higher-income groups by levying higher property taxes on real estate.

If Haiti is to enjoy sustained economic growth, then the country’s infrastructure of roads, ports, airports, electric power, water, and sewage will need to be improved and maintained. Expanding the infrastructure is not just a question of building new highways, power plants, and the like. Systems are required for maintaining the infrastructure once built and for ensuring that utilities charge and collect enough revenue to cover the costs of services they provide.

Education and Health

There are three pressing needs for the education system in Haiti: substantially expanding access to education (which requires the government to spend many times more than it now does on education over and above the costs of rebuilding the roughly 5,000 schools destroyed in the earthquake); improving the quality of education (which means recruiting, educating, and training teachers; establishing a national curriculum; providing textbooks that align with content standards; and ensuring that students attend elementary school without dropping out for extended periods of time); and exerting oversight to guarantee access and to enforce quality controls, such as the establishment of a regulatory system to accredit and inspect schools and of teacher-training programs.

AP IMAGES/RAMON ESPINOSA

Haitians reach out for books, donated by the Cuban government, on October 2, 2010.

Only a third of Haitian children reach the fifth grade, and only 4 percent enter high school. In a nation that lacks a middle class, which would normally supply teachers, it is not surprising that teacher quality is extremely low. Tests administered to a representative sample of 1,200 private- and public-school teachers in 1996 showed that one in three teachers did not know how to sequence words alphabetically; eight in ten could not use the passive verb form in French; and fewer than one in ten performed satisfactorily on fourth-grade mathematics.

Haiti is unusual in that private institutions dominate the education sector. Prior to the earthquake, 80 percent of Haitian students were enrolled in private schools, which were financed by a combination of parent fees and subsidies from organizations, such as churches, charities, and foreign government aid. More than half of private schools were religiously affiliated.

Most private schools in Haiti are considered to be of lower quality than public schools. To help close the quality gap and to increase access to schools, the Haitian government should subsidize private-sector teacher wages to be on par with public-sector salaries, with certain conditions. The wage supplement should be contingent on private schools entering into and annually maintaining the quality standards required for accreditation.

Haiti needs about 60,000 teachers, meaning the vast majority will have to come from within the country. Investing in Haitian teachers would improve schooling while establishing a large source of employment. To provide a stable source of funds, the wages of private-school teachers should be included in the education aid packages of international donors. A commitment by donors to pay a portion of teacher wages over a number of years would attract people to the teaching profession. It could also give donors influence in setting the conditions that teachers must satisfy, in establishing a wage schedule for desired teacher and school characteristics, and in offering rewards for teachers who remain in the profession and who continue their education and training.

Private, nonprofit, and religious institutions are the primary providers of health care as well as education in Haiti. Many of the health care facilities are outdated, and much of the medical equipment is old or broken. About 40 percent of Haitians lack access to health care. The lack of doctors, nurses, and administrative professionals has posed a major challenge.

Given the lack of capacity and funding within the Haitian government to maintain public health facilities, the operation of all health centers and hospitals in Haiti should be shifted to NGOs and private institutions, allowing the government to concentrate on overseeing, monitoring, and evaluating the health service network. With donor assistance, the government could establish its own performance-based contracting mechanism for the provision of health services throughout the country.

A more immediate response to the unmet demand for health services would be to expand the use of Haiti’s community health workers. Such workers have provided an effective means of extending the reach of health systems in fragile states. Their use is particularly appealing in Haiti because of the lack of access to care, the number of health problems stemming from a lack of basic health education and preventive services, and excess mortality linked to communicable diseases. Community health workers have been successfully utilized in several rural areas of Haiti, but their use is neither widespread nor supported by the public health system. The use of community health workers, either contracted or volunteer, could be made part of the requirements for the delivery of health services in Haiti.

Next section: Donor Cooperation

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