Congressional Briefing - October 18, 2010

Rebuilding Haiti

Building damage in Haiti

Speakers:

James Dobbins Director, International Security and Defense Policy Center, RAND Corporation

Keith Crane Director, RAND Environment, Energy, and Economic Development, RAND Corporation

Laurel Miller Senior Political Scientist, RAND Corporation

Date:

Monday, October 18, 2010

Time:

1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Location:

2220 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C.
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About the Program

Haiti's future prosperity and peace depend on its ability to build a more resilient state, one capable of providing public services like education and health care as well as responding effectively to natural disasters. Even before a 7.0 magnitude earthquake battered the Caribbean country in January, its state institutions were challenged in human resources, organization, procedures and policies. Now, with the international community having pledged nearly $10 billion in aid, what priorities need to be set in best using those funds? This briefing will examine those priorities in the following areas –

  • Governance and public administration
  • Justice and security
  • Economic policy and infrastructure
  • Education and health care
  • Donor cooperation

About the Speakers

Ambassador James Dobbins is the director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center within the RAND National Security Research Division. Dobbins has held State Department and White House posts including Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Special Assistant to the President, Special Adviser to the President and Secretary of State for the Balkans, and Ambassador to the European Community. Dobbins has had numerous crisis management and diplomatic troubleshooting assignments as the Clinton and more recently the Bush administration's special envoy for Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, and Somalia. Diplomatic assignments include the withdrawal of American forces from Somalia, the American-led multilateral intervention in Haiti, the stabilization and reconstruction of Bosnia, and the NATO intervention in Kosovo. In the wake of September 11, 2001, he was named as the Bush administration's representative to the Afghan opposition with the task of putting together and installing a broadly based successor to the Taliban regime. He represented the United States at the Bonn Conference that established the new Afghan government, and, on December 16, 2001, he raised the flag over the newly reopened U.S. Embassy.

Keith Crane is director of the Environment, Energy, and Economic Development program at the RAND Corporation. In addition to working on issues within this program, he is also engaged in issues pertaining to Iraq, Iran, the Middle East, the transition economies of Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, China, and post-conflict nation building. He was a member of the Afghan Study Group in 2007 and in 2006 served on the Economy and Reconstruction Working Group for the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. In Fall 2003, Crane served as an economic policy advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. Crane received his Ph.D. in economics from Indiana University.

Laurel Miller is a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation. She has served in several positions at the Department of State and National Security Council, and has been an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University and a senior expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Miller was involved in peace negotiations in Macedonia, Kosovo, and Bosnia, and has worked on state-building, rule of law development, and war crimes issues. She received her A.B. from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and her J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.

About RAND

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND focuses on the issues that matter most such as health, education, national security, international affairs, law and business, the environment, and more. As a nonpartisan organization, RAND operates independent of political and commercial pressures. We serve the public interest by helping lawmakers reach informed decisions on the nation's pressing challenges.

Further Inquiries

For further information about this event, contact the Office of Congressional Relations at ocr@rand.org or call (703) 413-1100, ext. 5395.