Building a future

The international community meeting in New York to draw up a post-earthquake reconstruction plan for Haiti to spend the US $11.5 billion pledged by multilateral agencies and individual governments faces many challenges. This is an enormous sum for a small country of 9.7 million people but Haitians need everything: houses for the one million made homeless and millions of others living in unsanitary conditions; food, clean water, regular electricity, functioning schools and hospitals, agricultural development, good roads and more.

Corruption can seriously undermine the humanitarian mission underway. When relief is delivered in a challenging environment, there is pressure to disburse aid rapidly and immense organisational challenges in expanding the scope and scale of programme delivery. Haiti’s reputation for poor governance makes this of particular concern. The billions of dollars donated in the past have made little difference in the lives of Haitians, most of whom still live on US $1.25 a day.

The key to ensuring a solid new start is effective aid monitoring.

Monitoring for Haitians, by Haitians

As donor countries begin to fulfil their pledges, civil society organisations have a key role to play in any aid monitoring programme. A network of local NGOs who report regularly to donors, the Haitian government and humanitarian aid agencies on where and how the money is spent adds a much-needed layer of accountability to the process.

It is the people on the ground, trusted persons working in local communities, who can report back on whether the donated food is sold for profit, who gets the new houses and whether these are built up to standard, if contracts are given to friends rather than competent companies and whether the rich are privileged over the poor.

A path toward accountable aid

Aid workers can be alerted to the potential loss of aid as it makes its way to final beneficiaries, and allows them to employ strategies and policies to prevent corruption before it becomes endemic.

Additionally, the establishment of a monitoring committee with representation from the Haitian government, key donors, humanitarian aid providers and local civil society organisations, could manage a network of NGOs that monitor aid distribution.

Although aid agencies carry out their own monitoring and evaluation activities, local civil society organisations can play a key role in independently assessing humanitarian operations. This includes assessing risks and the impact of corruption that diverts aid resources as well as the effectiveness of anti-corruption policies and measures.

TI’s experience in Indonesia following the Asian tsunami, in Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake, in Guatemala following Hurricane Stan and in Bangladesh in 2007 after Cyclone Sidr, shows that local monitoring helps accountability and transparency, combats corruption. The longer term impact is a strengthening of the institutions involved in aid operations and in public service provision.

The recently published TI handbook is a practical guide resulting from field experience and input from seven major international aid agencies. It includes recommendations and can be a highly effective tool in the Haitian context.

TI in Haiti

The TI chapter in Haiti, La Fondation Heritage pour Haiti (LFHH) was founded more than a decade ago and joined the TI family in 2003. In 2008 LFHH began to develop a network of Committees of Citizens against Corruption and has organised workshops and capacity building programmes to help train NGOs on corruption prevention across Haiti.

In 2008 LFHH opened an Advocacy and Legal Advice Centre (ALAC), one of 35 citizen resource centres operating around the world to help people seeking advice about corruption. The Haiti legal advice centre has already successfully launched an investigation into corruption in Haiti’s pension fund which forced out the fund’s director.

After the 2008 hurricanes that struck Haiti LFHH formed a network of 14 local NGOs called Collectif Haitien pour la Transparence, L’Integrite et L’Ethique (CHATIE) to increase public awareness and initiate an anti-corruption dialogue with government agencies.

Corruption-free humanitarian aid

This network of civil society organisations can become the backbone for an aid monitoring programme reporting to a multi-stakeholder committee. When many are watching, there is less room for business-as-usual corruption in government, the private sector or within NGOs. Ensuring that accountability mechanisms are put in place and set in motion now, can bring about changes in behaviour, even where endemic corruption has persisted for years.

Corruption in emergency aid is a matter of life and death. Stopping and preventing corruption should be a strategic priority for the humanitarian community. In addition to working in Haiti, TI’s broader work to stop corruption in humanitarian assistance, covers policies and procedures for transparency, integrity and accountability, and specific corruption risks, such as supply chain management and accounting. It also identifies corruption risks along the programme cycle, from needs assessment to post-distribution monitoring and evaluation.

New blog post on Space for Transparency:

Aid Monitoring for Haitians, by Haitians
By Marilyn Allien, president of La Fondation pour Héritage pour Haïti, the Haitian chapter of Transparency International and Roslyn Hees is co-author of Preventing Corruption in Humanitarian Operations, a Transparency International handbook.

Contacts:

Haiti
La Fondation Héritage pour Haïti (LFHH)
Ms Marilyn Allien
Tel:+ 509-2513 7089
E.mail: admlfhh@yahoo.com, heritagehaiti@yahoo.com

Berlin
Larissa Schuurman
Tel. +49 30 34 38 20 657
E.mail: lschuurman@transparency.org

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photos by: © Phuong Tran/IRIN