Urban planner reflects back on Haiti; suggests two priorities
Against the backdrop of the continuing turmoil in Haiti, Thoughtfox reached out to Rose-May Guignard, a prominent urban planner there. The interview was conducted by Piyush Mathur on March 2, 2020 via two electronic messenger systems as well as email. The transcript has been slightly edited for clarity and grammar. Guignard insists that her responses to the questions in this interview are entirely personal.
Mathur: Born in Haiti, you were educated in the United States; but then you returned to Haiti as a professional. How long ago was that?
Guignard: My first trip back to Haiti was in early 2010.
Mathur: I would like you to take a moment—and travel back to the time when you decided to come back to Haiti as a professional. What were the exact sequence of events that led you to accept the position that you eventually accepted to work there?
ROSE-MAY GUIGNARD (Photo credit: Ralph Thomassin Joseph)
Guignard: I don't know if I could speak of [the] exact sequence of events—or about coming back as a professional as a willful decision. [After the January 2010 earthquake] I had felt compelled to be with [my] family and friends [based] in Haiti.
But a few months after my arrival [there], it became clear [to me] that I had the right professional skills set [for the challenges that the country was facing in the wake of the earthquake]—and I was [also] offered several gigs as a consultant.
The first five years after the earthquake were fluid—but things fell into place for me. In my case, several factors became [my] assets: [my] US education—[given that] most meetings [in Haiti] at that time were [being] held in English; my professional experience in academia; my ability to speak French and Creole; and my knowledge of the place, urban issues, institutions and actors.
I remember not being intimidated [in Haiti’s work environment]—and also thinking how "humanitarians" were getting away with workplace behaviors and practices that were wholly unacceptable in the U.S. I would call them [out] on that in public and in private.
I also remember being face-to-face with a jarring reality. [My] foreign counterparts were for the most part fresh out of Ivy League grad schools in the US and elite European universities; [but they had] little field experience. They were in the field receiving orders from [their] headquarters in the US and Europe—and were, for the most part, unable to make decisions dictated by the context or suggested by local officials. Their actions were guided remotely.
The locals—local administrators—were overwhelmed. I remember the moment when I realized that [the] locals had been disengaging from the cluster process: the post-disaster management framework implemented by the United Nations. Perhaps it is somewhere around [then that] I sensed that I would be professionally engaged in Haiti. I also had relatives who needed care. So, it was like killing two birds with one stone [for me].
In many ways I was a bridge between two worlds.
Mathur: At the time you arrived in Haiti, the country was in utter shambles—because of the earthquake. But we also know that Haiti hadn't been having a smooth ride anyway; and things had got particularly rough after the September 29, 1991 coup d'état. In your estimation, had Haiti become worse off in terms of its internal administration between that coup and this earthquake—or had it remained about the same, give or take a few factors? I guess what I am trying to understand is whether the political events since 1991 had left Haiti less prepared to deal with a natural disaster of that scale?
Guignard: Worse than the coup was the 3-year US embargo [against Haiti that had followed the coup]. Economically, Haiti has never recovered from the embargo. Around the mid-1990s, international institutions also asked the government to reduce public sector workforce. Top and mid-level administrators were incentivized to retire early—and the public sector has not recovered from that, either.
Mathur: That seems to indicate that the international powers have failed to make up for the economic losses that Haiti, as a whole, had to incur through (and because of) the embargo. Was this shortfall in maintaining Haiti predominantly economic—or were there much bigger consequences of this embargo that cannot be measured purely economically?
Guignard: Causality is complex here. You know, when you have MINUSTAH [the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti], UN Police, in one form or another, ensuring ‘peace’ in a country not at war, then dysfunction ensues. After a while, Haiti’s eroded public agencies relied on these outside forces—and these agencies stopped ‘working’. There is a great evaluation of the UNDP’s [United Nations Development Programme’s] assistance that came out in 2006.
In addition to the economic loss, Haiti has suffered a great deal of brain-drain. We have been losing our middle class at a high rate. Each event caused another exodus [of the middle class]. We are not simply talking about a hollowed state; we are talking about a hollowed society. Skilled workers do not stay [in the country].
Mathur: You have highlighted something very interesting in your previous statement: that ‘ensuring “peace” in a country not at war’ generates dysfunction. I would ask you further questions about that; but before I do that, I wish to ask you whether the international media has generated an image of Haiti as a country at war: some kind of a war?
Guignard: Haiti is nuanced and complicated as any other country; and the media conveys only a simple narrative. The easy narrative is that there is a minority élite exploiting the underclass. It is a theory of class warfare—a theory taken up by the local political ‘left’. We go back to the independence wars and to an ‘unfinished’ business of those times. Today politicians use local gangs to advance their political agendas—which is nothing more than to keep their own seats; so we are facing gang violence that gives the impression of a country at war. But these gangs are, in part, political competitors and unemployed youth in search of resources. This situation reifies this easy discourse of Haiti at war with itself.
Media is portraying the ‘war’ but not what is causing those conflicts. Haiti is the canary in the mine. Haiti is capitalism in its purest form: profiteering regardless of the costs produces the situation that we have in Haiti; taking away all safeguards produces Haiti; disinvesting in social policy, choosing a market perspective to provide social goods, produces Haiti. I cannot help but reflect back on the dismantling of protections and safeguards in the US also through the past 10 years—and the fragmentation of its society into extremes: the extremely rich and the extremely poor.
The truth is, Haitians need to generate jobs; and create wealth for the whole society. But this is not easy: We lack the skills, will, and vision. Financial institutions say that we cannot take loans for major infrastructure projects; so, we are riding this wave of pilot projects that cannot have an impact on the overall economy because of their scale and reach.
Mathur: At the same time, we are left to ask how else to portray Haiti if not as a country in the grip of some kind of a war when we know—as reported last week—that its police had a gun battle with its own military force?
Guignard: There is also a breakdown of authority in Haiti. Others have said that this is an outcome of the end of the Duvalier regime. Since 1986, authorities have been unwilling to exercise authority. What I have noticed [through] the past 10 years is in fact an unwillingness [in Haiti, on the part of government authorities,] to say ‘no’—to say ‘this is illegal, you can't do it’; or to say this is 'theft and you will be denounced’. That is paradoxical because this is also a very authoritarian society with set ideas of right and wrong.
If we go back to the earthquake and the 10 years [that followed it], then what we find is that much of the damage from the earthquake is a direct result of a lack of control of building codes. The laws exist—but the authorities have not put [in] the resources to implement the laws. Those laws are not new; they have been in the books—in some cases since the 1930s. They were followed until 1986 (whereafter the governmental machinery began to hollow out).
Mathur: It has been a decade since you returned to work in Haiti. If you were to render these 10 years into some type of stages of the international organizations' and international community's engagement with—and socio-political-economic investment in—Haiti, then what would they look like? I mean, how would you classify and characterize them—as some sort of a philosophical observer on the ground?
Guignard: It is a hard question. Not sure I could answer it from the get-go in a systematic fashion. I have been mulling over two things I would like to see change: skills set and implementation. Haiti is not a place where you come to earn your first work experience. Haiti is not a place for internship. Haiti is a place for mature professionals who have worked in a multitude of settings, tried many approaches, understand well the technical ins and outs of their fields, and have the trust of their organization to deviate from plans when the context changes. Too many inexperienced professionals in international agencies these days!
In addition, there is the delivery of international aid. Projects are designed by a set of actors, negotiated by another set of actors, and implemented by a third group. These groups overlap minimally. Yes, there are project leads who ensure a continuity among all three; however, most of the times, what is designed is not what is implemented. Project leads are interested in the rate of fund disbursement; not on meeting objectives. Also, we administer foreign aid through contracts to consulting firms (‘aid delivery by contracts’) as opposed to direct disbursement to local public agencies—which would have strengthened the institutions. Institutional memory, local capacity building, and appropriate accountability mechanisms have to be built into those technical assistance contracts. They have not been.
Administrators (literally project accountants and M&E [Monitoring & Evaluation personnel]) have been overriding technical experts. [We have] endless meetings on ensuring that contractors are acting within the scope of contracts—not on substance: i.e., on meeting overall objective. Subject specialists are called in to give specific [pieces of] advice—that are not taken into account because [they tend to] fall [outside] the scope of the poorly designed project.
Mathur: That is useful—and we may yet come back to some of that; but my question was more about whether there have been qualitative and quantitative variations in international engagement with Haiti over the course of 10 years since you came back to work there?
Guignard: Through the past ten years we have been through the following stages. There was the humanitarian approach: Help the wounded and the poorest of the poor via subsidies. A good example was the “cash for work” program—which kept the labor market distorted for a while. However, [during that phase] we ignored the structural issues related to the built environment. The post-earthquake projects were top-down and very limiting.
About 5 years ago we went through the ‘learning from the humanitarian mistakes approach’. For a while we saw some initiatives that espoused a government-designed, government-led philosophy. These programs took 2 to 3 years to be designed; by the time of their implementation, another government was in power.
Unfortunately, through the past two years we have entered ‘the contradictions are coming to a head stage’—and this is putting in peril those projects that were designed in the previous stage. For, in the background, here, we have been dealing with government corruption at an unprecedented scale. Members of Parliament say on the radio that they are paid to vote on laws: no money, no vote!
In terms of resources, we saw a massive influx of money after the quake; that has dwindled to little resources today. The donor community regularly funds part of the budget—but the government was not able to access those funds last year because of the current stalemate. The same can be said for foreign investment.
I evoked contradictions earlier. The reality is that international community lent its support to corrupt individuals. It is the story of the scorpion and the frog crossing the lake. We are paying the consequences of those decisions today.
Mathur: Let's say that that's a characterization of the international engagement with Haiti since 2010—and some of its effects. But through the same period, in what ways Haiti itself has improved, deteriorated, or just changed? Are any particular sectors relatively better off at all—and any others worse off, for example?
Guignard: Haiti is worse off: massive brain-drain; economic growth for 2020 is -.12% (negative point one two); inflation, 21%; exchange rate from 2010 to now has doubled (in 2010, it was 40 HTGs for $1; now it is 96 HTGs for $1). [What we have is an] extremely precarious economic situation for all: 40% of the population will experience food insecurity this year. After the 3-month long lockdown last year, we are starting this year with a rush of kidnappings. They are kidnapping even poor people.
There was a push on the tourism sector, but governmental inaction—unsafe roads, for example—has killed all the private sector investments in tourism. After a gap of almost a year, a new government was installed on March 5, 2020—which is also the day when the US upgraded Haiti to a Category 4 “do not travel” country. A national budget does not exist!
The situation is dire today. However, it is important not to fall into the ‘societal collapse’ mindset. I am not always successful at doing so. But the collapse metaphor limits one’s purpose, commitment, actions—and it erases grassroots efforts to put the country on a different path. Haiti remains a beautiful country; and Haitians are good people—regardless of what you read in the press. So, this is a moment in a cycle.
Mathur: That's truly alarming—and it doesn't seem that the world is even paying any attention.
Guignard: The world has other problems—and perhaps that is what we need. We need to solve our own problems with our means.
Mathur: Two things that have come out very clearly from your statements are as follows: Haiti is in a state of a near complete civic and economic breakdown, and that the hollowing out of its skilled and educated workforce—its emigration to foreign destinations—is at the heart of that breakdown. How could Haiti lure back that workforce in any planned fashion? What sort of a repatriation framework would you suggest—economically and politically?
Guignard: I remember, in 2009 a Haiti-based relative of mine used to talk about how things were getting better—and he had been telling his Haitians friends abroad that it was a good time to come back to the country: The crime rates were going down; there was a slight economic growth, etc. But then, [we had this] earthquake. But after the quake, many Haitians did come back with a sense of purpose.
So, we do not need a repatriation framework. Haitians will come back when the basic conditions are met: economic stability; predictability; low crime; and infrastructure. Changes are needed in the local labour market: We need to put an end to the two-tier system whereby foreign consultants are paid 10 times the salaries of their local supervisors. We need a job creation programme, not a cash-for-work programme. So many jobs need to be created in agriculture and food processing; health services; mechanics; plumbing; repairs, etc. Retooling needs to take place. We need better lending practices (currently we have a 60% interest rate on credit cards here; 18-21% on a 10-year mortgage). We need to change our economy from commercial and rental to productive.
Also, politics has to change to incentivize return. The political class—from the extreme right to the radical left—is corrupt. It does not help either that who gets to be president has to be 'vetted' by the US (and that the vetting has given that type of result).
The novelty of the past 18 months is the emergence of civil society actors dedicated to denouncing and rooting out corruption. But we know that it is an uphill battle. And this is the type of local actions that needs to be amplified and supported by the international friends of Haiti.
Somehow economy and politics are tied. If we do not create other ways for people to make money, then politics—the affairs of the state— will remain the way to make money; thus continuing the corruption. If the world wants to help, then many countries should identify, reveal, and prosecute those who have diverted Haitian public funds to their banks and real-estate investments.
Mathur: So, in other words, it is not as if Haiti needs foreign funds; but it is more like its own funds need to be repatriated from offshore destinations?
Guignard: That would be a start. I think Haiti needs foreign funds for investment in basic infrastructure (road, water, sanitation, energy). A family has to buy solar panels and an inverter because it cannot rely on state electricity. It is a high cost on a family budget.
Lack of infrastructure is an impediment to economic growth. We have known this since the 1960s. At this stage, if I were to make a plan, then I would start out with education (from the kindergarten to the university) with an emphasis on teacher training; then, key infrastructure: roads, public transport, water, sanitation. We need to solve some problems once and for all.
Mathur: So, suppose I were to sum up your top two suggestions for the uplift of Haiti from its current state, I would have to put out these two statements on your behalf:
1. Bring back Haiti's money that is illicitly parked in foreign banks, and prevent Haiti's money from getting out illegally.
2. Bring foreign investment into Haiti's basic infrastructure.
Would you agree?
Guignard: Sure. Maybe a third: Money that is made in Haiti should stay in Haiti.
Mathur: I sort of added that third one in the first one—but I kind of see your point about newer monies that Haiti may generate hereon! Well, Ms. Guignard, it was a pleasure learning from you about the current state of this historically important country—which deserves a future as bright as any other. I hope to be able to steal some more of your time in the future to get into further specifics about the first of these two steps that you have suggested.
Guignard: Super! Thanks for giving me an opportunity to reflect back on this experience. The next time, I would like to focus on the built environment and its specific challenges, opportunities, and what we are currently working on.
Mathur: You are most welcome—and I hope to get back in touch with you again. Wish you, your family, and Haiti all the best!
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Rose-May Guignard started her career in architecture; and progressively moved toward urban policy. Before starting her work as an urban planner, she taught urban public policy and public management in the School of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Arlington. Through her more than 20 years of experience in urban planning, she has focused on public participation, collaborative decision-making, and urban redevelopment policy. You may contact her by clicking on her name above.
An independent scholar and consultant, Dr. Piyush Mathur is the author of Technological Forms and Ecological Communication: A Theoretical Heuristic (Lexington Books, 2017). He has prior experiences in interdisciplinary teaching and research in US, Nigeria, India, UK, and Vietnam. His shorter publications could be accessed here. You may contact him by clicking on his name above.
Background material:
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article240650527.html
https://www.oecd.org/countries/haiti/44826404.pdf
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/development/mission-drawdowns-financing-a-sustainable-peace_a0b4c681-en
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article235434697.html
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article240941336.html
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/demonstrators-in-haiti-are-fighting-for-an-uncertain-future
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/haitians-want-to-know-what-the-government-has-done-with-missing-oil-money