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THE CRISIS IN HAITI:

ARE WE MOVING FAST ENOUGH?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JULY 29, 2010

Serial No. 111–110

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California, Chairman 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

BILL DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

DIANE E. WATSON, California 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

MICHAEL E. MCMAHON, New York 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee 

GENE GREEN, Texas 

LYNN WOOLSEY, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

BARBARA LEE, California 

SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada 

JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York 

MIKE ROSS, Arkansas 

BRAD MILLER, North Carolina 

DAVID SCOTT, Georgia 

JIM COSTA, California 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona 

RON KLEIN, Florida 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

DAN BURTON, Indiana 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

RON PAUL, Texas 

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

BOB INGLIS, South Carolina 

GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida 

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Staff Director 

YLEEM POBLETE, Republican Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York, Chairman 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GENE GREEN, Texas 

GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona 

ENI F. H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee 

BARBARA LEE, California 

JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York 

RON KLEIN, Florida 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

DAN BURTON, Indiana 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

RON PAUL, Texas 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

The Honorable Rajiv Shah, Administrator, United States Agency for International Development .......................................................................................... 1

Mr. Jimmy Jean-Louis, Actor, Goodwill Ambassador, Pan American Development Foundation .................................................................................................. 33

Mr. Samuel A. Worthington, President and CEO, InterAction ........................... 46

Mr. Jonathan T.M. Reckford, Chief Executive Officer , Habitat for Humanity 

International ......................................................................................................... 58

Barth A. Green, M.D., F.A.C.S., Chairman and Co-Founder , University of 

Miami Global Institute for Community Health and Development, President 

and Co-Founder of Project Medishare ................................................................ 67

Ms. Joia Jefferson Nuri, Chief of Staff, TransAfrica Forum ................................ 72

Mr. Michael Fairbanks, Author, Founder and Director, SEVEN Fund .............. 83

Ms. Nicole S. Balliette, Deputy Director for Haiti Emergency Earthquake 

Response, Catholic Relief Services ..................................................................... 91

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

The Honorable Rajiv Shah: Prepared statement .................................................. 4

The Honorable Eliot L. Engel, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of New York, and Chairman, Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere: 

Prepared statement .............................................................................................. 28

The Honorable Connie Mack, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Florida: Prepared statement ........................................................................... 30

Mr. Jimmy Jean-Louis: Prepared statement ......................................................... 36

Mr. Samuel A. Worthington: Prepared statement ................................................ 49

Mr. Jonathan T.M. Reckford: Prepared statement ............................................... 60

Barth A. Green, M.D., F.A.C.S.: Prepared statement ........................................... 69

Ms. Joia Jefferson Nuri: Prepared statement ....................................................... 74

Mr. Michael Fairbanks: Prepared statement ........................................................ 85

Ms. Nicole S. Balliette: Prepared statement ......................................................... 93

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 122

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 124

The Honorable Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, a Representative in Congress from 

American Samoa, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and 

the Global Environment: Prepared statement ................................................... 125

The Honorable Eliot L. Engel: Material submitted for the record ...................... 128

The Honorable Donald M. Payne, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of New Jersey, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Africa and Global 

Health: Material submitted for the record ......................................................... 130

Mr. Michael Fairbanks: Material submitted for the record ................................. 134

Written responses from TransAfrica Forum to questions submitted for the 

record by the Honorable Barbara Lee, a Representative in Congress from 

the State of California ......................................................................................... 141

(1)

THE CRISIS IN HAITI: ARE WE MOVING FAST 

ENOUGH? 

THURSDAY, JULY 29, 2010

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE, 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:39 a.m. in room 

2172, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Eliot L. 

Engel, (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. ENGEL. Good morning. I think we will get started. I want to 

welcome everyone who is here to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere hearing on the crisis in 

Haiti: Are we moving fast enough? We are going to dispense with 

the usual procedure where I would give an opening statement and 

Mr. Mack would give a statement, and others would give a statement. We will give our statements before the second panel because 

I know that our first panelist, Dr. Rajiv Shah, USAID Administrator, has to leave to go to the White House in about 1 hour, and 

I want to hear what he has to say. 

So let me very briefly say, Dr. Shah, how happy I am to have 

you here. I know we are all very happy to have you here. We have 

talked about Haiti and other things many times. I am an admirer 

of your work, and your caring and the work that you do. You bring 

a very good complement of someone who has done a very, very good 

job, but you also have a heart and that is very important. I think 

that is important. You have the intellect and a heart, and that is 

a very good combination. 

So, we are all ears. Dr. Shah is the Administrator, and USAID 

has a tremendous task in dealing with the crisis in Haiti, and it 

is working very hard, and he, in particular, is working very hard 

to address the problems, so Dr. Shah, we are all ears, and then we 

will ask you some questions. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE RAJIV SHAH, ADMINISTRATOR, UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

Mr. SHAH. Let me start by thanking you, Mr. Chairman, for your 

attention to this issue and this hearing, and your unwavering support of USAID and our team in Haiti that has been working so 

tirelessly over the last 7–8 months to really help make sure that 

this effort succeeds. I also want to thank members of the committee. It is an honor to be here and have the opportunity to have 

2

this discussion with you, and I apologize in advance for my timing 

today, but I appreciate your consideration. 

Two and a half weeks ago served as the 6-month anniversary of 

really the most dramatic and devastating natural disaster to ever 

face the Western Hemisphere, and it is an opportunity for us to reflect on the scale of the disaster, the magnitude and lessons 

learned from the response, and to recalibrate our approach as we 

go forward. 

To reflect on the scale of the disaster, we are all aware of the 

incredible suffering that the Haitian people had to live through 

through this tragic earthquake. More than 230,000 people perished, 

and damages are estimated to be upwards of $7 billion, a significant percentage of Haiti’s annual GDP, 28 of 29 government ministries were destroyed, up to 15 percent of the civil service workforce had passed away, and most of this disaster happened on a 

base of already low income, slow infrastructure and low equity in 

terms of very high poverty rates, high mountain efficient rates, limited access to food and basic services in and around certain communities in Port-au-Prince 

In this context, I remain quite proud of the entire U.S. Government and American response. More than half of all families in this 

country found it incumbent upon themselves to give directly to the 

Haitian relief effort. The President asked us to mount a swift, aggressive, and coordinated response, and together with so many 

agencies across the Federal Government and in particular with the 

Department of Defense and the U.S. Armed Forces we mounted essentially the largest single response to a disaster ever. This includes efforts in the food area to feed more than 3.5 million people, 

clean water was provided to more than 1.3 million people, the 

health sector was supported with unique assets,including the Comfort Hospital Ship, a broad range of medical disaster assistance 

teams, and support for the NGO network in Haitian hospitals that 

in total U.S. personnel saw more than 30,000 patients. 

Shelter, which was perhaps the most difficult of the various sectors in which we worked, was also an area where we were able to 

provide 1.5 million people with basic shelter and materials; we 

being the broader international community, and we were able to 

create work opportunities for more than 20,000 people on a day-today basis. 

These are important accomplishments in the context in which 

they took place, and in the fog of relief where data and information 

was often missing. But, of course, they will not fully meet Haiti’s 

needs today or going forward. 

To address those needs and to do it in a partnership with the 

Government of Haiti, we have engaged in a robust effort to plan 

the relief to recovery transition. This started with the March 31 donors conference that brought the global community together to 

make real commitments to Haiti for its future. Notably at that conference the Haitian Government presented their own plan and 

their won vision of a future that is based on some central tenants 

that we are now trying to abide by. 

First, they expressed a commitment to decentralize their economy and create economic opportunities and employment opportuniVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:56 Sep 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\WH\072910\57689 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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ties outside of Port-au-Prince. That is the defining feature of our 

reconstruction efforts. 

Second, they presented the World Bank and international communities damage needs assessment and committed themselves to 

rebuilding the basic infrastructure of Port-au-Prince and of nearby 

communities. 

And third, they presented an economic development plan based 

on the assets that Haiti has for agriculture, energy, water management, and a range of other productive growth sectors that they 

could attract investments, create jobs, and help build a brighter future. 

The relief to recovery work continued with the creation recently 

of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission. This commission, 

co-chaired by Prime Minister Bellerive and former President Bill 

Clinton, represents a unique opportunity and a learning from the 

tsunami in Acheh Indonesia. What we learned was that given the 

broad global interest and commitments we need a strong centralized capability to coordinate and direct the overall relief and construction effort. This commission will report to President Preval, 

and take on that task. 

Finally, as we seek to help Haiti rebuild itself we intend to help 

Haiti build back to a better and higher standards, and this will require USAID to do some things very differently: First, we are committed to pursuing a strategy that is focused an aligned and in 

partnership with the strategy of the Government of Haiti. I am 

eager to talk more about that but I feel we are on path in getting 

that done. 

Second, we are pursuing a broad range of public-private partnerships and innovations such as the recently announced partnership 

to help create mobile banking platforms in Haiti since such a small 

percentage of Haitians actually have access to the formal banking 

system. 

Third, we are reforming our procurement system so that we can 

work with small and minority-owned businesses in the United 

States more effectively, and we can work with local partners in 

Haiti so that as we are spending the recently approved supplemental resources we are doing that in a way that builds real capacity and real institutions in Haiti that can support Haiti’s long-term 

development and support Haiti’s own sustainability. 

Finally, I will just conclude by thanking you again for your attention to this issue and your support from the moment this crisis 

started. It is reflective of a unique commitment that the people of 

America have to the people of Haiti and that this President shares, 

and that we are trying to work effectively to implement. 

So thank you, and I look forward to your questions and comments. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Shah follows:]

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Mr. ENGEL. Thank you very much, Dr. Shah. Again my thanks 

on behalf of the Congress and the American people for the job you 

are doing. 

Let me first ask you this: As we look back in the many months 

since the earthquake, what would you say have been our biggest 

failings? What would you say that we need to improve, or what 

have we noticed about the population there that perhaps we didn’t 

contemplate several months ago? What can we do in Congress to 

focus on some of these shortcomings? 

Mr. SHAH. Well, thank you for that question. There are actually 

a broad number of areas where we can do better in these efforts. 

You know, most of international humanitarian relief has been run 

on essentially a very modest budget compared to other comparable 

activities, and there has not been a robust decades-long kind of investment in the coordination structures and the capacities to support effective and coordinated humanitarian relief abroad. 

So, the first set of recommendations, and we have conducted now 

two different after action reviews and actually just this evening are 

conduct an interagency high-level policy after action review, but in 

the relief space we have a number of specific things we are trying 

to do. One is to establish an international relief framework that 

would help us work in more coordination with the United Nations 

and with other countries from the get-go so that we are not creating structures on the fly in Haiti or in a disaster relief environment in that context. 

Often the U.N. helps set up that structure. In this case and in 

the unique situation the U.N. itself had lost much of their capacity 

in Haiti and suffered a really tragic loss of life, so that took longer 

than it otherwise would to set up, but we are working on that 

international relief framework. 

A second set of things is to have the resources to more rapidly 

bring the kind of assets into the theaters as are necessary. In this 

case the defense department was uniquely supportive in being able 

to open the airport quickly and being able to have a strong personnel presence very fast and sending the Comfort Hospital Ship. 

We believe the civilian response side needs to have more ready access to certain assets like those and others in order to work more 

effectively. 

The third set of things would be around how we plan the relief 

to reconstruction and oversee that process. Clearly, as every step 

of the way there has been the need to have strong and effective decision making from the Government of Haiti on many issues that 

can be seen as very technical issues, and some issues that are seen 

as very significant political issues. 

In both sets of decisions, having a strong and effective communications with the government at all levels will be effective, and in 

this case I think we have learned that we need to make sure that 

diplomatic capability is strong, is supported, and is continual and 

operates at all levels so that we are not just bringing every big decision that needs to be made to President Preval, and asking him 

to take that one. So, I think that those are some of the things. 

In terms of sectors where I think the international community 

could do a lot better job clearly some of the things we are working 

on now related to shelter and ruble removal are areas that are imVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:56 Sep 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\WH\072910\57689 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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mediate priorities, but really you can look across every sector of 

work and identify areas that we can do better, sir. 

Mr. ENGEL. Let me ask you because you mentioned reconstruction efforts. The Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission is still 

not fully staffed, I believe. When will it be completely up and running? 

Mr. SHAH. Well, sir, the IHRC is an important innovation and is 

absolutely critical to the long-term success of the reconstruction effort. I visited there 21⁄2 weeks ago, and actually met with staff. At 

that point they might have had 25 or 30 staff. Some of that is consulting support, pro bono consulting support from firms here in the 

United States. But they are up and running. I think their goal is 

to build a significant staffing capability and then to physically 

house a few key people from each international aid agency and foreign ministry in a single physical space, and that will allow for 

sharing of information and joint planning, and engagement in a 

way that otherwise would simply not be possible, and I know that 

they are in the process of building that team. 

But they are already operational in terms of able to review 

projects and programs, and we are already in a dialogue with them 

to make sure that as we get going with the early reconstruction efforts they have approved it, they have reviewed it, they have offered their comments, and we are doing it in coordination with 

them. 

Mr. ENGEL. Before the earthquake, Haiti had been nicknamed 

‘‘the Republic of NGOs’’ because there were so many NGOs operating in the country. There were estimates between 3,000 to 6,000 

NGOs. If you divide that into Haiti’s population of about 9 million, 

one NGO per 1,500 to 3,000 people, and public services were provided by NGOs instead of the government. 

So let me ask you, is the effect of NGOs, now the donors, on the 

government’s capacity a concern for the reconstruction effort, and 

if so, how can reconstruction be pursued in a way that enhances 

rather than undermines the capacity of the Haitian Government? 

How can NGO activity be better coordinated among themselves and 

with the Haitian Government and donors? 

Mr. SHAH. Well, I appreciate that question. It is a very important 

one. I would just highlight on your next panel you will have Sam 

Worthington from InterAction who played a uniquely helpful role 

for us in the early relief when we provided resources to InterAction 

to help coordinate the NGO operations and bring them into the fold 

of the larger humanitarian and international response. 

I thought that was a very effective, low-cost effort and could be 

a model for future engagement of humanitarian relief and how we 

coordinate with the NGOs. But I would also that as we go forward 

with the reconstruction I know there are a large number of NGOs, 

as has been identified, but if you look at which ones are the largest 

and most capable partners that have the most reach, it is a much 

smaller number, and we need to take those NGOs and integrate 

them into the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission and make 

sure they are represented in that, and make sure they work along 

the lines with that. 

I was on the phone just yesterday with the head of the Red Cross 

to make that suggestion, and I think the NGOs, especially the largVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:56 Sep 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\WH\072910\57689 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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er ones that will have the larger portfolios, will be more oriented 

around participating in that system, and we think that is very important. But you called attention to an important issue. We dealt 

with it in the relief effort through our partnership with InterAction 

and through the U.N. coordinating structure, but for the reconstruction we are hoping that the IHRC will be the vehicle that coordinates those activities. 

Mr. ENGEL. Well, the NGOs have done a wonderful job and we 

all take our hats off to them. Let me ask you one final question. 

As you know, there was an earthquake in Chile shortly after the 

earthquake in Haiti. It was of a much greater magnitude than the 

earthquake in Haiti, but because the buildings in Chile are basically built to code, good code, there were many, many fewer casualties; I think under 100 in Chile. 

When I went to Haiti, it was amazing to me to go into the U.S. 

Embassy, where if you didn’t know there had been an earthquake 

you would never know it because our embassy was built up to the 

best building code standards and therefore there wasn’t any destruction whatsoever that I could see. How can we guarantee that 

when Haiti is rebuilding, and obviously it will take many, many 

years to rebuild Haiti, that we have these buildings built up to 

code so if there is ever an earthquake there again the loss of life 

will be minimal? 

Mr. SHAH. Well, thank you for that question. Certainly building 

back to a higher code is absolutely part of the strategy of building 

better, and we have identified about 400,000 structures, homes 

that people have left, and are conducting habitability assessments 

for those homes. Approximately half of those have been conducted. 

There was about 176,000 completed assessments when I was there 

2 weeks ago. 

Of those that have been completed, we think about half are categorized as yellow homes that need some reconstruction for people 

to move into, and then the others are split between green homes 

that are ready for people to go back into and red homes that need 

to be reconstructed from the ground up. In all of those reconstruction efforts we are using improved construction methodologies, 

training local masons and local construction firms to work with our 

partners to do the reconstruction in a way that builds back better, 

to a higher and more protective level of code. And we have learned 

from other earthquakes like in Peru, around the world, that unless 

you train and partner with local construction firms and come up 

with low-cost ways to build back to a better code it simply will not 

happen at the kind of scale that I think we all expect in order to 

protect the people of Haiti from future disasters. 

So, in this case we are using local materials for rebar, using improved methodology for the production of cement, teaching better 

leveling methodologies. I learned more about masonry than I ever 

thought I would, but it is important in order to make sure that we 

build back to a higher code, as you point out, and I think we believe we are able to do it at a minimum of additional cost if we use 

local materials and train local firms on how to do that. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you very much. Mr. Mack. 

16

Mr. MACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I also thank you so 

much for taking the time to be here with us this morning and I 

know you are on a tight schedule, but we do appreciate it. 

First, Mr. Chairman, I think I would like to commend the U.S. 

military for their involvement and swift action, and with their help. 

I would also like to acknowledge the U.S. Ambassador who is dedicated to helping the people of Haiti, and I would also like to tell 

the people of Haiti that although it has been some time since the 

earthquake we still think of them every day, and that their perseverance shows. There is a lot of pride in Haiti, and the remarkable 

people in Haiti, and so I just wanted to make those comments, Mr. 

Chairman. 

I listened to some of your statement and read some of the statement, and then listened to the chairman’s questions, and I think 

what kind of goes through my mind is there is some basic necessities that are needed. There are things like water, shelter, restroom facilities, basic human needs. If you could maybe just talk a 

little bit about where we are in those needs, and then also maybe 

talk a little bit about the bureaucracy or the things that may be 

slowing down what—you know, the American people are very giving people, but what they don’t want is their help to Haiti tied up 

in red tape and bureaucratic processes. There is an expectation 

that when we commit ourselves to Haiti’s recovery that we expect 

to get things done and we don’t want to hear about how there is 

a bureaucratic problem in delivering those resources, so if you 

could talk to those couple of points, I would appreciate. 

Mr. SHAH. Well, thank you for your opening comments. Clearly 

without both the scale and capacity of the U.S. military and the 

professionalism and compassion through which our armed services 

actually provided services in those early days and weeks and 

months this would not have happened at the scale at which it did. 

And I would just point out that many of our NGO partners went 

out of their way to point out that our armed forces were actually 

working in a way that was very amenable to partnership with 

NGOs and with others as they were carrying out this mission in 

Haiti, and I think that is an important thing to note. 

I also want to address your points about basic necessities. Clearly, as you look across food, water, shelter, latrines and a range of 

other things, the early relief effort was conducted at a very large 

scale. Conducting that relief with that large scale comes with some 

risks as you transition from relief to reconstruction. 

So, for example, we had a feeding program that reached 3.5 million people, largely with free food. Some of the early food was purchased locally but beyond that much of it came in as food assistance. It was absolutely needed. But we also had to track 22 different commodities and markets and understand the effect that 

was having on market prices because Haiti is still largely an agricultural economy, and we didn’t want to create an environment 

where farmers wouldn’t have the incentive to produce. 

So, we have worked with the Government of Haiti to scale down 

the free food general distributions, and instead have targeted feeding programs for infant and young children and in schools, an for 

pregnant women. 

17

In water, water has been a real success story where we had more 

because of some unique attributes of the relief effort, most notably, 

the distribution of chlorine tabs with water that was trucked in 

from the Dominican Republic we were able to get to a higher level 

of clean water, clean drinking water access in Port-au-Prince than 

existed pre-earthquake, and initial studies conducted by the CDC 

at 56 different sentinel nodes indicated that as a result they felt 

real disease had been reduced in Port-au-Prince compared to preearthquake levels by about 12 percent. These are very tenuous 

gains because, of course, there is a long road ahead, but it is important to note that I think that was a positive outcome. 

Shelter, I think, was the toughest and remains the toughest. Millions of people have access to shelter materials, but getting into 

transitional shelters and away from tents and other things that are 

less protective, transitional shelters can actually last for 3–5 years, 

and they can use the basic frame of the shelter to build a proper 

home on, that is the challenge now and we are trying to get 

135,000 of those built. The U.S. Government is committed to building 47,500. The overall effort has produced about 6,000 so far, and 

we expect that it will accelerate but it will take some time. 

And latrines and sanitation is a real challenge as well, even preearthquake the percentage of the population that didn’t have access 

to safe sanitation was far too high, so we are working on that. 

You asked specifically about what attributes of the bureaucracy 

sort of slowed the process down, and I would say coordination 

across the broad range of donors, partners, NGOs, and investors. 

I would say that decision making on behalf of both the government 

and the implementing partners of the relief effort so that when we 

need to identify land, for example, that can be used for reconstructing transitional shelters, so that that is done. 

Mr. MACK. You are talking about the Haiti Government? 

Mr. SHAH. That is right. That is right. And a lot of times they 

have to have the visibility into what the needs are in order to make 

those decisions and determinations. I am pleased to note that in 

the last few days they have in fact identified specific plots of land 

that can now be used for much accelerated rubble removal effort 

and for much accelerated transitional housing effort, but it took a 

long time to get there. 

So, a lot of it is about communication, coordination, teeing up the 

decisions in a way that they can be made, and that is why we are 

placing a lot of emphasis on this Interim Haiti Reconstruction 

Commission and the role that Prime Minister Bellerive and President Clinton will have in overseeing that effort. 

Mr. MACK. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, if I could just 

follow up on the shelter issue. 

What else is needed to move this along? I mean, it sounds like 

it is an extraordinary effort to provide shelter for so many people 

who have lost their homes, and you talked about how there needs 

to be a stage, steps done so you will go from tents to a structure, 

a structure that can then later be modified into a permanent home 

or shelter for people. Can you talk a little bit about how that process is going and with a little more detail? 

Mr. SHAH. Sure. I think that is an important question and this 

is an important issue. We think there are about 1.5 million people 

18

that were displaced, so that is somewhere between 300,000 and 

400,000 units of shelter that would be required. Estimates on how 

to provide those 400,000 units have varied a great deal. I think 

with recent data from the assessments of peoples’ homes and structures we are finding that we think about half, maybe more, could 

go back into their homes if those homes were rehabilitated and reconstructed in a way that gets it to a higher level of standard and 

safety. 

I mentioned that we are working with local construction firms to 

do that. We still need to complete the habitability assessments and 

then accelerate the process of the reconstruction, but that is an important process and it is a process where usually donors and partners will help rebuild the structure itself, and then the family will 

come in and actually finish the project. They will do the painting, 

they will do the cleaning up, so they are vested in their home 

again. 

As we are doing it, we are also looking at are there ways we can 

build back up the structures, not just to a higher level of earthquake standard, but also put in latrines, put in gutter system for 

rainwater harvesting so that they have basic water and sanitation 

in the home, and do that at a unit cost that allows for scale across 

several hundred thousand units. So that is a big part of the strategy to get people back. 

The second part of the strategy is to build 135,000 transitional 

structures. They are called transitional structures, but the frame of 

it is a proper housing frame with—you know, these are two by 

fours, metal brackets that construct them, and then they start with 

a tarp that is hurricane-resistant and weather-resistant tarp that 

conforms to international standards, but they can then always 

build on that base and build the proper home structure. So that is 

about 135,000, and that is the other part of the strategy. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Mr. Mack. Mr. Sires. 

Mr. SIRES. Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing. Dr. 

Shah, thank you for being here. 

Dr. Shah, in my district in New Jersey we have a large Dominican population, and a few years ago there was the Jiminy floods, 

I don’t know if you remember, in the Dominican Republic, and we 

were engaged in bringing supplies and so forth. I have to tell you 

this Jiminy flood is no way near as tragic a catastrophe as the 

earthquake, and when we got to the Dominican Republic the biggest problem that I saw was coordination, coordination between all 

the people that wanted to help, the international committee making sure that the international committee delivered on what they 

committed, and it seemed that everyone wanted to do housing in 

that section. 

I just want to know who determines the priorities when the 

international committee wants to do housing but who tells them, 

look, we already have France doing house, we already are doing 

housing, we need you to do this, we need you to do that because 

that seemed to be the biggest problem, and getting and making 

sure that all the items that we collected and the monies that we 

collected got to the people? 

We started out as a housing group. We wound up putting the 

money into a school. We wound up bringing the supplies down, we 

19

were fortunate that the government of Ipolito, you know, gave us 

trucks and everything else to make sure, and we dealt with the 

church to make sure that the people received the supplies. 

How do we make sure that the people get it? There is a church 

involved. I know that the NGOs are involved. But coordinating this 

is a very difficult job. You have a very difficult job on your hands 

because this catastrophe was not nearly as large as the one in 

Haiti, and I will tell you it was an eye-opener for me. So can you 

talk a little bit about that? 

Mr. SHAH. I can, sir, and I appreciate your raising the question 

in that context. It is absolutely a challenge of coordination, and I 

would say this requires two or three things that I think are happening, and we have to continue to stay focused on it. 

First, the largest donors and the largest NGOs and the largest 

international partners have to be committed to a coordinated approach against a single strategic plan, and I think the donors conference in March in New York was important because the donors 

did commit to that, and the Government of Haiti did present a coherent and effective strategic plan. 

Second, you need a structure that brings it together and allows 

for the adjudication of differences, and during the relief effort we 

played a large role in that. Going forward, this will be the Interim 

Haiti Reconstruction Commission, and that commission with its 

unique leadership with both the Prime Minister and the former 

President engaged will, I think, make a big, big difference, and I 

will tell you that on visiting the commission and seeing the capacity they are developing and seeing their physical plan of putting 

people from each of the major donors and each of the major partners physically in one large collective office space, I think that that 

will have a chance to be successful at bringing this together. 

But what we need is we need every partner to be as aggressive 

about committing themselves to that commission and to the process 

of reviewing and dialogue as we are and as other partners are, and 

I know that that is an issue with some of the partners, but we are 

getting through that process to make sure that really everyone who 

is operating at some degree of scale is willing to abide by the guidance and governance of the IHRC, and I just couldn’t agree with 

your assessment anymore in terms of what it takes to be successful 

in this environment. 

And I would add one final thought. You articulated the need to 

be flexible very well, and I think for us to all be successful we can 

go in with our plan of building a certain number of transitional 

structures or anything like that, but we learn new data all the 

time. I think it was surprising to our team to learn that nearly 

200,000 homes could be reconstructed to a higher earthquake 

standard at a very low cost and that might be a better way to go 

long term in terms of housing than entirely new transitional structures, and we need to be able to adapt to that kind of data as it 

comes in. So thank you for your comment. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Mr. Sires. Mr. Smith. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you and the 

ranking member for convening this very important hearing, and 

Dr. Shah, it is great to see you again. 

20

Dr. Shah, the majority of human trafficking cases, according to 

the TIP office, are found among the some 225,000 restaveks, child 

slavery in domestic settings. The restaveks are not only vulnerable 

to rape, beatings and other exploitation, but are often put on the 

streets, as we know, as teenagers forced into prostitution. They become disproportionately the number of street children in Haiti. 

The Haitian national police and NGOs have reported an increase 

in alleged cases of forced slavery and coerced prostitution of children and adults since the earthquake. Women and girls are increasingly vulnerable to the IDP’s self-appointed security guards 

who exploit them in exchange for protection. 

So my questions would be: What is being done to protect these 

vulnerable women and children, especially in the IDP camps? Is 

restavek prevention and protection incorporated into our relief efforts systematically? Is it across the board among the NGOs and 

among the government efforts? 

And one of the recommendation is that there be a—that in a trafficking law, domestic obviously for Haiti, that the definition of trafficking include child labor because the law is not current there. 

Mr. SHAH. Thank you, Congressman. It is good to see you again 

and thank you for your consistent commitment to these issues. We 

share your commitment. 

On the specific issue of IDPs and settlements, you know, there 

are a very broad number of settlements in Port-au-Prince and 

around Port-au-Prince, and they differ in their character. Some are 

smaller settlements in communities were people are actually not 

that far from their homes and kind of go back and forth, and those 

types of smaller community settlements benefit from the fact that 

these are communities that have lived together, that understand 

each other, where there are common standards of both behavior 

and policing and oversight. 

The larger settlements that account for the much greater percentage of people are where most of these incidents and challenges, 

especially with respect to gender-based violence, has been occurring, and we have been very, very focused on this, and we know 

that in these settlements there are a range of things that can be 

done that range from lighting, safe and effective appropriately 

sized areas for latrines and toilets and bathroom facilities for 

women, in particular; some women-only spaces inside the settlement so people don’t have to go outside; and some degree of patrolling and supervision and policing. 

In the 20 largest camps, we have been working aggressively to 

make sure that all of those attributes exist in those camps. They 

still do not. The UNDP and other partners are helping us to identify and put in place lighting to meet all of the lighting needs of 

the largest camps. The camps came together in a very sort of rapid 

ad hoc way, which has made it hard to identify the safe spaces for 

latrines and things like that, but that is taking place in a more accelerated manner. 

And on the policing side the Haitian National Police together 

with MINUSTAH have been conducting joint patrols in most of the 

larger camps. Those patrols in some cases are quite adequate and 

quite effective, and in many cases are not, and so we are working 

to help continue to expand their capacity to take on that mission, 

21

and to really to do it together between MINUSTAH and HNP (the 

Haitian National Police) so that they take that on. 

But the gender-based violence issue, in particular, is concerning. 

The data on the number of incidents is very unreliable, and we are 

very focused on that, but thank you for your attention. 

Mr. SMITH. No, I appreciate that and that response as well. Just 

let me ask you quickly in terms to donor fatigue. 

Are pledges adequate and are pledges being matched by followup obligations where the money actually materializes, and with the 

approaching hurricane season, which obviously can be on Haiti in 

an instant, are the IDP camps sufficiently fortified against that 

probability? I don’t even think it is just a possibility that some bad 

weather could come their way soon. 

Mr. SHAH. Well, thank you. On donor fatigue or donor commitments, we believe that 22 of the 30 donors that made commitments 

at the March conference are on path to living up to those commitments and are doing so at a different pace. I want to take this opportunity to thank this committee and the Members of Congress 

who supported the supplemental because that allows us to live up 

to our commitments, and many other countries are going through 

similar processes to have the actual resources. 

The resources are flowing and are being spent in country, but 

this is also a period of time where there is a lot of planning and 

a lot of working with implementing partners to make sure that we 

set up a system that allows those resources to be spent effectively, 

and sometimes we will make the tradeoff to have a more gradual 

spend rate in order to make sure that we do things the right way. 

We engage local businesses, we plan adequately so that the things 

we do are sustained over the long run and really help Haiti achieve 

its long-term aspirations. 

On hurricane preparedness, the United States Government has 

been aggressive about, again, working with the military and the civilian side in terms of prepositioning basic supplies for 100,000 

families and in terms of providing support for the construction of 

shelters and planning and joint drill activities in high risk areas. 

Some of the settlements are in higher risk areas than others, of 

course, and so that has to be matched. 

You can never be prepared enough in Haiti for hurricanes, and 

so we are going through that effort. Part of what we did was help 

clear out the drainage system. We did large-scale debris removal, 

removing almost 800,000 tons of debris from the canals and the 

drainage system so that in the event of flooding related to hurricanes or just heavy rains the disease risk would be mitigated and 

that there would be more protective action for people in the settlements. A lot of those settlements were shored up and we moved 

more than 7,000 people from the most vulnerable places to safer 

sites. So, we have been working aggressively on that, but you 

know, it is never really enough. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Mr. Smith. Thank you. Mr. Payne. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much, Dr. Shah. Good to see you. 

Let me commend you for the outstanding work that your agency 

have been doing. Of course, we all know that much more needs to 

be done, so my congratulating you doesn’t necessarily mean that I 

am satisfied with what is going on, but I think that you have really 

22

hit the—many of us have to recall that I guess you were sworn in 

for a day or two when the earthquake hit, and so we realize that 

there is certainly no period of adjustment. 

Let me just ask some quick questions regarding the health care. 

What has been done overall in a short-term strategy to deal with 

the health care needs? Is that under the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission or is it done by the U.N. or is it the Haiti Government that is trying to deal with health care in general? 

Mr. SHAH. Well, thank you, sir, and we share your comment that 

we are really never satisfied with the work we tend to do around 

the world, so that certainly applies here as well. 

On health care in particular, you know, we had a very strong 

early response with USAID, its partners, its NGOs, and a number 

of others providing some form of health service to nearly 300,000 

families over the course of the last 6 months. In terms of the longterm development of Haiti’s health plan, we are working with the 

government and with the IHRC to have a single long-term health 

reconstruction strategy that will include expanding the primary 

care system, it will include investing in the university hospital and 

the hospital system in Port-au-Prince, and it will seek to bring into 

the fold the large number of NGOs and others that provide critically needed and important services, but we believe if we all work 

together we could do so in a more coordinated way as we do the 

reconstruction. 

In order to support that planning, we have actually relaxed quite 

a lot of the usual constraints that exist on U.S. Government resources for the health sector because a lot of our resources can be 

programmed against very specific diseases or very specific activities. We have tried to relax those constraints and then engage in 

a single health system planning effort, so it would be a very different way of working for us. 

Mr. PAYNE. Now in regards to the population, as we all know one 

of the basic problems in Haiti was that the main city of Port-auPrince was totally overpopulated and as we know the earthquake 

dispersed the population to some degree. Will resources be adequate enough to retain the dispersed persons so that there is not 

the repopulation of Port-au-Prince which, of course, exacerbates the 

problem and was really part of the previous problem in the first 

place? 

Mr. SHAH. Yes. Well, certainly on behalf of USAID and U.S. Government resources in certain strategic sectors like energy and agriculture we are pursuing a very decentralized approach to supporting, in agriculture, for example, productive watersheds that 

are, of course, outside of Port-au-Prince, but also in the north and 

along the northwest. So there are specific investments we are making to make sure that our resources are invested in a way that supports Haiti’s plan to have more decentralized economic opportunity. 

But I don’t think that in and of itself will be enough, to answer 

your question. Ultimately we have to attract private investment 

into those decentralized areas or economic development zones, and 

I know the Haitian Government and many others are working with 

private sector companies in the United States and elsewhere to try 

to attract real private investment to sites outside of Port-au-Prince 

to create jobs and to create economic activity. If that happens, I 

23

think that is probably the key. If that happens, we are prepared 

to use our funding to provide service support to those populations 

in a decentralized way. 

Mr. PAYNE. Is there any way to utilize the food security program 

that State Department is implementing actually through USAID 

worldwide, particularly in Africa, and some of those principles to 

be used in Haiti? 

I think if we look at possible economic growth, it seems to me 

that agriculture is a natural, and that could also combine with the 

population dispersement of trying to keep them in the less developed areas. 

Mr. SHAH. Yes, sir, that is a great suggestion. We in fact are—

Haiti is one of the Feed the Future—Feed the Future is our term 

for that program. Haiti is one of the first four Feed the Future 

countries. That means that we have sent special planning teams. 

We are working with the ministry in a different way to look at the 

whole agriculture sector, tie it together with its nutrition and 

health programs, and to invest in a productive agricultural approach in Haiti that could really be the backbone of distributed economic opportunities. 

So, that is exactly what we are doing in the agricultural sector, 

and it is important to note that that was actually underway prior 

to the earthquake. In fact, last August when I was at the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of the Feed the Future effort I 

went to Haiti to work on planning and preparing for that program, 

so Haiti has maintained, in fact redoubled its commitment to that 

approach, and the United States as a partner has also done the 

same. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you. 

Mr. ENGEL. Well, thank you, Mr. Payne. Ms. Lee. 

Ms. LEE. Well, thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, 

for this hearing and for your leadership on these issues that are 

so important to Haiti, the Haitian people and to our own country, 

and Dr. Shah, I want to thank you again. I guess you have been 

here three times this week and I think that is a testament really 

to your commitment to your work, to Haiti. Given our short attention spans in our own country, we know that the focus is easily diverted once an issue is taken off of the front page, so I just want 

to thank you for your sustained commitment and your staff’s. 

I want to follow up on the issue as it relates to food and agriculture, but primarily U.S. food policy. Several times, and I know 

President Preval has urged our administration and other donors to 

make room for food purchases directly from local producers so that 

Haitian can really help themselves in the recovery effort, and of 

course the implication is that U.S. food policy, because of our—you 

know, the fact that it relies, and Haiti relies on imports of U.S. 

commodities, that this policy may be actually undermining the effort of local farmers and local entrepreneurs. So I would like to find 

out if in fact we are trying to find ways to help make sure that food 

can be purchased directly from local farmers and local entrepreneurs and lines of credit are there and available for that. 

Secondly, let me ask you about the direct budgetary support for 

the Government of Haiti. They do have a democratically-elected 

government. I know there are a lot of issues around budgetary supVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:56 Sep 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\WH\072910\57689 HFA PsN: SHIRL
24

port, and I am wondering what your thoughts are as it relates to 

Haiti, and are we moving at all in that direction? 

Next, I would just like to, and I visited Haiti not too long ago, 

and I had a chance to talk with Sean Penn, and he is doing remarkable work there, and there were many issues we discussed, 

and I wondered if you all are in touch with Sean. He has a lot of 

ideas. He has been on the ground. I mean, he has a deep commitment to the recovery of Haiti. We talked a lot about what happens 

when the hurricanes come. And I am not sure, thank goodness, you 

know, so far so good. But have we been able to move everyone into 

higher ground or into stronger kind of housing, tents or wherever? 

And then finally, you know, my bill, the Next Steps for Haiti Act, 

we have to be able to begin to support the Haitian-American community, and Haitians in the diaspora in terms of going back to help 

in the development and in the reconstruction effort of Haiti, and 

I am wondering your thoughts on that. We are beginning to move 

in that direction but I want to make sure that we have a fully 

funded and supported effort within USAID to help promote Haiti’s 

reconstruction efforts with the skills and the experience of the Haitian-American community? 

Mr. SHAH. Thank you. Well, thank you for your really tireless 

commitment to this issue and to continue to help us be successful 

with it. I will just address these in turn as effectively as possible. 

On food and agriculture and local purchases, you know, the very 

first purchase of food was 6,00 metric tons of rice that we did purchase locally for expressly that purpose, and through the relief effort we tracked the prices of approximately 22 different commodities to look at our market effects. As we go forward with Feed the 

Future plan of which I just spoke, we will be looking actively at 

how can we support local purchase of food and food aid programs, 

and how can we study the impact of our own food assistance efforts 

to apply those efforts in a way that minimizes any market distortion it would create. Agriculture is going to be the backbone of Haiti’s economy for most participants, and we need to make sure we 

get that right. 

On budget support, the two big issues for us are compliance and 

recourse, and if we can work through and develop mechanisms that 

will allow for compliance and recourse we can provide more budget 

support. We are starting to do it by providing $30 million to the 

World Bank Trust Fund which will be tied to budget support, and 

we will look at a range of other tools as well so long as they allow 

for the kind of compliance and recourse that we need to be able to 

track resources. 

On JPHRO, which is Sean Penn’s organization, we have worked 

quite closely with him, and in fact when I was last there we met 

in Delmas 32 neighborhood, and are trying a pilot effort with them 

to say is there a way for us to do the habitability assessments of 

home structures and reconstruction of homes that need to be elevated to a higher standard in coordination with his group so that 

we can then transition those people back to their homes in a coordinated way, and I think if that works that should become a 

model for how we might be able to work with different communities 

of people in settlements so that we can kind of in one move improve their basic home living conditions, and then help them tranVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:56 Sep 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\WH\072910\57689 HFA PsN: SHIRL
25

sition back, and we need to coordinate with the NGOs and partners 

providing services in the settlements in order to do that effectively, 

so I am watching this very closely, and I appreciate his really tireless efforts, and he is not—he has really been there from the beginning and has been working very, very hard to help provide that 

service. 

And finally, I would perhaps ask if we could ask for your continued help with connectivity with the Haitian-American community. 

It is our aspiration to do work in that way. One of our first large 

contracts for clearing rubble and improving the canal and drainage 

systems went to a 8(a) firm and to a Haitian-American-owned business. We are trying to do outreach in different districts around, 

making sure that people are aware, how they can plug into the procurement system, but we will need your continued support and we 

would look forward to your continued support to make sure we 

make those connections effectively. 

Ms. LEE. Thank you, and just let me thank Mr. Chairman for 

your support. We are trying to get H.R. 417, the Next Steps for 

Haiti Act done. 

Mr. ENGEL. Well, we should, and we thank you for all of your 

efforts. You have certainly been a leader in the Congress on these 

issues, and we really do appreciate it. 

So, Dr. Shah, I know we promised you and your staff that we 

would have you out of here by 10:30. We have made it except for 

a couple of minutes. I really just want to thank you, and I know 

that we are going to have continuous dialogue. You know, this 

hearing is called ‘‘The Crisis in Haiti: Are We Moving Fast 

Enough?’’ That is what we really want to focus on; we all know 

what needs to be done, but we want to make sure that we are moving fast enough. 

Mr. SHAH. Thank you. 

Mr. ENGEL. So thank you so much and thank you for the job you 

are doing. 

Mr. SHAH. Thank you. 

Mr. ENGEL. Okay, we will pause for about 1 minute or 2, and we 

will give our next panel a chance to come up. We will put the name 

plates down, and then we will call them all up. 

Before I introduce our panelists on our second panel I am going 

to give my opening statement that we pushed back because of Dr. 

Shah needing to be with President Obama at 11 o’clock, so let me 

do that, and that will give our panelists a chance to settle down 

for a few minutes. 

So, I want to thank Dr. Shah, as I mentioned before, for testifying, and he only had a short time with us, but it is obvious that 

USAID has an enormous task in dealing with the crisis in Haiti 

and is working very hard to address the problems. 

In March of this year I visited Haiti to bear witness to the horrific loss of life and devastation which befell the country on January the 12th. I surveyed the damage done to the land and physical 

structures of Haiti. It was my intention then and remains my profound wish that the people of Haiti know that the United States 

is committed to help them rebuild their nation. 

As chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the 

House Foreign Affairs Committee, I want to determine what more 

26

America can provide to help Haiti recover from this tragedy and 

emerge as a stronger nation. As a representative from the 17th 

District of New York, which is my district and we have a large 

community of Haitian-Americans. I believe we have the fourth largest population of Haitian-Americans in my district of any of the 

435 districts in the country, so I have one of the largest Haitian 

communities, and we mentioned, as Dr. Shah mentioned, that it is 

very important to coordinate everything we do in Haiti with the 

Haitian-American community. So I want to experience firsthand 

what happened to their homeland and to help bring back answers 

to my constituents. 

As a human being, I went to see the faces of the victims of this 

earthquake and to offer whatever assistance I could provide them. 

Haiti will recover and America will be standing side by side with 

our neighbor. For now we are doing everything in our power to accelerate that recovery. Haitian-American communities in New 

York, especially in my district in Spring Valley and Nyack, and 

other states have welcomed victims with open arms. Our schools, 

such as the East Ramapo School District have taken in children 

displaced by this natural disaster and are educating them, and 

likewise, Haitian-Americans from all over the country have shown 

their sympathy for the people of Haiti and the generosity of approximately $1 billion given to Haitian relief. 

Let me also say that as our schools take in Haitian children, we 

in the Federal Government have to compensate these schools to 

make sure that they have adequate funds to educate these children. The burden should not simply fall on the local communities 

where Haitian children are coming in. The Federal Government 

has a responsibility to provide for the education, to help pay for the 

education, otherwise the education will be inferior not only for the 

Haitian children that are coming in, but for all children in that 

school district if we don’t provide them with more money. 

The devastation in Haiti was all-encompassing. The destruction 

was so complete it is really hard to know where to start. Should 

the international community focus first on shelter, health care, 

education, agriculture, economic development, or must we address 

all at the same time? And regardless of how we prioritize our response in Haiti one question keeps coming to mind as I think about 

the crisis in Haiti, and you will see this in the title of today’s here 

as I mentioned: Are we moving fast enough? 

For more than 6 months have now passed since the earthquake 

and so much has yet to be done. We simply must carry out the relief and reconstruction program as fast as we can, and at this point 

I am not sure if we are moving fast enough. 

Of the 2 million people who have been displaced in Haiti, approximately 1.5 million are still in camps. As of earlier this month 

only 5,000 transitional shelters had been built in Haiti. USAID’s 

Haiti Task Team Coordinator Paul Weisenfeld said on the 6-month 

anniversary of the earthquake that the international community 

has promised to build 125,000 shelters for about 600,000 people by 

July 2011. But that will leave up to 1 million people without 

homes, and there are concerns that the Haitian Government has 

not resolved land titling issues so there aren’t yet enough locations 

to resettle the large numbers of displaced people. 

27

Given this, again I ask are we moving fast enough? I want our 

panelists to please keep that question in mind when they give their 

testimony. Are we moving fast enough in providing shelter to displaced people in Haiti, and is the Haitian Government moving fast 

enough to work out land title issues so that the land can be set 

aside for additional shelter? 

I have often heard that one of the greatest obstacles to rebuilding 

Haiti is that there is so much rubble from the earthquake which 

needs to be removed so it is hard to get new construction going 

until this rubble is removed. I saw this with my own eyes when 

I visited in March. In fact, there is an estimated 25 million cubic 

meters of rubble to remove, but almost no place to put it but into 

the sea. As a point of comparison, the tragic destruction of the 

World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, created 560,000 cubic 

meters of rubble. Some have said it will take 2 years to remove the 

rubble, and estimates range up to 10 years. Once again, are we 

moving fast enough to deal with the rubble removal problem? 

And since the earthquake various multilateral institutions of 48 

countries and the coalition of NGOs, non-governmental organizations, pledged approximately $10 billion toward the long-term construction efforts in Haiti. However, according to a recent article in 

the New York Times by former President Bill Clinton and Haitian 

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, co-chairs of the Interim Haiti 

Reconstruction Commission, only 10 percent—this is the quote—‘‘of 

the 5.3 billion pledged by governments at a U.N. conference in 

March has been disbursed to the Haitian Government without reliable schedules for disbursement.’’ And that is from the Interim 

Haiti Reconstruction Commission. 

Clinton and Bellerive say, ‘‘The Commission is unable to plan, finance projects or respond quickly to immediate needs.’’ It is hard 

to understand with the crisis as large as that faced in Haiti that 

the money is not flowing faster. So I ask again, are we moving fast 

enough in collecting and disbursing the pledged money for Haitian 

relief? 

With respect to the IHRC, this critical body is only supposed to 

exist for 18 months to support the Haitian ministries and provide 

grants for rebuilding projects, but now more than 6 months after 

the earthquake it is still not yet fully staffed, as I mentioned to Dr. 

Shah. Indeed it is possible that the IHRC still requires another 

month or 2 to get its act in gear. With the enormity of the task 

ahead and the key commission not fully up and running, again are 

we moving fast enough in Haiti? 

Finally, we must not think that because the problem to be fixed 

is in Haiti the answers are all to be found there. Here in Congress 

we face long delays on passage of a supplemental appropriations 

bill which contains $2.9 billion in support to support relief efforts 

in Haiti. We should have moved faster, but I am glad that we have 

finally sent the bill to the President for his signature. 

Regardless, I think I have conveyed my concern in looking forward to this panel and today’s witnesses so we can address the 

question are we moving fast enough in Haiti. 

Mr. Mack has said that he doesn’t have a long lengthy statement. He just wants to make a few comments, and I am sure he 

28

concurs with the statement that I just made, so I turn it over to 

Mr. Mack. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Engel follows:]


57689i-1.eps
29


57689i-2.eps 57689i-3.eps
30

Mr. MACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You just washed some 

work on the fly because I told him I wasn’t going to say anything 

and he adjusted quickly. But I do want to associate myself with 

your opening statement and in the interest of time I will not have 

an opening statement other than to thank you all for being here, 

and this is really an opportunity, I think, for you, for us to have 

a discussion on what we can do to improve recognizing that there 

has been a lot done, there is a lot to be proud of, but there are 

things that also need to be done to make it better. We are only one 

hurricane, one earthquake, one other disaster away from a huge 

setback and we need to make sure that we have plans in place, 

people in place, structures in place that can ensure that the people 

of Haiti have a chance to a better future. 

So that with that, Mr. Chairman, thank you for putting this 

hearing together today. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Mack follows:]


57689q.eps
31

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Mr. Mack. Ms. Lee, do you have an opening statement? 

Ms. LEE. Just very quickly. Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman, 

and thank all of you for coming, and thank you for staying the 

course. 

I think out of this crises we do have some opportunities if we can 

just get past the crisis. It is, again, 6 months. The cameras are 

gone, but it is those of you who are really staying the course, and 

I just want to thank all of you for taking the time to come here 

so that we can stay the course, and I especially want to welcome 

Mr. Jimmy Jean-Louis. Thank you for being here, and thank you 

for your work. Many of you continue to work with the Congressional Black Caucus which has been for so many years in support 

of Haiti and the Haitian people. So just welcome, look forward to 

your testimony, and thank you again, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Ms. Lee. We have been joined by my fellow New Yorker, Mr. Meeks. I would like to give him the opportunity for an opening statement. 

Mr. MEEKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I, too, want to join 

my colleagues in thanking you for staying the course for long after 

the cameras were gone, that we would have a lot of work to be 

done. I have had the opportunity to visit Haiti in the interim and 

there is no question that there is a lot of work to be done. What 

concerns me is that we have a balance because we have short-term 

work to be done, and we can’t forget that, and we have long-term 

work to be done, and we can’t forget that. 

There seems to be at times we get out of balance. You know, 

whether we get the money is not flowing, as the chairman has indicated, whether it is flowing quick enough or not, but even the distribution of aid. You know, at one point we said that—I know in 

another committee I sit on, you know, when I sit on the International Monetary Policy and Trade, we had a couple of hearings 

there. Mr. Fairbanks, you were one of the witnesses there where 

we talked about private enterprise and how we have got to get it 

up and going, and moving. 

And at one point it seemed as though we had a lot of food that 

was coming in, and we heard individuals saying that, well, that is 

not helping the small business person because they are not able to 

sell anything, so therefore they are going out of business, and that 

is not going to help the long term. Now I hear, you know, that 

there is not enough food coming so people are now starving again 

and looking to going back to eating mud pies and things of that nature because they don’t have any money to cater to some of the 

small businesses. 

How do we get that balance is what I am—you know, we have 

got to focus. One of the reasons why I had submitted a bill talking 

about a Marshall Plan was trying to think we could get expertise 

in each area that are talking and coordinate with one another so 

that we could be moving and organized and talking to one another 

so that we can get a balance so that we can move forward and try 

to take care of all segments. 

There had been some hope at one point that we would be able 

to create new towns outside of Port-au-Prince that would create 

jobs and opportunities for individuals, to prevent the overcrowding 

32

as we try to get the rubble out of Port-au-Prince, but it seems to 

be very little, if any, movement in that direction. How do we get 

that to happen? Where is the coordination between the former 

President and the current government and some of the foreign government? 

You know, I get frustrated at times, to be quite honest with you, 

and that is why I would love, and I thank you for being here so 

that we can listen and learn and understand what is going on in 

that regard. 

So I will stop there and just say I, like the chairman, I have a 

number of Haitians that live in the district, it is either the second 

or third largest in the country, and they are—you know, so much 

resources, so many great opportunities in Haiti. 

Lastly, let me just say this because I forgot to give it out and this 

is, I think, Mr. Fairbanks is going to testify to that, what is this 

marriage between Haiti and the Dominican Republic? We had a 

meeting not too long ago, many of us in the Congressional Black 

Caucus with the President of the Dominican Republic who talked 

about his willingness in looking to work collectively with the Government of Haiti to make sure that they can employ people and 

train people, but I would like to hear more about that marriage 

and how do we get this done. 

So, Mr. Chair, I stop there and thank you for having this hearing 

today. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Mr. Meeks, and let me just say that you 

mentioned the President of the Dominican Republic. He is really 

very enlightened because he is really a New Yorker like you and 

me, you know, having been raised in New York and growing up in 

New York. 

I am really now pleased to introduce our distinguished private 

witnesses for this second panel, and we do have a distinguished 

panel of witnesses. Jimmy Jean-Louis is an actor, best known for 

his role as the Haitian in the NBC series ‘‘Heroes.’’ This was an 

appropriate role since Jimmy is actually Haitian and was born in 

Port-au-Prince. Today he is Goodwill Ambassador for the Pan 

American Development Foundation. Welcome. 

Samuel Worthington is president and chief executive officer of 

InterAction. Welcome to the panel. Jonathan Reckford is chief executive officer for Habitat for Humanity International. Welcome. 

Dr. Barth Green is chairman and co-founder of the University of 

Miami Global Institute for Community Health and Development, 

and is president and co-founder of Project Medishare, but most importantly he is a personal friend of mine, and I look forward to 

hearing his testimony. You know, if you go to south Florida, and 

my parents lived in south Florida for 30 years so I am familiar, all 

you have to do is mention the name Barth Green and everybody 

knows him. So if he ever gets involved in politics, you know the 

other representatives from south Florida have to really kind of 

worry, so welcome. 

Joia Jefferson Nuri is chief of staff of TransAfrica Forum. Welcome. Michael Fairbanks is an author and founder and director of 

the SEVEN Fund. Mr. Meeks has already mentioned that he has 

testified on a lot of these important matters before. Welcome. And 

Nicole Balliette is deputy director for Haiti Emergency Earthquake 

33

Response for Catholic Relief Services. Let me say this panel is so 

distinguished that every time we wanted to kind of keep it small, 

I would get a phone call—so and so would like to be added to the 

panel—and everyone was so good I could just not say no. 

So let me just say to the panelists, you have 5 minutes to summarize your testimony. You don’t have to read it. You could submit 

it for the record and it will be in the official record, and just summarize it. I am going to keep everybody to the 5 minutes, and I 

am going to be a little heavy with the gavel because that way it 

will give us a chance to ask you questions where I am sure you can 

give us better answers than opening statements. 

So thank you all very much for being here, and I call on Jimmy 

Jean-Louis. 

STATEMENT OF MR. JIMMY JEAN-LOUIS, ACTOR, GOODWILL 

AMBASSADOR, PAN AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION 

Mr. JEAN-LOUIS. Good morning. Is this working? 

Mr. ENGEL. Yes. You might want to push it a little closer to you, 

and then we can—no, it doesn’t move? 

Mr. JEAN-LOUIS. Hello. 

Mr. ENGEL. That is better. You always know an actor can kind 

of—you know, I grew up in a household, Jimmy, with a mother 

who is an actress, and growing up in New York my mother always 

did these bit parts on broadway, off broadway I should say, and bit 

parts in movies and she always told me you need to project from 

your diaphragm, she used to say to me—so project from your diaphragm. 

Mr. JEAN-LOUIS. You are giving away my tricks. [Laughter.] It 

is not good. 

Well, on behalf of the Pan American Development Foundation I 

thank you, Mr. Engel and the other distinguished members of this 

subcommittee for the opportunity to testify here, Mr. Meeks, Mr. 

Mack, Mrs. Lee. 

Today I am appearing before this committee as the Pan American Development Foundation’s Goodwill Ambassador, and as the 

president of the nonprofit organization Hollywood United for Haiti. 

Also extremely important, I am here as a Haitian that had a 

chance to go to Haiti just days after the earthquake, and the smell 

of the burning flesh, the cries of the survivors, and the desperation 

of the people in the capital will stay with me for life. It took me 

about 5 days to dig the body of one of my dear friend who is 28, 

or was 28 years old. It took me 5 days to get him out of the rubble 

of my own house, just to find a piece of arm, nothing else. 

I want to say thank you to the people of the United States for 

coming to Haiti’s assistance after the deadly earthquake. Haitians 

will remember the generous support, acts of kindness and prayer 

on their behalf. 

The crisis Haiti, are we moving fast enough? No, if I have to answer real quickly. Too many Haitians continue to live in despicable 

conditions with little hope of moving into recovery phase in the 

foreseeable future. I mean, obviously this is not a criticism to any 

particular person, government or non-governmental organization. 

Some of the things worked. 

34

What worked? Although the list of people, project, and activities 

is very long, the following are just a few examples of what I think 

worked. President Obama’s immediate pledge of U.S. assistance 

proved critical to opening a life line to Haiti. The media did a great 

job the first couple of weeks. The NGOs played a huge role in saving the day. If it were not for their dedication, however the number 

of Haitians would have died, suffered needlessly, would have been 

far greater. 

So the programs worked well such as the Cash for Work. Haitians want to work. They don’t want handouts. Tens of thousands 

of Haitians have found temporary employment cleaning streets, 

clearing drainage canals and removing rubble. These Cash for 

Work programs are also a major step in reviving devastated neighborhoods. 

The human rights, and this one is a very important topic for me, 

for years Haiti has faced serious problems with trafficking of persons, forced labor, exploitation of children, and violence against 

woman; nonetheless the January 12 earthquake caused these problems to explode. After the quake a number of highly qualified national and local NGOs stepped in and helped. Safe areas were established for children. Medical services were provided. Support to 

government agencies increased, and other activities. Settling, monitoring was set up to limit the number of acts of aggression against 

women and children and that was something that was done by the 

PDF. They also launched an anti-rape campaign in the displacement camps. 

Although very far from sufficient to meet the current demands, 

these programs have gone a long way toward addressing the critical human rights problems. 

What did not work? I just would like to mention some of the 

problems and we know that the list is pretty long. The camps, the 

IDP settlements, more than 1.2 million people are living in the horrible conditions in temporary displacement camps right now in 

Haiti, and some of those camps are in the key areas in the main 

city of Port-au-Prince. I am talking about the airport, Presidential 

palace, the squares. Those displacement camps are very dangerous. 

They are overcrowded, lack sanitation and are well on their way 

to coming permanent settlements, unfortunately. 

Security is starting to be a problem because of those camps as 

well, and also because of the prisoners that escaped from the collapsed prison. We have been pretty lucky in the past couple of 

months because of the World Cup, that kept a lot of people quiet. 

Unfortunately, the World Cup is gone. People have less patience. 

The hurricane season is coming up, so I fear that security might 

be a big problem in Haiti in the next few weeks. 

The coordination and cooperation, we cooperated in the beginning but that has slowly faded, I think. We all need to set a line 

our institutional objectives and reach out to all stakeholders, break 

down barriers, and focus on the outcome for Haitians. 

Now from crisis relief to recovery, there is a lot to do there. Moving Haiti from crisis relief to recovery is much more complicated in 

Haiti than more developed countries. The PADF believes that the 

key areas that must be taken in consideration as we move from relief to recovery, as most of you know as many as 18,000 governVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:56 Sep 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\WH\072910\57689 HFA PsN: SHIRL
35

ment employees died in the quake. Many were mid-level technical 

specialists and managers. I think one relevant donors like USAID 

should require on-the-ground implementors to include a component 

that strengthen the Government of Haiti. 

I am going back to the human rights. The human rights abuses 

and violence against woman and children has to pass the crisis 

point. They are a direct result of insecurity. The PADF just did a 

survey about 3 weeks ago, and in a camp in Santeis. Out of 4,000 

people, 300 girls are pregnant, teenage girls on the age of 13, 14, 

up to the age of 18, and we are not speaking about the ones that 

are not pregnant, the boys that can’t be pregnant, so we can easily 

see what kind of problems we could have in these camps, or are 

having in these camps. 

The reconstruction, you know, I think Haiti could have a bright 

future because we have nothing left. You know, everything have to 

be rebuilt. We have to start over again. I think we have a great 

chance to think, to think green, you know. Finding sustainable solutions to long-term issues such as renewable energy, I encourage 

everybody to go in that direction because we have the technology 

to go there. Why not try it in Haiti and make an example out of 

Haiti, maybe for the rest of the world as well? 

Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Jean-Louis, could I ask you to summarize the 

rest of it in about 1 minute? 

Mr. JEAN-LOUIS. Yeah. 

Mr. ENGEL. And then we will ask you some good questions, you 

can give some of the other statements that you had. 

Mr. JEAN-LOUIS. The lucky thing is I have 30 seconds left. 

Mr. ENGEL. Okay, excellent. 

Mr. JEAN-LOUIS. Well, obviously, the Haitian diaspora also are 

key component in the reconstruction and the rebuilding of the future of Haiti, and I am going to go with some of the ideas I have 

heard as well from Congressman Lee. The Next Step For Haiti Act, 

I think it is something that we should consider. There are some 

other bills as well such as the Haitian Enterprise Fund by Congresswoman Clark. And as you know the Small and Micro Enterprises, that is something that works as well. It worked in many 

other countries and I think it can work in Haiti because it creates 

jobs for the poorest. 

So once again thank you very much, Chairman Engel. I would 

like to conclude by saying that so many organizations, governmental and non-governmental have done an Herculean effort to 

help Haitians during this unprecedented crisis. Can we do more? 

Yes. Yes, we can by focusing on strategic pieces of problem. We can 

continue to effect change on the ground. Eventually we will move 

from crisis relief to recovery. The challenge for all of us in this 

hearing as well as those in the field is to ensure that we select the 

right pieces and properly fund them. 

And I would just like to add that PADF would welcome the opportunity to participate as one of the NGOs on the reconstruction 

commission that the doctor just mentioned earlier on. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jean-Louis follows:]

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Mr. ENGEL. Well, thank you very much for excellent testimony. 

I let you go over by several minutes because I wanted to hear your 

very heartfelt testimony. Obviously coming from Haiti you have a 

special relationship and it was very good to hear your testimony, 

and we will ask you questions, I am sure. I would like to ask the 

other witnesses to try to keep it within the 5-minute rule. 

And I want to also acknowledge we have been joined by Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California, who is not a member of 

the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but has been a leader in the 

Congress in caring about Haiti. It did not take an earthquake to 

get Maxine to participate in Haiti. She for many, many years both 

in private conversation with me and things that she has done publicly, like Ms. Lee, I think the two of them have really been the 

leaders in the Congress in terms of caring about Haiti, and working for it, so we welcome Congresswoman Waters to our panel. 

Mr. Worthington. 

STATEMENT OF MR. SAMUEL A. WORTHINGTON, PRESIDENT 

AND CEO, INTERACTION 

Mr. WORTHINGTON. Chairman Engel, Ranking Member Mack, 

members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning. 

InterAction is the largest coalition of U.S. nonprofits operating 

overseas. Our members were the primary actors on the ground as 

the earthquake hit and right after. We had 82 InterAction members operating in Haiti. Their staffing levels went from 2,300 when 

the earthquake hit, unfortunately with loss of life, to around 8,000 

now operating in Haiti. 

The key question that you ask is are we moving fast enough. I 

just want to stress the how fast people did respond in the emergency phase, and that the challenge we are facing now in reconstruction is largely due to the poverty of Haiti, the lack of capacity 


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of the Haitian Government, but also the limited capacity of the 

international community to effectively respond to an urban disaster 

of this scale. 

I think one analogy I have, all of us have dealt with Washington, 

DC, traffic gridlock. Try getting across Port-au-Prince if you had 

1,000 trucks descend on Port-au-Prince right now would just make 

that 2-hour transit to become 3 hours, so it is an awfully tough environment to operate. 

Really to stress at first the resilience and the entrepreneurship 

and the capacity of the Haitian people is tremendous. To start with 

the issue of coordination, as Dr. Shah mentioned—USAID funded 

a coordination office for the NGO community that InterAction led. 

This coordination office was an important effort. Just to give you 

a sense, a 21st century disaster by definition results in church 

groups from Europe and America coming down to try to help. But 

we do have a situation where the 15 largest organizations, in essence, these private organizations are, these nonprofits are 90-plus 

percent of the resources and that ability of that smaller group and 

other professional groups to coordinate is actually quite significant. 

I would also make a distinction of the Haitian civil society has 

often, a comment that you made of so many NGOs per capita and 

so forth, you mentioned one per 1,500. If you look at the number 

of nonprofits per capita in the United States there is one for 260 

Americans, so I think this base of volunteer organizations is a fundamental element of democracy in a society. 

It is crucial, however, that the international groups that come in 

are accountable. We have launched, thanks to funding from Federal Express and a partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a map that maps the major NGO activities, not just in Portau-Prince, but across Haiti. This mapping effort continues to be 

under development as to where resources will be spent and so 

forth. 

To date, $1.2 billion has been raised by nonprofits in the U.S. Of this amount, $978 million was for InterAction members, $467 million was allocated for relief activities, of that amount $323 million 

has already been spent, and $511 million was set aside for reconstruction. Our challenge in spending is actually a concern that the 

magnitude of the relief effort will pull resources out of reconstruction in terms of private resources. I am not talking here, of course, 

about the significant partnership we have with the U.S. Government resources. 

In terms of the way going forward, we all know that we are going 

to be confronted with ongoing humanitarian need while doing reconstruction. Our priority in the reconstruction phase will be resettlement, as mentioned by others, but it is important that this new 

commission on resettlement set up by President Preval will bring 

community-based support and a resettlement strategy. We do also 

have the challenge that in terms of sanitation and health, in many 

ways water and sanitation is better off in the camps now than 

where people might be moved, and there is this critical ongoing 

challenge of feeding people. 

One of the areas that is critical for the reconstruction of Haiti is 

the relationship between the Haitian Government and Haitian civil 

society, and at this point in time there is limited outreach from the 

48

Haitian Government to Haitian civil society, and it is crucial that 

this broad capacity of Haitian people be engaged. 

All the members of InterAction and other major NGOs are committed to working with the Interim Commission—to second staff to 

it, to help build the government capacity. To some extent we have 

seen limited outreach to the NGO community. We had the opportunity to meet with the Prime Minister and President Clinton last 

week on this. 

To conclude, are we moving fast enough? The answer, of course, 

is a nuanced one. There is a challenge and a disaster side to point 

fingers at who can move faster or not. The reality is we have a disaster that has overwhelmed the international system’s ability to respond. I participated in an evaluation for President Clinton of the 

tsunami response. This one, our coordination was far better here, 

but it has a long way to go, and I think the real challenge here 

is to maintain a focus on Haiti. 

And I would like to suggest, please, if we could have some form 

of 1-year event because there will still be people in camps, still 

challenges going, and if we could have major donors refocus on 

Haiti. The American people were tremendously generous and the 

nonprofits, commonly known as NGOs, continue to do what they 

can to make a difference on the ground. 

I would like to thank the chairman and the subcommittee for the 

opportunity to testify. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Worthington follows:]

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Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Mr. Worthington. Mr. Reckford. 

STATEMENT OF MR. JONATHAN T.M. RECKFORD, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER , HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INTERNATIONAL 

Mr. RECKFORD. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. 

Member of the committee and friends, on behalf of Habitat for 

Humanity I appreciate this opportunity to share with you an update on the shelter needs and recovery efforts in Haiti 6 months 

after the devastating earthquake. Before I begin, I want to acknowledge my fellow panelists and thank you all for what you are 

doing in support of the people of Haiti. I also want to recognize the 

hard work and dedication of each of our staff member and all those 

who are working so hard in Haiti right now. I am honored to be 

with you today. 

Habitat for Humanity is an ecumenical christian ministry that 

welcomes to its mission all people dedicated to the cause of eliminating poverty housing. Since its founding in 1976, Habitat has 

built more than 350,000 home worldwide, providing simple, decent 

and affordable shelter for more than 1.75 million people. 

Shelter is one of the most basic and essential human needs. It 

is critical to good health, stable employment, and effective education. Failure to prioritize the need for adequate and affordable 

housing will not only deny hundreds of thousands of Haitian a safe 

environment in which to live, but it will diminish the returns of 

other humanitarian investments and ultimately delay real and 

lasting recovery. 

As part of our three-fold response to serve 50,000 families affected by the earthquake, Habitat has assembled more than 21,000 

emergency shelter kits, conducted more than 2,000 structural damage assessments, and is building up to 150 additional transitional 

shelters each week. To date, Habitat has built nearly 400 shelters 

and expects to provide more than 31,000 transitional shelters, significant repairs in core houses over the next 5 years. We are doing 

this in partnership and collaboration with a number of organizations such as the Red Cross, as well as working closely with local 

and national government officials. 

These housing efforts stimulate local economies through jobs creation, investment, commerce, and skills training. It is crucial to 

build houses near locations where Haitians want to work and 

where they will have access to resources and knowledge that will 

allow for growth and expansion. 

While the arrival of hurricane season reminds us of Haitian peoples’ desperate and immediate needs, it is imperative that Haiti 

and all of its international partners fully commit ourselves to build 

back better. The quality of the shelter solutions provided must be 

carefully balanced against the expected speed of their delivery. An 

effective house reconstruction plan that will enable families to be 

safe and secure once again must address factors such as the availability of land and improved security of tenure, land use and environmental issues, the improved delivery of basic services, including 

water, sanitation and transport, national economic development 

and job creation opportunities, disaster-risk reduction measures, 

the special problems and needs of renters, and particularly the expressed preferences of those who have lost their homes. 

59

Policymakers and programs should also focus on helping families 

return to homes that are structurally sound, and assist families in 

fixing homes that can be repaired. In addition, efforts must be 

made to help families re-integrate into communities near their 

friends, family members, and livelihoods. 

The land tenure issues that Haitians face are complex. Creating 

more permanent shelter solutions is difficult when one is unable to 

ascertain who owns the land or how has the rights to shelter when 

it is finished. Putting Haitians back into homes without secure tenure will subject them to the same arbitrary evictions and above 

market rents that they too often endured before the earthquake, 

and will also discourage investment in housing and the economy as 

a whole. 

This disaster also underscore the importance of building codes 

designed to address the risks inherent in a particular location. As 

Chairman Engel noted, comparing the devastation seen in Haiti to 

levels of damage seen in the subsequent Chilean earthquake, which 

was of a far greater magnitude, demonstrates clearly the number 

of lives that are saved when adequate building codes are enforced. 

As Congress and the administration work to support shelter recovery efforts in Haiti, Habitat for Humanity urges the U.S. Government to take the following actions: First, increase resources for 

rubble removal and for shelter reconstruction; increase resources 

for community-based solutions to land tenure issues with a special 

focus on renters since they represent a majority of the Haitian 

IDPs; focus resources on housing repair programs; work with the 

Government of Haiti and its citizenry to create a comprehensive 

urban development strategy and development plan; and make decisions with the knowledge that decentralization and resettlement 

are separate issues, and that housing reconstruction investments 

will only be effective in areas where jobs exist. 

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman and esteemed members of the committee, this hearing is an important step in meeting the critical 

shelter needs of Haitians. This is clear evidence of your recognition 

of the vital role that shelter will play in the successful rebuilding 

of Haiti, and I appreciate your invitation to participate. Habitat for 

Humanity looks forward to continuing its work with all of you and 

with the people of Haiti to help develop safe and affordable housing 

opportunities. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Reckford follows:]

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Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Mr. Reckford. Dr. Green. 

STATEMENT OF BARTH A. GREEN, M.D., F.A.C.S., CHAIRMAN 

AND CO-FOUNDER , UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI GLOBAL INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT, 

PRESIDENT AND CO-FOUNDER OF PROJECT MEDISHARE 

Dr. GREEN. Good morning, Chairman Engel, Ranking Member 

Mack, and members of the subcommittee. 

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss current health conditions in Haiti and outline the challenges 

and opportunities moving forward. My testimony is from the perspective of a volunteer physician who worked in Haiti the last 20 

years and is co-founder of Project Medishare and the University of 

Miami Global Institute. 

Within 24 hours of the earthquake I was on the ground in Portau-Prince working with our Project Medishare team and created a 

major trauma and critical care field hospital at the airport. We 

treated over 30,000 patients and acted as the staging point for U.S. 

military evacuations to the U.S. Navy Ship Comfort and hospital 

in the U.S. and abroad. 

In June, we moved to an existing community hospital which continues today to serve as Haiti’s only trauma and critical care hospital. 

In the health care sector the situation in Haiti was dire before 

the earthquake. That is why 1/4-million people died. Today, it is 

even worse. Preventable causes of death in Haiti range from heart 

attacks, stroke, and maternal emergencies to lack of blood supply, 

vaccinations, and a bureaucratic log jam in customs. 

Haiti’s plan for reconstruction is focused on decentralization and 

industrialization. This plan cannot succeed if there is insufficient 

infrastructure in rural areas to attract people, including investors, 

away from Port-au-Prince. This also means there needs to be an 

adequate health care safety net in these areas. Health care delivery 

and training need to be integrated nationwide, which is particularly important as Haiti’s new health needs have changed dramatically. 

Prior to the earthquake there were five medical schools and one 

nursing school. Today, there is one medical school, and Haiti has 

all but lost all of its health care education infrastructure. Committees formed lead by diaspora, mainly from the United States and 

Canada, were partnering with the Ministry of Health to rebuild 

theses institutions, but since the Haitian medical system is mainly 

based on a French curriculum the participation of the Haitian diaspora is especially valuable. 

Equally, if not more important in the training of the physicians, 

will be advance education of nurses and allied health professionals. 

Haiti’s anemic public health system has long depended too heavily 

on NGOs, often with a different agenda than the government. Facilities outside the capital were chronically understaffed, poorly 

equipped and insufficiently funded. Following the earthquake hundreds of thousands of patients fled Port-au-Prince and sought refuge in the traditional home communities, placing additional stress 

on the already compromised health care system. 

68

Haiti’s health care system is truly on the ropes. It is important 

to ask ourselves whether we are attempting to solve Haiti’s problems in the same way that it failed in the past, or whether now 

is the time for new approaches to help Haiti help itself. These 

strategies must include procurement reform, employment generation, capacity building. Priorities should be given to partners who 

have past experience, on-the-ground records of success, integrity 

and transparency. 

Today the picture on the ground in Haiti is both encouraging and 

discouraging. Avoiding major famine and epidemics in the short 

term is a very fragile victory. However, lack of fundamental shelter, near collapse of economic sector coupled with the lack of flow 

of donor dollars bodes for a very poor prognosis. 

Bureaucratic hold ups and a lack of focus on the needs of Haiti’s 

masses do not allow for a cure which must be rapid, skillful and 

aggressively implemented. 

In spite of U.S. citizens’ donations of unprecedented amount of 

money to help Haiti, there is little evidence that most of these dollars have reached Haitian shores or are sticking on the ground. It 

is also extremely difficult for any organization that is not a traditional foreign assistant contractor or grantee to get inside the doors 

of those making funding decisions within the U.S. Government. 

So the answer, Mr. Chairman, is no, we are not moving fast 

enough to help Haiti. Six months after the earthquake millions of 

Haitians are still living in inhumane conditions with few services 

available and virtually no prospect of employment or opportunity. 

The U.S. must change the way we do business in Haiti. Public/private partnerships are essential. Following traditional passive assistance will only lead to more of the same. 

Thank you for this opportunity to discuss health care issues facing Haiti’s reconstruction. Project Medishare and the University of 

Miami’s Global Institute remain committed to rebuild a new and 

better Haiti. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Green follows:]

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Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Dr. Green. Ms. Nuri. 

STATEMENT OF MS. JOIA JEFFERSON NURI, CHIEF OF STAFF, 

TRANSAFRICA FORUM 

Ms. NURI. Chairman Engel, Mr. Mack and members of the committee, I also thank you for this opportunity to testify. I speak 

today on behalf of the president of TransAfrica Forum, Nicole Lee, 

who could not make it here today. 

To answer your question are we moving fast enough, I agree with 

Dr. Green. Absolutely not. We are not. It is TransAfrica’s assessment that despite the high level of financial resources already 

pledged and available, the efficacy of the relief effort has been undermined by structural inefficiencies, bureaucratic inertia and vested interested parties working to preserve privilege while giving the 

appearance of change. 

This assessment is a result of six field missions to Haiti, including daily consultation with Haitian grass roots, and communitybased organizations, and interviews with camp residents. Our assessments are detailed in our 6-month report, ‘‘Haiti Cherie’’ which 

has been submitted for the record. This oral statement summarizes 

the findings of this report. 

Unprecedented amounts of money have been raised to address 

the crisis of Haiti. It is estimated that enough money has been 

raised to provide $37,000 to each family displaced by the quake. 

International NGOs and governments alike have been quick to recognize the return to Haiti to the pre-quake status cannot be the 

standard and TransAfrica agrees with that. Unfortunately, it is our 

estimation that despite extraordinary efforts the crisis response 

has replicated flawed models both on the emergency response side 

and long-term reconstruction. 

The present model of relief and reconstruction has effectively 

stopped Haitian civil society from taking leadership roles in the rebuilding process. Their inclusion in on-the-ground operations as 

well as policy discourses, including congressional hearings such as 

today, is imperative. Despite a stated commitment to include Haitian participation, long embedded prejudices and systems continue 

to operate. 

Relief and reconstruction efforts have also taken place overwhelmingly in Haiti’s crowded capital with few resources distributed to other regions where the need is just as great. Post-quake 

Haiti is being framed as an opportunity for further international 

investment in the poverty wage industry. TransAfrica Forum staff 

have met with textile factory workers who returned to work with 

no worker protection, wages so low that many have to walk home 

because they cannot afford their transportation costs. Left uncorrected, the failures of the post-crisis period will set a state for a reconstruction period that will be in crisis. There will be continued 

national and international corruption, human rights violations, 

wasted resources, and most importantly, the continued suffering 

and loss by the people of Haiti. 

Today in Haiti, over 6 months after the quake, we have seen little progress. Many residents of Haiti’s 1,300 internally displaced 

persons camps are living in the same limited security and access 

to basic goods they found the day after the quake. Conditions in 

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IDP camps remain atrocious. Haitian camp leadership TransAfrica 

Forum have met with throughout Port-au-Prince report resources 

have been limited since the quake. Problems faced by the people 

living in IDP camps consist of the following: Infrequent food and 

water distribution; inefficient washing and sanitation facilities; inadequate security, particularly for vulnerable populations; minimal 

jobs and educational opportunities; inadequate and unsafe temporary and transitional housings, because the emergency phase of 

this is clearly not over. 

TransAfrica has been particularly concerned about the impact on 

marginalized populations, including women, children, the disabled, 

and the elderly. KOFAVIV, a Haitian CSO that works on issues of 

gender-based violence has recorded 242 rapes since the quake, likely just a fraction of the actual total, with no prosecutions to date. 

There are issues of housing and shelter. I am running out of time 

but I would like to talk about the upcoming elections. If I have just 

a few moments, I would like to say that there is an opportunity 

coming up for Haitians to become very, very involved, and that is 

the elections that are set for November 28, and those are the Presidential and the parliamentary elections. They present an occasion 

for unprecedented civil participation, and voter turnout. But this 

requires immediate action for these elections to be fair and inclusive. Adequate funding, technical assistance, including the creation 

of a national identification card, updated electoral list, accessible 

polling places, and extensive voter education are needed. 

The creation of a new unbiased CEP, which is the Provisional 

Electoral Council, to oversee this year’s election should be followed 

by pressure on the Haitian Government to establish a permanent 

electoral council as required by their constitution. 

In addition, inclusion of all registered political parties is the only 

way fair and representative elections can take place. International 

governments and NGOs must commit funds and manpower to create such an environment for elections which could give the Haitian 

Government both authority and faculty to effectively manage the 

country’s reconstruction. 

We also should really dissect decentralization as mentioned by 

Dr. Green, and we can get into that when we get to the Q&A, but 

these things are not going to be easy, but they are going to be imperative, and I thank you for the opportunity to testify. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Nuri follows:]

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Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Ms. Nuri. Mr. Fairbanks. 

STATEMENT OF MR. MICHAEL FAIRBANKS, AUTHOR, 

FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR, SEVEN FUND 

Mr. FAIRBANKS. Thank you very much. The recent press reports 

indicate that somewhere between 2 and 5 percent of the pledged 

funds have been disbursed. I think just on that basis everyone in 

the room can agree that we are not moving at the rate that we can. 

What is interesting is the reasons why. 

The first reason is our planning method, referred to by many as 

the waterfall methodology, which means that requirements cascade 

toward design, implementation, verification, and then maintenance 

phases. The type of people who are good at that aren’t the type of 

people who deal well in the environments of ambiguity and underdevelopment that we find in places like Haiti. So we are actually 

configured to solve a problem for a time in which we no longer live, 

and this is a very important strategic planning principle. 

The second reason is that Americans are very prone to 

overresponsiblity and then underresposibility. We are there on the 

spot. We make big commitments. We speak with passion. We believe in our own exceptionalism and our ability to fix these things. 

And then 6 months later, when good things are not happening, we 

also are prone to point fingers, blame other people, make excuses, 

and then withdraw. I think we are still in the overresponsibility 

phase, but I think it is just about over; and I think the situation 

in Haiti is going to get not pretty very fast. 

Americans are also prone to be sympathetic, rather than empathetic. Because we feel ourselves in a very powerful position, we 

fall into this trap of sympathy where overzealous donors bring 

their own experiences to bear on the situation, and take decision 

rights away from the people that we are trying to help. What this 

means is that our model of development is based on a massive infusion of financial capital, and expertise. We go to these conferences 

and we reenforce each others’ values and we congratulate each 

other; and we are filled with esteem and we develop terrific narratives about our own capacity, which helps us to shape donor fashion and raise money, and continue on to the next place. 

I think in some ways it is good news that a lot of money hasn’t 

shown up. If a lot of money showed up, it would already affect a 

completely overvalued exchange rate in Haiti, which prevents indigenous innovation from happening. It would be the so-called 

Dutch Disease. Just like they found oil, they found aid; it would 

have the same impact on the economy. 

When a lot of aid shows up it severs the sovereign relationship 

between democratically-elected leaders and the people. I spent the 

entire morning yesterday with President Preval, and I know for a 

fact he spends more time talking to aid officials than his own people. I know for a fact that he spends more time thinking about development than about private sector innovation. 

So what can we do about this? The answer lies across the border 

in the Dominican Republic. It is a match made in heaven. They 

have unbelievably sophisticated capacity to innovate. They have 56 

specialized zones that are world class. They have certain tariff relationships which allow them to export into the United States. But 

84

their wages have gone up too fast recently. It has created too much 

prosperity for too many people and it has made them price uncompetitive. Haitian labor is very desirable and hard working, and 

their wages are lower than China. 

If the two countries could get by the migrant issue and some of 

the negative attributions they make to each other, they could develop textile, construction, and tourism experiences that would beat 

China and the United States. It is a match made in heaven. The 

Island of Hispaniola could beat China in the delivery of massive 

amounts of textiles and apparel products in the United States, but 

nobody is having that discussion, so I want to give you a few very 

quick things that we could do in my last 45 seconds. 

The protection of tangible and intangible property; trading 

patants; focus on the market access incentives; and fiscal incentives 

for tax exemptions of certain investments in certain parts of the 

country. Forget about the migrant issue between the two countries; 

de-link it from the free trade issue. It has got to be solved separate 

from that and by a trusted third party. Work on the production 

costs, most importantly, energy costs in there. Focus on the hidden 

taxes on the economy that other people have mentioned here, the 

time to register a business, the time to register a mortgage, and 

focus on specialized and advanced transportation logistics. 

It turns out that the real impediment to Haiti’s development is 

its lack of self-determination, its fatalism, its unwillingness to go 

into the world and compete, and the lack of a sovereign relationship between a democratically-elected leadership and its people because it is being distracted by a discussion for a time in which we 

no longer live. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Fairbanks follows:]

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Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Mr. Fairbanks. Ms. Balliette. 

STATEMENT OF MS. NICOLE S. BALLIETTE, DEPUTY DIRECTOR 

FOR HAITI EMERGENCY EARTHQUAKE RESPONSE, CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES 

Ms. BALLIETTE. Thank you, Chairman Engel and Ranking Member Mack, for calling this important hearing, and giving Catholic 

Relief Services an opportunity to testify. 

My name is Nicole Balliette. I am the CRS deputy director for 

the Haiti Earthquake Response. At this time I would like to thank 

the members of this committee for the passage of the Haiti Economic Life Program Act, the Haiti Debt Relief and Earthquake Recovery Act, and for passage of the Haiti Supplemental. CRS is also 

appreciative of the other bills in support of the people of Haiti, and 

would like to especially thank perhaps Mr. Engel, Ms. Lee, Ms. 

Waters, Mr. Fortenberry, Mr. Meeks, Mr. Conyers for their leadership and support. 

I know this committee and the world are concerned about Haiti 

and the recovery process. CRS shares those concerns, but good 

things are being done, and we believe we can overcome the immense challenges that we face. But we do want to be clear. Together we are not moving fast enough. We cannot consider it fast 

enough when people are living without shelter, without security, 

and without livelihoods. 

We have already heard from my colleagues on the panel about 

the situation in Haiti prior to the earthquake, as well as the extent 

of the devastation with which the people of Haiti are currently suffering. CRS has been working together with the people of Haiti for 

over 55 years, providing immediate relief as well as long-term development assistance. Some of the highlights of CRS’s response to 

the earthquake include that within hours or Haitian and international staff began responding. Our generous donors, including 

private individuals and the U.S. Government, began almost immediately to contribute what has become an unprecedented amount. 

CRS has to date spent over $30 million and together with our 

Haitian partners has made major strides in meeting desperate 

needs, including providing food, water and sanitation, shelter materials, health care, and protection services to hundreds of thousands 

of people. Although we and the others have accomplished a lot, I 

would also like to talk a bit about the constraints and some of our 

recommendations. 

First, the Government of Haiti must play the leadership role in 

the country’s recovery, but the success of the process will depend 

in large part on the actions of a robust civil society. We all must 

encourage and facilitate strong and effective leadership by Haitians 

and provide them with the support that they need. 

Second, security in certain parts of Port-au-Prince, especially in 

the settlements, is a huge constraint on the ability of people to 

function normally as well as on the ability of actors like CRS to 

provide services. And if most vulnerable members of Haitian society are able to participate in the recovery, they need to be protected from trafficking, from sexual and gender-based violence, and 

all other forms of exploitation and abuse. Only a few years ago imVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:56 Sep 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00095 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\WH\072910\57689 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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proved security in Haiti was a great success story. Could this not 

be replicated now to facilitate the recovery process? 

Third, the lack of an overall resettlement strategy seriously constrains the work of all the actors in Haiti. Current efforts are ad 

hoc. The Haitian Government must develop a holistic resettlement 

and recovery strategy that we can all use to guide our efforts. 

Linked to this are specific and high priority problem that has been 

mentioned here on the panel is the lack of places to install the 

transitional shelters. This is an urgent need that requires the highest possible prioritization, and two of the solutions have been mentioned—the quicker removal of the debris and the rubble—and 

then the securing of land. 

The Haiti earthquake response is large-scale and complex, and 

having worked myself in places like Angola, Sierra Leone and Eastern Congo, I do know what complex is. But we cannot let the complexity prevent us from achieving immediate results while we also 

lay the groundwork for long-term development. We need to strike 

this balance, and we need to act in solidarity with the Haitian people to help ensure not only that the right things are done, but that 

they are done in the right way. 

The solution requires the leadership of the Government of Haiti 

acting in partnership with civil society, including key actors like 

the church in Haiti, and the support and assistance of international actors, including the U.S. Government. There is trauma 

and devastation in Haiti. There is no doubt. But there is also hope 

and I would like to share a story that gives me some hope. 

Within hours of the quake our Haitian staff in Les Cayes in the 

southern peninsula they got together. They loaded up trucks with 

food and non-food items, and they hit the road. They came to Portau-Prince. They were worried about their own families, their own 

friends, but they were worried about their colleagues as well and 

all the victims of the disaster. 

When I was in Haiti recently, I was co-facilitating a workshop 

with some partners, and I heard similar stories from Carry Toss 

Haiti, from the government of people who did the same thing 

throughout the country. This illustrates for me that when the need 

is great and the actions to be taken are clear people will find a 

way. 

The stage of the recovery process that we are in now is perhaps 

more confusing. So much needs to be done and there are so many 

different ways to do it. But with leadership and direction to guide 

our efforts we can find a way. We are grateful for all of your efforts, and those of other members of the U.S. Government to do 

what you can to support the people of Haiti. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Balliette follows:]

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Mr. ENGEL. Well, thank you very much, and thank you all for 

wonderful testimony. I want to say for me, and I know I speak for 

Mr. Mack, we appreciate the hard work that all of you have done 

and the help that you have given the people of Haiti, and helping 

us to focus on what we should be doing in the Congress. 

Dr. Green, let me start with you. You talked about the medical 

schools and things that have been destroyed. What about the hospitals? I am told that there is virtually perhaps one hospital, or a 

lot of the hospitals have been destroyed. What can we do to make 

sure that there is enough care, that perhaps the hospitals are rebuilt? What should the Congress be doing to help ensure that? 

Dr. GREEN. Well, I think there has to be a coordinated plan, and 

that really has to be integrated through all the sectors. You can’t 

isolate health care without housing and agriculture and micro finance and all the components. There was a very feeble system that 

was there before that really was not effective, and so in Port-auPrince right now we have moved into a preexisting community hospital. We have strengthened it, and we are running as a critical 

care hospital. It is the only one in the country. 

There is a network of regional community hospitals, most of 

which are run by NGOs, and there is also national hospitals. They 

are underequipped and understaffed. There needs to be a national 

plan for public health and there needs to be a national plan for 

critical care and rehabilitation, and what Project Medishare is 

doing is creating a public/private partnership to create a national 

net work of critical care and trauma centers in disaster response 

so this never happens again. 

But it is not going to be Ministry of Health. It is in partnership 

with the Ministry under the government’s control, but it is a foundation that will be self-sustaining through a catastrophic insurance 

plan, and this is what we need—sustainable systems, because if 

you create, if you build hospitals, how do you sustain them? How 

do you fund them? And this is why we are looking to the private 

sector to partnership with the public sector to create the income 

necessary to support the public mission. I think that is the clue. 

Mr. ENGEL. Do you think that the prioritization has been wrong? 

Do you think that the health care needs have been pushed down 

in the scale in terms of the international community response, or 

do you think that it has been adequate and that it is moving along 

fairly well? 

Dr. GREEN. You asked the wrong person. It is really unfair, because the formulas for countries like ours where the GNP is say 

maybe 4 percent health care, but in Haiti there is no infrastructure. So when they take 4 percent of the reconstruction money, it 

is a joke because there is no hospitals, there is not one hospital in 

Haiti except our with a ventilator, with oxygen in the walls, with 

sterile operating rooms for $10 million. So it has to be a balance 

of community health along with specialized center, and I can tell 

you in the central plateau, which is the most isolated part of Haiti, 

we serve over 100,000 Haitian citizens in a very isolated area for 

less than $10 a year per person, child birth through geriatrics. We 

have a model. We have to fund that model in cooperation with the 

government, the ministry and the NGOs working together. 

98

Mr. ENGEL. Amazing, you do amazing work, and we are all grateful to you for it. Thank you. 

Let me ask Mr. Reckford. Cheryl Mills said at the State Department on the 6th-month anniversary that the international community has pledged about 125,000 shelters which would cover about 

6,000 people. Now we know we have the onset of the hurricane season. It is coming soon. So how quickly can these temporary shelters 

be built, and what will happen to the hundreds of thousands of others who will not be able to move into a structurally sound shelter? 

Mr. RECKFORD. I think capacity is ramping up quickly. It is certainly slower than we or anyone else would like. Due to the core 

issue, and I think there is starting to be attention on it, is really 

the land issue. So what is the system for titling land, allocating 

land, and providing for secure tenure for families so as we put 

them in? 

I think there are going to be two types of shelters, transitional 

shelters that could be moved or reused or recycled, and then our 

preference where there land issues would be upgradable transitional shelters that actually can be turned into permanent housing 

ideally. 

I think the shelters are designed—the ones we are building are 

designed to withstand 100-mile-an-hour winds, so they would help 

in a Category 1 plus hurricane, and then realistically we are stockpiling emergency materials in the case of a more devastating hurricane to be able to support families, but it is a huge issue and the 

faster we can get land issues, I think, as well as the supply chain 

of materials the faster Habitat and other groups can ramp up their 

production. 

Mr. ENGEL. Let me ask anyone on the panel who would care to 

answer. Can you describe the bottlenecks to improving shelter such 

as land and building materials, supply chain constraints, and how 

the U.S. Government is working to address this issue? How do you 

envision a robust repair program for existing damaged homes that 

will help to accelerate the transition? Anybody would care to comment based on your experience. 

Mr. WORTHINGTON. You asked a very tough question, and the 

roadblocks are in many places. It goes from getting goods through 

customs to other issues. You mentioned the roads earlier. If you 

had to make a new road through Port-au-Prince, you would have 

to displace people; the ability of the government to make decisions 

that then are actually implemented on the ground is constrained. 

There are decisions made at the Presidential level but it is very difficult since there is such poor infrastructure, I believe to carry out 

those decisions it took 7–8 weeks just to identify the first piece of 

land where you could move people from some of the camps. 

There is a recognition that this needs to change, and in many 

ways it reflects the fact, unfortunately, that the key people in the 

Ministry of Planning were killed during the earthquake. Also it is 

not just the challenge of the government in doing this. It is the 

ability of the international community to help people, as Dr. Shah 

mentioned, to move back into some of these houses that are green, 

and to reconstruct the ones that are yellow. 

There is a significant psychological challenge that the people of 

Haiti face. The number of individuals who say, ‘‘I do not want a 

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concrete roof over my head’’ is enormous. So even though there are 

good houses, you have people living in tents outside those houses 

because they are afraid to move in. One of the good things about 

transitional shelters is they are wood and you do not have that psychological barrier. But to be very candid, we are talking years here, 

and it is going to be a slow process because you have both the psychological, bureaucratic and capacity issues that stand in the way 

of making this idea a solution. 

Mr. ENGEL. I will give Ms. Nuri a chance to answer that, but I 

also want to throw out this question: How about the people there? 

You know, when I was there in March I was amazed at how eventempered the people seemed to be. You did not see anybody with 

rage. People seemed to welcome us. We were one of the first groups 

to come. I thought, my goodness, there are so many people out on 

the street with nothing to do, no house to return to, no job to go 

to. You know, you wonder why there wouldn’t be some kind of a 

riot or whatever. I was just amazed. 

Is that the situation now or are people starting to just get fed 

up and feel hopeless and starting to feel outraged? Mr. Jean-Louis, 

did you want to——

Mr. JEAN-LOUIS. Well, I just got back from Haiti about 2 weeks 

ago, and I could really start to see a little change in peoples’ attitudes. They started to be a little bit fed up. Not all of them because 

for some people it is a good way to escape or even deeper poverty 

because they have a space in some of the tents, which is hard to 

say, but it is a reality for some of them. But yes, I am really afraid 

that we might have more acts of aggressions coming up as I mentioned earlier because of the hurricane season that is coming up 

and also the election that is coming up in November. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you. Mr. Worthington, did you want to——

Mr. WORTHINGTON. One of the things our community did is we 

actually pushed quite hard for the White House to maintain the 

U.S. military presence down there longer, and usurping nonprofits 

and military. In this case we had tremendous cooperation with the 

U.S. military in terms of security, and we are seeing that security 

as the situation unfolds. I think Mr. Jean-Louis has phrased it 

well. You have a resilient, patient, very capable people. We had an 

individual a week after the earthquake whose sole focus was on 

Haitian civil society. There is a pent-up capacity in lots of local 

Haitian organizations that is not being tapped, and unfortunately 

that inability to have an effective conversation with government 

from Haitian civil society does lead to a significant anger. 

It is student groups, it is peasant groups, it is associations of 

lawyers—this is a society with lots of associations that got 

critiqued as the ‘‘NGO community’’ of Haiti. There needs to be a 

better dialogue with those groups because, unfortunately, they are 

an escape valve that could result in violence in a relatively near 

future, particularly around the election. 

Mr. ENGEL. Ms. Nuri. 

Ms. NURI. I wanted to address your first question about moving 

forward. We have all sat here on the panel and many of us have 

said that the Haitian Government needs to step up and be able to 

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ernment, it has translated to only a pittance of the money that has 

been given actually going to the Haitian Government. The Haitian 

Government is operating with very little funds. We have admitted 

that only 3–5 percent of the money is given out at all, and that 

money has been given to major corporations in this country and 

around the world and not to the Haitian Government or any assistance in building their capacity to take care of this. 

That has also translated to a point where the grass root leadership, the civil society organizations are also on the ground, also not 

getting the funds they need to build. So if we are looking to the 

government and we are looking for the civil society organizations 

in Haiti to step up and lead as the United States and as people 

of good conscious, we should also look at how are they being funded, how are we supporting them in order for them to step up and 

lead. 

We also have no evidence and history that the Haitian people are 

going to be anything different than they already are. They are very 

good natured. We have worked with them. Mrs. Waters can probably testify to this more than me, that the people of Haiti want to 

go to work, they want to build their country, and they want the 

world community to help them do this themselves, not us, as Mr. 

Fairbanks testified to, come in and do it for them. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you. Mr. Fairbanks. 

Mr. FAIRBANKS. Thank you. Poverty is not just low purchasing 

power. Poverty destroys hopes and aspirations, and that combined 

with indigenous belief systems and a history of disempowerment 

means there is not a lot of self-determination, there is not a lot of 

optimism about the future. What you see in the streets, in my 

view, is people who are moving along just to get along like they always have. They have never had a lot of optimism about their future, and nothing has really changed. 

There is a second factor that can’t be avoided here which was—

Dr. Shah mentioned the rate of diarrheal diseases has gone down 

because the rate of fresh water has gone up. A lot of food has gone 

up. In fact, and this is a little bit of a difficult thing to say, but 

a lot of the 11⁄2 million people who have been displaced, their lives 

have improved. 

Now, people are going to resent that statement, but to the point 

where people from remote villages are sending relatives into the 

camps to live because of the access to water, nutrition and medical 

care. Part of what you are seeing is that the emergency response 

has dramatically improved the lives of some, not a trivial portion 

of the population. 

When our underresponsibility phase kicks in, because we are already delivering less food to the people and even less medical care 

than a few months ago, that is when we are going to see a restive 

population get very angry. That is when we will begin to point fingers, and that is when things will begin to deteriorate at a higher 

rate. 

Mr. ENGEL. I am going to go to Mr. Mack, but Ms. Nuri quickly 

raised her hand. I don’t know, Dr. Green, did you? I didn’t notice. 

Okay, yes, I am going to give the two of them a chance to respond, 

and then I will call on Mr. Mack. 

101

Ms. NURI. I think that what Mr. Fairbanks just addressed is 

wrong. I think that the people of Haiti—in TransAfrica, we know 

from our research that the people are not living better than they 

were living before. People are living in camps because their homes 

fell down. A lot of people are coming back into Port-au-Prince because we need to address that issue of decentralization. Thousands 

upon thousands of Haitian left after the earthquake to go to their 

homes, their heritage homes, but there was no aid there. There 

was no water there. There was no medical care there. So they came 

back to Port-au-Prince. They are stuck in Port-au-Prince because 

there is nothing—we have not put aid outside. We had no roads. 

We don’t have medical care. There is no water outside of Port-auPrince. 

And for the statement that Haitians don’t want to have a concrete roof over their heads, there is no proof that those homes are 

going to sustain them, and the fact that Haitians would rather live 

in camps is offensive. It is not true. It is not true from any research 

or any NGOs that we have worked with on the ground there or 

even the people we have come to this country to testify before this 

Congress. 

We have got to figure out how to assist Haitians in decentralization. Government, economies, jobs, health have to be outside of the 

city of Port-au-Prince in order to effectively talk about rebuilding 

Haiti or building Haiti to be a better Haiti. 

Mr. ENGEL. Dr. Green. 

Dr. GREEN. I agree with Ms. Nuri, and I think that the problem 

is our Government, our nation means well, sends water. We send 

food. But at the end of the day they are worse off because we do 

it for all the socio-economic reasons that were mentioned earlier. 

What we need to do, what we talk about teaching the fishermen 

to fish, not giving you fish, and if we don’t wake up this time and 

create jobs and opportunities and schools, and make people buy 

their housing with micro finance, let them earn their housing. In 

the DR, tens of thousands of houses were built 10 years ago. They 

are all trashed because they were given to people who needed shelter. There has to be a coordination between all the sectors, health 

care and education, and industry, agriculture, micro finance, sanitation, and that is what we need to do right. We had better learn 

because we have never had it right before. I really believe that. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Dr. Green. Mr. Mack. 

Mr. MACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank again 

everyone on the panel for your insight, and as I listened there was 

some common themes and there was obviously some points where 

there was some disagreement, but I think those are good things, 

and we might not appreciate some of the terminology that one uses 

in trying to make a point, but what I think I heard is that we need 

to be careful that we don’t create a permanent camp; that we have 

to, and I think Mr. Fairbanks was trying to get to that, that we 

are not creating a permanent camp. 

I was struck early on by, and I know I am going to butcher your 

name so I am sorry, Jean-Louis, and because of your unique position in the world to hear the heartfelt testimony something struck 

me very clear through all of the testimony, starting with yours, and 

that is, there is a basic security, human rights issue that if we do 

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not handle, if we do not get control of will be a cancer to any reconstruction and any long-term recovery and growth for Haiti, and I 

do believe that there is a role for the United States to play, and 

so I would ask you, and don’t answer it yet because I want to get 

through some of these points, and then I will let—but I am going 

to ask you, will the people of Haiti see if the United States more 

active in security and some of these human rights, will the people 

of Haiti see that as the United States overstepping, or will the people of Haiti see that as a welcomed offer from the United States? 

The other thing that I heard is that we really need to rely or 

bring in—make sure that the Government of Haiti is the key player in whether it is the basic needs of security, human rights, to the 

reconstruction with homes, shelter, food, water, hospitals, education, or to the long-term planning of how to help Haiti then become—I should say take advantage of what we all know to be inherent in all of Haiti, and that is, hard working people who want 

to provide for themselves. 

So another thing I think the United States could play a lead role 

in is coordination, helping set a structure where we don’t necessarily lead it, but to create a structure where all of the different 

elements can come together and you get out of this bureaucracy 

mud. It just stops everything, and I hope to have the opportunity 

to talk with the chairman, maybe there is a way we can work together to create this kind of framework to allow all this to happen. 

So, again, I break this down into the basic necessities of human 

rights and security has to be one of the first things that we tackle. 

The reconstruction, and I will say this, that I think if people who 

have lived through hurricanes or lived through earthquakes, there 

is a psychological toll that it takes. I can see people saying, I don’t 

want to go back in a structure with a concrete roof. That doesn’t 

mean I do not want to have a place to live, but it means that I 

don’t want to put myself in a place where that roof could come 

down crumbling on top of my head. I definitely see there is a psychological thing there. 

And then the long-term approach to helping Haiti realize its 

dreams, and the real frustrating part of this is all of this has to 

happen at the same time, and this is a challenge of monumental 

proportion without the help of all of you, without this committee 

and the Congress recognizing its role, without the people of Haiti, 

this will not happen. And so I am going to put it out there as a 

statement. I would like to hear from you, Mr. Jean-Louis—I am 

trying, I am trying, and then maybe we can go down and you can 

just give a quick kind of thoughts on what I have laid out. Thank 

you. 

Mr. JEAN-LOUIS. Thank you very much for the question, and 

Haiti has always been in a situation where Haiti needed help, and 

when I say ‘‘always,’’ I am probably referring the past 200 years, 

since their independence. Now the situation which just devastate 

Haiti on January 12th is a situation that nobody could actually 

foresee and think about. 

Would Haiti feel that the United States is afraid if they come 

and help? No, I don’t think so because before the earthquake Haiti 

has been asking for help, been crying for help, you know, however 

possible way. We just have to be careful in how we help Haiti. It 

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is a small island and it is right next door. We don’t have a lot of 

internal problems in Haiti. We don’t have any religion problems, 

any wars. We are just a group of people that are looking for a better situation, and something that I never understood as a Haitian 

is how difficult is that to actually have such a small nation that 

is located just a couple of hours away from America. 

I think all Haitians would be more than happy to be helped, but 

I think Haitians always will love to keep their dignity, and will 

love to let people know that, you know, they mean something to the 

world regardless of all the bad situation that has happened to 

Haiti. As you must know, you know, we went through the worst 

catastrophe from hurricanes, to earthquakes, to political unrest 

and so on. 

So, no, I think we are dealing with a nation that is just ready 

and waiting for help, for real help, and that is why most people 

here are a bit stunned by the reaction of the Haitians after the 

earthquake. It is true there has not been too much violence really 

compared to the level of devastation, so that tells you a lot about 

the Haitian spirit. So, yes, we need the help but we need the proper help. 

Mr. WORTHINGTON. Thank you, Congressman Mack, for your 

question, and the challenge for a U.S. nonprofit, and we always use 

this term ‘‘NGO,’’ you have this mission. You have various different 

missions and the bottom line is you want to keep people alive. You 

want to educate, you want to provide safe places for children in 

camps. You want to distribute food, but at the same time you do 

not want to become an obstacle to rebuilding, and that ultimately 

even though our members are 95 percent staffed by Haitians, it is 

ultimately a rebuilding process of a nation. And that solution, and 

I am listening to this whole panel here, even through different people, it is the combination of all of these things. 

It is greater government capacity. We must have the private sector and so forth. You must have Haitian civil society, and at least 

for some time you are going to have international nonprofits—

whether it is working through church groups or other groups—as 

part of this solution. Right now there is sort of a scramble for resources. As I mentioned, all these private resources have not gotten 

there. But on average, if you look across our communities, about 

92 cents on the dollar tends to actually be distributed in-country. 

I am nervous, and I have heard this about the long run. Will these 

long-term pledges by government actually come through because 

this will take time? The Haitian people absolutely have the right 

to be very annoyed if they are still in camps a year from now and 

the international community has moved on, or 2 years from now. 

Attention needs to be maintained over time. 

Ultimately it is about the faith of the community to rebuild itself, 

and our role as international actors is to do what we can to facilitate that, but there are clear contradictions and challenges between 

the imperative to keep someone alive and slowly doing less in 

camps because you don’t want people there forever, and the ability 

to rebuild, and that rebuilding inevitably is slower than what you 

could do in terms of feeding, sheltering, and providing support in 

a camp, and that is clearly not an adequate solution for the Haitian 

people and their human rights. Thank you. 

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I must apologize to the chairman. Unfortunately, as I had mentioned earlier, I do have to leave at this point, and thank you very 

much for this opportunity. 

Mr. ENGEL. Yes, thank you, Mr. Worthington. Thank you. Mr. 

Reckford. 

Mr. RECKFORD. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

I would just reiterate. I believe sort of a common theme is all of 

these pieces are needed. We desperately need shelter, we need all 

the other services. It is going to start ultimately though with economic development. People need jobs, and if they have jobs they 

can then—they can pay for shelter. They can pay for the other 

things they need, and so I want to go back to what we really need 

is the encomia roadmap and the acceleration. 

Even if it is not all done, there needs to be clarify around where 

the major infrastructure investments are going to go because we 

don’t want to build permanent housing unless we know there is 

going to be an economic base to support the families in those. So 

before decentralization is going to work we need to know where the 

major investments and infrastructure are going to go. So the sooner 

there is the land planning, both for the economy as well as for 

housing for families, the faster those pieces can move. So even if 

not all the economic development happens, even the commitments 

and the knowledge that it will be coming, allows more actors to develop housing and allows the private sector to begin to invest which 

there is no structure now for the private sector to really come in 

and make investments in Haiti. 

Dr. GREEN. I am sorry Mr. Worthington left, but I was shocked 

when he said 92 percent of the dollars have landed in Haiti. I 

would like to guess it is about the opposite of that. He is not here 

but if anyone else has evidence that 90 percent of the billions of 

dollars raised are in Haiti, it is sure invisible. 

I think what is needed, you talk about security, that is a big 

issue, and the United Nations has been inadequate. They have 

army soldiers and heavy armored equipment with flack jackets and 

helmets. There is no armies to fight in Haiti. We need to develop 

a Haitian police force that is professional. We need to get rid of the 

armed forces and bring in United Nations police to instruct the 

Haitian police force and pay them adequately so there is integrity, 

professionalism. They don’t have bullets for their guns. They don’t 

have computers. They don’t have jails. They don’t have a court system. So all these things are essential. 

But development needs to be multi-sector. It needs to be integrated. There is no sense in me putting in a hospital if there is not 

a factory. There is no sense putting houses if there is not agricultural. We built a factory in the plateau called Achamill that mills 

grains and beans, and micro nutrients. That is what is needed, the 

economic engine. My farmers in the plateau, you say selling food? 

They cannot even raise enough, they don’t have a tractor. They 

can’t even raise enough to eat. So you have to first level it from 

a substance crop to a cash crop so they can pay for their houses 

through micro finance. 

This is the integrated development, community development, bottoms up. That is what is going to be successful in Haiti, and they 

deserve it, and they deserve it now. Thank you. 

105

Ms. NURI. I want to agree with Mr. Reckford that we need jobs, 

that the Haitian people need jobs, and we have to make sure that 

they have decent wages and labor protections. A job for the sake 

of a job is not going to serve the community or the economy or the 

future of Haiti. So to make sure that there are labor protections 

in place when there are factories or in any other place where they 

have a job. 

The panel is discussing wonderful, very large, lofty solutions, but 

there are some things that can happen on the ground right now 

that Congress can put in place, and Mr. Shah can correct immediately. One of them would be to include Haitians in the United 

Nations coordinating rebuilding efforts. There are cluster meetings 

that are happening daily that are being translated into French and 

English, that are not being translated into Kreyol, and Haitians by 

and large are not invited to or not even allowed into those meetings. So if you want Haitians to be part of the solution they should 

be part of the meetings where the solutions are being crafted, and 

the language they speak should be translated. That is something 

that could be corrected immediately. 

The security precautions and zoning systems have stopped aid 

organizations from having an effect the way they need because 

many of the international NGOs continue to use security protocols 

which limit their movement throughout Port-au-Prince, including 

measures to have them have direct interaction with Haitians and 

be able to evaluate their own programs. 

There is a zone system by which they cannot go into certain 

areas because of security protocols that have been set up in ancient 

times that Mr. Shah can break down right now and allow agencies 

to really get into these camps, really see what is going on, make 

sure that adequate food and water is being delivered every single 

day. Those are things that we can correct immediately. 

The other thing is the international organizations, including 

USAID, have such strenuous and lengthy accounting and auditing 

requirements that local groups simply do not have the capacity to 

compete or the process the proper paperwork. They are being asked 

for 3 years of audited receipts in order to become a contractor, and 

beyond the fact that there was an earthquake so how would you 

find your receipts, the process in Haiti is not the same as here, so 

you are asking—we are asking contractors or people who could step 

in and help in Haiti to live up to unrealistic standards of how you 

get the contract. 

Those are things that we can fix right now. Everything the panel 

has talked about has to be addressed, and as you said, Mr. Mack, 

it has to be addressed immediately. But the things I just listed can 

be corrected in a moment by Mr. Shah’s office and by members of 

this committee. 

Mr. FAIRBANKS. Thank you. The world met in March at the 

United Nations and I was there, and I made a list of the platitudes 

that were spoken at the time. I will read you a few of them: We 

need to build the engines for progress and prosperity. We cannot 

accept business as usual. It is tempting to fall back on old habits 

and the requisite is essential that Haiti take ownership in the rebuilding effort. 

106

We have not made progress on any of those, and that was in 

March. What we have done very well, while the world was looking 

at Haiti, is connected it to global networks of charity, aid, debt forgiveness, and sentimentality. That is what we have connected it to. 

One of the world’s greatest economists in history, Pope John Paul 

II said, ‘‘Poverty is the exclusion from networks of productivity, investment, and trade.’’ Pope John Paul said that. What are we doing 

to connect the Haitian people to networks of productivity, investment and trade? 

I can tell you right now an NGO collected $600 million in a campaign to help Haiti and hasn’t dispersed a single dollar. What is 

happening is that USAID is preaching the benefits of decentralization, but cannot hire a non-American consultant to go down and 

work in Haiti even though the Colombians understand a lot more 

about post-earthquake recovery than we do. They cannot hire a 

commercial consultant from the Dominican Republic even though 

they know how to grow things and sell things from the island, and 

we don’t. 

Congresswoman Waters talked about budget support for Haiti. 

There should be no debate for this. We should provide budget support for Haiti. But USAID, to its eternal shame, has constructed 

a parallel decision-making government in every country in the 

world in which it works. They have duplicated and created a parallel decision-making structure and won’t have anything to do with 

the decision makers in the host countries. That is just wrong, and 

we are the only major power to do that. Japan gets it right and 

America gets it wrong. Sorry. 

Ms. NURI. Venezuela. 

Mr. FAIRBANKS. And Venezuela gets it right. Maybe that is the 

only thing they get right. 

Budget support is a really good idea. If we trust the Haitians, we 

should provide it. If we don’t trust it, why are we giving them 

money anyway? 

Finally, what I would say is that we need to find the indigenous 

innovators in that country in the sector, find out who they are, how 

they do what they do, and give them rocket fuel. There is a list of 

the world’s best entrepreneurs in Haiti. They would all be billionaires if they were raised in America. They know how to employ 

people. They pay taxes. They don’t pollute the environment. This 

doesn’t sound like the Haitian private sector that gets all the news, 

but they are there, and we need to find them and we need to give 

them rocket fuel. 

We need to look at the indigenous social entrepreneurs. I hate 

that term, I regret using it, but find the indigenous ones, find out 

how they do what they do, and give them rocket fuel. 

I am going to say something contentious again, but I am going 

to pick on myself and not on anybody else, because maybe that will 

make it more palatable. The only people that are really benefitting 

from the way that we structured aid all over the world, especially 

in Haiti, are people like me. I am getting richer. Because of the oligopolistic structure that has been set up to favor me, I am the one 

that is doing well in this environment, not the people that we 

espouse to be helping. 

107

Ms. BALLIETTE. Thank you, Congressman Mack. I would like to 

go back to one of your comments. 

You did talk about the trauma in Haiti and I would like to just 

come back to that for a minute because we should not forget it is 

a traumatized country, and that includes all the people living 

there: The people who work in CRS who are there who started 

working immediately in the earthquake relief but were in fact traumatized. Members of the government and all the other organizations working there, that does affect what is going on right now, 

and we should not forget it. When we wonder why things are not 

moving more quickly, more smoothly, there are things to be done 

better, but we have to remember that underlying trauma that you 

don’t necessarily see. You are walking down the streets. I know 

many of you have been to Haiti as I have. You see people getting 

back to life, getting back to work, buying things in the market, but 

inside there is a trauma that they are still trying to overcome, and 

that does affect your ability to plan for the long term. We see that 

in all devastated countries, your ability to really think long term 

and make those decisions in your own lives that will affect your 

long-term prosperity. 

Going back, I think, to what the U.S. Government can do, I think 

there have been a lot of good ideas here. I think, in general, it has 

to do with listening. What is it that the Haitian Government is 

asking of us that we can do to help them? 

When we talked about shelter earlier there is a process that the 

government is rolling out in coordination with the U.N. and with 

NGOs to identify the houses that can be repaired, to classify them, 

to determine what needs to be done, to go back and verify that the 

work has been done well. There is a process now for that that we 

need to follow up on, but for that to move quickly perhaps there 

are more experts that need to be there. Perhaps there is more work 

to be done on the building codes, and perhaps there are experts 

from this country who can provide additional assistance if the Government of Haiti is asking for it. 

Finally, I think in terms of funding, this has been mentioned, 

there is the flexibility factor. The more that can be done to be flexible the better we all will be, the more creative we can be in our 

solutions to resolve the problems that exists now. Thank you. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you. Before I call on Mr. Payne, I just want 

to acknowledge the presence of the former chairman of the full 

committee, Congressman Gillman, and we thank you for being 

here. You can see Congressman Gillman over there. You can see 

is portrait in the middle over here. I actually think you look better 

now than you did then, Ben, but we are always happy to have you 

come back and visit us, so thank you for your presence. 

Mr. Payne. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much, and I, too, had the privilege 

to serve under Mr. Gillman as the chairman, and it is good to see 

him again, and he is with us every time we meet because his picture is there watching us. 

Let me say that we talked about the heavy roofs and that people 

are reluctant in Haiti now to deal with them. As you know, because 

hurricanes were the problem in Haiti as we all know, it was felt 

that you need a strong roof because the roofs are what are deVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:56 Sep 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00111 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\WH\072910\57689 HFA PsN: SHIRL
108

stroyed in hurricanes. And so since there has been no earthquake 

for over 100 years no one thought earthquake, and therefore the 

heavy roofs, which have become so devastating in the earthquake 

now create a dilemma because then people have to decide do we 

try to prevent hurricane resistance or is it the possibility of an 

earthquake and this coming down. So that is just a sidebar that 

is going through the mines of some of the people in Haiti. 

I think, secondly, the U.N. clusters that have been kind of exclusive that pairs with the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission 

having representatives, they have deputies, they have senators, 

they have local people on, I think that those days, the first 6 

months, problems of exclusion and confusion and, you know, this 

has been the most devastating tragedy to happen anywhere in the 

world if you take it to scale. 

And so I think that with the new—the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission, some of those, hopefully, probably that have occurred in this first 6 months will be dealt with which several of you 

mentioned, and I could not agree with you more. 

Thirdly, I think that Mr. Fairbanks brings out a very good point, 

that the possibility for Hispaniola as an island to move forward you 

are absolutely correct. The wages are going up around the world. 

China is starting to have strikes. The DR getting to be a middle 

income country, and so the possibility of tying Haitian labor with 

the possibility of a growth on the island is great, and I agree with 

Ms. Nuri that we certainly have to have labor rights and to try to 

have an expanded wage, but I think that can certainly be, or expand on an incremental basis. 

However, I do think that the opportunity is right. As you know, 

the DR has had a history that they talk about the occupation of 

Haiti more than they do about the occupation of the Spanish. They 

remember their independence from Haiti over there and their independence from the colonial powers. So as we know the history on 

Hispaniola during that period before was a very tough, ugly history 

that the Dominicans was one of the problems between the two 

countries. 

I think that currently the new President Fernandez in a recent 

meeting that we have had with him with members of the Congressional Black Caucus led by Congressman Rangle talked about 

wanting to extend their hand to Haiti to be more helpful, and as 

a matter of fact they were fairly helpful, showing a new relationship and respect and cooperation between the DR and Haiti. So if 

that can be built on with the new leadership in the DR, not new 

but relatively new, and with the elections coming up in Haiti, I 

think that if we do some focusing it could be to see how we can 

marry the two, where they can both prosper, continue to prosper, 

and I think that we may be ready for a new day, and that is where 

efforts that I am going to try to expend, would how can you, you 

are one island, you know, how can the two of you work together 

to benefit both of you. 

Just a question. With the elections, Mr. Jean-Louis, there will be 

two elections as you know, the elections for deputies and senators 

will supposedly be in November of this year, Presidential election 

is not this year. Presidential elections will be held between February or May 2011. These two elections are not at the same time. 

109

One of the problems today is that the entire deputies have expired, two-thirds of the senators have expired, leaving only onethird of the governance. One, how do you see, if you are that familiar or anyone else, how do you see the elections working out? Do 

you think the peoples’ mindset is there for elections? To your 

knowledge, has the registration been completed? And thirdly, is it 

true that Lavalas is excluded from the elections, and if they are, 

who is excluding them? I mean, who can exclude them? The President? What is going on there? Maybe you can——

Mr. Jean-Louis. Well, as an artist, I always try to stay away 

from politics. 

Mr. PAYNE. Okay, that is a good point. 

Mr. JEAN-LOUIS. I come to witness, you know, to testify about the 

situation in Haiti and hopefully by me testifying will be able to 

help the country. I might have ideas on some of your questions but 

I prefer not to——

Mr. PAYNE. Okay. Well, since you are the only Haitian there, 

that is why I asked you the question. But if you are an artist, and 

prefer to keep it in that vein, that is fine. 

Anyone else like to comment on any of those issues? Yes, Mr. 

Fairbanks. 

Mr. Fairbanks. Nobody has any idea who the next President is 

going to be and no one has any idea who is even running in the 

election. There is one thing that is clear, which is President Preval 

will choose someone and that person will have the highest probability of success, and that President Preval will remain in the 

background exerting a very strong influence in the next term. 

Ms. NURI. And Mr. Payne, the Lavalas has been excluded by the 

CEP, which is in temporary form now. The constitution calls for a 

permanent panel to be appointed, but has not yet. So Lavalas has 

been excluded from the ballot by the official election panel. 

Mr. PAYNE. You know, we do try not to interfere with the politics 

of countries, but do you know of U.S. policy or suggestions about 

the CEP about exclusion of political party? If you are going to have 

a democratic elections, you know, like I say, it is a sovereign country so we cannot go in and say you have got to have these particular parties allowed to be on the ballot. However, if we are talking about democracy, we certainly should say, you know, an open 

democratic election is really what we want. Of course, like I say, 

you are a sovereign state and we cannot demand that you do anything. 

Ms. NURI. Well, sir, I don’t know of any official U.S. delegation 

that has gone and said this to Mr. Preval or to the board of the 

CEP. I don’t know of any official U.S. request that Lavalas be put 

onto the ballot, but we do know in TransAfrica that there have 

been lots of Haitians in the diaspora who have gone on and said 

Lavalas must be included in order for it to be a fair election. 

We do know the largest political party in Port-au-Prince is 

Lavalas, so it would sort of be like most of the people not having 

their party represented on the ballot, so it will present some sort 

of problem. From what I understand, and this is anecdotal, I don’t 

know anything official, that the reason Lavalas was left off the ballot is because Mr. Aristide was not in the country. But I only know 

110

that as an anecdotal thing. I don’t know that officially. I have not 

read that from CEP at all. 

But at this point officially Lavalas is not on the ballot for either 

one of the elections. 

Mr. ENGEL. I am going to let Mr. Reckford answer and then we 

are going to move on because we are told there is going to be a series of votes very soon, and I want to give everyone who is up here 

a chance to ask questions. So Mr. Reckford, and then I will call on 

Ms. Lee. 

Mr. RECKFORD. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Actually, I would ask your 

forbearance. I have to leave and head to the airport, but I want to 

thank you for the opportunity to joint the committee today, and for 

your interest in this critical issue, and certainly would ask continued U.S. Government support, particularly around these issues of 

land because if they are not resolved then we won’t see economic 

development or housing get solved. But thank you for the chance 

to be with you today. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Mr. Reckford. Ms. Lee. 

Ms. LEE. Thank you very much. Once again, Chairman Engel, 

thank you for this very important hearing and thank all of you for 

being here. 

I wanted, first, Ms. Nuri with TransAfrica, thank you so much. 

I want to thank Danny Glover and Nicole, and I have seen them 

all the time when I am in Haiti. 

Ms. NURI. Yes. 

Ms. LEE. Sean Penn, and they are even before the earthquake, 

I mean, TransAfrica has continued to lead and to really be there 

even below the radar but doing such wonderful work. I just wanted 

to pursue this whole issue of Lavalas not being on the ballot or not 

being part of the election. What is the rationale and reason, the 

stated reason for that? 

Secondly, and I will just ask all my question, and then you can 

respond, to Mrs.—is it Balliette? 

Ms. BALLIETTE. Balliette. 

Ms. LEE. You are right, everyone, anyone would be traumatized 

after what has happened in Haiti, and I wanted to just ask you 

about the mental health services, how you see that in Haiti, and 

if there are enough mental health services, are they culturally appropriate, and do we know what we need to do on the mental 

health front? 

And then to Dr. Green, I just want to ask you as it relates to 

HIV and AIDS. Of course, Haiti has the highest incidence, you 

know, in the Caribbean of HIV and AIDS. Has PEPFAR responded? Are people getting their anti-retroviral drugs? Prevention 

and treatment, is that still on the table given such trauma that 

people are experiencing such dislocation? Are the distribution of 

condoms, is testing available? Could you just give us a sense of how 

you see the whole HIV/AIDS strategy as it relates to now having 

to move forward from such a disaster? 

Okay, we can start with you, Dr. Green, and then Ms. Nuri, and 

then Ms. Balliette. 

Dr. GREEN. Thank you. I will take a little shot on the mental 

health area because I have been working if that is okay. 

Ms. LEE. That is fine. 

111

Dr. GREEN. The fact is if you look at all the allied health professionals, if you take medicine, doctors, physicians and nursing aside, 

and you look at psychologists, social workers, physical therapists, 

recreational therapist, prosthetist, all the different people that we 

take for granted in this country, there are no real professional 

schools in Haiti, so there is a very small workforce. 

I think the psychology association, I spoke with them after the 

earthquake had about 30 members for 10 million people. So the 

whole cycle of social, the traumatic stress that has occurred, all the 

people that are traumatized and really hurt by this earthquake 

have few resources. There are groups, NGOs that are working with 

the government to try and bring in the workforce, but you really 

need to train bottoms up psycho-social type health care workers 

that are going to really interact with the Haitian people and help 

them get out of this crisis. That is part of what we are doing with 

capacity building. We are setting up training programs for allied 

health professionals that did not exist before the earthquake. 

The second issue, I have to tell you, this is some good news. HIV 

and resistant TB in Haiti is much better treated than in the 

United States. There is not a country in the world that has a more 

effective record thanks to Bill Path, Paul Farmer, all the people 

working in this area of infectious disease. The death rate has plummeted. Triple therapy, which cannot be afforded by many people in 

this country and in Europe, is given there. There are wonderful national and regional systems through the Ministry of Health in cooperation with them, and so these people are not dying anymore, 

AZT is given for transmission. There is wonderful programs where 

I work in the plateau, the most isolated area. 

So I have to tell you before the earthquake it was great. The 

earthquake, of course, took away the supply. It took away the community health centers collapsed, the doctors and nurses died. So we 

are in a bit of a bad time right now. A lot of the HIV people treated—the people who have been on treatment have lost their access 

to medications. This is being restored now. 

But I just want to tell you this is one thing we can be proud of 

as cooperating with PEPFAR and this program. It has been very 

effective in Haiti. 

Ms. BALLIETTE. If I could maybe start with that because CRS is 

also implementing AIDS relief in Haiti, and we agree. It was somewhat devastated in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, 

but there was such a strong basis there for that program that we 

were very quickly able to get it back up to speed, and ensure that 

all the people that were enrolled in the program were able to continue to get services. 

We are actually now using the foundation there for our AIDS relief program to roll out larger health institution strengthening with 

the network there, and in coordination with the government and 

the Ministry of Health in Haiti. So I do think there are grounds 

for optimism in the health sector. 

Going back to the trauma and just to agree that the capacity is 

not there. We ourselves brought in some people from actually a 

partner in Karitas Lebanon, to help our own staff to get over the 

trauma or to at least work through parts of it, and we are conVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:56 Sep 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00115 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\WH\072910\57689 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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tinuing to do things like that, but there is not an excess capacity 

on the ground to help the people so desperately need it. 

Ms. LEE. And Ms. Nuri, with regard to just Lavalas, the rationale for Lavalas being excluded, and you heard Dr. Shah’s comment 

on direct budgetary support for the Haitian Government. What is 

TransAfrica’s take on that? 

Ms. NURI. Well, of course, we support direct budgetary support 

for the Haitian Government because our point of view is that because of whatever the reasons are, and I am sure there are some 

historical reasons, a lot of the money that is going into Haiti is not 

even going to the government. So we are making demands on a 

government that isn’t getting international funding at all. 

And even out of the donors conference, there is only a handful 

of countries that have even given money they have promised in sort 

of an appropriations process like we do in this country, and they 

haven’t gotten the money to do the basics of putting together the 

government, let alone moving forward and through an election. 

So we support budgetary support and support for the election 

process with all sorts of guidance that is in my original statement 

that we can get to your office. 

To answer your question about why Lavalas has been excluded 

from the ballot, what we know is that several parties have been excluded from the ballot. We do not know the rationale for why, and 

we can find that out and get it to the committee and get it back 

to your office, in particular, and other members. 

But we also know that the U.N. certified the last election and 

said the voter turnout was only 10 percent. We are not sure if 

there was any connection between that and who got left off the ballot in an official sort of way, but we will find out the answer and 

get back to you. 

Mr. ENGEL. I am going to move on because we have a series of 

five votes coming up and I want to give other members a chance 

to ask questions. I want to acknowledge Representative Sheila 

Jackson Lee. Committee members are here, but I would ask unanimous consent to allow Ms. Waters to ask her questions now since 

she has been here for several hours. So without objection, Ms. Waters, and then we will go on to Ms. Jackson Lee. 

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I certainly 

appreciate the opportunity to come here today and to be able to 

participate, and I would like to thank you for the interest that you 

have shown and your travels to Haiti. I was on one such trip with 

you when we went to DR and to Haiti. I would like to thank all 

the members who have come today to serve as witnesses to help 

us make some determinations about what we can do to be more 

helpful. I would like to thank TransAfrica, Ms. Nuri in particular. 

I served on that board for many years, and at the time our director, 

Randall Robinson, almost died because he went on a hunger strike 

for Haiti, and that was an important moment in the history of our 

relationship with Haiti and what Clinton was able to do following 

those actions. 

For Dr. Green, when I went to Haiti right after the earthquake 

we landed at the airport. I came over in a little private plane. Your 

place was the first place I went to. I just started walking around 

and ended up over at the clinic that you guys had set up, and some 

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of the volunteers kind of brought me over there and I was very appreciative for your ability to respond so quickly, and at that time 

you may have been one of the only emergency operations set up 

dealing with the trauma that was in Port-au-Prince other than 

some other makeshift kinds of things that were going on. So I 

would like to thank all of you for your participation today. 

All of you have talked about the lack of involvement of Haitians 

in decision making, in planning, et cetera, and that is an important 

element that is not involved, and happen to plan for the future of 

Haiti. But let me just ask Ms. Balliette, I think it is, from CRS. 

You guys are on the ground and you are in those cluster meetings, 

but the Haitians are not in the cluster meetings. They can’t get in. 

I wandered around for a few days, and found cluster meetings and 

understood, began to understand how they were organized. Have 

you guys taken any of the local Haitians to the cluster meetings? 

Ms. BALLIETTE. We work very closely with, especially Karitas 

Haiti, but there are also other organizations in Haiti, Haitian organizations that we work with. So because we are implementing together, we might decide, we talk beforehand what are the issues 

for the meetings, what are our implementation——

Ms. WATERS. But that is not my question. What I saw was the 

NGOs had access for the most part, but the people that they were 

helping did not have access. My question to you is if you want to 

break up this business of exclusion, the NGOs who have access 

should be bringing in some of the people that they are working for 

and working with to these meetings. Have you done that? 

Ms. BALLIETTE. Honestly, I can’t say specifically for all of the 

cluster meetings that we participate in whether or not we are 

bringing in specific individuals to those meetings. I can just say 

again the way we work is together with our Haitian partners to 

make sure that what we are doing is involving their voice as much 

as possible. 

Ms. WATERS. Well, I appreciate that and I am not blaming you, 

but I am simply talking about ways that you can be helpful in 

sharing information and helping people to get involved who evidently are excluded from involvement. 

Yes, Dr. Green. Is your microphone on, Dr. Green? 

Dr. GREEN. Yes, I have to tell you that the cluster meetings are 

joke in general. We attend all the different clusters, and we always 

bring Haitian employees who are Haitian nurses or doctors or administrators, whatever is appropriate, but the cluster meetings are 

very ineffective. They last for hours. You don’t talk, you don’t discuss, you listen. You get reports, and so I think we need better 

interagency communication 

And I want to show you, I don’t know if you are aware of this, 

there is a private sector economic forum, and they have met, and 

this is the private sector which represents probably 200,000 Haitian business people, families who want to be part of the solution. 

Ms. WATERS. Excuse me. Is that the one that Juan Henry Saiiant 

is involved with? 

Dr. GREEN. I don’t know, but I know that they came recently to 

meet with Jean Max Bellerieve in Miami, and they have been very 

involved. They have gone to the government and said let us be part 

of the solution. I would be happy to share this report. 

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Ms. WATERS. I would like to see that report. 

Dr. GREEN. But everything you have talked about they want to 

do. They want to open up the airports and the customs and they 

want to engage the people, the masses of people in job creation and 

development, and I think this is going to happen if they are allowed to. 

Ms. WATERS. Well, I think it is a great idea. One of the things 

we need to understand is who they are because, as you know, the 

privileged families that have been basically in control of the economics of Haiti for so long are very exclusionary, and that that 

middle class business person that you are referring to has not been 

really involved in the business development and the economic development of Haiti, and I think that certainly does have to be expanded. 

If I may, because he is going to shut me down in a few minutes, 

let me just say this. NGOs have had a special relationship with 

Haiti for a long time because we sent our money to the NGOs rather than fund the government. It’s part of the history of all of this, 

and that certainly has to change. There has to be a working relationship and cooperation, reporting too, and an understanding of all 

of that. 

Now having said all of that everybody is trying to do something 

good for Haiti in different ways, and it has been expressed here. 

But what you cannot talk about is simply what our fine actor, Mr. 

Jimmy Jean-Louis said, you can’t talk politics. TransAfrica can because that is part of what they do, and understanding how to get 

things done and how governments work. 

There is a governance problem in Haiti, a governance problem. 

When you talk about how are you going to get things built, how 

are you going to create jobs, how are you going to do all of these 

things, that is normally what would be done by the government. 

And until that is solved it is going to be very, very difficult for people to be able to do all that they would want to do. 

Ms. Nuri just talked about the CEP, and what it is and what it 

is not. You want to know why Lavalas is not on the ballot? Because 

if Lavalas was on the ballot they could elect anybody they want to 

elect. It is the biggest party in Haiti, and they think it is still controlled from afar in South Africa by President Bertrand Aristide. 

That is why it is not on the ballot. 

I sent a letter months ago, and others, I think someone from the 

Senate side sent letters, urging them to be sure and allow the political parties to operate and to be on the ballot and operate in a 

democratic way. The CEP determines that and they are picked by 

the President Preval. They are a sovereign nation, and even Bill 

Clinton and others recognize that it is a sovereign country, and you 

cannot just go in and tell people what to do. 

But I am coming to the conclusion that in exchange for support 

that we are going to have to be a little bit more forceful in encouraging certain kinds of things. For example, to stop the delivery of 

food and have food in warehouses and then have television cameras 

from the United States showing kids scraping the bottom of burnt 

pots trying to get a grain of rice while food is stored because there 

is a policy that says you can’t distribute any more food because you 

are displacing the local vendors and merchants. 

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United States could help with that policy and help to show how 

the agencies that are helping can purchase the food from the vendors so that they can continue to earn money and food could be 

given to the people rather than the food simply being purchased 

someplace else and brought in and given to the people, and then 

the government stops it because the merchants get mad at them. 

This has to be worked out, and if we are going to be helpful we 

need to say to President Preval and others we think we can help 

you work this out in ways that will benefit the merchants and will 

benefit the people, and the people won’t have to be hungry. 

The land problem, the land problem is not going to go away by 

itself. First of all, there are questions about who owns it. There are 

records that have been lost and on and on and on. A legislature 

must be empowered, elected, and make some determinations about 

eminent domain and other kinds of things that you do in order to 

have good land use policies. 

We can’t do that, you can’t do that, but we can encourage and 

we can teach and we can have development. And this business 

about the police force, you are absolutely right. No, the United 

States cannot go in there with helmets and guns keeping the peace 

and killing people just as MINUSTAH cannot continue to do what 

they do. We have got to train and develop a local police force, fund 

it and stick with it in the training until they get it, and pay them 

good salaries. 

So some of us are going to focus on governance. Some of us are 

going to talk about what our role is going to be in helping to 

strengthen government. We are not to tell them who to elect. That 

is not our problem. But our problem is to continue to try and work 

with a situation where there is no real government in place, organized in order to facilitate what governments do in the building of 

this infrastructure, et cetera. This is very difficult for everybody. 

I think Mr. Fairbanks is right and this usually happens with a 

lot of poor nations, including Africa. Everybody makes money but 

the people who live there, because by the time all the consultants 

are hired and the different organizations are hiring advisors, et 

cetera, everybody is making money. Even in the Cash for Work 

Program going on right now, I am learning that our USAID is giving money to the contractors. The contractors are paying $1 or $2 

a day, as bad as the exploiters on the ground who have been exploiting labor in Haiti for years and years and years. 

So, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for all of this time you have afforded me and others. We have a lot of work to do. I have decided 

which way I am going with my work. I am going to deal with this 

governance issue and hopefully we can be advisors and supporters 

and help develop a strong government. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Ms. Waters, and thank you for all the 

work, all the good work that you have done involving Haiti for 

years and years as I mentioned before, not just for the earthquake 

but even before. You have truly been a leader and have shown us 

the way. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to join as well, and to follow members who have been 

here to listen to the testimony, and to be able to say ditto in following suit on the direction that many members have taken, inVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:56 Sep 21, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00119 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\WH\072910\57689 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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cluding the detailed explanation and discussion of Congresswoman 

Waters. 

I think that, although many of us have engaged with Haiti on 

many different occasions, many of them volatile as relates to governance, that I want to be hopeful and I want the hopefulness, 

however, to be with a very firm hand because I think if we don’t 

have hope with command and firmness we have nothing. 

I would like to say to the chairman we are an authorizing committee and I would like TransAfrica to answer this question, I, 

frankly, would like to have you really be financially supported by 

our appropriations or authorizing and then appropriations, that 

means we have to move quickly to be of real assistance on the governance issue. All of the points that I have heard just sitting here 

for the few minutes I have happen to be even in the obstacles of 

an earthquake traced back to a government that is not functioning. 

And when you speak to Haitian people and you walk through the 

camps, that is what they say. Maybe in not that term but can 

somebody help us. 

I don’t know, and I realize and let me just say that I acknowledge that the government lost personnel and leaders and parliamentarians, and all of us have offered our deepest sympathy and 

respect. When we were in a meeting with the President and his 

cabinet and staff, one of his high-ranking personnel had lost a son. 

What can you say about that other than to offer your deepest sympathy? 

But as we do that we really need to get boxing gloves on because 

when you have food sitting in a warehouse and you have orphans 

two miles down, around the block, up the street, you really have 

to say this. Mr. whatever dignified public position you have, take 

your feet and a bucket and go to the warehouse, and go back with 

the bucket, a wheelbarrow, the pickup truck, and take it to the 

children. That is government. Government finds a way to respond 

when no one else can. 

What happened with Katrina? They were mad at government because they knew everything else collapsed. They knew that the 

dam went, not the dam but the structure went in their neighborhood. They knew that, you know, they were up to their ears in 

water. They knew that other elements did not work, but they said 

where is the Federal Government? 

So let me ask you about what you could do if financed on the 

governance? Could you lift yourself up, plant yourself down with a 

team to begin to probe what are the fractures of the government 

where you could begin to say if you do this and you do this, you 

could at least get yourself focused on what you are supposed to be 

doing? Maybe moving debris, maybe cleaning up the tents, maybe 

taking half of the tent cities and shutting them down and putting 

people back in their home, which we heard a large percentage 

could be livable if they were fixed? Would you please? 

Ms. NURI. Well, the answer to that question was I work for 

TransAfrica, and the answer is we can do anything if afford it. And 

Haiti has been a mission of the organization for more than 20 

years. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Absolutely. 

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Ms. NURI. We have been on the ground in Haiti through all sorts 

of hurricanes, and political upheaval, and every day, every day we 

have been dedicated to this since January 12, to a point where I 

wake up every morning and the first thing I look for is the latest 

information on what is going on on the ground in Haiti as the organization’s chief of staff. 

The decision about what we can do and how that structure will 

be, my overall answer to you is yes. The detail of that will be 

worked out by the President of our organization, Nicole Lee, and 

our chairman of the Board, Danny Glover. But overall, ma’am, my 

answer to you would be of course we want to be part of this. We 

work very closely with Representative Waters and Representative 

Lee, and with your office and with Mr. Payne’s office, and also with 

Mr. Engel’s office on this issue and others. But I would say that 

we truly want to be a part of making sure that the Haitian Government, the elected Haitian Government is leading Haitian people, 

and that Haitian civil society is advising that government and 

doing it. 

So, whatever TransAfrica can bring to the table to assure that 

for this generation and for future generations because like Dr. 

Green said, this time we have to get it right. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Absolutely. Let me just raise this and then I 

would like the other panelists, thank you so very much, to answer 

my second question. Let me focus in on you just a little bit because 

I would like our chairman, who has been unwielding in his commitment to the Western Hemisphere and his knowledge of Haiti, and 

I thank you, Chairman Engel, for your astuteness and your commitment and passion. Let us be a little more specific and I know 

both of your leaders and they are wonderful people, but let me use 

your genius right now. 

Let us say, for example, here is the detail or not the detail but 

here is the kind of commitment, and I would like the chairman to 

be supportive of TransAfrica because of its familiarity and comfortableness with the people, I, frankly, believe that you need to be 

in essence sort of the box around the contents. The government is 

the contents. If there is a meeting talking about issues of governance and how to get the water on, how to move trash, I think they 

need that kind of close hand involvement. 

Certainly if there is a meeting about this recovery, because of our 

familiarity with how the garbage is supposed to move and how you 

can go to warehouse and get goods, I, frankly, believe that you 

could put a team together that would be able to be part. There are 

a lot of NGOs, and I am not leaving them out, but part of that 

structuring them to be able to put A in front of B in front of C, 

and it is not insulting to them. Could you do that? 

Ms. NURI. Yes, ma’am, and I would say that the leadership on 

that would have to be the Haitian people who actually know it. 

Where the wisdom would come is coming from this government and 

coming from this country that has mastered so many of those many 

items that you have listed and far more. 

But the people on the ground in Haiti, our colleagues on the 

ground there would have to also work with us on the ground to get 

this done. 

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Ms. JACKSON LEE. I would not rule against that, but I would 

hope that they would be in a position that they could work with 

you, but you would have to be in a position to instruct them as 

well. 

Ms. NURI. If what you are asking is do we want to take a leadership role on making sure that Haiti’s governance comes back to 

shape or gets in shape? 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Absolutely. 

Ms. NURI. That the people of Haiti are served? Of course, we will 

accept that role. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Let me ask this question and if all of you 

would answer it, please. I get a sense that there is great movement 

but there is great suffering. I want each of you to tell us in your 

own words the limited time, of course I am putting my framework 

on it, that we have to act before we have catastrophes of major proportion. Can we start with the actor who was there, and thank you 

for your talent, your commitment, and your passion? 

Mr. ENGEL. Let me just say we will go right through to everybody and then we will have to have the last word because we were 

just called for a series of five votes. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. JEAN-LOUIS. Thank you very much. I think we have to act 

now. We have to start acting straight away if I understand your 

question. Once again, I go back to so many problems that I see in 

Haiti, and I always go back to the main one which is the human 

rights, and that is what makes me cry, you know——

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Yes. 

Mr. JEAN-LOUIS [continuing]. To see the entire population living 

under these conditions, what can we do for them, what can we do 

for 1 million peoples sleeping out in the tents. We just need to start 

giving them places to be because we have the hurricane coming up, 

so it is now that we need to act. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you, Mr. Jean-Louis. Doctor? 

Dr. GREEN. I believe that the masses of people in Haiti who have 

directly suffered have had enough. I don’t think there is any time. 

I think we have to show some visible evidence and commitment of 

transparency, and that we are really what we say we are. We are 

Americans who care about what their problems are. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Our presence. 

Dr. GREEN. Medically, just as an example we raised $7 million 

for the earthquake at Project Medishare. We are out of money in 

30 days. We have the largest critical care hospital, the only one in 

Haiti. We are going to have to shut it down. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I was there, yes. 

Dr. GREEN. Selling tee shirts isn’t working any longer. So we are 

hoping that somewhere funding will continue so we can continue 

training health care workers, building capacity, and creating sustainability, but it is almost too late. We need to act now. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you. Let me skip you and go on to 

the—thank you. 

Mr. FAIRBANKS. There is not a recorded incident in the history 

of the world where aid has ever lifted a nation out of poverty. It 

has never happened. It doesn’t exist, not even in a reasonable-sized 

region. Aid is very good at humanitarian concerns, doing what Dr. 

119

Green does, that is what aid is really good at. It is not good at 

growing an economy, and we need to be deeply introspective about 

our own limitations when we try to do that. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Yes. 

Ms. BALLIETTE. I would just say that what needs to happen now 

is we need to speed up our efforts. We need to redouble our efforts. 

I think a lot of good things are happening but we need to listen 

to the ideas of people that are coming out of the lessons that are 

being learned, and we need to work faster and harder. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you. Joia. 

Ms. NURI. I would say that we have moved out of the emergency 

phase too fast. We have moved onto reconstruction. Our minds are 

into this reconstruction when people are still hungry, women are 

being raped on the streets, our children are not safe in Haiti, and 

I think that we have moved—of course, reconstruction should be on 

the plate, we should be discussing it. But the emergency phase, as 

Dr. Green has articulated, is still in place. And if we move on too 

fast we will actually have nothing to build reconstruction on. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, I am going to——

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. ENGEL [continuing]. Let that be the last word, but first I 

want to call on Mr. Payne. He has a unanimous consent request. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I ask unanimous consent 

that a statement from the American Red Cross be entered into the 

record. 

Mr. ENGEL. Without objection, so moved. 

Let me conclude because we have 6 minutes and 59 seconds to 

get to our votes. I want to thank all of you for excellent, excellent 

testimony. Since I have been chairman, now it has been 4 years, 

and before that as the ranking member, we have now had about 

31⁄2 hours at this hearing, which is the longest hearing I think we 

have ever had, and for good reason, because we had excellent testimony first from Dr. Shah, and then from the seven of you, and I 

want to thank the five of you who are left for sticking it out, and 

really helping all of us in understanding better what is happening 

on the ground in Haiti. 

We all want to be of help, but we can only be of help if we listen 

to the people who are on the ground, who have the experience, who 

can tell us, you know, cutting away all the extraneous materials, 

tell us just what is happening, and that is what we received today 

from all of you. 

So thank you for helping us to better understand what is going 

on. Thank all of you for your caring. Thank all of you for your excellent work. Working together we are going to continue to make 

sure that the people of Haiti get the right help and get everything 

that they deserve. Haiti is a country that is close to the United 

States, and it is a shame and it cannot stand that there is so much 

suffering there at a time when we have bounty of wealth here. 

So, again, thank you all, and the hearing is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1:03 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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