Haiti: When Development Hurts

Image taken from www.restavekfreedom.org

When I was eight, I had the opportunity to go on a mission trip with my mother to Haiti. This trip changed my life as my eyes were opened to the conditions in which the world’s poor truly live. I remember to this day driving past tin huts and learning that those were people’s real homes. I saw the conditions that hundreds of thousands of people lived in, and my heart broke. Ever since then, Haiti has had a special place in my heart. I knew I wanted to one day make a difference there. I wanted to help.

Once I got older and being the person I am, I started researching ways I could help. I thought about finding a charity I could support or volunteer with. However, before I was ever able to volunteer, something happened. While researching and taking a Development Studies class at university, I discovered something that I was not expecting to find. The more I researched, the more I found, and the more it impacted me. I eventually seemed to have so much evidence that I could no longer ignore it. The charities I was researching that were supposed to be bringing relief to Haiti may not have been helping the country. I began to discover that “international aid” may be doing a lot more harm than good.

International aid for Haiti started in the 1980s. At the time, Haiti had problems with deforestation, underdevelopment and a large population for its small size. They had almost double the population density as its neighbour, the Dominican Republic (Schwartz, 2010, p. 107). So, an initiative called the American Plan was created to assist Haiti. The plan seemed smart, one that worked for everyone. Haiti would be transformed from an agricultural economy to an industrial one. The peasant farmers would stop farming and move to the urban centers and get industrial jobs. All this would bring in a new age of prosperity to the country.

The main parties to benefit were western investors, U.S. farmers, conservationists, and supposably Haiti itself. Western investors were looking for a new country to invest in, and Haiti seemed prime to support a new assembly sector. The Haitian government agreed to support this initiative by eliminating custom taxes, guaranteeing a low minimum wage, suppressing labour unions and allowing U.S. companies the right to repatriate profits (McGowan, 1997). With these policies in place, Haiti was a great place for western investors to make money. The western investors set themselves up to win. At the time of forming this plan, the U.S. was pushing to increase its exports of corn, wheat, cotton and rice. By changing Haiti to an industrial country, Haiti could be changed from an exporter of these products to a consumer and importer of U.S. corn, wheat, cotton and rice. The U.S. supported this by heavily subsidizing these products from 35-100 percent. Additionally, the Haitian government agreed to low tariffs from 35 to 3 percent due to the promise of future financial and political support (Schwartz, 2010, p. 109). The U.S. Farmers were set up to win. Additionally, the conservationists were concerned with the amount of runoff coming from Haitian coasts due to the deforestation. By moving the farmers off the Haitian hills, it was intended that the deforestation would decrease, and the environmental condition improved (Lundahl, 2015). Conservationists were set up to win. Finally, it was expected that Haiti would benefit as they would have become a more industrialized country with a strong assembly industry.  

In the name of international development, the U.S. started to export rice to Haiti. By 1996, 2100 metric tons of U.S. rice were imported into Haiti every week (Schwartz, 2010, p. 109). This subsidized imported rice destroyed the agricultural industry. However, instead of pushing the Haitian population to move to an assembly industry, it created mass poverty. As the agricultural industry was being decimated, wages were being held low, and there was little investment into alternate domestic products or services. The actual effect of these policies was Haiti’s entrepreneurial and educated population deciding to leave the country. Over a million Haitian elite boarded planes and went to emigrate to western countries like the U.S., Canada and France, while over a hundred thousand Haitian tried to reach the U.S. mainland through boats illegally. At the time, Haiti only had a population of 6 million, so this was a devastating loss to the already struggling Haitian economy (Schwartz, 2010, p. 114). Before the 1980s, before international aid “assisted” the country, Haiti had been economically similar to the rest of the Caribbean and Latin American countries (Schwartz, 2010, p. 115). Yes, the country had its problems, but Haiti’s real GDP was growing at a respectable 2.5 percent per year. In 1980 the real GDP stagnated, and from 1985-2004, the real GDP declined at a rate of 2 percent per year (IMF, 2005). All this thanks to international aid.

But how does all this relate to charities? They are related because USAID, the U.S. government branch responsible for exporting rice and other crops to Haiti, used the many charities/NGO’s stationed in Haiti to distribute the food that destroyed the Haitian economy. If you look at many of these organizations’ websites, they will claim to have the mission statement of “feeding the world’s poor.” One such organization is CARE International (CARE).  CARE was responsible for much of the distribution of the exported U.S. rice and other crops. Not only has the concept of giving out this food aid itself been condemned, but the process in which CARE attempted to distribute this food has also been heavily criticized.

Timothy T. Schwartz holds a Ph.D. in anthropology and has worked in Haiti for several years. He wrote a book called Travesty in Haiti, in which he carefully documented corruption in the international aid organizations he worked for and with. Schwartz covers in detail the impact of how food aid destroyed the local economy in Haiti. He shows a study done by a French charity in 1993, which studied the price of 1 unit of corn before and after introducing imported French corn. Before the corn “food aid” was brought in, 1 unit was priced at 13 Haitian gourdes (gdes), not even three months after the delivery of French corn began, the local price had fallen to 4.5 gdes (Schwartz, 2010, p. 101). That means that any local farmer now had to sell their locally produced corn for almost 1/3 of the original price.

The NGOs advertise food aid goes to those who can’t afford it, so one might wonder why food aid was affecting the local market price. Timothy describes in detail the corruption in the food aid delivery system.  One program that CARE runs is a program in which they deliver food aid to children in schools so they can have a nutritious meal at school. However, after investigating the program, Schwartz began to see evidence that much of the food was either being stolen or lost in the system. He expressed to a CARE food monitor that he suspected that “no more than 50 percent of CARE food reaches the children.” The food monitors response, “You know how things work, it would be a miracle if children get 10 percent of the food.” It seemed the other 90 percent was either stolen or sold on the local markets for profit (Schwartz, 2010, p. 90).

The economic problems Haiti faced because of aid only got worse after the earthquake in 2010. No one can question that help was needed immediately after the earthquake. It was a major disaster, and the country needed assistance. The problems started when the aid didn’t stop. More and more food aid was delivered, keeping any hope of restarting an agricultural industry down. However, after the earthquake, it wasn’t just the agricultural industry that was affected. A fantastic documentary called Poverty INC. illustrated the effect of aid in Haiti through what happened to Enersa, a Haitian solar energy upstart. This company had begun producing Haitian made solar-powered streetlights. All of the employees were local Haitian men, many of whom accredited working at Enersa from keeping them from joining gangs. After the earthquake happened, Enersa needed a few weeks to rebuild the factory but were soon ready to resume production. However, even once Enersa was ready for production, they suddenly faced a new problem. Numerous different organizations were donating hundreds of solar panels. These donated solar panels provided a severe problem for Enersa, as the founder states, “it’s very hard to compete with free.” The company went from selling 50 lights a month to selling 5 in 6 months (Matheson, 2014). Obviously, the organizations that donated the solar panels had good intentions; however, these good intentions still had adverse effects. The donation took work away from a local company that could have provided the solar streetlights and provided employment for local workers. The donation kept many Haitians in poverty. What if instead of donating solar lights, companies had placed orders to Enersa to increase production and kickstart the company so they could have hired more workers who had lost jobs to the earthquake? Not only would solar streetlights have been available to recovering Haiti, but poverty avoided as well. This example shows again that handouts are not a sustainable solution to problems related to developing countries.

I do not want to imply that these organizations and the people working for them are meaning harm. However, the impact of international aid needs to be recognized, especially the negative aspects. While the intentions are good, the net effect seems to be more harm than good. This means we need to rethink how we do international aid, especially in Haiti. We need to think more about how we can assist Haitians in caring for themselves and less about what we can give them. We need to stop giving Haitians fish, but instead, assist them in learning how to fish, and then prosper in self-sufficiency. The purpose of this post is not to condemn international aid and the idea of nations helping other nations. We need more of that. I am begging that more thought is put into the effects of our actions when we assist each other. Researching for this piece has shown me a simple truth. Destructive policies with good intentions are, in fact, still destructive policies.

I plan to write a follow-up post on an organization that has figured out how to bring assistance correctly, bringing not just aid, but a genuinely sustainable solution. Stay tuned.

Sources:

International Monetary Fund. (2005). Haiti – 2005 Article IV Consultation, Statement by IMF Staff. Retrieved on Sept 24, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2015/09/28/04/52/mcs031605

Lundahl, M. (2015). The Haitian Economy: Man, Land and Markets. Routledge.

Matheson Miller, M (Director & Producer). (2014). Poverty INC. Amazon, https://www.amazon.com/Poverty-Inc-George-Ayittey/dp/B01AZ1CG1E

McGowan, L. (1997). Democracy Undermined, Economic Justice Denied: Structural Adjustment and the Aid Juggernaut in Haiti. Development Group for Alternative Policies.

Schwartz, T. (2010). Travesty in Haiti (2nd Edition). BookSurge Publishing.