Haiti: Back to school

October 30, 2008

Days after this article was published, Michele Pierre-Louis faced the kind of test we hoped would not occur -- on Novmeber 7, a school in the suburbs of Port-au-Price collapsed, killing over 90 students.

Recently ratified Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis next week faces her first significant test: the start of the new school year. Haiti continues to suffer the effect of four recent hurricanes, which have exacerbated ever increasing hardship as a result of high international food prices. The need to pay school fees and buy uniforms will put pressure on households, hard hit by unemployment even before the natural disasters hit.

President Rene Preval struggled to appoint a new prime minister, after parliament dismissed Jacques-Edouard Alexis in April following rioting over food prices. For five months, parliament refused to ratify two potential replacements, citing questions over their qualifications.  Despite similar concerns over Pierre-Louis, she was confirmed thanks to a deal between Preval and the 19 political parties represented in parliament, which saw the former promising jobs to political appointees.  

So, even though both houses of parliament have approved Pierre Louis’s government programme the government is likely to continue to face obstruction, particularly in the Senate, which was more hostile than the lower house to her appointment.

Aid resumption?

Appointment of a prime minister should at least mean that government is more able to negotiate with donors on aid and debt forgiveness.  Indeed, World Bank President Robert Zoellick last week visited the country to inspect hurricane damage.  International organisations appear to recognise the gravity of the situation -– UN Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes recently described natural disasters as “one of Haiti’s biggest catastrophes”.  Nonetheless, the response to date has been halting:

• A UN appeal for 108 million dollars, launched in September, has had a slow initial response, with Holmes last week complaining that more needed to be one to improve immediate conditions while addressing long-term problems sustainably.

• The World Food Programme says it has distributed food to over 500,000 people, including 280,000 in the particularly badly-hit city of Gonaives, but there have been widespread complaints about absence of aid.

This makes for a perilous situation, and an outlook that at best is mixed. While global inflationary pressures -– particularly food-related -– are likely to ease, nonetheless, reconstruction will be extremely slow, exacerbating desperate problems of poverty and leading to a likely worsening of insecurity.  This means that further anti-government protests are likely in the relatively near future, threatening Pierre-Louis’ position. Moreover, the problems of major economies around the world will deprive the state of one resource it has always struggled to secure: media attention.