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Shelter, local procurement, civil society involvement head list for Haiti

Congressional Black Caucus hearing on Haiti followed by Houseâ??s late
night passage of aid funding

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Wed. July 28, 2010 -- Massive shelter issues, the
need for local procurement, improved engagement with civil society, and
additional funding head the list of requirements for successful
reconstruction in Haiti, a group of Haitian and U.S. advocates told
members of Congress and interfaith leaders in two Washington events
yesterday.

Speaking before a hearing of the Congressional Black Caucus in
Washington on Tuesday, and during a morning interfaith breakfast,
Camille Chalmers, Executive Director of Plateforme Haitienne de
Plaidoyer pour un Developpement Alternatif (PAPDA - Haitian Platform to
Advocate for Alternative Development), stressed the need for greater
involvement of civil society in the devastated country's recovery,
saying, "despite this great wealth of national expertise ?
reconstruction planning has been quite exclusive" to date.

PAPDA's Chalmers highlighted the role of a number of Haitian civil
society groups, including those that focus on rural and agricultural
development, women's movements, and cooperatives and micro-finance
initiatives, as important civil society counterparts who should be
actively engaged in consultation around recovery and reconstruction in
Haiti.

He called for the creation of "formal structures that can open the
dialogue in Haiti between civil society and the State."

In opening statements at the hearing, CBC member Representative Sheila
Jackson Lee (D-Texas) characterized efforts to address the
â??entanglementâ?? of land and legal issues preventing people  from
re-establishing themselves in more permanent shelters in Haiti. Calling
those efforts "anemic and overly bureaucratic," Jackson Lee said that
more should be done by the U.S. to demand progress from the Haitian
government and added that "The Congressional Black Caucus means
business... we intend to hold ourselves accountable and everyone else."

Hearing presenter Dr. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for
International Development, said the U.S. would like to do more and
emphasized the importance of receiving supplemental funds for ongoing
humanitarian and development assistance in Haiti.

As if on cue, last night, after being held up for weeks as the House
and Senate went back and forth on what to include in the supplemental
funding package, the House approved a version of a supplemental funding
bill designating $918 million in assistance to Haiti and $460 million to
fund USAID's Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) programs
that provide emergency assistance to Haiti and other disaster-affected
countries globally.

The Haiti allocations for humanitarian and development assistance were
included in Congress' overall $59 billion war supplemental bill.

Also attending the CBC hearing were Dr. Paul Farmer, Deputy Special
Envoy for Haiti, United Nations; Loune Viaud, Director of Strategic
Planning and Operations, Zanmi Lasante / Partners in Health, Haiti; and
Ira Kurzban, Esq., Chair, Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.

Farmer, founder of Partners in Health, has been working in Haiti for
about three decades. He urged that the strategies employed by the U.S.
during the Great Depression be used as a pattern for jobs creation in
rebuilding Haiti.

Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), a member of the Black Caucus,
told hearing attendees that "political decisions" were being made rather
than decisions in the best interest of the Haitian people, including the
decision to end mass distributions of emergency food aid through the
World Food Program. Waters urged USAID and Administrator Shah to find
ways to support the nutritional needs of Haitians by procuring food
locally to support, rather than compete with, local agriculture markets.

Donna Derr, Humanitarian and Development Program Director for
humanitarian agency Church World Service (CWS), agrees that local
procurement is one way to support both Haitians in need of emergency
food assistance and local farmers whose prices might otherwise be
depressed by the arrival of free foreign foodstuffs. â??After working
with farming communities in Haiti for several decades, we see local
procurement as a cornerstone of sustainable recovery of the agriculture
sector.â??

The plea for local procurement was heard earlier at Tuesday morning's
interfaith breakfast with members of Haitian civil society who later
presented at the CBC briefing. The breakfast was co-sponsored by Church
World Service and other members of the Haiti Advocacy Working Group
whose members also helped make arrangements for the CBC briefing later
in the day.

"We were heartened by the intensity of commitment by CBC members, who
stated their desire to take these concerns and recommendations for
relief and reconstruction in Haiti all the way to President Obama," said
Jessica Eby, Protection Officer for the CWS Immigration and Refugee
Program, who attended the hearing. "Their support, coupled with quick
dispensation of U.S. supplemental funds for Haiti and ongoing monitoring
of the situation are all key roles Congress can and should play in
Haitiâ??s recovery."

CBC members attending the hearing included Representatives Barbara Lee
(D-Calif.), Charles Rangel (D-New York), John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.),
Donald M. Payne (D-N.J.), Sheila Jackson-Lee, CBC Whip Yvette Clarke
(D-New York), Maxine Waters, William Lacey Clay, Jr. (D-Mo.), Al Green
(D-Tex.), Donna M. Christensen (D-U.S. Virgin Islands), Hank Johnson
(D-Ga.), as well as Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).

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