This New Year began on a controversial note for Canada’s International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino. According to a story published in La Presse, Ottawa froze aid to Haiti shortly after Fantino’s visit to the Caribbean nation in November. While some current funding will continue, funding on new projects will be, to quote Fantino, “put on ice.”

The Canadian government has since denied plans to entirely terminate aid to Haiti. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), under the guidance of Fantino, has clarified that while long-term strategies of aid and assistance in Haiti are under review, there are no plans to freeze funding per se. This review process is seen as a way to measure the true impact of Canadian tax dollars to bring about change in the lives of Haitians.

[pullquote]The question right now is: are the good intentions of the developed world translating into aid money that complicates reconstruction and rebuilding activities in Haiti?[/pullquote]

These recent developments have prompted large questions about the efficacy of humanitarian aid relief in general. Following the massive earthquake of 2010, damages to life and property in Haiti were assessed to the tune of $7.8 billion USD. Shortly thereafter, several nations pledged a sum of $13.34 billion USD, of which $6.43 billion USD, or 48.2 per cent, has already been disbursed. This amount ($6.43 billion USD) is very close to the estimated damage. Yet, the disaster-stricken nation has not seen any discernible improvement in the reconstruction of people’s lives. In fact, the situation worsened when a cholera epidemic broke out, claiming 7,400 more lives. In his book “The Big Truck That Went By: How the world came to save Haiti and left behind a disaster” published early this year, Jonathan Katz, a survivor of the 2010 earthquake, claims that the aid has done more harm than good and has resulted in a series of different interrelated problems. At a time when Haiti’s water contamination was a serious problem, Katz writes that “the U.S. military reported distributing 2.6 million bottles of water, including at least 120,000 gallons of deluxe Fiji water … bottled 8,000 miles away. You can still find containers in the great plastic dams of debris in the capital, blocking canals when it rains.” A water-purification system could have better solved the issue.

The question right now is: are the good intentions of the developed world translating into aid money that complicates reconstruction and rebuilding activities in Haiti? A major portion of the aid funding is disbursed to NGOs, while less than one per cent of the money is provided to the Haitian government. This is confirmed by the bitter remarks of Haiti’s Minister of Economy and Finance, Marie Carmelle Jean-Marie who said: “I do not have one gourde (Haitian currency) from the Canadian government in my budget.” When NGOs, which are not accountable to the population in the way governments are, receive a larger portion of the pie, a power struggle between parallel institutions enters the picture. Haiti is a classic example of this dynamic.

Even before the earthquake struck, Haiti was a developing nation with a practically dysfunctional government. According to a report by Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Daniel Kaufmann, Haiti fares slightly better than Somalia, and comparably to Sudan in terms of worldwide governance indicators. One of the reasons for diverting aid to NGOs is the questionable nature of the government efficiency. As Kaufmann rightly notes, the international community needs to take a more hands-on approach without meddling with the internal affairs of the troubled nation, or, in this case, micromanaging its reconstruction. By offering all means of support, we have to enable the Caribbean nation to rebuild its property, as well as its own institutions, paving the way for sustainable development.

As Fantino and CIDA review where Canadian taxpayers’ money is going, better monitoring the distribution process would be a good start. By letting Haitians rebuild their own communities, as opposed to allowing NGOs to do it for them, we will  hopefully be able to record palpable change. Offering simple solutions to a problem, rather than complicating the conundrum is another approach that will work to Haiti’s benefit. But the question of freezing aid is indeed an absurd one.