From the study Visitor cited:
Resolve governance issues as the top priority. Haiti illustrates that failing to address issues of poor governance and political instability jeopardizes the entire aid effort. Donors face two choices: either to engage governments or wait until countries resolve their own governance issues.The problem with the latter is that fragile, post-conflict states are very unlikely to ever resolve their own governance issues without assistance.And, while they are doing so, economies, societies and people’s lives can be severely damaged. So like it or not, strategic countries like Haiti require intense engagement with good governance and political stability as the highest priority. Be prepared for the long haul in achieving good governance
Building good governance takes time—probably years, maybe decades (OECD, 2005). Nonetheless, donors seemed to have little patience.Why? Aid flows to developing countries through annual appropriations. Bilateral investors are faced with changing priorities and administrations at home that can translate into reduced or interrupted aid. Multilaterals have increasing demand for assistance and diminishing resources, so they tend to invest where they see the best return. Because results from governance programs are often negative or at best invisible, donors get nervous about continuing to pour what they perceive as good money after bad.There is no instant gratification in funding governance programs.There is, by contrast, much gratification in funding humanitarian and infrastructure projects—thousands of starving people fed and a highway system completed. Donors must find ways to persist in promoting and sustaining good governance.
Understand what a fragile, post-conflict state is. Donors in Haiti were slow to consider that even though Haiti is in the Western Hemisphere where all countries—except Cuba—are well-functioning democracies, Haiti was not one of them.
If the number of failed or failing states multiply, Haiti may be the future of foreign relations. There’s no easy way for a UN-recognized state to die. They exist, as a husk almost like a Haitian zombie long after real life has left it.
Failed states are like patients with an impaired immune system. They chug along for a while until something — a hurricane, earthquake, civil war, disease or other catastrophe — comes along blows the whole shebang over in a heap. There is something deeply flawed in the current international model. The UN/development assistant/world bank/NGO model can’t hack it.
Maybe the only real development assistance is that which helps genuine democratic and accountable governance to emerge. Without governance, not all the money in the world helps. Venezuela has devalued five times. There are rolling blackouts in Caracas. The Congo is a far greater tragedy than Haiti. It’s all-Africa war has killed 5.4 million people. It’s mankind’s greatest war since World War 2. But while everyone has heard of Vietnam, Korea or Iraq, who the heck has heard about the Congo?
They used to talk about the “invisible men” of 1940s Hollywood. Well who were the invisible men of the late 20th century and who were the media producers of the era but the very people who swore they were color blind? Blind maybe, but let’s leave the colors out of it.
And so it goes. All these places can’t be fixed with aid or NGOs. These places have got to be helped to remake themselves. The earthquake may be a good metaphor for the state of international development theory. It is so at odds with reality that like a tectonic plate struggling against the plate of reality, the tensions will grow until one day they snap in an earthquake and we wake to find that we’ve been trying to open the door the wrong way.
