Country Strategy Paper: Spanish Cooperation in Haiti 2006-2008

The Documento de Estrategia País is the country-level strategy Spain wrote for its cooperation with Haiti over 2006 to 2008, under the II Master Plan of Spanish Cooperation 2005-2008. It was drafted immediately after the February 2006 elections and the installation of a government drawing on six of the most-voted parties.

Its diagnosis is the substantial part. On politics, it reads the high turnout as evidence of democratic demand and the days that followed as evidence of institutional weakness, and it argues that the 1987 Constitution's semi-presidential design, borrowed from the French model, is itself a standing source of instability and deadlock because it fuses presidential and parliamentary logics in a way the hemisphere does not otherwise use. On the economy, it records GDP per head in 2002 at 61 percent of its 1980 level and identifies environmental degradation and demographic pressure as structural sources of vulnerability. On justice, it reports that an estimated 85 percent of the prison population had been held without trial for longer than the maximum sentence attaching to the offence alleged against them.

The strategy itself is an exercise in concentration. Of more than 55 strategic lines available in the Master Plan, 17 were selected, 15 at first priority and 2 at second, grouped under objectives covering social and institutional capacity, human capacity, economic capacity and environmental sustainability. The selection criteria are stated: the poverty impact of each line, and Spain's tradition and comparative advantage, which the document ties to earlier water and sanitation work, accumulated experience in decentralisation, and Spain's established presence in the neighbouring Dominican Republic.