Building a More Resilient Haitian State

The report argues that the 2010 earthquake exposed the weakness of Haiti's state institutions as well as its infrastructure. For each core state function it describes the main challenges, appraises the plans and initiatives in place before and after the earthquake (including the 2007 Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper and the 2010 Action Plan for National Recovery and Development), and recommends actions that are fiscally sustainable, within the government's administrative capacity and able to show results within three to five years.

Its priorities include civil service reform, a case-management system linking police, prosecutors, courts and prisons, a pretrial detainee review mechanism, a property-dispute resolution mechanism, keeping UN peacekeepers for at least five more years, simpler business and property registration, faster rubble removal, removal of restrictions on private container ports, full cost-recovery electricity tariffs, subsidies for private-school teacher wages, performance-based contracting of health services to NGOs and private providers, and an effective Interim Haiti Recovery Commission. The conclusion stresses that state-building depends on political leadership as much as on technical measures.