Haiti After the Donors' Conference: A Way Forward (Special Report 232)

Written after the mid-April 2009 Inter-American Development Bank donors' conference that pledged $353 million for Haiti, this September 2009 Special Report surveys the country's persistent poverty, inequality, and vulnerability to external shocks following the 2008 storms and food-price riots, and asks what would make the new resources count. Maguire reviews the Collier report's growth-pole prescriptions, the government's poverty-reduction strategy, and the record of past aid surges that bypassed the Haitian state. The report argues for strengthening government capacity rather than routing aid around it, investing in agriculture and rural livelihoods alongside export assembly, decentralizing economic opportunity beyond Port-au-Prince, and sustaining security gains through jobs for at-risk youth. It closes with recommendations for U.S. policy, urging patient, coordinated engagement anchored in Haitian institutions. Published four months before the January 2010 earthquake, it captures the pre-quake development debate whose themes recur in every subsequent recovery plan.