Thank you very much. It's a real pleasure to be here.
Monsieur Pétillon, as director of the Haiti program, also lived in Haiti from 2001-04. He should be able to give you some on-the-ground perspectives about some of the developments you've been discussing over the last hour.
I'd also like to acknowledge the extensive work of the committee at a really critical moment for Haiti. We'll follow your deliberations with interest. If we can help in any way, we would be very pleased to do so.
We've tabled four documents with the committee: "Haiti-Country Development Programming Framework/CDPF"; "Summary of Lessons Learned by Donors in Haiti"; "Guidelines for Effective Development Cooperation in Fragile States"; and, lastly, "Canadian Cooperation with Haiti: Reflecting on a Decade of 'difficult partnership'". This last document, which you referred to, was prepared for the OECD.
My remarks will be fairly brief. I won't go beyond the five-minute limit so that I can hand the floor over to my colleague. My remarks will concern the last document, which analyzes the context of fragility prevailing in Haiti, identifies some of the key Canadian and international cooperation issues and states certain conclusions and principles regarding our overall approach to fragile states.
In referring to the analysis that we undertook for the OECD, let me start with a basic observation about fragility and development.
Many of the basics of aid effectiveness are quite clear: the importance of local ownership, donor coordination, alignment of priorities and resources, sustained engagement, and cross-government policy coherence. This committee, I think, has heard and discussed a lot of these across many issues.
The point we would make, which comes out of the study, is that these principles of aid effectiveness are especially difficult to apply in fragile states because of the fundamental lack of authority, legitimacy, and capacity. It's these fundamental shortcomings of authority, legitimacy, and capacity that manifest themselves in very different ways across fragile states. It is therefore not surprising that our studies show that understanding the local dynamics of fragility is a key determinant of effective engagement.
Even more importantly--and I think this was alluded to by one of the members, Mr. Chair--is that this understanding needs to be structured, it needs to be ongoing, and it needs to be shared, or it results in very ad hoc, very uncoordinated and sometimes mutually incompatible results, as we have seen elsewhere, particularly in the context of Haiti.
It is a very different environment from fragile state to fragile state. The warlords, terrorism, and poppy culture in Afghanistan are not the same as the ethnic resource wars of Sudan, and they owe little, in turn, to the historical, socio-economic, political, environmental, and security dimension of Haiti's instability.
We've found, therefore, in Haiti and elsewhere, that shared perspectives across governments and the donor community, leading to shared commitments to achieve stability and concrete progress toward millennium development goals, are basic conditions of success. That was our first and overwhelming conclusion, and it was taken up subsequently within the OECD as one of the fundamental principles of aid effectiveness in fragile states.
As for our second conclusion, our study also concluded that in a politically charged, corrupt, and high-risk environment, even greater attention is required to ongoing monitoring and evaluation to ensure due diligence and oversight, because if it can go wrong in fragile states it most often will.
Realistic targets must also be set. Sometimes "realistic" means just a arresting a decline, not making progress. But we need to set these realistic targets and determine early on if we're making enough progress and adjusting as needed, with the kind of flexible response mechanisms that I'll talk about in a second.
And we must reflect, as well, the mutual accountability that must govern the aid relationship. That was our second set of conclusions.
Our third conclusion in this study for the OECD was that effectiveness in Haiti and elsewhere requires a long-term commitment of resources. We all know in development that progress takes time, but stabilizing crises, building accountable institutions, and rebuilding trust and a social contract are among the greatest challenges of development. And in this context, on-again, off-again relationships with poorly applied conditionality can sometimes do more harm than good.
Mr. Chairman, this is not about ensuring that annual budgets are spent; it's about ensuring, in a flexible and responsive manner, an ongoing relationship based on dialogue, accountability, and mutual responsibility.
Our fourth of five conclusions is that it takes a lot more than effective programming to make a lasting difference in fragile states. Diplomatic dialogue at a bilateral and multilateral level, backed up by support for basic security and an activist approach to outreach, involving both state and non-state actors, are essential for achieving sustainable results.
Our last conclusion, Mr. Chairman, emphasizes that it is important to adopt iterative approaches to implementation. Here we're talking about involving various partners, providing for alternative solutions selected from a full range of delivery mechanisms and about forming a critical mass of resources in order to achieve tangible results.
We have seen in Haiti, as elsewhere, an international community that has a responsibility to prevent, protect, and rebuild countries in crisis, including difficult partnerships where will or capacity, or both, are lacking. This government has undertaken tangible steps in this area, but great challenges still lie ahead in fragile states such as Haiti. The work we undertook, therefore, in relation to this study is helping the international community and us to understand the need for a different and more effective approach to development assistance in fragile states.
Mr. Chair, that concludes the main aspects of the study that was undertaken. It was undertaken, as you mentioned, at the end of 2004. For a short update from 2004 to the present, and on how this was implemented in practice, I will turn to my colleague Monsieur Pétillon, with your agreement.