I think those are fantastic questions, and they outline the fact that these are very challenging areas.
Development in a Haiti or an Afghanistan, which are like South Korea or Taiwan, for example, 40 years ago, is not a five- or 10-year issue; it's a 30- or 40-year issue.
In Haiti during the 1980s and 1990s, per capita income was dropping, environmental devastation was increasing, and there was increasing political violence. There was a downward spiral. Haiti has now, despite the earthquake and the other challenges, stabilized. There are certain indicators of education of young people, particularly girls, and certain elements of per capita growth that are starting to be positive, but it's going to take a lot of work. A lot of the best officials were the ones who were killed in the buildings during the earthquake. Rebuilding capacity takes decades, not years.
What can we do? I think Canada, both in Haiti and Afghanistan, did some excellent work. What do we need to do? Keep the focus at a high level. It's complex and challenging and it's not nice to work in these areas, but it's necessary, so what it requires is a cross-partisan parliamentary decision to stay by it. We have to decide that although there are ups and downs, we're going to keep pushing.
What can we do to build on this? We can continue to do the security sector reform in Haiti by reforming the police, the judiciary, and the penitentiary system so that MINUSTAH eventually can leave; we can continue to build some of the key institutions and create the rule of law that will allow private sector and other growth; we can have someone at an assistant deputy minister level charged with Haiti, either the ambassador or a special envoy; and we can lay out in Haiti and Afghanistan not a two- or three-year commitment, which is what we're presently doing, but a conditional 15-year commitment.
If we want to make a difference in Afghanistan, we have to say, “We're there.“ If certain things are realized, we're there for 15 years at $300 million a year, which was what we did at the peak civilian engagement. That's a $4.5 billion commitment. We're going to have an assistant deputy minister, or a special envoy retired deputy minister, as someone there to oversee it. We're going to report back to this group every quarter, as we did before. We're going to keep pushing. We're going to do it not because there's a partisan reason or a political reason, because it's not that popular; it's just important. I think that's the level of commitment we have to have.
I mentioned South Korea because it's interesting. In the case of South Korea in the 1960s, a decade after the end of the conflict, the World Bank and others were in despair. It was a terrible mess. There was a military dictatorship. Why did they stay the course? It was because they had to. We couldn't let South Korea collapse. If you look at what happened in the 20 years since, you see that things bore fruit. That's because there was strategic persistence. I think that's another element we can bring to it. Those would be the parts.
To conclude, one difference in development compared to 30 years ago is that the key remaining development challenges are fragile states. These are the toughest of the toughest nuts to crack. If we're going to make a difference, we have to be prepared to make a difference in a different way.