Thank you.
Mr. Chair, members of the subcommittee, thank you for giving me this time to speak today.
My testimony is based on several years of research into the coordination of international aid in Haiti and on various assignments I have been given as a humanitarian program evaluator for international organizations working in Haiti.
At a time when the country is facing a particularly difficult political, economic and humanitarian crisis and Canada is questioning its role, I am first going to make a few remarks and talk to you about the lessons learned from recent interventions in Haiti. Second, in light of those remarks, I am going to make recommendations regarding the possibility of a military, political or humanitarian intervention in Haiti.
I am going to start with the consequences of recent interventions, particularly the post-earthquake response, for what is happening today and for what we can learn from it.
At the previous meeting, other witnesses said that the last 20 years of foreign intervention in Haiti had not enabled us to avert what is happening today. I would add that the effect of the way in which international interventions have been carried out in the past, particularly in the years following the earthquake, has sometimes been to exacerbate the problems and even to undermine both Haitian institutions and certain elements of civil society, rather than to support them.
I am going to make two brief observations.
First, strengthening institutions works best when the support of the international community is based on a long-term vision, and when that support focuses on financial and logistical support. As well, expertise in the sector, coordination and regulation in Haiti must be handled by the Haitians who work in those institutions. When, on the contrary, the support of the international community sidesteps and sometimes competes with local authorities, as was the case in the healthcare sector in Haiti between 2010 and 2015, those sectors are weakened.