MIAMI, F.L., December 15, 2010 – Diplomats at the Haiti Reconstruction Conference nearly all support implementing sector-wide approaches (SWAps) as the premier mechanism for long-term development in Haiti, though the program was scarcely mentioned in the opening plenary.
In particular, the sectors covered would include agriculture, disaster management, education, public financial management, transportation, and water and sanitation, according to meeting minutes released to the public.
“SWAps present the strongest possible mechanism by which to coordinate donor funding for priority needs,” said Robert Quinn, CEO of Save the Children and delegate to the conference. “When it comes to our work, functioning education and health SWAps are the first step to providing quality and sustainable services.”
Sector-based approaches aim for coherence in international development by putting forth a single set of policies or projects in any given sector. They bring together donor governments, local officials, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to develop these policies and implement them. According to a World Bank report the term “SWAp” was coined in 1997, though similar models had been tried previously. As of 2004, the World Bank supported over 30 SWAp projects in 17 countries.
At this week’s conference the idea was first suggested in a joint communiqué from the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and the International Monetary Fund which was sent to all delegates an hour before the opening plenary last Thursday.
“SWAps are designed to prevent project overlap, increase coordination…and minimize the administrative burden on both donors and the Haitian government,” the statement read.
Only Save the Children CEO Quinn mentioned SWAps at the plenary, and did so only briefly. The three international financial institutions were not given the opportunity to address their fellow delegates at the session.
But in a remarkable display of accomplishment, all three working groups – one on coordinating NGO and government action, another on donor government policies and coordination, and a third on state capacity building – championed SWAps as the signal approach for long-term recovery, according to draft reports from each group.
“SWAps should be the method for transitioning from the current cluster system to a more long-term coordination mechanism,” reads the first “Key Recommendation” in the draft report for the working group on NGO-government action. Similar recommendations are found in the other two draft reports.
 |
| Jeff Ross, president of the Haitian Chamber of Deputies, addresses the diplomats. The statesmen showed strong support for SWAps at the sessions. |
The delegates meet tomorrow at the conference’s final session to sign a final report, which has not yet been released.
For all the unanimity, there are still several areas of disagreement and uncertainty. Some delegates are reluctant to commit a significant portion of their pledged aid to pooled funds – essential in implementing a SWAp – and prefer to use bilateral channels for donation in order to preserve sovereignty of funds and ensure proper oversight.
“Americans are hesitant to donate to a multilateral fund,” Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), and incoming House Foreign Affairs Committee chair, said at the meeting. “The lack of transparency of knowing exactly how that money is being spent [and] how the steering committee is making decisions” is not in the interests of the United States.
Jacques Gabriel, Haiti’s minister of public works, transportation, and communication replied by “strongly beseeching” the delegates to contribute to pooled resources, which he said was essential to maintain budget support for the Haitian government.
 |
| Minister Jacques Gabriel (right) "strongly beseeching" fellow delegates to contribute to pooled resources. |
There is also the issue of who would administer the SWAps and for how long.
It was widely recognized by the participants – including Haitian officials – that the government didn’t have the resources to implement these programs in the immediate future. In the working group on donor government coordination, most delegates wanted the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) to assume these duties with individual donor country leads in each sector until they could be transferred to the respective Haitian government ministries.
However, the Canadian delegation warned that implicit in its name, the IHRC was intended to be an interim institution, and they worried about creating a parallel structure for reconstruction programs that contended with the government.
Though the World Bank was itself the proponent of the initiative, it was not without its misgivings.
Bank representative Dhruv Malhotra – largely credited for proposing the SWAp idea at the conference – was cautious about the program’s applicability to Haiti.
“We very much imagine that is going to be a medium-term to long-term objective because the kinds of conditions required for a SWAp to be operational and effective are currently certainly not present in Haiti,” Malhotra said in the meeting.
He also issued a word of warning on the historical effectiveness of the program more generally.
“I must emphasize that the performance of SWAps in various countries has been very uneven,” he told Fox News during a short break between sessions. “Great idea, but we have to be very careful about the way we implement it.”
 |
| World Bank representative Dhruv Malhotra listening intently at the working group session. He has mixed feelings about implementing SWAps in Haiti. |
And yet, he told Fox News that he is very satisfied with the direction in which the meetings had been going. In the run-up to the working groups, prospects for accomplishment and consensus seemed dim.
“There is a lot of good will in the conference room,” Canadian foreign minister Lawrence Cannon diplomatically told Fox News before that morning’s deliberations. “If everyone buckles down and works hard at this, then we can get some tangible results that will be beneficial to the Haitian people.”
Luckily for the long-suffering Haitians, buckle down they did.
No comments:
Post a Comment