Haiti is the Bermuda Triangle of foreign aid: well-meaning, earnest NGOs go down there with a song in their heart and cash in hand and often leave wondering where the money went. Crippling poverty. Check. An intransigent government that is blithely incompetent at best and patently obstructionist at worst. Check. A savvy government and population that know how to work the aid game. Check. It’s the perfect storm in which to lose your matching, day-glow, religiously-themed shirt.[1] Many grizzled veterans of the aid industry will tell you that this combination makes Haiti the most difficult humanitarian environment in which to work. There are many more destitute destinations in Africa,[2] but the combination of proximity, promise, and cynicism make it a unique quagmire for American philanthropists. I myself worked there for almost two years in the wake of the cataclysmic 2010 earthquake, and I can personally attest to the challenges and frequent frustrations that accompanied my work, despite the many talented Haitians with whom I collaborated.

None of this, however, is meant to excuse the recent allegations of waste and abuse that have been levelled by NPR and Pro Publica against the American Red Cross’ post-earthquake Haitian relief campaign.[3] In a June 3rd article, the authors claim that the Red Cross wasted the approximately half billion dollars in donations that was earmarked for relief efforts after the earthquake. There seems little doubt that a considerable portion of this money was mismanaged and wasted. While their behavior doesn’t appear to have been fraudulent, there does seem to be a high degree of persistent incompetence. Very few tangible results were achieved with this money which gave rise to the eye-catching headline “How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Homes”. People put their faith in the Red Cross to deliver on their promises, and those promises seem to have fallen flat. Sure, there were hand-washing campaigns and disaster response trainings but very little measurable progress was made in terms of houses built, latrines constructed, or roads paved.

Having worked in shelter reconstruction and water & sanitation in Port au Prince, I can attest that it’s a difficult gig. How do you build a house for someone when you don’t know who owns the land on which they’re squatting? Property rights are notoriously difficult to establish in Haiti as well, and deeds rarely exist. When they did exist, many of these records were lost when government buildings collapsed in the earthquake. We (and I mean Catholic Relief Services, the NGO for whom I worked in Haiti) were able to build over 8,000 transitional shelters in Port au Prince because they were considered property, not houses, so we could get around the issue of land titling. Above and beyond the land titling issue, working with the government was sometimes hard and often impossible. The local mayor in my neighborhood of Port au Prince with whom I tried to collaborate was more interested in collecting property taxes than restoring community housing. It was maddening at times.

Another reason that Haiti is so very hard is because the government and the people know all too well how to play the aid game. The government knows just what to say to foreign governments, NGOs, and international institutions (the UN and the World Bank). Its political class was all educated in the US, and most speak excellent English. You can get by in Haiti in business (if not aid) circles not knowing a word of Haitian Creole. Even the poor know how to deal with the foreigners who routinely show up in their neighborhoods with cash and the best of intentions. They show them what they want to see: broken-down schools, dilapidated houses, and cute kids. Haiti needs investment, to be sure, but its ills are not going to be cured by NGOs or well-meaning volunteer church groups. Haiti needs its economic elite to stop standing in the way of progress. It needs its so-called “bourgeoisie”[4] to stop quashing competition by preventing competitive manufacturing and imports that would destroy their local monopolies, drive down prices, and open up the economy to the benefit of the poor and marginal middle class (think India in the 80s and 90s). There is very little the aid industry can do about that, and until this is accomplished, Haiti will see little long-term progress.

At the core of this issue is one of the most difficult and damning questions in the aid industry: how do you simultaneously help people get off their feet and avoid creating a cycle of dependence? It’s why I continue to feel that the aid industry does a fantastic job in (and is well suited to) the realm of emergency & disaster response but has a poor track record of creating lasting development. At its core, aid can provide immediate relief, but only long-term governance reform, infrastructure investment, and private-sector growth can lift a nation out of poverty—the sheer scale of these tasks precludes the large-scale efficacy of aid and confines them to the province of governments and the private sector.

The Red Cross was never going to save Haiti. Nor were all the philanthropic church groups who showed up with slogans on their t-shirts. But the Red Cross did have a responsibility to their donors, and, more importantly, to the Haitian poor, to spend their money responsibly. Every organization worth its salt needs to spend on overhead and technical expertise. People who quote overhead figures and balk at 15% rates have never worked in difficult developing country contexts. You need support from the home office, and, despite having many talented Haitians on our staff, we needed expat expertise on issues like shelter, engineering, logistics, and international supply lines. However, you justify your expat salary by adding value with your talents, time, and expertise to ensure good programs, quality management and supervision, and strict standards of moral and financial stewardship. Could a Haitian have done my job? I trained my rock-star deputy to do just that, and she did it well for the last few years. Could she have done it without the example and training I provided? Maybe. But in truth probably not as well. Our responsibility was to go in, help out, train up, and get out. The Red Cross apparently lost that somewhere along the way. Programs have expiration dates, and the aid cliché rings true: you hope to leave a place better than you found it. If they want to continue to be the default American aid organization, the Red Cross would do well to remember that axiom.

[1] I’d always see any number of different church groups at the Port-au-Prince airport in their matching neon shirts boasting a variety of inspirational messages about how they were going to save Haiti.

[2] Central African Republic, where I spent a few months last year, springs immediately to mind.

[3] https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half-a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes

[4] While the term means middle class in French, it represents the uber-wealthy in Haiti who effectively control the economy while maintaining dual residences in Miami.