Now that we have sent all of this money to Haiti, the chal­lenge is mak­ing sure the money is prop­erly spent.

Before the earth­quake, 60 per­cent of Haitians couldn’t afford to buy food. Before the earth­quake, 1 in 8 chil­dren in Haiti died before the age of five. Before this dis­as­ter, Haiti had few roads, lit­tle safe drink­ing water and not much electricity.

So the chal­lenge is after the vic­tims of the earth­quake have been healed, how do we insure that all the money donated will bring basic ser­vices to the coun­try. For money has been given to the coun­try before, and it was in bad shape before the earthquake.

From this Cana­dian Press arti­cle that we found at Google News, writer Sharon Theimer looks into the dona­tions to Haiti made in the past, and the cor­rup­tion that pre­vented from being used as intended.

Cor­rup­tion, theft and other crime and Haiti’s sheer short­age of fun­da­men­tals — reli­able roads, tele­phone and power lines and a sound finan­cial sys­tem — add to the dif­fi­culty as for­eign gov­ern­ments and char­i­ties try not only to help Haiti recover from the dis­as­ter but pull itself out of abject poverty.

It is one of the poor­est places on Earth. Most basic pub­lic ser­vices are lack­ing, peo­ple typ­i­cally live on less than $2 a day, nearly half the pop­u­la­tion is illit­er­ate and the gov­ern­ment has a his­tory of insta­bil­ity. The pub­lic has lit­tle oppor­tu­nity to be sure that aid to the gov­ern­ment is used hon­estly and well. Nor is fol­low­ing the money easy for donors, includ­ing the United States, 700 miles (1,126 kilo­me­tres) away and one of the country’s biggest helpers.

“It has been a chal­lenge and I think it really is one of the things we have to look at when the coun­try has had such long-standing prob­lems that it seems as though we have made lit­tle dent there,” said Rep. Russ Car­na­han, Demo­c­ra­tic chair­man of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives For­eign Affairs Committee’s sub­com­mit­tee on inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions, human rights and oversight.

The imme­di­ate focus is search and res­cue and address­ing imme­di­ate pub­lic health needs. But after that, “I think there’s going to be a num­ber of ques­tions that arise,” Car­na­han said.

Just last month, a pri­vate group, the Her­itage Foun­da­tion for Haiti, urged Haiti’s gov­ern­ment to com­plete an audit of a $197 mil­lion emer­gency dis­as­ter pro­gram to respond to cor­rup­tion alle­ga­tions over how the money was han­dled. Haiti’s sen­ate cited the alle­ga­tions when it removed Prime Min­is­ter Michele Pierre-Louis in Novem­ber and replaced her with Jean-Max Bel­lerive.
…

“Atten­tion on Haiti is often focused in times of dis­as­ter but not nec­es­sar­ily in the long-term,” said Rich Thorsten, direc­tor of inter­na­tional pro­grams for Water.org, a char­ity work­ing to pro­vide safe drink­ing water and sewage treat­ment to Haitians. “Fund­ing that has been avail­able does not nec­es­sar­ily go toward basic infra­struc­ture like water and sanitation.”

The Hait­ian gov­ern­ment doesn’t use its own resources for san­i­ta­tion, and instead depends on char­i­ties, Thorsten said. In addi­tion, inter­na­tional groups often do not co-ordinate, and there are also prob­lems with secu­rity, cor­rup­tion and polit­i­cal sta­bil­ity, he said.

“It is very impor­tant to keep track of the spend­ing, and so when we work with part­ner orga­ni­za­tions we make sure they have detailed account­ing sys­tems,” he said. Sup­plies must be guarded, he added.

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