Alix Filsaime

Tent cities are bracing for a promised dangerous hurricane season with no real solution on the immediate agenda.

Political process has not been cleared for schedule elections in November. Time is running short and decay and chronic instability looms.

Pledged funds are not upcoming. No real upsurge on job creation will create conditions for civil unrest and provide more grounds for political maneuvers that have proven not to be constructive.

On strategic issue of reconstruction, current plan is an aggregate of business opportunities that lends lesser priority to fundamental aspects:

1.. . .Protecting Haiti’s damaged environment is make or break factor of overall stability and sustainability.
Resolutely engaging that aspect would jump start decentralization’s must do in planned phases so as not to recreate/spread ghettos. Hundreds of thousands of new and diverse jobs would be created.

2…..Security strategy needs to be more pro-active . Thousands of criminals have been out since the quake. Having survived the post quake trauma, they seem now poised to resume criminal activities. Younger desolate children in poor urban areas are sucked into what seems to be an inevitable spiral of poverty and crime.

Security planning for decentralized projects has not been taken into account. Instead of  beefing its own forces, the UN should defer to Haiti’s Government the corresponding funds to allow bringing the National Police up to 20,000

3….Governance has been hacked by politics. Coherent practices are mandatory. The key element is lack of synergic action. Joint task forces on specific goals could be a smart debut.

The International community will be trapped into this incoherent whole as it seems to want to assume a greater role on local governance. They will share responsibility for successes and failures.

Short of recapturing the process, there should be more coherent and constructive agendas on the table. The Haiti road map needs resourcing now.