Revitalizing & Rebuilding Haiti

Working together to create a better future for Haitians

Our proven strategy—working with community organizations, the Haitian government, international donors, and the private sector—will continue to be our key to successful work on the ground. Our plan of action is based on the three “Rs:”

Returning people to safe homes: PADF and its partners assessed 389,000 homes to determine their safety. We are letting people know which homes are safe and what repairs are needed. This translates into getting people out of the displacement camps and into safe homes. It means we are dramatically improving the skills of Haitian engineers, masons, and contractors—and that legacy will help the country for years to come.

Rebuilding neighborhoods: We are gathering resources and mobilizing teams to continue the tough task of transforming these damaged and destroyed neighborhoods into livable communities with new parks, paved roads, and proper infrastructure.

Restoring livelihoods: Haitians want to support their families. PADF works with communities to help them determine their economic needs and then channels resources to create these opportunities. This ensures sustainability and job growth in the most heavily impacted areas.

PADF's Response to the Earthquake

During the first eight weeks after the quake, the Pan American Development Foundation, the Organization of American States, Hollywood Unites for Haiti and its partners provided support to more than 300,000 people, delivered in excess of 200 tons of supplies and united a wide range of people.

To chronicle some of these achievements during those critical eight weeks, PADF produced a 36-page report. Click here to see the pdf. It tells the stories about the people and activities that made significant (even life-saving) differences in the lives of Haitians from January 12 to March 12.

Now in the next few months of on-the-ground work, PADF-OAS-HUFH and its partners continue to provide much-needed relief. At the same time, we are moving into the recovery phase.

The rainy season arrived earlier than expected, placing more pressure on all of us to do more. As you have probably seen in photos, the displacement camps are a mixture of tents, tarps and make-shift building materials (even bed sheets and cardboard). That is how approximately 1.3 million people are living today.

We are supporting efforts to move people out of the camps and into safe homes. At the same time, PADF has hired thousands of Haitians to remove rubble from streets and clean refuse-clogged canals. This has the double benefit of clearing public areas and providing employment. We are providing counseling to victims of violence and others traumatized by the loss of live. Finally, we are supporting institutions that provide a safe haven to children who have been abandoned or lost their family. So much more still lies ahead.

This is a critical time. Help is still needed. Donations will be used to help rebuild Haiti. Please ask your friends to call (877) 572-4484.

First Major Study Explores Urban Violence, Human Rights Issues

Nearly a quarter million impoverished children – mostly young girls – are forced to work as unpaid domestic servants in major Haitian cities, according to the first major survey of Haiti’s human rights, the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF) announced.

Called restavèks, these very poor children are sent by their parents to live in other homes with the idea that they would have access to education and food. PADF’s ground-breaking study, which focused on key neighborhoods in five major cities, found that 16 percent of all children are restavèks.

“Restavèks are prone to beatings, sexual assaults and other abuses by host families,” says Herve Rakoto Razafimbahiny, PADF’s Protecting Human Rights in Haiti Program Director. “This major survey is a key tool in our efforts to eliminate this stain on dignity.”

With support from the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Haiti Mission, PADF conducted the largest field survey on human rights violations, with an emphasis on child trafficking, abuse and violence. Called "Lost Childhoods," it consists of nearly 1,500 door-to-door surveys in troubled urban neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, Cap-Haïtien, Gonaïves, Saint-Marc and Petit-Gôave. (Click here for a copy of the report.)

Promoting Economic Cooperation and Conflict Mitigation in the Haitian-Dominican Borderlands

The 172-mile Haitian-Dominican border divides two distinct cultures that still display strong and deep-rooted historical, social, and political animosities. Stark differences on each side of the border in terms of land availability, natural resources, public infrastructure and services, agricultural activity, labor costs, and poverty levels create tensions and the potential for continued conflict. Issues such as undocumented migration, contraband smuggling, human trafficking, and poor enforcement of laws governing trade, commerce, and other bi-national interactions plague relations between the countries and stifle potential for positive growth and development.

This poorly managed and conflictive border region has ramifications that extend beyond the island of Hispaniola and could negatively impact on hemispheric and U.S. security interests.

Through the Our Border Program, the OAS and PADF have been key catalysts for promoting important changes that have come to the Haitian-Dominican borderlands. Binational trade has increased significantly—Dominican exports to Haiti grew from $US 58 million in 2000 to over $US 200 million in 2008; Haitian exports have grown as well. The Haitian government is reasserting itself and providing substantial infrastructure and human resources to its borderlands.

Check out the November 2009 Interim Progress Report to learn more about PADF's Nuestra Frontera program, and what PADF is doing to promote economic cooperation and end conflict in the Haitian-Dominican borderlands.

The Dominican-Haitian Border: From Transition to Transformation

Click here for the report from the Dominican and Haitian American Chamber of Commerce.

Sources of Conflict along and across the Haitian – Dominican border

Popular media accounts and several academic reports suggest that the people of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic have an ancient, deeply-rooted hostility for one another. As part of its MIF/OAS funded program, PADF hired Dr. Gerald Murray to conduct a study of the sources of this conflict along the Haitian-Dominican border. During the six weeks of fieldwork conducted all along both sides of the border, Dr. Murray found that the stereotype that Dominicans hate Haitians for racial reasons is actually very inaccurate. The tensions and problems that do exist have nothing to do with skin color or hair type. The image of two hostile populations who cannot interact with each other is a media-generated stereotype based on false information and ignorance of the real life interactions that do occur on the border. This work was done in parallel with Dr. Murray’s study of mutual perceptions and attitudes that exist between Dominicans and Haitians.

Although the bulk of the fieldwork was done in 2009, Dr. Murray returned to the island after the earthquake and updated the report based on the changed conditions that he found. Though nobody yet knows what is in store post-earthquake, Haiti will never be a replica of the country before the earthquake. The earthquake also exerts a profound impact, somewhat more predictable, on the economy and demography of the Dominican Republic as well. These impacts are already being sensed, though they cannot yet be fully charted.

The report focuses on one particular dimension of issues that has affected the past, and will affect the future, of the development of Haiti: the relations between Haitians and Dominicans on the border area. In that regard the report has several modest, analytically focused objectives:

1. to describe the immediate pre-earthquake state of relations between Dominicans and Haitians who lived along the border,
2. to extrapolate from there as to the likely long-term impact of the earthquake on the economy and social organization of both sides of the border, and
3. to discuss alternative policy measures that would permit different institutional actors on both sides of the border – multilateral, bilateral, public sector, and NGO – to link up and contribute effectively to the agendas of local border communities.

Dr. Murray concludes that if institutions can focus careful attention on the economic, educational, and healthcare agendas of local communities, and if they can channel their resources to local communities; the humanitarian attention generated by the tragic earthquake can be an occasion of positive developmental transformation.

The full report can be downloaded by clicking here.