Daniel O’Neil

thoughts and reflections

  • Rebuilding communities, not just houses

    This is the text of the speech that I gave at the Earthquake Symposium on January 11th in Port-au-Prince. Although I am very proud of the work that we have done to repair houses in Port-au-Prince, I hope that we are able to move beyond just repairing houses to rebuilding communities.

    Ladies and Gentlemen, good afternoon.

    The Pan American Development Foundation has been partnering with the Haitian government for over thirty years. We remain committed to helping Haitians to rebuild their homes, rebuild their neighborhoods and rebuild their lives.

    I have lived on this island for more than a dozen years. I was living in Santo Domingo when the earthquake hit and drove here bringing the first load of relief supplies the next day.

    We have heard of the progress being made on repairing houses, removing rubble, and building transitional houses. These are important steps on the path towards rebuilding communities.

    I would like to finish these talks by discussing what it takes to rebuild a community and how we have succeeded in involving both the local community and the Haitian government.

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  • Haiti’s reconstruction lessons are found on the other side of the world

    I had this article published today in the Miami Herald:

    Haiti's reconstruction lessons are found on the other side of the world

    BY DANIEL O'NEIL

    WWW.IMUNITEDFORHAITI.ORG

    As I rushed relief supplies from the Pan American Development Foundation through the streets of Port-au-Prince just after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, I could not fathom how Haiti would recover from the worst humanitarian disaster in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

    Nearly a year later and on the other side of the world, I saw what could be Haiti's future.

    In October, I traveled to Indonesia with a World Bank study group to see how that country recovered after the post-Christmas 2004 tsunami, which killed in excess of 200,000 and leveled some 139,000 homes, and the 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake, which took the lives of more than 5,700 and damaged 175,000 buildings.

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  • STUCK…the Haitian Elections Part 3

    The Haitian elections are at an impasse with no clear path out. I was in Haiti last week when the rioting broke out over the elections results. I had been asking my Haitian friends what they thought would happen.The most common response was, "I don't know what will be announced, but I don't think the results they announce will have anything to do with how people voted on the 28th." Like most organizations, we closed our office early on the day that the results were announced to allow our staff to get home before the storm broke.

    That night, the CEP representative was shaking as he read the results that put Preval's Unity party in a strong lead for controlling the parliament and then announcing that their candidate had made the cut and would be part of the run-off for the presidency.

    I spent the next days and a half holed up in our guest house as we listened to the reports of the protests that spread throughout the country then fled out through the Dominican Republic when a light rain kept the protesters home (it was a bit odd being the person from Washington who had to be evacuated out of the country rather than the one was expected to hold down the fort!).

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  • What if the Haitian Elections were not so bad?

    Yesterday, I wrote a post entitled "The Haitian Elections are Disputed…now what?" At that point, it looked like Haiti was headed towards a major crisis. 12 of the Presidential candidates had held a press conference to denounce the elections as fraudulent. Crowds had gathered in Petionville to protest against the elections. A well-connected friend of mine told me that the only solution was for President Preval to quit and leave the country. There were all the makings of a major crisis.

    But then the tide changed. The top two opposition presidential candidates retracted their earlier allegations. Then the OAS came out saying that the elections were valid. It seems that the early returns had Mme. Manigat and Michel Martely as the top vote getters. It is hard to claim that the government had rigged the elections if their candidate was losing! Although it is too early to close this affair entirely, it does seem that we all jumped to the wrong conclusion.

    So what happened? Assuming that no new information comes to light and the final results are legitimate and accepted, why were we all so ready to believe that they were fraudulent? I am afraid that this might turn out to be a case where we all chose to look at the world through our own filters rather than waiting for the facts. Haiti has had so many failures that it was easy to assume that the elections were yet another one. Rather than holding out for facts, we went with the easy story that Haiti had failed once again. 

    I hope that am left humbled by this situation–that the final results show that Preval and his electoral council, with help from the OAS and the UN, did pull off the impossible and manage to hold relatively free and fair elections. I will happily apologize for having been a doubter.

     

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11870013udd

  • The Haiti Elections are disputed…now what?

    Twelve of the candidates for the Haitian Presidency gathered today before the polls had even closed to denounce the widespread fraud that they claimed was happening. The candidates included all of the top candidates with the exception of the one in Preval's party who had been trailing a distant second in the pre-election polls. As I write this entry, there are reports of protests in Port-au-Prince, Gonaives, Cape Haitian, and elsewhere. So what comes next?

    It would be wonderful if the reported cases of fraud were untrue–if the stories of stuffed ballot boxes and blocked voters were just exaggerations. There are always logistical problems at elections–we have this problem in the US as well. If it turns out that the actual vote count matches the pre-election polls, then perhaps the twelve candidates over-reacted.

    A second possibility is that the fraud happened, but that the Electoral Council and the International Community decide that it was within an acceptable range. A candidate has to get more than 50% to avoid a second round (scheduled for January 16th). If the results show that no candidate won the required 50%, even if Preval's candidate (Jude Celestin) was in first place, then a runoff will have to happen. This might be acceptable to the Haitian political parties, if they could be assured that the runoff would be cleaner. Many would claim that the Celestin only made it to the second round through fraud, but it would hold out the hope that the opposition could still win in the second round. Note that Mme Manigat refused to run in the runoff elections in 2006 because she felt that the first round was too flawed. She might take the same route again.

    The worst case would be to have the fraud so blatant that the results would be completely unacceptable–for example if Jude Celestin was declared to have won more than the 50% required to avoid a run-off election. This would force a confrontation and would force the international community to take sides.

    The international community trumpeted these elections as an important milestone in Haiti's progress. Instead of providing a clear path forward, the elections have created many more questions and doubt. Haiti desperately needs clear leadership to allow it to rise from the rubble. I hope and pray that somehow this mess ends well.

  • The “To Do No More” List

    To do no more

    My workload changed dramatically on January 12th when I stepped in to take over the earthquake response in Haiti.  Although I have always felt that I was productive—I set goals based on the The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and I managed my workflow through the Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity system. Yet pre-earthquake, my work load was manageable. Those days seem like a lazy vacation in comparison to my situation today.

    My biggest challenge when swamped with work is to find the path forward. It is easier to respond to the tasks in front of me than to work on longer term goals. I could easily spend my days responding to emails and phone calls and putting fires out—I suspect that some of the people that have given me tasks that sit in my “@action” folder would rather I did just that. However, I know that my days spent responding to urgent requests brings me no closer to my own goals and just leaves me one day older.

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  • The View from Washington

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    Back in Haiti–touring the Delmas 32 housing repair project with the OAS Secretary General and the PADF team.

    Over four months ago, I drove away from Haiti thinking I was finished. I didn't make it very far. I know support PADF's Haiti operations from our Washington office. Although I spend a good bit of time in Haiti–next week will be third visit in two months–the view from Washington is quite different. 

    The biggest difference is distance–both geographic and personal. I am typing this in my Rockville, Maryland house far from the hassles and stress of Port-au-Prince. Although I spend a good part of my days working directly with our Haiti office through phone calls and emails, I don't live the experience any longer. This geographic distance makes things much more personal. I was talking with our Country Director when the storm went through last Friday. It was an immediate threat to him and to those around him. For me, it was a logistics question–how could we mobilize any support to help.

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  • Completing my work in Haiti

    Four months after the earthquake, there is still so much to be done
    I drove away from Haiti yesterday, having finally been relieved of my role as the Acting Country Director. I chose to make the five-hour drive to give myself time to reflect on the last four months. I am both wonderfully relieved to be done and sad to leave my team. In my farewell speech the day before, I had stressed how proud I was of everyone. It was the hardest four months of my life. We had great successes–reopening the office within days of the earthquake, developing a logistics chain that delivered 50 containers of supplies to our most needy partners, restarting and accelerating all our programs so that we could help as many people as quickly as possible. 

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  • Can NGOs or the international community build a country?

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    Gonaives following the 2008 floods. Photo courtesy of Matthew Marek/American Red Cross.The air support was provided by Mission Aviation Fellowship. 

    In an interview with NPR, Wyclef Jean said: " Because think about it, you've had NGOs in Haiti for over 30 years and you still have no real infrastructure." I've heard similar comments from lots of different people since the earthquake. The problem is that there has never been enough money to fix the damage caused by any of the numerous disasters that have hit Haiti nor to help it rebuild its infrastructure. The situation in the Haitian town of Gonaives is a great example of how foreign assistance fails. Gonaives was badly flooded in 2004 by Tropical Storm Jeanne. Thousands of people died. Immediately after the disaster, a lot of money was poured in to feed the disaster victims. Later some money was put into rebuilding houses and cleaning the city. However, there wasn't enough to fix the damages, much less to make the city safer. 

    In 2008, Gonaives was flooded again. Some people complained about how inefficient the aid must have been to have left Gonaives vulnerable to repeated flooding. The truth is, there was never enough money. Imagine New Orleans if the dikes had never been repaired. That is Gonaives today. As Jeffrey Sachs put it so well in The End of Poverty, there is never enough money to really end poverty. However, money is only half the problem. 


    The international community cannot take charge of a country. Haiti is a sovereign country with an elected president. Neither the United Nations nor the United States (nor any non governmental organization) can replace a sitting government. We can help and advice, but the host government has to lead. International development assistance is very effective at protecting vulnerable populations, but it cannot make a country develop itself.

    Sorry Wyvlef. The international community can't take responsibility for Haiti's future. Yes, we've made mistakes and yes, all countries act with their own interests in mind. However, Haiti's leadership is responsible for Haiti's future. You know that you would not want it any other way.

  • Signs of Progress in Haiti

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    I had a rare chance to get out today and see the good work that my team is doing. It is so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day hassles of managing that I lose sight of the great changes that are happening around me. 

    Five weeks ago, I visited the Delmas 32 neighborhood. It was a tough visit. the area had been hard hit by the earthquake and still looked bad. Many of the roads were impassable and the area looked unlivable. I noticed a fire burning inside one of the buildings and made the mistake of asking what it was. I was told there was a body that they could not recover and were burning it. We put together a proposal to do demolish the buildings that were falling into the street and to remove the rubble from the roads. We were given a couple of grants to put 1,300 people to work in this neighborhood. We began working just over two weeks ago.

    A Delmas 32 street as it looked in February

    A month after the earthquake, the streets in Delmas 32 were still blocked by debris.

    The change that I saw today was incredible. The streets were filled with yellow and green shirted workers that were working hard to remove the debris. many sections of the streets were already cleared and many of the partially collapsed buildings had already been demolished. However, the most impressive change was in the people. As the workers moved through the neighborhoods, street vendors set up stalls and life returned to the neighborhood. 

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    Today's visit reminded me that we are making progress. Sure, we might end up rebuilding the chaos, Haiti might not have elections this year, and no one knows what tomorrow will bring. But we are working hard to recover from the worst disaster to ever hit the Americas. We might not have the answers, we are making life better. Petit à petit l'oiseau fait son nid–Little by little, the bird builds its nest