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- 02/06/12: Remarks by Donald Steinberg, Deputy Administrator, US Agency for International Development - Beyond Victimhood: The Crucial Role of Marginalized Groups in Building Peace
- 02/02/12: Statement of Dr. Sarah E. Mendelson, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, before the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights - U.S. Policy toward Post-Election Democratic Republic of the Congo
- 01/20/12: Remarks by USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah at the Environment and Security Conference, Washington, DC
- 01/19/12: Remarks by USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah at the Brookings Institution, Washington, DC - U.S. Aid and Transparency for Global Development
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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Remarks by Andrew S. Natsios, Administrator, USAID
U.S. Ambassador's Residence
Haiti
July 21, 2003
Well, given that introduction, Ambassador, it means I'm going to have a very, very, very long speech, because I know what's going to happen to me when I finish talking. I will be descended upon! But the good thing is that dinner is served, and so you really should eat before you talk to me about further funding.
There are several things that I wanted to say to you tonight. I'm really not going speak a long time because I want to make sure we're under the tent if it starts raining. But I want to first thank my friend Dean Curran for having this reception and David Adams from AID. This is very important. Ambassador Curran was the ambassador to another favorite country of mine, Mozambique, before here. I don't know if you know that, but he's very well regarded in a country that's actually taking off economically: 12% growth rates now. Mozambique lost 2 million people during the civil war.
Doctor Mocumbi, the Prime Minister, is a very good friend of mine, and every time he has a good quarter he calls me on the phone and says, "Do you know what the new growth rate is in Mozambique?" A lot of that work was done when Ambassador Curran was the Ambassador.
Of course, you have to have a political leadership in the country that's defending the right policies and is enthusiastic about growth, democratic governance, civil society and economic reform. If you don't have that, it's a little difficult to have a 12 or 13% growth rate.
The first thing I want to say though is that AID is committed to being in Haiti for the long term. Just so there's no doubt at all, AID is going to be here for a long time. We hope not too long, because we hope that at some point the political leadership will agree to the political and economic reforms needed in order for Haiti to take off in the same way that Mozambique is taking off. The notion that countries have to be stuck in perpetual poverty is simply nonsense.
We know from the experience of Costa Rica, for example, or even El Salvador, that if the country leadership adopts the right policies and makes decisions at the national level, then the country can get out of the rut of poverty and start accelerating its growth rates economically, protecting civil liberties, guaranteeing the freedom of press and guaranteeing free and fair and open and honest elections which are critically important in a country. So we're going to be here for a while.
But what I also wanted to talk about, though, is our other partners. We don't do our work in any country just from just government to government. In fact, we learned a long time ago that sometimes in some countries that's really not a wise thing to do. And so, in the last 15 years there has been a change in the way AID does its work, and we are much more private-sector oriented -- not just NGOs, but with universities, business associations, professional associations.
In many countries we've started the Labor Union Movement, AID has, using the AFL-CIO in the United States. The Chamber of Commerce in many countries has been started by the Chamber of Commerce in the US using AID funding. Why? Because at AID we believe in a rich civil society. What is civil society? It is a complex web of private associations, of professional associations, medical associations, nurses associations, the Bar Association, of NGOs, of indigenous NGOs, international NGOs, of universities, of foundations, of all sorts of non-government institutions that, when they combine together, protect individual freedom, protect civil society, and protect civil liberties which are critically important to the development of a country, a stable democratic system over the longer term, and guard society against abuses.
We saw some very bad events take place last week which we were shocked by in Washington, where civil society was meeting peacefully and was disrupted. It was very disturbing: the President was disturbed by it, Secretary Powell was disturbed by it, and I was disturbed by it. I just want to condemn the violence that took place against civil society meeting peacefully last week in a way that we thought was outrageous, just outrageous.
We've established a new policy in AID. We are categorizing countries in 4 categories -- I don't even remember which category Haiti's in, but you can use your own imagination. There are certain countries, about half a dozen of them that are geo-strategically important to the United States: Pakistan, the war on terror, Jordan, countries like that. There are no countries in the Western Hemisphere that are in that category.
The second category is countries that just barely fail to make Millennium Account Challenge (MCA) status. If you don't know this, President Bush has proposed a five billion dollar increase in foreign assistance: the largest since the Marshall Plan in the 1940's. Five billion dollars a year. A normal foreign aid program is about ten billion dollars. This is a five billion dollar increase, on top of which we add two billion dollars for HIV/AIDS. So it's a seven billion dollar increase the President proposed: seventy percent in the next few years.
Countries have to have three characteristics to be eligible for MCA. What are they? They have to invest in health and education from their own budget resources, for their own people. The second: they have to be a pluralistic democracy that protects individual rights, that protects civil liberties, that guarantees the freedom of press and has honest elections, and has some control over corruption. There are sixteen indicators of performance in the MCA. One of them is an absolute requirement -- and we didn't recommend this to the President; the President said "...if there are excessive levels of corruption, and the government is predatory, stealing the wealth of the country, then they are completely ineligible for MCA status; they will get no money out of this account." The third requirement is that they liberalize their economy and create an investment climate that will encourage private sector investment and trade. And if they have these characteristics, they become an MCA country and they will have a massive increase in aid. The increase in assistance in most countries will amount to a tenfold increase. So a country with a thirty million dollar budget will go to three hundred million dollars. A country with a thirty million dollar budget will go to three hundred million. There are only ten or fifteen countries in the developing world that will be in this category; some countries will just barely miss it. I don't want to mention the countries because they have not been told yet who missed it and who made it.
I was in a country in the Balkans recently, and they have terrible corruption problem but everything else is pretty good, and I met with the President and the Prime Minister and the Speaker of the Parliament and I said: "I don't want to tell you this but you guys just barely missed it" and they said: "Why didn't we make it?" and I said: "The corruption in your government is so terrible that the tax revenues of the Treasury are all being stolen." And there was silence in the room. And I said, "You won't pass a conflict of interest law, you won't pass a law creating an auditor general to investigate corruption, and I'm sorry, because these bills have been proposed for 4 years and you won't pass them." Within two weeks all this legislation had been rammed through the Parliament. They said, "Ah! well this is the problem." I said, "Well, you knew it was the problem for a long time, you just simply refused to act on this."
Not that there is any problem with these sorts of issues in Haiti. I am speaking now about the Balkans. I would not make allusions about any other country, but the whole point here is if you perform, if a country performs, then we will invest large, huge amounts of money in those countries. There are some countries that just barely didn't make it, and we're going to put more money in AID from our regular funding for these countries. Some countries are sort of mediocre performers, and they're not doing very well, and there's no will to reform and they are in a third category.
The final category is failed states, like Somalia which has had no government for ten years or Sudan that is in the middle of a civil war. Afghanistan is graduating from failed state status but the point I want to make here is this: if the government of a country does not have the capacity to manage the resources then we are going to go to the broad sector of civil society to invest our resources from AID. If a country does not have the capacity to spend money in a government-to-government program, then we need to go to civil society to do our investments, because it's irresponsible otherwise. So we rely on the NGO community, the university community, the foundations, indigenous groups and trade associations to be our partners in order to make progress and development because the government can't be trusted to do that.
The question gets asked in Haiti: why do we have so many private-sector partners? It's an obvious answer: Haiti is in one of these categories that says we are going to have to invest in these private civil society groups in order to do our work. It should be a message. There shouldn't actually be a great debate about it -- it's pretty clear. We have very stringent requirements for accountability and the President wants results! He keeps saying to me: "Andrew, I want measurable results in your programs." And when I meet heads of states and ministers of finance and planning ministers, I keep telling them, "It does not make any difference what the rhetoric is; it's useless rhetoric; don't even mention it to me."
What's interesting, what's important to us, what's critical, is are you improving the standard of living of your people, are you protecting civil liberties, are you protecting democratic governance, are you having honest elections, are you in fact liberalizing your economy, in order to attract investments and to stimulate job growth. Are you doing these things or aren't you, because if you're giving speeches about it, it doesn't help. What helps is change in policy.
One last point: I was recently in Jordan where King Abdullah is going so fast AID is trying to catch up with him. He calls us up on the phone and says, "I want to reform this particular part of the economy." Last week it was on education. He said: "I want a reform plan; you have two weeks to prepare it." And I said, "Well, we need a little bit more time, Your Majesty." He said, "No, I want it now." He is moving so quickly we are just trying to catch up with him. And Jordan has had now three years of five percent economic growth. They just had an election, which was very dangerous for the King to do, given what was happening around him. He had democratic elections in which there were no interference; they were honest elections. I was astonished he took the risk of doing it but he did it. That's the kind of leader you want to invest your resources in. Whether it's the European Union or the United States or Canada, it does not make any difference what the country is. You want a country that's taking off. Even though they are very poor, they are taking off because they have the right leadership and the right policies.
The question for all of us here is: whether Haiti is moving in that direction or not, it needs to move in that direction.
And I just want to tell you that when Ambassador Curran makes public statements, some people think he's stating his own opinion. That is not true. He's speaking for Secretary Powell and he's speaking for President Bush who have the same views that he does. So just for everybody, there's no lack of clarity at all. He is speaking, not just for the U.S. government, but for the Secretary of State and the President himself when he makes a statement.
I am here to reassure you that America is going to be here in the long term with AID and the American Embassy. But we do need to have leaders here in Haiti who are like King Abdullah, who are running so fast to develop the country that we have to catch up with them.
Finally we are here to announce our huge commitment to HIV/AIDS, and Cornell and my friend, who is the Secretary of HHS, are partners in this. The Centers for Disease Control which is part of HHS announced today a major initiative. Haiti is one of the fourteen countries in which we are going to invest this huge increase in U.S. government resources to prevent the spread of this disease.
I'm sorry I went on for so long, Ambassador, so I really appreciate it. The rain has held off; the Good Lord has intervened again miraculously here. Thank you all for inviting us and having this wonderful reception this evening. Thank you all for your work and your help in our great effort to develop Haiti.
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