(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) “The Haiti of the future must be completely different and significantly different from the Haiti of the recent past,” the Most Honourable Percival J. Patterson said at the International Donors Conference on Haiti, Wednesday, 31 March 2010.

The Conference was held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, to mobilise support for the development needs of Haiti towards its sustained reconstruction and recovery.

Speaking as the Special Representative of the Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to Haiti, the former Prime Minister of Jamaica acknowledged that the initial response from the international community had been “tremendous”, but, he added, “the work has just begun to lift Haiti from the rubble.”

Mr. Patterson stated that re-energising Haiti’s agricultural sector and decreasing its dependency on foreign food aid were among the inextricable components of the Action Plan for Haiti’s recovery.

Important too, he said, was proper management of the funds that would be procured and the decentralization of government, economic activity and other services to lessen the present over-concentration in the capital city.

He said that Port-au-Prince was not only the capital of Haiti, but was the location where public administration, political, business, cultural and other activities were “over-concentrated to the detriment of outside locations.”

Illustrating the critical importance of decentralisation, Mr. Patterson said, “The State’s human capital, its institutional and administrative capacity as well as its physical presence -The Presidential Palace, Ministries, Courts, Police Stations including the Headquarters - have been virtually wiped-out by a single event.”

He said to ensure that no future catastrophe had the “similar devastating impact and therefore such national significance as the recent earthquake”, decentralisation was essential.

Another critical element of success of the reconstruction efforts the CARICOM Representative to Haiti said was the strengthening of the government’s “pulverized institutional capacity.”

As a matter of urgency and priority, he stated, the public functions of the state and of its public service must be reinforced, not only to provide the Government of Haiti with institutional capacity, but also to empower it to play the lead role in guiding and in managing the recovery and reconstruction of the country.

Mr. Patterson said in that process there must be a guarantee that the progress made in the provision of public good and basic services, which was the responsibility of the state, was sustainable. He added that the Haitian Diaspora could play a key role in this regard.

He told the conference, “We must go beyond relief and recovery to build with the Government and people of Haiti, a land which provides a quality of life for its citizens and future generations, which its amazing history and rich culture truly deserve.”

“This was a defining moment in our collective history as Haiti. Donors, development agencies, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations seek to attain an objective which has long eluded us – the sustainable development of Haiti,” he said.

Contact:  piu@caricom.org