Haiti's Recovery: Put the Money Where the Work Is

Suppose a Haitian neighborhood is safe enough for its market to reopen. Vendors are ready to return, but the water connection is broken. Money has been approved for repairs. Who holds it? Who can authorize the work? Can the people waiting for water find out why nothing has happened?

Those questions belong inside a security strategy. A market needs repairs, police need reliable salaries, and families need a way to earn again. We cannot wait until every national institution works well before funding ordinary life. We can, however, change how the money reaches the people and institutions doing the work.

Two practical places to start are direct grants to authorized local institutions and direct salary payments to verified police officers. In each case, shorten the payment chain, check delivery independently, and make the use of public money visible without exposing sensitive personal information.

Does every local project need to pass through the capital?

We talk a great deal about corruption in Haiti. Fair enough. But identifying corruption is not yet a strategy for reducing it. Could we change the path the money takes so that fewer people can intercept it, and more people can see what happened to it?

Here is my proposal: foreign aid intended for local recovery should flow directly to legally authorized local institutions through designated, auditable accounts. It should not first enter a discretionary pool controlled by political leadership in Port-au-Prince. Publish the allocation before the transfer, the receipt when it arrives, and the expenditure as it happens.

That is a rule about control of the money, not the physical location of a bank. National authorities would still establish lawful standards, coordinate shared infrastructure, and receive complete fiscal records. Projects serving several communities need an identified joint implementing body. Neither case requires placing local project money at the discretionary disposal of a national political office.

Why move accountability closer?

A citizen may have little practical access to the president or prime minister. A representative serving a smaller constituency is closer to the people affected by his decisions. Residents are better placed to know whether a promised market exists, whether the road was repaired, and whether the contractor ever arrived. Why not make that local knowledge part of the accountability system?

Give local institutions responsibility for delivery and representatives a clear role in scrutiny. A deputy, as a national legislator representing a constituency, can help residents question an allocation or demand an explanation. The appropriate local public institution would hold the funds and administer the project. Keeping those roles separate lets a representative challenge a contract without also being the person who awarded it.

A program must verify which institutions actually have lawful authority, representation, and financial capacity in each participating area. It cannot assume that every locality currently has an elected deputy or functioning administration. Where capacity is missing, fund accounting support and establish a lawful, publicly identified interim arrangement. Do not substitute a favored individual for an institution.

Proximity alone does not make anyone honest. Local officials can also be corrupt, and residents may be afraid to challenge them. The advantage comes from combining proximity with visible records, independent checks, and enforceable consequences. Those consequences must be lawful: investigation, recovery of funds, removal through proper procedures, and prosecution where warranted. Accountability cannot depend on intimidation or violence.

Make the money visible before anyone spends it

Imagine a public page for each participating community. Anyone, in Haiti or abroad, could open it without an account and answer five questions:

• How much was promised, by whom, and for which project?
• How much actually arrived, when, and in whose institutional custody?
• Which contractor was selected, through what process, and at what price?
• What has been paid, what remains, and what work was verified?
• Who is responsible for answering a discrepancy, and what action followed?

Transfers, contracts, invoices, and verification reports can share a project identifier. Reconcile the donor's payment with the local account's receipt and subsequent spending. Keep amendments visible beside the original contract. A website maintained solely by the official being monitored would simply give that official another place to make claims; bank reconciliation and independent physical and financial checks must feed the record too.

Make the pages usable on basic phones, with plain-language Haitian Creole and French summaries, downloadable records, and noticeboard or radio summaries for people without internet access. Publish institutional responsibility and contract recipients, but protect personal bank details, complainants, and vulnerable workers. Citizens need a safe way to challenge what the record says.

Start with a market, not a national promise

Take a hypothetical market whose drainage and water access need repair. Ask vendors and residents, including those displaced from the area, what prevents reopening. If they confirm those priorities, the local authority publishes a costed scope, bids, the selected contractor, completion criteria, and who will maintain the repairs.

A donor funds the designated local account under an agreement with the legally authorized institution. The grant covers accounting, public reporting, and verification as well as construction. Release a limited mobilization payment so a capable small contractor does not have to finance the entire job; subsequent installments follow verified milestones. Separate the people who authorize spending, make payments, and certify completion.

Residents can now compare a concrete claim with a concrete result. The record says the drainage was completed. Does it work? The account says the water connection was tested. Can vendors use it? Independent inspection checks technical quality; community feedback identifies failures that a scheduled visit may miss.

If evidence conflicts, pause the disputed installment, investigate independently, and publish the resolution. An allegation alone is not proof. The agreement should provide for recovering misused funds and replacing a failed implementer without abandoning the essential service.

This belongs in a security strategy because a reopened market restores customers for farmers, destinations for transporters, and income for households. It does not replace police protection or justice. It gives security an economic purpose that residents can experience. Prepare financing and procurement before an opening, then start delivery when access and protection assessments permit it.

Pay the officer directly

If donors want to help pay a Haitian police officer, why should that officer depend on a succession of people passing his salary down the chain? Establish the lawful entitlement, verify the person, and pay the approved amount directly into an account he controls. The opportunity to divert the payment is narrower.

I would begin with an independently checked payroll pilot agreed with the Haitian National Police and the relevant fiscal authorities. Reconcile identities, authorized posts, active-service records, and bank or regulated mobile-money accounts. Apply the required human-rights vetting and aid eligibility rules. A real identity does not by itself establish that someone is serving, eligible, or entitled to the amount claimed.

Donor funds would enter a restricted payroll facility, with a licensed payment provider executing the approved roster and officers receiving individual payment confirmations. Reconcile donor contributions with Haiti's own payroll so assistance does not produce duplicate payments or an unexplained reduction in domestic funding. Agree on the funding period and eventual domestic responsibility before creating recurring commitments.

Check what the officer can actually withdraw, after fees, and provide a protected channel outside the immediate command for reporting demanded kickbacks. Plan for lost phones, identity errors, network outages, and cash-out agents without enough liquidity. Any exception needs a traceable resolution, not an unrecorded return to cash handed to a commander.

Publish the pay rules, aggregate amounts funded and paid, unresolved exceptions, and independent audit findings. Do not publish officers' identities, account details, or operational assignments. Auditors need access to individual records under strict controls; the public needs proof of reconciliation without exposing personnel to targeting.

This changes the payment route, not the chain of command. The HNP remains a national institution under Haitian law. Local politicians and donors should not acquire their own police forces through payroll. Nor does a full salary guarantee honest policing. Training, supervision, equipment, courts, and consequences for abuse remain necessary.

What has worked elsewhere?

Afghanistan offers a specific police-payroll precedent. A 2016 account by the Afghan Treasury, published by the Better Than Cash Alliance, describes a mobile-linked salary pilot begun in Kapisa in 2015. It reports that police received their full salaries and some mistook the amount for a bonus. This is an implementer's report, not an independent impact evaluation. It shows a workable payment mechanism, not that Afghanistan solved police corruption; UNDP's later account records the closure of its police-support projects after the government's collapse in 2021.

India provides stronger evidence on payment leakage. A randomized rollout of biometric payment infrastructure in Andhra Pradesh, studied by Muralidharan, Niehaus, and Sukhtankar and published in 2016, produced faster, more predictable employment-program payments and reduced leakage in employment and pension programs without adversely affecting access in that study. It tested a package of payment reforms, not police salaries or decentralization. The useful lesson is that changing delivery can improve what intended recipients actually receive.

Uganda illustrates why recipients must know what was sent. Research by Reinikka and Svensson on a school-grant information campaign linked publicizing transfers to reduced capture of funds by local intermediaries. Publication came alongside stronger monitoring; this was not a randomized test of a website. It supports the transparency part of the proposal and also warns against assuming local officials are inherently trustworthy.

These examples support different parts of the design. None proves that a direct-payment system will eliminate corruption in Haiti. Together they give us a better starting point than simply asking recipients and donors to trust another promise.

Strengthen the institution that has to stay

International security assistance and a stronger Haitian police force serve different but connected purposes. Specialized personnel and operational support can help address immediate threats. A reliable Haitian payroll helps sustain the institution responsible for public safety over time. The UN's October 2023 account of the Multinational Security Support authorization records calls for both operational assistance and financing for the HNP.

Direct payment would address one specific weakness, not replace the rest of a security strategy. But if we can verify who should be paid and whether the full salary arrived, we can resolve a concrete problem while the harder institutional work continues. Why wait?

Start small enough to learn

Start with a limited group of local projects and a defined police-payroll cohort. Choose them through published criteria for need, lawful authority, and the ability to verify delivery safely. Include the cost of accounting support and independent checks in the budget from the beginning.

For local projects, measure transfer delays, costs, quality, and unresolved discrepancies. For payroll, measure verified full and timely receipt, fees, exceptions, and reports of forced deductions. Compare against a documented baseline and, where feasible, similar conventional programs. Publish failures as well as successes.

My larger hope is that local transparency would establish an expectation. Once a community can see where foreign assistance went, why should it accept less visibility for money collected by its own government? Domestic transfers could eventually follow the same local allocation and public reporting model through Haitian budget law.

Haiti should not have to wait for an exceptionally honest leader before a community can repair its market or an officer can receive a full salary. Put the money where the work is, make its movement visible, and give independent reviewers the authority to check it. Then judge the arrangement by what people actually receive.

Sources and context

The international evidence is linked where discussed. Haiti-specific context includes the Working Group's March 2026 humanitarian discussion and June 2026 economy and job-creation discussion. These are dated assessments, not a current security map. The designs above are the author's proposals for legal review and testing, not existing programs or agreed Working Group recommendations.