Haiti Resilience Factsheet
Haiti faces multivariate recurring shocks and stresses, including natural disasters, political instability and extreme weather, making it difficult for the country to sustain long- term development gains.
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In 2021 alone, Haiti experienced several major shocks, including COVID-19, the assassination of its President, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake followed by a tropical storm, a major food security crisis and reports of African swine fever. Any of these could negatively affect food security and livelihoods for years to come. These crises follow major past disasters, including the 2010 earthquake, destructive tropical storms and hurricanes such as Hurricane Matthew in 2016, political insecurity and economic hardship. Nearly 6.6 million people live in dense coastal cities, floodplains and deforested and eroded hilly regions rendering them more vulnerable to landslides and other natural disasters.
Major shocks and stresses exacerbate and perpetuate entrenched poverty, food insecurity, water insecurity, high rates of stunting and other forms of malnutrition and infant mortality. Key underlying issues include weak governance and limited capacity of local systems to provide quality services to the population. Haitian communities face significant challenges with water resource management and in accessing quality sanitation and maternal child health services. Agricultural productivity is low due to land degradation and poor soil fertility, limited access to improved technologies and limited market engagement and jobs for marginalized groups, especially women and youth. Most food is imported and most households purchase the majority of their food. While food is available in markets, prices are also high, and poor households cannot afford a safe and nutritious diet. Communities also face significant instability, a growing problem of gang violence, major fuel shortages which impact markets and telecommunications and corruption, which erodes social cohesion and productivity, contributing to international and domestic migration.
USAID has established two Resilience Focus Zones (RFZs) that encompass 10 percent of the country’s population, or about 1.2 million people. One RFZ is found in the flood- and hurricane-prone south and the other in the drought- prone north.
Program Strategies
USAID builds resilience through three primary strategic priorities:
- Improving the independence and accountability of government institutions
- Advancing economic and food security, improving nutrition and strengthening natural resource management
- Improving health and education outcomes
In design and implementation, USAID sequences, layers and integrates humanitarian assistance and development resources in the RFZs to strengthen synergies and linkages between different funding mechanisms, to reach people and systems at different levels and to build economies of scale. Building programmatic and operational flexibility into activity designs, contracts and agreements allows for quicker responses to unanticipated challenges. USAID has also stood up a resilience and new partnerships initiatives unit within the Mission that strengthens coordination across USAID activities and among implementing partners. USAID and implementing partners also work with public and private local systems and structures as well as the broader donor and partner community to strengthen planning and coordination.
Activities and Strategic Partnerships
USAID anticipates awarding a new Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance Resilience Food Security Activity focusing on multisectoral food security, nutrition, water security, sanitation and hygiene and disaster risk management approaches that build and protect resilience capacities and assets among marginalized and underserved populations and those vulnerable to shocks and stresses.
USAID also supports resilience through other programs, including supporting local systems in strengthening social protection systems and structures, agriculture and reforestation activities and capacity-building support for the World Food Programme and the emergency operation centers throughout the country to enhance communities’ ability to respond to disasters.
USAID is building human capital through strengthening health systems and improving the nutritional status of vulnerable groups, including pregnant and lactating women and children under age five. The Community Health Action for Improving Nutrition and Ranfòse Abitid Nitrisyon pou Fè Ogmante Sante programs focus respectively on livelihood improvement and food fortification in support of families with cases of severe malnutrition.
Water Resilience for a Drought-Responsive Northeast Haiti is promoting food security and livelihoods through adaptive water resources management and risk mitigation measures in response to the existing challenges and anticipated further negative impacts of climate change on water availability, quality and management.The activity strengthens local institutional systems and key stakeholders to safeguard and sustainably manage water resources and strengthen water service delivery.
The recently signed Haiti Resilience and Agriculture Sector Advancement Activity will focus on market efficiency, private sector engagement and resilience.This activity will work with smallholder farmers in communities vulnerable to climate change and natural disasters to support the implementation of sustainable land and water resource management practices and the use of improved technologies. A market system approach to development will create both on and off-farm employment in agro-food systems to diversify and increase incomes.
The Haiti Reforestation Project addresses environmental degradation and loss of tree cover in the north and northeast regions of Haiti through support to food security, community resilience, facilitating access to environmental services, diversifying household income sources and building and protecting economic assets.
Evaluation and Learning
USAID integrated resilience into its Strategic Framework [2020–2022] and resilience measurement into its performance management plan. The Mission plans to conduct a baseline survey of its two RFZs in 2022.