Understanding Complex Challenges
Alister William Macintyre research notes[1]
9/19/2010
Version 2.0
Table of Contents
Introduction (Sep 19) 3
Pre-requisite Priorities Solution Path (Sep 17) 5
Haiti Statistics (Sep 17) 8
Terminology Challenges (Sep 13) 9
Terminology Glossary (Sep 18) 10
Suggested Reference Documents (Sep 17) 14
Earthquake Rubble Debris (Sep 18) 15
Defining Land Tenure (Sep 11) 17
Land Policy Challenges (Sep 15) 18
Land Tenure Reform (Sep 17) 19
Defining Owner Documentation (Sep 11) 19
Quebec Parallel (Sep 14) 20
Haiti Resolution (Sep 12) 21
Delaleu Solution (Sep 12) 21
Haiti Challenges (June 11) 22
How long until mess resolved? (Sep 18) 23
Major Players (Sep 17) 27
Direction Générale des Impôts (Sep 14) 28
Public Notaries (Sep 14) 28
Local Municipalities (Sep 13) 28
Before Quake Reality (Sep 15) 29
After Quake Reality (Sep 15) 29
No Documentation = No Ownership (July 11) 31
Violent Evictions by Non-Owner Gangs (Sep 15) 35
Haitian Confusion (Sep 18) 35
Build back Better (Sep 14) 36
Introduction (Sep 19)
Topic sub-titles end in a date signifying when that info last updated, so by viewing table of contents, we see where most recent input to these research notes, especially aiding people who have a copy of an earlier version.[2]
Themes: Housing rights, Land & Tenure, Land and Housing; Rubble Debris disposal;
There is a popular expectation by ordinary people donors to charities that in the aftermath of any disaster, that with enough donated funds, the humanitarian community ought to be able to wave its magic wand and for all natural disasters, and man made disasters, for all the victims miraculously make them whole again. Five Years after Katrina, there are people who have not yet been made whole again. There are people still living in those trailers which were shown to have certain poisons to be breathed by the occupants.
Many months after the Haiti earthquake, there’s over a million people in tent cities, the UN and World Bank saying it will be over a year before most of those people are in anything better, Haiti facing a parade of hurricanes, where no one seriously believes a tent city can survive a hurricane. On top of that there is an epidemic of rape and other violence. In the time it takes to resolve this, there is also a need to balance needs of legitimate land owners with that of the survivors of the latest disaster.
· 60% of tent camps are located on private land.[3]
· Tens of thousands of Haitians, displaced by the quake, have been violently evicted from the camps, often in middle of night, with no advance warning.[4]
· Less than 5% of Haiti’s land is legally registered as to who owns it.[5]
Around the world there are many disasters, and relief to those people seems to take forever before they are getting anything more than subsistence assistance. It is like once a nation gets into a fragile condition, they can never get out of it. The mainstream news media would have us believe that this is a scandal, corruption, incompetence, something is very wrong.
When we look at reports issued by the UN, the NGOs, the governments involved in the humanitarian relief effort, it is evident that most of the mainstream news media has been painting a rather superficial picture of the Haitian challenges.
It would be like a journalist going into a hospital or nursing home and showing all those sick people, who have been there for a while, not telling us anything about what diseases they may have, what the statistics are regarding recovery rates from different diseases, then saying that the failure of the doctors to cure these people instantaneously is evidence of something criminal.
However, there are some challenges faced by the relief and recovery efforts, which are also reported in the news media. Many of these challenges do not seem to have good explanations in either the reports by the people on the scene, or in the news media stories. That is the focus of my research, where this document has my notes so far, on trying to make sense of multiple inter-related challenges.
In this research document, I will try to wrap my mind around:
· As I figure things out, explain so other people can also understand situation.
· Include sources of my info, so people interested in pursuing some of these threads a bit differently than me, do not need to duplicate my effort.
· What are the dimensions of Haiti challenges to be resolved?
· Is the Debris Rubble challenge as serious as the news media has painted? It needs to be moved out of the way before replacement housing, but there is no place for it to go, and it cannot be used in replacement construction? Is that true?
· What is Land Tenure? How is that different from real estate ownership documentation?
· What is Haiti’s system of real estate ownership documentation?
· Does this system work elsewhere in the world, why not in Haiti?
· Can it be fixed? How could it be fixed?
· What are the pitfalls of various proposed solutions?
· What are the priorities? What needs to be fixed as a pre-requisite to fixing other things?
This is an on-going research effort, where many of these questions have not yet been answered to my satisfaction. I freely admit that there’s a lot I do not understand, and may have got wrong.
Pre-requisite Priorities Solution Path (Sep 17)
The powers that be in Haiti (international community, NGOs, Government agencies) are struggling how to solve many problems, which could take them months years or decades. While they are doing so, hundreds of thousands of Haitian lives are at dire risk of multiple hazards. They need to have intermediate solutions implemented, while working on the better solutions, for the long term.
The powers that be, such as Gov of Haiti, UN, international community, NGOs, need to come to an agreement that certain needs should have a higher priority for fixing, than they have got so far. Then they need to have conferences of all stakeholders to discuss proposed plans for resolution, where the plans are published for public comment. The plans should include a hierarchy of someone in charge of a master plan, if that person is to be appointed by head of Haiti Gov or by Parliament, a way for the courts to address grievances against various portions of the plan, how it will be funded. This can be a model for good governance resolution of many challenges.
Whatever the powers that be do, or are doing, need to be communicated to the Haitian people, through a healthy news media. When there is no communication of what is being done, the people think nothing is being done. This can lead to violent revolution. It leads to well meaning people, outside of Haiti, devoting great efforts to suggesting solutions, which are not needed, because the news media had painted a fantasy picture of nothing being done.
Prior to the Jan 12 Earthquake, the Haiti “system” typically took people a year to figure out who was legal owner of some property, longer after the quake. Challenges solving the disaster aftermath need resolution faster than being constrained by that “system.”
The Government of Haiti needs to be functioning effectively, including:
· A declaration by Parliament that there is no such thing as unowned land. It either has a land owner, or it is owned by the government. Seizing land, with declaration that it is unowned, should be considered to be a crime. The only organization with authority to seize land by eminent domain is the national government, or the government that is over the department or municipality involved. The prior owner should get compensated, once prior ownership has been proven. It is not acceptable for one department to seize land from another department, or one municipality to seize land from another municipality. The Government of Haiti needs to have the power to enforce such declarations.
· A judicial system which resolves ownership disputes, eviction disputes, rape and death threats, in a fair and even handed manner;[6]
· For example, if a land owner wants an encampment of homeless evicted from the property, or farmers evicted from agricultural land, or for whatever reason, a better process could be:
1. Show proof to judge that this person is in fact owner of the land, and/or is legal representative of the land owner. This process to include opportunity for official property record keepers of government to determine if this land owner has in fact been paying relevant taxes, and there are no conflicting info regarding ownership claim.
2. Hearing is held with the judge at the site of the encampment, where the people there get to dispute the eviction, and date of hearing is announced in advance.
3. “Friends of the court” (UN IOM, NGOs, local municipality officials, etc.) explain what practical alternatives are available to these people.
4. If eviction approved, it be conducted in a humane fashion, and the site be posted appropriately, so additional homeless do not take up residence in the vacated property, in ignorance of the eviction order.
5. Have a phone #, which works, for people to get help, if there is an eviction without approval of the judge.
· Enforce an immediate moratorium on evictions of displaced Haitians (which are outside any authorization by the court system) utilizing the labyrinth apparatus of established MINUSTAH, OCHA, GoH, community systems and partners, to protect basic human rights essential to survival, according to international and Haitian law;[7]
· Government clarification of how tent city victims are to get protection from rapist gangs, alleged land owner eviction gangs, civil wars over who gets to control which property, and other “bandits”, etc. who have killed many quake survivors;
· Minimum standards, for human dignity of aid to disaster victims, mandated by government, with swift action against “humanitarian” violators;
· Certification of who is authorized to handle the land surveying, registration, etc.;
· Legislative reform to outlaw land tenure, replace with land ownership;
· Local (Municipalities and Departments) review what ownership documentation exists, fill in the gaps with who decides for what property, pending judicial resolution of any disputes;
· Documentation of who owns what property and who has what rights to use what land – this accessible for anyone who seeks to rebuild there, remove rubble debris, etc. or condemn the land for the public good, reimbursing the former owners;
· Undocumented property where ownership cannot be verified should be reclaimed as state owned property and made available for auction unless eminent domain is applied;
· Designate more sites where it is legal to dump rubble debris;
· Public confidence in the government, as opposed to people not cooperating because they think everything is too corrupt;
· Literacy such that owners can trust the documentation which has been issued to them.
In the absence of Gov of Haiti functioning as just described, it may be impractical to solve the challenges of Real Estate Ownership Documentation. A sane policy, for what to do about the Rubble Debris removal, needs either resolution of the ownership, so permission can be obtained from the right people, or a legislative mandate that supersedes ownership rights. Without the removal of the debris, it is impractical to rebuild on the property.
The leadership of the nation, whoever they end up being, need to have a mutual consensus that these problems need to be solved, and agreement on what the end game should look like.
According to IOM, at least 60% of tent camps are located on private land.[8] The owners do not want the tent cities on their land, do not want quality services provided, which encourage the people to remain there. Those owners need appropriate financial compensation for the use of their land, or government mandates which supersede ownership rights, until such time that the tent cities temporary “solution” can be replaced with something better.
Currently alleged land owners using excessive force to evict tent city dwellers, without warning, is a MAJOR problem epidemic in Haiti.[9]
Civil Society interests should be encouraged to help solve Haiti’s immediate problems. In Leogane, for example, in the face of frustrating inaction by local officials, Haitian Roody Joseph[10] negotiated one-on-one with owners of empty plots of land. His partnership with Samaritan's Purse is leading to the swift acquisition of these plots and construction of T-shelters to relocate the most vulnerable families off private land where they are being harassed. This model could be emulated all over Port-au-Prince. Organizational efforts to lease usable land or acquire land in existing camps need to be stepped up.
Haiti Statistics (Sep 17)
Info from UN-Habitat as of 2001:
UrbanisationTotal Population: 8m
Urban population: 36%
Slum to urban population: 86%
Annual population growth rates:
Urban: 4%
Slum: 4%
(2001 estimates)
Slum Indicators
% urban population with access to:
Safe Water Source: 49%
Improved sanitation: 51%
Sufficient Living area: 65%
Durable Housing: 87%
(2001 estimates)
Terminology Challenges (Sep 13)
We are familiar with many concepts, and words, which may be used with other meanings in other nations and cultures.
According to Brookings Institute Sep 2010 analysis of burning issues for Haiti recovery and reconstruction,[11] many Haitians’ homes were destroyed by the earthquake, but they have remained on or near their property. In other words, they are homeless but not displaced.