The funders operating in Haiti receive a lot of criticism.
Donors operating in Haiti receive a lot of criticism. It is not easy to justify disbursement operations amounting to several million dollars in a recessionary economy, without a stable government for almost five years, for socio-economic results as disappointing as those we are experiencing. Haiti is undoubtedly a particularly challenging terrain for most international development experts who have devoted time, energy, and resources there.Having personally participated in and contributed to several projects, it is my view that neither kindness, expertise, nor the will of funders is at issue in this observation. We all share the deep cognitive bias of believing that good decisions always produce good results. Annie Duke, in Thinking in Bets (2018), calls this bias resulting, the tendency to judge the quality of a decision by its observable outcome rather than by the process that produced it. She argues that life is more like a game of poker than a game of chess. In an environment where the result depends on many factors beyond our control, the link between the quality of a decision and its outcome is not as direct as our mind wants to believe. A good decision is the result of a rigorous process, not a guarantee of a good outcome.Haiti is one of those terrains where the best-intentioned decisions, the most rational and previously tested processes fail, and can even produce negative effects. The question is therefore not whether the donors have worked well. It is more structural. Why does the contribution of donors not translate into sustainable economic development in Haiti?
