As we previously mentioned, last week the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the independent government agency tasked with evaluating the performance of the federal government in selected areas, released their assessment of U.S. efforts in Haiti.  The report – which bears the less-than-optimistic title “Haiti Reconstruction: U.S. Efforts Have Begun, Expanded Oversight Still to be Implemented” – offers more a description of the general framework of the relief effort than a critical examination of its results to date.  For those not aware of where and how hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funding are being channeled in Haiti, the report has a number of useful pie charts, flow charts and bar graphs that provide a clearer picture of where U.S. funds are being spent, and where they aren’t.  Although the report offers no examination of whether the programs implemented by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are actually effective, it does shine a light on some of the structural problems affecting the international relief mission.

The four broad sectors receiving U.S. funding are 1) Infrastructure and Energy (46% of total funds); 2) Governance and Rule of Law (16%); Health and other basic services (13%); and Food and Economic Security (7%).  The breakdown of spending within each sector provides evidence of misplaced priorities.  For instance, while significant funds are being channeled towards improving Haiti’s energy infrastructure, roads and permanent housing, only a comparatively small amount of allocations are going to rubble removal ($25 million), although the continued presence of rubble throughout Port-au-Prince remains the biggest obstacle to the reconstruction of Haiti’s devastated capital city.

Though the U.S. has allocated over $98 million to health care, only $10 million is being channeled to education (or approximately 1% of total U.S. spending on Haiti’s reconstruction).   Haiti’s education sector was in crisis well before the earthquake – with over 60% of students dropping out of school before the sixth grade and the literacy rate hovering around 50%.  There are now heaps of rubble where many schools stood and the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of children in tent camps have no access to any form of education.  Given the crucial role that education must play in Haiti’s reconstruction, it’s difficult to understand why this “sub-sector” is receiving so little funding.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report last week noting, among other things, that the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC) is still not operational, although it still has several months to do so before its mandate ends:

although the commission's mandate ends in October 2011, IHRC is not fully operational due to delays in staffing the commission and defining the role of its Performance and Anticorruption Office--which IHRC officials cited as key to establishing the commission as a model of good governance.

The GAO goes on to note a significant disconnect between what the Haitian government has identified as priorities, and what IHRC has green-lighted:

although the Haitian government identified nearly equal 18-month funding requirements for debris removal and agriculture, IHRC has approved about 7 times more funding for agriculture projects.

This is perhaps not surprising considering the IHRC’s problems in ensuring involvement of Haitian partners in decision-making.

The debris removal, of course, is necessary in part to clear space for new shelters, and getting displaced persons out of IDP camps, where cholera – abetted by a severe lack of adequate sanitation – can be a serious danger. (Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported this weekend on a new milestone in post-quake tragedy: 5,200 cholera deaths and 300,000 infections over the past seven months.) Yet just 20 percent of the rubble has been removed, according to various officials. USAID has not made rubble removal much of a priority either, according to the USAID Office of the Inspector General.