Marla C. Haims

Hope for a prosperous and peaceful future for Haiti lies in building a more effective, resilient state. This report identifies the main challenges to more capable governance, evaluates existing plans for improving the delivery of public services, and proposes a realistic set of critical actions. The proposed state-building priorities merit the greatest degree of Haiti's and international donors' policy attention and financial commitment.

Insecurity in the 21st century appears to come less from the collisions of powerful states than from the debris of imploding ones. This paper aims to improve the understanding and treatment of failed states by focusing on critical challenges at the intersections between security, economics, and politics and on the guiding goal of lifting local populations from the status of victims of failure to agents of recovery.