A Haitian woman farmer inspecting a lush vegetable crop with community workers in the background

By HDNF Editorial Team
Editorial review: HDNF Communications Team
Published: September 7, 2026

Haiti’s poverty is not proof that Haiti lacks talent, history, or the capacity to build.

It is the result of structural forces: extraction, political instability, environmental degradation, weak institutions, and a development model that too often sends money for Haiti through systems that do not place Haitians in control.

The spine of the question is bigger than USAID alone:

Should a people at the avant-garde of freedom and territorial independence need to learn freedom and independence from others?

That question should unsettle every conversation about Haiti.

It should unsettle the way aid is designed, the way history is told, and the way power is distributed.

The latest question is direct: Where does USAID’s money go?

According to Jake Johnston’s February 2025 report for the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), USAID obligated $368 million in contracts and grants for activities in Haiti since October 2023, the beginning of fiscal year 2024. Yet only 7.6% went directly to Haitian organizations.

The money is moving.

The central issue is whether it is building Haitian ownership.

This is the answer taking shape from both history and data: a people that helped define freedom should not be treated as if freedom, capacity, and self-government must always be delivered from somewhere else.

Haiti Was Once the Pearl of the Antilles

Before Haiti became the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Saint-Domingue was known as the Pearl of the Antilles and the most prosperous colony of France. Its plantation economy generated enormous wealth through sugar, coffee, and other exports: but that wealth depended on enslaved labor and was extracted from the people and land of the colony.

Haiti’s history is also a history of resistance and contribution.

The historical record answers clearly.

  • 1679: Port-de-Paix became associated with the first documented Black slave revolt in French Saint-Domingue, led by the maroon leader Padre Jean, also known as Padrejean. Some accounts place an earlier escape or attempted uprising in 1676, but 1679 is the better-documented revolt near Port-de-Paix. Britannica’s history of Port-de-Paix provides historical context.
  • 1779: Approximately 545 Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue, free men of color from the colony, fought alongside French and American forces at the Siege of Savannah during the American Revolutionary War. The tradition that a young Henri Christophe served as a drummer boy is widely repeated, although the surviving evidence is indirect rather than conclusive. Julia Gaffield's Haitian Declaration of Independence project (University of Virginia) provides broader independence history context.
  • 1791: The uprising associated with Bois Caïman helped ignite the Haitian Revolution.
  • 1804: Haiti declared independence and became the first independent Black republic.

This is not the history of a passive people waiting to be instructed in liberty.

This is the history of a people who fought, organized, sacrificed, and built freedom under conditions designed to deny it.

Haitians fought in the struggle for American independence decades before winning their own.

That history does not erase Haiti’s present challenges. It does reject the idea that Haiti has never possessed leadership, courage, or the ability to build.

Extraction Did Not End With Colonialism

The plantation economy extracted wealth and labor from Haiti for generations. After independence, France’s 1825 indemnity placed another major burden on the new nation. France’s royal ordinance conditioned recognition of Haitian independence on the payment of 150 million francs to compensate former colonists. The Bibliothèque nationale de France documents the historical terms of this indemnity.

This history matters because modern aid can repeat an older pattern without repeating the same legal form.

The pattern is simple:

Resources leave Haiti. Decisions are made elsewhere. Haitian institutions remain underfunded.

HDNF does not demand reparations from France. We report, as a documented fact, on the United Nations Secretary-General’s call for reparatory justice frameworks. Our focus is the work ahead: building systems that Haitians own, operate, and improve over generations.

The $368 Million Question

Johnston’s CEPR analysis of USASpending.gov data provides a clear picture of recent USAID obligations.

Key facts

  • $368 million: USAID contracts and grants obligated for activities in Haiti since October 2023.
  • 7.6%: The share that went directly to Haitian organizations.
  • Approximately 40%: The share that went directly to UN agencies.
  • More than $70 million: The amount obligated to the World Food Programme, the largest single recipient identified in the analysis.
  • $330 million: At least this amount in outstanding commitments to Haiti programs was threatened by the 90-day U.S. foreign assistance freeze reported in February 2025.

The $368 million figure covers contracts and grants identified in the analysis and excludes some overhead costs. It also represents obligations: funding commitments recorded in the federal spending system: not necessarily money already disbursed in full.

The largest UN recipients included the World Food Programme, the International Organization for Migration, UNICEF, the Pan American Health Organization, UNDP, UNFPA, and OCHA.

This does not mean every program delivered through a UN agency lacks value. WFP’s Haiti school lunch program reached nearly half a million people and was working toward 100% locally procured food by 2028, according to the CEPR analysis. That model shows what aid can do when it connects immediate relief to Haitian producers and local markets.

But the larger question remains: Who controls the resources, and who builds lasting capacity?

The USAID figures answer the opening question by exposing the problem. $368 million was obligated. Only 7.6% went directly to Haitian organizations. This is not simply a funding story. It is a control story.

Resources move. Authority often does not.

That is the difference between aid that passes through Haiti and development that grows from Haitian leadership.

Only 7.6% Went Directly to Haitian Organizations

The largest direct Haitian recipient identified by CEPR was the SEROvie Foundation, which received obligations of approximately $8.8 million for work involving at-risk youth and HIV/AIDS services.

The funding freeze halted at least an additional $2.5 million connected to SEROvie, according to the report.

That example reveals two realities at once.

First, Haitian organizations are already delivering essential services. Second, they remain vulnerable because they often depend on funding decisions made by foreign agencies, foreign contractors, and foreign intermediaries.

Local organizations cannot build durable systems if they are treated only as downstream implementers.

They must be trusted as prime partners.

A Haitian woman vendor standing beside locally produced food and goods at an outdoor market

The “Beltway Bandit” Problem Is Structural

CEPR uses the term “Beltway bandits” to describe Washington, D.C.-area for-profit contractors that have received large shares of foreign assistance.

In the decade after the 2010 earthquake, Beltway firms received more than half of Haiti-related spending. CEPR reports that Chemonics and DAI together received more than 20%.

According to the report:

  • Chemonics received more than $200 million for 141 post-earthquake projects: more than USAID awarded to the entire Haitian government in the earthquake’s aftermath.
  • Chemonics’ global revenue in fiscal year 2024 was approximately $1.5 billion.
  • Its CEO’s annual salary was reported at approximately $955,000, according to the CEPR/Haiti Liberté analysis.
  • DAI had nearly $25 million committed but not yet disbursed for water, reforestation, and agriculture programs in Haiti.
  • Tetra Tech operated a five-year, $24 million citizen security program, with nearly $20 million yet to be disbursed.

These figures do not prove that every foreign contractor fails. They do show how the delivery structure can concentrate resources outside Haiti while Haitian institutions remain weak.

This is not a partisan issue. It is a systems issue.

The question is not whether international expertise has a role. It does. The question is whether expertise strengthens local ownership: or permanently replaces it.

Why Not Train Haiti’s Own Institutions?

The same structural problem visible in aid also appears in security.

Haiti’s modern history includes repeated foreign interventions: the U.S. occupation of 1915–1934, Operation Uphold Democracy in 1994–1995, which restored President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), deployed in 2004 and present until 2017, and the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission deployed in 2024. As AP News and The Haitian Times make clear, Haiti has lived through a long cycle of outside forces arriving in moments of collapse and leaving without fully solving the institutional question underneath.

That is the same question in security form: why does the international community repeatedly fund third parties to bring law and order to Haiti rather than training and equipping Haiti's own national police and army?

The Kenya-led MSS mission shows the cost of that pattern. The mission's estimated annual cost was roughly $600 million per year. But by May 2025, the UN-managed trust fund had received only about $110.9 million in pledges and roughly $21 million disbursed. Multiple reports described underfunding, delayed and incomplete deployment, and continued gang expansion, including The Haitian Times’ report on the mission’s end in late April 2026 and Citizen Digital’s review of how the Kenya-led force fell short. The United States provided more than $600 million in total support including bilateral aid and equipment — a different figure from the mission's annual cost estimate, yet the basic institutional result remained incomplete.

Now Haiti is transitioning from the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission to a UN-authorized Gang Suppression Force targeting about 5,500 personnel by October 2026, but at the point of transition only about 400 Chadian troops had arrived. CNN and Foreign Policy have both warned that the new force risks repeating past mistakes if the model remains externally driven, under-resourced, and detached from long-term Haitian institutional capacity.

A June 5, 2026 oversight letter from senior members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee reinforced that warning in direct, structural terms. The letter documents the transition from the MSS to the new GSF and warns that a focus on “maximum lethality” without a broader strategy addressing the collapse of institutions and Haiti’s converging security, humanitarian, and economic crises risks plunging the country into a fresh cycle of violence.

The same letter confirms the scale of the institutional breakdown. It states that gangs control roughly 90% of Port-au-Prince, that children make up about half of all gang members, and that the Haitian National Police face an asymmetric threat fueled by an unrelenting flow of illicit firearms, including from the United States. That is not only a security emergency. It is evidence that external force alone cannot substitute for the long work of building competent, trusted Haitian institutions.

The oversight letter also raises accountability concerns that matter because legitimacy matters. It cites four substantiated allegations of rape by MSS members and states that three of the victims of rape were children, and the fourth survivor was 18, while calling for pre-deployment training and swift accountability. It notes that such incidents occur against “the historical backdrop of the Haitian people being victimized by those promising to forge a better future.” That warning is not rhetorical. It goes to the core question of whether outside missions strengthen public trust or erode it further.

In the same fact-based spirit, the letter relays reports that the Haitian government is funding a private security firm, Vectus Global, whose activities are not coordinated with the GSF but could easily be conflated with GSF operations, undermining the force's legitimacy. It also requests the GSF training curriculum, concept of operations, funding accounts, and civilian-harm mitigation plans, while asking how international authorities will work with Haiti’s interim government and civil society to ensure transparency in financing, deployment, and oversight.

This is the central point. Senate oversight did not call for a narrower foreign mission. It called for a fuller strategy that “avoids repeating the mistakes of past decades of interventionism in Haiti” and recognizes that “Haitian-led solutions guided by the people of Haiti are vital to the country’s future.” That reinforces the same thesis as the rest of this article: external missions may be necessary in moments of collapse, but if they do not build Haitian institutional capacity, they risk extending the pattern rather than ending it.

This is the same question.

Haiti’s army was disbanded in 1995 and only partially reconstituted starting in 2017. The Haitian National Police remain underfunded and outmatched in the face of heavily armed gangs, as reporting from AP News and CNN has repeatedly shown.

This is not an argument against partnership. It is an argument against permanence without transfer.

Security relief is immediate. Institutional strength is lasting.

If the world can mobilize hundreds of millions of dollars for rotating outside missions, it can also invest in the training, equipment, logistics, and professional development of Haitian institutions that will still be present after each mission ends. That is the difference between relief mentality and long-term support. That is the difference between response and sovereignty.

Haiti’s Agricultural Crisis Requires More Than Inputs

Haiti’s poverty is also connected to the condition of its agricultural systems.

Bargout and Raizada’s review, “Soil Nutrient Management in Haiti, Pre-Columbus to the Present Day”, describes how soil degradation, erosion, nutrient depletion, limited soil testing, and generalized fertilizer recommendations have constrained agricultural productivity.

The lesson is practical:

Farmers need information for their land, not generic advice for an entire country.

This is why the HDNF Precision Agriculture Initiative combines local farmer knowledge with satellite imagery, soil analysis, terrain mapping, and expert agricultural guidance. Launched on May 1, 2026, the initiative is designed to identify what each plot needs and which crops are best suited to it.

Science matters.

Local knowledge matters.

The strongest model combines both.

A Different Pipe for a Different Future

More money through the same pipes will not automatically produce different results.

The answer to “Where does the money go?” is not simply to increase the amount. It is to rebuild the delivery system so that resources reach Haitian communities, remain in Haiti, and expand local capacity.

Our answer is no.

Not after Port-de-Paix. Not after Savannah. Not after Bois Caïman. Not after 1804. Not after a nation once called the Pearl of the Antilles proved what Haitian labor, knowledge, and determination could produce, even under a brutal colonial order.

Real partnership does not lecture Haiti about self-reliance from the outside. Real partnership invests in Haitian ownership from the inside.

HDNF’s Haiti 2050 model is organized around five connected pillars:

  1. Food production : improving soil-based agriculture, fruits, vegetables, and sustainable livestock systems.
  2. Energy independence : developing biodigesters, improved cookstoves, and waste-to-energy systems.
  3. Preservation skills : teaching canning, fermenting, and dehydrating to reduce food waste and extend harvests.
  4. Craftsmanship : strengthening woodworking, sewing, tool repair, and locally owned livelihoods.
  5. Sustainable tourism : protecting Haitian culture and natural resources while creating community income.

Haitian artisans displaying locally made crafts at a community marketplace

This is the difference between relief and transformation.

Emergency relief is immediate. Development must be lasting.

A distribution is temporary. A productive system is generational.

A foreign project may end when a grant ends. A locally owned enterprise can continue.

The goal is not to reject partnership. It is to make partnership accountable to Haitian ownership.

The Future Must Be Built With Haitians

Haiti does not need another cycle in which outside institutions define the problem, control the funding, and leave local organizations with limited authority.

Haiti needs trusted partnerships, transparent funding, technical knowledge translated into practical use, and long-term investment in people who will remain after the project closes.

Should a people at the avant-garde of freedom and territorial independence need to learn freedom and independence from others?

History says no. The USAID data shows why the question still matters. The work ahead is to build a development model that finally acts on that truth.

That means supporting Haitian farmers, entrepreneurs, craftspeople, educators, community leaders, and local organizations: not only as recipients, but as builders and decision-makers.

You can support this approach through HDNF’s Haiti 2050 work, Precision Agriculture Initiative, food security programs, and community economic development.

Support locally owned systems. Build for generations. Help move Haiti from emergency relief to self-reliance.

Sources and Methodology

This article is based on:

The CEPR figures describe USAID obligations and direct prime-recipient flows. They do not capture every subcontract, subgrant, local purchase, salary, or indirect benefit. As the report notes, funding that reaches Haitian groups through intermediaries may not be visible in public prime-award data.

Nonpartisan statement: HDNF does not endorse or oppose any candidate, political party, or administration. This article discusses a structural development and aid-delivery model, not a partisan position.

Comment moderation policy: Reader responses are welcome on Haiti’s history, foreign assistance, and development model. HDNF will remove hate speech, defamation, partisan attacks, threats, dehumanizing language, and spam. Comments may also be moderated when they make unsupported allegations about identifiable individuals or organizations.