Two senior officials from the Ministry of National Education, namely Mr. Yves Roblin and Mr. Charles L. Joseph, participated in a forum organized at IENA in Paris by the institutes of the World Bank and UNESCO, under Minister Gabriel Bien-Aimé. The theme addressed was: “Education in Poverty Reduction Strategies: Towards Pro-Poor Growth”.
During these meetings, experts, including Jacques Hallack and Françoise Caillods, raised awareness among participating countries about the need to target pro-poor strategies focused on free primary education, the relevance of vocational training, women's empowerment, and entrepreneurship development. These measures aim to reduce poverty and mitigate the social tensions that prevail in the country’s poverty pockets.
Additional resources must be mobilized to support these sectors. The lack of resources should not be the main obstacle to achieving these goals. The fundamental question remains that of good governance as per the resolutions from various international meetings, including the 2015 New York Congress that led to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This text thus aims to challenge policymakers on the necessity of redirecting financing for education in Haiti. In clear terms, to instruct Technical and Financial Partners (TFPs) to mobilize more funds towards increasing children's access to basic education and vocational training for youth, which is framed as an intervention axis of our various education plans.
Necessary remedies for reducing poverty
To improve the living conditions of the population, public authorities must mobilize more resources for free and compulsory primary education, a genuine social housing policy, increasing agricultural production to address food insufficiency, establishing an effective health system, and reorganizing public transport. They must also implement an economic model based on pro-poor growth supported by rigorous governance.
All of these measures could favor a return to a welfare state concept inspired by the works of economist John Maynard Keynes whose theories contributed to shaping economic policies implemented to face the 1929 crisis which had profoundly shaken the foundations of international capitalism.
These strategies are likely to contribute to reducing poverty and calming social tensions, particularly in areas of the country facing insecurity and a lack of public services.
I advocate, firstly, the principle of good practices: less embezzlement, fewer irregular operations, and most importantly, less corruption. To achieve this, it is essential to have a regulatory framework, strategic steering based on a database, as well as an effective monitoring and evaluation mechanism for major public policies.
When I was studying at the École Normale Supérieure, I placed considerable importance on systemic analysis and historical materialism developed by Karl Marx. It is in this perspective that I also refer to the Palo Alto School, whose systemic approach considers the individual in its entirety and in its interactions with its environment. A problem cannot be understood by isolating the person concerned nor by making them a scapegoat.
This approach reveals that resolving the difficulties of the educational system requires considering several interdependent dimensions: economy, social, agriculture, environment, security, technology, and many other factors.
Based on a worrying diagnosis of the situation in Haiti, particularly its education sector, I identified eight (8) priority intervention axes that public authorities should translate into public policies to pull the country out of the economic and social deadlock it finds itself in. This approach must also take into account the 2030 timeline set by the United Nations for achieving the SDGs.
Priority intervention axes
Fight against food insufficiency by ensuring better access to food for the population.
Improve housing conditions by developing public policies aimed at reducing the burden of rent on households.
Facilitate access to decent employment for graduates to reduce unemployment, especially in large cities.
Ensure free and quality primary education to relieve the burden on parents and promote universal schooling for all school-aged children.
Make healthcare accessible to all by establishing an effective system, particularly to reduce infant and maternal mortality.
Reorganize public transport by developing and improving road infrastructure to ease circulation and limit the massive importation of used cars.
Promote an economic model adapted to national realities, particularly by strengthening production and facilitating transactions in gourdes.
Enhance public governance by relying on three essential elements: an appropriate legal framework, a reliable database, and a monitoring and evaluation system enabling efficient administration of policies to combat precariousness and misery.
Pro-Poor Strategies
In this same perspective, Haitian public authorities must prioritize pro-poor strategies, notably by mobilizing more resources in favor of formal and non-formal education. A positive discrimination approach, consisting of compensating for the opportunity costs borne by parents living in disadvantaged areas, could favor more economically directed growth towards the most marginalized categories.
It is also necessary to adopt good management practices to optimize the use of resources allocated to the education sector.
Given the fundamental role of education in reducing poverty, planners and technicians must possess the necessary skills to design policies that favor inclusive growth. This must notably improve the living conditions of the most vulnerable groups, including the unemployed, street children, the disabled, and pregnant women.
The justification for these strategies rests on a crucial observation: a country can record overall economic growth, notably marked by the multiplication of banking institutions, without this evolution benefiting the entire population equitably. While some sectors prosper, the poorest may continue to sink deeper into their misery.
This reality highlights the urgency of the Haitian situation. In light of the international commitments made by the state, the country must pursue, by 2030, the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly those related to education, equitable access to essential services, and poverty reduction.
Therefore, a fundamental question arises for the authorities: under what conditions can the Republic of Haiti achieve these objectives, while remaining realistic, when many families live on extremely low incomes, sometimes below the poverty line used by the Bretton Woods institutions, including the World Bank?
The Opportunity Costs for Parents of Schoolchildren
The difficulty of addressing this issue lies in a finding highlighted by several studies: even when the free primary education, enshrined in Articles 32.1 and 32.3 of the amended Haitian Constitution of 1987, is effectively implemented through a proactive state policy, school attendance may remain low in the most remote areas, particularly those exposed to poverty and gang violence.
The availability of uniforms, textbooks, and meals in the cafeteria is not always enough to convince families to send their children to school. These mechanisms, although essential, do not necessarily take into account all the economic constraints that households face.
It must be remembered that enrolling a child always incurs an opportunity cost for the family. For some households, this cost is particularly high. Parents may prefer to send their children to work in the fields rather than to school, due to the immediate income that this activity can provide.
This situation shows that free schooling alone does not guarantee effective access to education. It must be accompanied by social measures capable of addressing the immediate needs of the most vulnerable families.
Subsidy Policies Adapted to Disadvantaged Families
It becomes necessary to consider incentive measures, particularly through the establishment of subsidy policies targeted at the most disadvantaged families.
These would involve complementing the subsidies granted to schools with direct assistance to households, in order to better meet the economic realities of disadvantaged families. For these families, children's education may seem secondary when essential needs are not met and when the benefits of schooling only manifest in the long term, without absolute guarantees.
In other words, sometimes it is necessary to start by ensuring livelihoods before prioritizing education. This logic aligns with the idea that meeting basic needs is a fundamental condition for sustainable access to education.
Haiti could particularly draw inspiration from the Bolsa Escuela or Bolsa Família programs in Brazil, as well as the Oportunidades program in Mexico. Measures previously adopted in New York in favor of disadvantaged families should also be studied, according to references made by economist Kesner Pharel of Radio Métropole.
A coherent policy based on partnership and participation would thus improve the purchasing power of families and encourage them to keep their children in the school system.
One of the essential elements of this policy would be the provision of allowances to underprivileged households, complemented, as needed, by support for students, school meals, and social assistance schemes.
This approach would have the merit of stimulating social demand for education by taking into account the immediate concerns of families. It could also facilitate the effective implementation of legal provisions regarding compulsory education.
It should be noted that Haiti presents certain particularities that invite nuance in human capital theory. In the national context, people in the highest positions in the social hierarchy are not necessarily those who have followed the most advanced educational paths, especially at the levels of Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctorate (LMD).
This observation recalls the filter theory developed by Kenneth Arrow, Nobel laureate in economics, in the 1970s. According to this approach, degrees and labor market selection mechanisms do not always perfectly reflect real skills or individual merit. Access to positions of responsibility may also depend on other factors.
In the administrative field, areas of uncertainty and informal mechanisms also play an important role. Michel Crozier notably analyzed them in his work
