Communal and local development

In rural areas, the Haitian population is particularly affected by poverty. While 65 percent of the population as a whole live below the absolute poverty level, this figure increases to 80 percent in rural areas. These people live on less than US$ 1 a day and have very inadequate or no access to effective social and economic infrastructure facilities and the corresponding services.

Haiti is a potential partner country of German Development Cooperation. Although GTZ has been concentrating its work in Haiti for many years on “local and communal development”, the priority area has not yet been formalised between the Governments nor agreement reached within the framework of a priority area strategy paper.

The Interim Cooperation Framework (ICF) designates the promotion of local development, decentralisation and local administrative autonomy as important instruments of crisis prevention in Haiti. This will be the basis for future Development Cooperation with Haiti. It builds on GTZ’s long experience in rural areas.

GTZ is working on the conceptual level in the Local Development Network together with the following partners: European Union (EU), UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and OXFAM Canada.