Western Union and Sogexpress Innovate: Remittances to Fund Renewable Energy in Haiti

New Klere Ayiti initiative seeks to address Haiti’s energy poverty

MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU), a leader in global payment services, and Western Union Agent Sogexpress, a leading Haitian money transfer and payment services company and subsidiary of Sogebank, today launched a new platform that enables the Haitian diaspora to use remittances to finance renewable energy products for families and friends in Haiti, where only 28 percent of the population has access to electricity.

“Comprehensive Planning for Electric Power Supply in Haiti – Expansion of the Supply for Electricity Generation”

The platform features a dedicated website that allows local customers and senders living abroad to pre-order the solar light kit of their choice at www.klereayiti.com. They then use their order number to complete payment at participating Western Union Agent locations around the world via the Western Union® Quick PaySM platform. Orders will be fulfilled by Sogexpress in three to five working days.

Western Union and Sogexpress’ corporate commitments provide an ecological and viable solution to address Haiti’s “energy poverty” challenge. The two companies are key partners of the ‘Klere Ayiti’ – “Light-up Haiti” – initiative made possible by technical assistance funded by the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), a member of the Inter-American Development Bank Group, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and provided by Arc Finance. The objective of ‘Klere Ayiti’ is to catalyze new commercial business models that will increase consumer access to clean energy in Haiti. The model is based on one piloted in a previous MIF-Arc Finance-Sogexpress project executed in 2012 to 2013. The remittance platform will add a new financing option to enable Haitians to access larger systems that have economic, health, and social benefits.

Sean Mason, Vice President for Western Union in the Caribbean said, “The Klere Ayiti initiative is a real life example of the positive impact Western Union aims to achieve when we say we are Moving Money for Better. Through our services, we have seen the quality of life improve, education levels lift, jobs created and economies grow. We are committed to the collaborative approach of delivering renewable energy products, through a technologically innovative process of purpose-directed payments, with multiple benefits for the people of Haiti.”

Franck Lanoix, Sogexpress Executive Vice President, is enthusiastic about the initiative and the impact that solar energy will have on the lives of everyday Haitians at home and in small businesses. “At Sogexpress we want to help all Haitians benefit from our natural resource – an abundance of sunlight. With these solar lighting kits children can study at night, families will feel more safe and secure, businesses can stay open longer and people can charge their phones. Having a cleaner and more accessible alternative for electricity with the solar light kits has the potential to transform the lives of millions of Haitians,” he said.

Haiti receives substantial remittances inflows every year – approximately US$2 billion in 2014 according to the Multilateral Investment Fund. Remittances represent over 20 percent of GDP2 - mainly from the million-plus Haitians living in the United States and Canada. The average monthly remittance size is US$60 to $200, and a substantial portion of this is used to pay for energy, including fuel for lighting, cooking and transportation.

Documents Show Red Cross May Not Know How It Spent Millions In Haiti

The American Red Cross is under pressure this week to answer detailed questions from Congress about how it spent the nearly half-billion dollars it raised after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Some of those answers might be difficult to come by. New documents obtained by NPR and ProPublica reveal that the Red Cross may not have an accurate accounting of how all the money was spent.

The reports — internal assessments from 2012 of the group's health and water projects — found the charity failed in many cases to monitor its own spending, oversee its projects and even know whether the projects were successful. The documents also cast doubt on the accuracy of some of the Red Cross' public claims of success.

One report found the Red Cross had "no correct process for monitoring project spending."

Another pointed to $10 million the charity gave to other nonprofits to fight the spread of cholera. The review found the Red Cross did not evaluate any of the work by these other nonprofits, did not seem to know if any of the objectives had been achieved and wasn't aware that one of the nonprofits mismanaged its funds.

The review concludes: "It is too late to tend to this."

"It is very heartbreaking," says Bonnie Kittle, who was one of the independent reviewers hired by the Red Cross and author of one of the reports. She described her findings in an interview with NPR: "The only real advantage that the American Red Cross had over other organizations was that it had this huge amount of money. Otherwise it was very handicapped."

The Red Cross declined NPR and ProPublica's request for comment on the reports. In a statement, Red Cross spokeswoman Suzy DeFrancis said NPR and ProPublica have "mischaracterized" the Red Cross' work, stating "we will no longer respond to your requests."

The findings parallel NPR and ProPublica's earlier reporting about the Red Cross' troubled efforts to help Haiti recover from the 2010 earthquake. The charity has so far declined to explain how the almost $500 million was spent, what programs it ran and what its expenses were.

In explaining the troubles in its Haiti program, the Red Cross has previously cited the challenges of operating in one of the world's poorest countries, particularly confusion over land ownership and title.

But the internal assessments also lay blame on American Red Cross headquarters in Washington. The report on health projects found: "In large part because of the centralized decision-making, most if not all of the directly implemented projects in Haiti are behind schedule."

The report also found that Red Cross figures about how many people it claims to have helped on one project were "fairly meaningless."

Kittle says the Red Cross provided Haitians with important skills and Red Cross workers on the ground were passionate and dedicated. She also says local Red Cross managers in Haiti implemented training after her report to try to correct some of the problems.

Additionally, according to one report, one aspect of the Red Cross' response went well — a hygiene promotion project that was already underway and was quickly refocused on battling cholera: "The rapid scale up of cholera prevention activities in the camps likely helped save many lives."

But overall, Kittle says the Red Cross was unable to shift from its expertise — emergency relief — to rebuilding in a developing country and was unable to properly manage the programs it implemented. She pointed to one $24 million neighborhood project in Campeche, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, where residents were once promised new homes but have not received them.

"It's really easy to be very disappointed when you hear those numbers — the amounts of money," she says. "And the little it seems that they were able to accomplish."

According to the reports, many of the managers had little meaningful interaction with local residents. One senior manager couldn't speak French or Creole, hindering efforts to interact with the community. One report found turnover was so high among senior staff that at one point 20 out of 24 managers in Haiti decided not to renew their contracts.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley has asked the Red Cross to respond by Wednesday to more than a dozen detailed questions about how it spent the money in Haiti and what exactly that money achieved.

TeleSur - Dominican Republic Rejects Dialogue with Haiti with Bias Claims

The head of the OAS has called for the two countries to discuss tensions, but Dominican officials accuse him of being biased on migration issues. The government of the Dominican Republic has rejected a dialogue with Haiti requested by the head of the Organization of American States, saying Secretary General Luis Almagro is biased when it comes to the issue of the immigration situation on the Caribbean island. Dominican Vice President Margarita Cedeno said Friday that “Almagro showed not to have an impartial stance on immigration issues between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which disqualifies him from exercising his role as a neutral entity.” Almagro mostró no tener postura imparcial ante tema migratorio entre RD-Haití, lo cual lo descalifica para ejercer su rol como ente neutral — Margarita Cedeño (@margaritacdf) July 17, 2015 “Almagro showed not to have an impartial stance on immigration issues between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which disqualifies him from exercising his role as a neutral entity.” Cedeno's comments, reiterated on her Twitter account, support earlier statements by Dominican Foreign Minister Andres Navarro, who also said the Dominican government is unwilling to discuss immigration issues with Haiti. Navarro accused Almagro of hindering the role the OAS is intended to play in the region and predicted the OAS would deliver a “biased” report on the migration and human rights situation on the shared Caribbean island. The response comes after OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro asked the Dominican Republic and Haiti to sit and talk about the tensions that have recently flared between the two neighboring countries.

Haiti has accused the Dominican Republic of violating the human rights of Haitian migrants and provoking a humanitarian crisis on the shared island through immigration policies that are discriminatory towards Haitians. Meanwhile, the Dominican Republic has insisted it has a right to self-determine immigration law as a sovereign issue and has demanded an apology from Haiti for hurling criticisms at its policies. “We have the inalienable right to regulate foreign presence in our territory,” said Cedeno, “respecting human rights.”

Some may have misinterpreted Almagro's request for dialogue as a call for unification of the island, as the OAS chief later issued a clarification on his Twitter account. “I called for dialogue between two countries that share one island, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. A different interpretation is a misinterpretation,” wrote Almagro. Llamé al diálogo a dos países q comparten una isla #RepDom #Haiti. Una interpretación distinta es tergiversación. https://t.co/qoV1rsPDWS — Luis Almagro (@Almagro_OEA2015) July 17, 2015 “I called for dialogue between two countries that share one island, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. A different interpretation is a misinterpretation.”

The call for dialogue comes after an OAS mission visiting the Dominican Republic and Haiti to meet with state officials and civil society to assess the migration plight concluded earlier this week. A report from the delegation is expected before the end of the year. OAS delegation conducts visits in Dominican-Haitian border areas. (Photo: OAS) Longstanding tensions between the two countries on the shared island of Hispaniola have intensified recently, as tens of thousands of Haitian-Dominicans face mass deportation from the Dominican Republic and poverty-stricken Haiti lacks the resources to support a massive influx of migrants.

In 2013, a Dominican court decision to retroactively strip Haitian descendents of citizenship instantly made some half a million people stateless. A recent deadline for undocumented migrants to register with authorities as part of a state regularization plan has essentially been a mass deportation order for Haitian descendents, with limited spaces available and many challenges navigating the process. Tens of thousands of Haitian-Dominicans have been forced to leave “voluntarily” under pressure and threats or been deported.

Human rights activists say this law just shows the Dominican Republic's long history of discrimination against Haitians. Migration from Haiti to the Dominican Republic is a generations-old phenomenon dating back to the late 1800's. Haitian migrants have long provided a foundational labor force for the Dominican sugar industry, one of the country's most important exports.

The worst of US immigration policy is reflected in the Dominican Republic

Dan-el Padilla Peralta

Dark-skinned and nappy-headed, I fit the profile of a person of Haitian descent. Since the 1990s, the Dominican state has made a habit of denying papers to descendants of Haitians born in the Dominican Republic (and even people who look Haitian). And in a now-infamous ruling handed down in September 2013, the Dominican Constitutional Tribunal left hundreds of thousands of people – many of them born in the DR – effectively stateless.

The Dominican Republic's mass Haitian deportation reflects its racist history

Despite this, I wasn’t too concerned when I rode the subway to the Dominican Consulate in New York City to renew my passport 16 months ago. I’d completed this routine errand several times before without incident. On this visit, my lack of a cédula, the national identification card for Dominican citizens, became a problem. Having lived in the US almost my whole life, I’d never possessed or needed a cédula. I admitted as much to the consular officer, and prepared myself to be chastised in bureaucratese. Instead he looked me in the eye and asked: “Are you Haitian?”

At that moment I realized just how much trouble not having that flimsy card might cause me.

Behind the officer’s question I sensed a threat: if he declined to renew my passport on the grounds that I was “Haitian”, I would be deprived of the documentation I needed to prove my nationality. After being undocumented for much of my childhood in the US, I’d been granted F-1 student visa status to pursue my doctoral studies at Stanford. If the DR rejected my passport renewal request, I’d be cast into an immigration limbo.

Dominican birth certificate in hand, I remonstrated with the officer. An hour and a half later, I walked out of the embassy with my new passport. My patria’s determination to isolate and remove Haitians through the refinements of immigration policy had not harmed me. I was lucky.

Back home, many are not. In the year since my consular visit, the Dominican government’s enforcement of the ruling and the new “Regularization Plan” implemented in its wake has created nightmares worthy of Kafka. Those suspected of being “Haitian” and who cannot produce satisfactory evidence of two Dominican-born parents are now subject to deportation unless they succeed in regularizing their status with the Dominican authorities. To do so, many applicants must obtain documentation from both the Dominican and Haitian governments. While difficult and costly for actual Haitian migrants, this undertaking is near-impossible for Dominican-born applicants with no connections to Haiti. No surprise, then, that only 4,600 of the approximately 290,000 men, women and children who have registered to begin the process of obtaining residence permits from the Dominican Interior Ministry had received them by this year’s June 17 deadline.

This immigration policy has enjoyed broad support from the Dominican public and from the country’s most prominent politicians. Former president of the Dominican Republic Leonel Fernández recently penned an op-ed that dismissed concerns voiced in American and European media outlets as “an effort to degrade and smear us before the international community, something that we as a generous and caring people do not deserve.”

Directly attacking international reporting of the plan, op-eds in other national publications make much fuss about the differences between Haitians and Dominicans but conveniently downplay or dismiss the role of anti-Haitianism and racism in the reification of these “differences.” These same op-eds also show no awareness of the long history of withholding documentation in order to keep marginalized people excluded – by making their daily lives ever more precarious, their bodies ever more vulnerable to the state’s violence.

The predicament of hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Haitian descendants in my home country resonates with me because I know what it is like to be black and undocumented: to be rendered doubly marginal. In my forthcoming memoir, I’ve tried to show how America’s inflexible and punitive immigration policies result in absurd and unjust outcomes.

It has been dismaying to see the Dominican government adopt a similar approach to immigration while making use of American border-policing expertise. It has been equally dismaying to see the Dominican government take up another American practice: lobbying. In the aftermath of the ruling, the Dominican government enlisted the services of the Washington law firm Steptoe and Johnson LLP for the purposes of “consolidating and strengthening the image of the Dominican State in the eyes of the international public opinion [sic] regarding the Decision.” In the carefully curated talking points being circulated to members of Congress, the Dominican government has sought to minimize the extent of the dislocations and upheavals inflicted on immigrants and descendants of immigrants through its policies.

May this effort at spin fail.