ECLAC supports Haiti in the process of implementing its national social protection policy

“At ECLAC we remain available to support Haiti in building a social protection system with a State perspective and with a rights perspective, placing equality at the center,” said Alberto Arenas de Mesa, Director of the Division of Social Development of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), during the international seminar entitled Haiti: The challenges of implementing the National Policy for Social Protection and Promotion (PNPPS), held on June 21 and 22, 2022 in Port-au-Prince in hybrid format (face-to-face and virtual).

The event was organized by ECLAC, the Haitian Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MAST), the Haiti office of the World Food Program (WFP) and the Swiss Embassy in Haiti, within the framework of assistance activities and cooperation that the Commission has carried out with MAST (since 2015) and the WFP office in Haiti (since 2019) and whose main achievement was the enactment of the National Policy for Social Protection and Promotion in July 2020.

The promulgation of the PNPPS is considered a great political and institutional advance, since this instrument defines the strategic framework of the necessary interventions to sustainably address priority tasks such as the eradication of poverty, the reduction of inequalities and the promotion of autonomy and the rights of Haitians.

Now ECLAC and the rest of the institutions are focused on supporting the effective implementation of this policy, in particular the development of action plans at the national and departmental levels.

The international seminar featured opening remarks by Pierre Ricot Odney, Minister of Social Affairs and Labor of Haiti; Marc-André Prost, Deputy Country Director of the World Food Program; Fabrizio Poretti from the Swiss Embassy; and Alberto Arenas de Mesa from ECLAC. Officials from MAST and various organizations from Haiti, government representatives from Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay, specialists from ECLAC and WFP and members of civil society and academia participated.

During his speech, Minister Pierre Ricot Odney said he was convinced that the seminar will help to clearly identify and address the different challenges related to the implementation of the PNPPS, in order to achieve a coherent and effective social protection system. “On behalf of the Government, and MAST in particular, I want to thank the efforts made by the World Food Program and ECLAC, along with other United Nations agencies, which have supported us throughout this journey,” he remarked. .

For his part, Marc-André Prost, from WFP, reiterated his institution’s commitment to the Haitian government to strengthen institutional capacity in terms of social protection and promotion and support the development of information systems to guide the implementation of the PNPPS. “For the World Food Program there is a strong link between its ‘zero hunger’ mandate by 2030 and social protection. Indeed, our overall strategy includes ‘increasing access to national social protection systems that safeguard and promote people’s ability to meet their food security and nutrition needs,’” he explained.

Fabrizio Poretti, from the Swiss Embassy, ​​warned that “the sociopolitical and economic reality of Haiti shows today more than ever the importance of reinforcing initiatives and joint efforts to combat extreme vulnerability, reduce inequalities and promote access to services. basic social” in the country.

The international seminar held in Haiti is directly connected to the work of the Regional Conference on Social Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, a subsidiary body of ECLAC. Within the scope of this Conference, high authorities of the region approved in 2019 the Regional Agenda for Inclusive Social Development, a technical-political instrument that seeks to support the implementation of the social dimension of the 2030 Agenda and that has as one of its four axes “ cooperation and regional integration to advance towards inclusive social development and achieve sustainable development”.

“Latin America and the Caribbean -said the Director of the Social Development Division of ECLAC- is a diverse region that presents numerous shared challenges, with high vulnerability to poverty and inequality and gaps in access and participation that especially affect certain populations.

The event in Port-au-Prince sought, precisely, to strengthen alliances between the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor of Haiti and the Ministries of Social Development of the countries of the region, in order to advance in the construction of universal, comprehensive social protection systems , sustainable and resilient, leaving no one behind. The seminar also had the function of offering a comparative regional view as a preliminary step to the work that was carried out on June 23 and 24 on the PNPPS action plan at the national level, organized within the framework of the Sub- Drafting Commission (interministerial entity in charge of preparing the PNPPS and headed by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor).

“At this time when the role of public policy and the State are at the center of responses to global challenges, cooperation and multilateralism are more important than ever,” said Arenas de Mesa, stressing that, in the current context of crisis, “our region must not lose its course and prevent the urgent from overriding the important.” “This means that the growing social risks and uncertainties related to climate change, poverty, inequality, social unrest and the dangers to the stability of our democracies must continue to be present and a priority in our actions,” he concluded.

ECLAC’s technical assistance to Haiti’s MAST began in 2015 with the international seminar entitled Social protection in Haiti: towards the development of a new policy. In 2018, a training workshop on social protection and that same year the document Reinforcer la protection sociale was published. L’expérience de l’Amérique latine et des Caraïbes (available only in French).

Since 2019, ECLAC’s accompaniment to the Haitian Ministry has been financed with the signing of a collaboration agreement between ECLAC and the Haiti office of the World Food Program, which ends on December 31, 2022.

In 2020, the document Estimated cost of cash transfers in the framework of Haiti’s National Policy for Social Protection and Promotion (PNPPS) was published (also available in English and French), while in 2021 the study Estimation of the package of essential healthcare services, graduation programs and school canteens proposed by the Politique Nationale de Protection et de Promotion Sociales (PNPPS) in Haiti (available soon also in English).