In a keynote address delivered at George Washington University on April 14, 2026, Sandra Paulemon, Haiti’s Minister of Planning and External Cooperation, laid out the Caribbean nation’s ambitious blueprint for transforming its healthcare system during an academic exchange hosted by the university’s Institute for African Studies. The event centered on critical intersections between public health outcomes and sustainable public financing strategies for vulnerable nations grappling with widespread instability.
Paulemon opened her presentation by painting an unflinching picture of Haiti’s current health landscape, detailing long-standing structural barriers that have left millions without reliable access to care. She outlined the Haitian government’s incremental but ongoing work to expand, strengthen, and sustain healthcare access, with a deliberate focus on reaching marginalized and low-income communities that have historically been excluded from comprehensive services. At the core of the government’s agenda, she emphasized, is a deep-seated commitment to building a healthcare system that is resilient to ongoing shocks, equitable across all population groups, and fully sovereign, while upholding fundamental human dignity and advancing social justice for all Haitians.
A major focus of the minister’s remarks centered on the disproportionate crisis facing women and girls in Haiti, who face widespread threats of sexual violence, exploitation, and coercion at the hands of active armed gangs operating across the country. Paulemon drew international attention to the acute vulnerability of displaced women who have fled their homes amid ongoing violence: many have survived severe abuse, carry deep psychological trauma, and face almost insurmountable barriers to accessing routine medical care, specialized psychosocial support, and formal protection services. She also noted the parallel crisis facing young boys in affected communities, who are regularly targeted for forced recruitment by gangs, robbing them of their childhood and eliminating any clear path to a stable, hopeful future.
Against this backdrop of ongoing crisis, Paulemon argued that the domestic mobilization of resources for public health takes on urgent new meaning. She explained that sustained domestic investment would allow the Haitian state to expand its core capacity to protect, treat, and support the nation’s most vulnerable groups, including survivors of violence, at-risk children, and entire communities displaced by ongoing insecurity. Far from being a narrow social policy concern, she framed health financing as a foundational tool for advancing national stability, expanding social protection, and strengthening the nation’s overall resilience to overlapping crises.
Paulemon also outlined the central coordinating role of her Ministry of Planning in aligning disparate resources from national, bilateral, multilateral, and humanitarian partners into a single cohesive strategy aligned with the Haitian government’s stated strategic priorities. She stressed that a core mandate of her department is to improve alignment between external donor funding, national public health priorities, and sector-specific strategies led by relevant Haitian state institutions, most notably the Ministry of Public Health and Population. This coordination, she argued, is critical to reducing fragmentation and ensuring that all invested resources advance national, rather than external, goals.
Throughout her address, the minister reaffirmed the Haitian government’s commitment to collaborative partnership with both domestic stakeholders and international allies to build a healthcare system that can meet the population’s evolving needs, particularly for the most marginalized groups. She emphasized that this work must be rooted in the principles of national sovereignty, coordinated action, and effective public service delivery. A key long-term goal, she added, is to gradually reduce Haiti’s overreliance on external aid, building a self-sustaining health system that can address ongoing gaps with a targeted focus on survivors of gender-based violence and vulnerable youth.
In closing, Paulemon underscored the urgent need to expand access to integrated physical and mental health care, scale up psychosocial support for violence survivors, and strengthen protection and economic reintegration programs for affected communities. Ensuring that no Haitian is left behind, ignored, or forgotten amid ongoing crisis is not only a core responsibility of the Haitian state, she argued, but a shared global commitment. “Together, through alignment, coordination, and unwavering commitment, it is possible to guarantee genuine protection, effective access to care, and tangible dignity for the Haitian people,” she concluded.
