A look at the seven-month tenure of Haiti’s first female National Education Fund director — and why her exit raises more questions than it answers

🧵 THE BACKGROUND

Sterline Civil, born June 20, 1994, in Miragoâne, holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Université Quisqueya and two Master’s degrees from France’s Université Paris-Saclay — one in international and European human rights law, the other in political science and sustainable development governance. Before taking over Haiti’s National Education Fund (Fonds National de l’Éducation, FNE), she served as Director of Consular Affairs at Haiti’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as a counselor at Haiti’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, as a university professor, and — notably — as Secretary General of the political party Les Engagés pour le Développement (EDE), a role she left in August 2024 for what were described as personal reasons.

On February 18, 2025, she was installed as FNE Director General by presidential decree — the first woman to lead the institution since its creation in 2017 — replacing Jean Ronald Joseph, who had held the post since December 2021.

📉 WHAT SHE FOUND

Within weeks of taking office, Civil went public with what she called an alarming financial and organizational picture. At a March 13, 2025 press conference, she disclosed that the FNE was carrying debts of 2.353 billion gourdes — far exceeding available funds — including 761 million gourdes owed to schools under the PRONEC community-schools program and roughly 601 million gourdes in grants distributed to private individuals between October 2024 and February 2025, under her predecessor’s administration, in a manner she and multiple independent investigations characterized as opaque. She said the institution “does not control the scope of its own debts,” and that accounting records showed persistent mismatches between departments. She requested an audit from Haiti’s Superior Court of Auditors (CSCCA) and filed her own declaration of patrimony — a standard disclosure requirement for senior Haitian officials.

🛠️ WHAT SHE DID

Over roughly seven months in office, Civil’s documented initiatives included:

  • A four-part reform plan: cleaning up accounting data by replacing Excel-based tracking with an integrated accounting system, conducting a full asset inventory, negotiating a payment schedule with creditors, and revising agreements with beneficiary institutions
  • Cutting FNE’s payroll and operating costs by more than half
  • Rehabilitation work reported across 150+ schools nationally, including a 160+ million gourde allocation for 57 schools in the Grand Sud region
  • Support to ten regional public universities for science and computer lab equipment
  • A parent-support program (PAEF) that reportedly benefited more than 1,189 struggling families and 79 metropolitan-area schools

A subsequent social media post from Radio Télé Métronome claimed that Civil left the FNE in healthier financial condition than she found it, with nearly 2 billion gourdes on hand versus 803 million at her arrival, and most inherited debt repaid — a claim worth flagging as single-sourced and not yet independently corroborated by other outlets at the time of this report.

⚖️ THE ALLEGATION

On June 18, 2025, Esaïe Beauchard — former mayor of Cité Soleil and a leader of the socio-political group ROSPO — filed a formal complaint with Haiti’s Anti-Corruption Unit (ULCC), accusing Civil of misappropriating FNE funds. Civil responded by issuing him a summons to correctional court. Beauchard has publicly maintained his accusation, stating he is prepared to answer the summons but insisting Civil resign first to ensure, in his words, a fair proceeding. Separately, the education advocacy group CEREH publicly demanded clarification from Civil regarding 19 billion gourdes reportedly earmarked for schools in insecure zones — though it remains unclear from public reporting what time period or which administrations that far larger figure spans.

It is important to state plainly: these are allegations, not findings. No court ruling, ULCC report, or CSCCA audit result confirming or refuting the misappropriation claim has been made public. The correctional court proceeding Civil herself initiated against Beauchard also remains, as far as public records show, unresolved.

🚪 THE REMOVAL

On September 18, 2025 — seven months into a role with a legally defined three-year mandate — Civil was dismissed by Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council (CPT) via a Council of Ministers decision, and replaced by Élysée Colagène. In a public statement, Civil called it an “arbitrary dismissal,” noted her term had not legally expired, and suggested certain political figures sought to remove her for reasons she linked to corruption dynamics within the institution — without providing further public detail on that claim.

🔍 WHAT A REAL INVESTIGATION WOULD STILL NEED TO ESTABLISH

Multiple threads here remain genuinely open, and would require the following — not conclusions this report can offer, but the actual next steps for accountable institutions:

  1. A CSCCA-conducted forensic audit reconciling the debt figures Civil disclosed against the FNE’s prior accounting records, to confirm whether the 2.353 billion gourde figure was accurately assessed
  2. ULCC review of the Beauchard complaint’s underlying evidence — what specific transactions, if any, he alleges were misappropriated, and whether they predate or postdate Civil’s tenure
  3. Court resolution of the defamation/correctional proceeding Civil filed against Beauchard
  4. Independent verification of the Grand Sud rehabilitation disbursements — cross-referencing the 160+ million gourdes against completion reports from the 57 schools involved
  5. A published CSCCA exit audit, which Haitian law requires of senior public administrators, to definitively establish the FNE’s financial condition at the moment of Civil’s removal

None of these have been publicly completed as of this report.

🤔 A NOTE ON HOW SHE’S BEEN CHARACTERIZED

Some opinion outlets have described Civil as a “PHTKiste” or aligned with Haiti’s PHTK political establishment. That characterization is disputed by her own documented political history, which shows her as Secretary General of a different party (EDE) until August 2024. Readers should treat partisan labels applied to her in opinion pieces as contested framing, not verified fact.

LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE: Sterline Civil inherited an institution already carrying billions of gourdes in disputed debt and, by her own account and multiple independent reports, undertook real structural reforms in a short window — a downsized payroll, a modernized accounting system, and hundreds of millions of gourdes in documented school rehabilitation. She was also formally accused of the very kind of misconduct she said she was fighting, and was removed from office before her legal mandate ended, under circumstances she calls political retaliation. Given Haiti’s education system’s decades-long record of institutional failure — a system where corruption allegations have followed nearly every FNE director, and where CEREH, ULCC complaints, and unresolved audits are a recurring pattern rather than an exception — the honest answer is that the public record alone cannot yet tell you whether Sterline Civil represented a genuine break from that pattern or another chapter in it. That determination belongs to the ULCC, the CSCCA, and Haiti’s courts — institutions that, to date, have not finished the job.