1/12/11: Haiti one year on: a look at aid progress reports

Haiti one year on: a look at aid progress reports

The first anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti comes with a deluge of progress reports from many of the NGOs and aid agencies involved in reconstruction and ongoing relief work.



Claire Provost
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 12 January 2011 15.55 GMT

One year ago today, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake ripped through Haiti leaving nearly a quarter of a million people dead and another 1.5 million homeless. In the weeks that followed, however, expressions of pain and mourning were accompanied by an optimism and a hope that recovery from the earthquake could “open a new chapter” in Haiti’s development, providing a much-needed “fresh start” for the country. The challenge was not just to re-build but to “build back better.”

Today is not just the first anniversary of the earthquake, but also the beginning of a crucial second year in relief, reconstruction and development efforts in the small Caribbean nation. The UN has estimated that 650,000 Haitians will still be living in camps by the end of 2011. Médecins Sans Frontières, meanwhile, has warned that cholera will remain a serious problem in the country for years to come.

The challenges that await Haiti provide a powerful incentive to evaluate the progress made over the last year. What worked? What failed? What has been learned from 2010 and what can we expect from 2011?

Below is a selection of some of the progress reports released for the anniversary. There are, of course, many other reports on Haiti’s reconstruction, so please post links to any others you think are interesting below. If you have trouble posting, email development@guardian.co.uk.

Unicef – Children in Haiti: One year after – the long road from relief to recovery

This report from Unicef focuses on the 750,000 children directly affected by the earthquake. Facilities in Haiti’s crowded camps are insufficient for children to access critical services such as health, education and protection, says the report. However, new crises, such as the cholera outbreak, should not overshadow the results achieved for children, says the report, which highlights successes in programmes such as child immunisation and malnutrition. Renewing its commitment to build a “Haiti fit for children”, Unicef recognises the fragility of the situation of children in Haiti and adds that “the bottlenecks making displacement a protracted crisis today are rooted in the disparities and poverty of pre-earthquake Haiti”.

Christian Aid, Progressio, Tearfund, Cafod – Building back better: an imperative for Haiti
Released by Christian Aid, Progressio, Tearfund, and Cafod, this UK parliamentary briefing paper argues that the humanitarian crisis in Haiti has exposed in “sharp relief” some of the most deeply-rooted structural problems in the country, including inequalities in the distribution of land, impunity, poor governance and long-standing adversarial state and civil society relations. The paper addresses five areas, chosen in consultation with the charities’ Haitian partners, which it claims are critical to Haiti’s reconstruction and development: land, rights, civil society participation, decentralisation and bi-national relations between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The report also points to the gap between the assistance promised by the international community and the pledges honoured thus far, and to the continued tension between short-term humanitarian objectives and long-term development considerations. The charities point to the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) in particular, for its failure to engage with Haitian civil society organisations, many of which have criticised the IHRC for prioritising the involvement of donors, governments and the business sector, to the exclusion of civil society and community-based organisations.

Merlin – Is Haiti’s health system any better?

This report, from Merlin, criticises the international humanitarian response to the earthquake for undermining and overwhelming local and national healthcare institutions and initiatives. International aid workers, says the report, incorrectly assumed that local healthcare services were either negligible or non-existent. Among many of the problems identified by the report is the flow of Haiti’s health workers out of the national health system and into better paid jobs with international NGOs. To enable the long-term recovery of Haiti’s health system – which was damaged to the tune of around $200m by the eathquake – it is crucial that local and national teams are included in the humanitarian coordination and decision-making processes, says the report, and that a robust health system is made a key pillar of all disaster-risk reduction programmes.

American Red Cross – Haiti earthquake relief: One-year report

This report, from the American Red Cross, details how funds raised have been spent in Haiti by the organisation that led the record-setting text donation programme. More than 3 million people sent more than $32m in donations to the organisation through the mobile giving programme. In 2010, the American Red Cross focused its expenditures on shelter, food and emergency services. Moving foward, the organisation notes a key challenge will be finding ways to get people out of camps and into transitional homes. This will continue to be complicated, says the report, because rubble must first be removed from available land, and because the Haitian government must determine who owns what land, and therefore where exactly these homes can be built.

Save the Children – Children one year later: A country at a crossroads

This report, from Save the Children, highlights the ongoing vulnerability of children in Haiti after the earthquake. The report presents Save the Children’s work over the last year, looking at each of its priority sectors (health and nutrition, education, child protection, shelter, food security and livelihoods, and water, sanitation and hygiene) in turn. The report calls on donors to honour their funding pledges, arguing that Haiti is “at a crossroads” and needs to shift out of “emergency mode” and towards a nationwide campaign for recovery that improves children’s quality of life, enables greater economic security and rebuilds homes and communities.

World Vision – One year on: Haiti earthquake response

From World Vision, this report lists the charity’s accomplishments alongside a three-page “fact file” on Haiti’s recovery and details of how it spent the $107m of the $194m funds raised. Alongside a number of other relief and development projects, the report reviews World Vision’s work on advocacy and empowering communities to know and voice their rights. The paper also discusses the charity’s preliminary work on using mobile banking for their cash-for-work programmes, and says that World Vision will continue to pursue and develop innovative partnerships for increased employment opportunities.

UNDP – Haiti: 1 year later

This report, released by the UN development programme (UNDP), reviews the agency’s experience with the cash-for-work and food-for-work programmes it has implemented, along with the World Food Programme. An estimated 240,000 Haitians have been employed by these programmes, which exchange cash or food for work clearing rubble, cleaning water supplies and collecting garbage. These temporary job programmes “provide a much-needed injection of cash into the local economy”, says the report, which estimates that 1.2 million people have benefited from them, and that 1 million cubic metres of debris have been cleared as a result.

DAP – One year follow-up report on the transparency of relief organisations responding to the 2010 Haiti earthquake
This is the second report on Haiti released by the Disaster Accountability Project since the earthquake. Looking at nearly 200 organisations working in Haiti, the report finds that only 20% of groups responded to requests for information and data on their projects. Organisations that did answer the DAP survey often left questions blank or incomplete.

Oxfam – From Relief to Recovery: supporting good governance in post-earthquake Haiti

This report from Oxfam says that a “year of indecision” has essentially put Haiti’s recovery “on hold”. The report blames the slow rate of progress on a “crippling combination” of indecision on behalf of the Haiti government, the tendency of rich donor countries to pursue their own aid priorities, and the lacklustre Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC). Despite the success of emergency aid, long-term recovery has barely begun says the report, which also points to the gap between donations pledged and money received. “Despite the current political crisis Haiti’s political and economic elites still have a once in a lifetime chance to address many of the issues that have held back the country’s development. But the process must start now,” says the report.

Amnesty International – Aftershocks: Women speak out against sexual violence in Haiti’s camps

From Amnesty International, this report focuses on the situation of women and girls in Haiti’s camps, finding an increasing risk of rape and sexual violence. More than 250 cases of rape in the camps were reported in the first 150 days after the earthquake, says the study, which relies heavily on the experiences of 50 survivors of sexual violence who shared their experiences with the report’s authors. Amnesty International is calling for the new Haitian government to take urgent steps towards ending violence against women as part of its wider humanitarian strategy, and argues that women in the camps must be fully involved in the development of such a plan. More immediately, the organisation calls for improved security in the camps, an end to impunity and for mechanisms to ensure that police respond effectively to incidents of sexual violence.

MSF – Haiti one year after

Published by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), this report reviews the work of the organisation’s largest emergency operation, providing detailed information on how funds donated to MSF have been used and how decisions have been made. Overall, the report notes that the assistance provided by the international humanitarian response has not been enough to fully meet the enormous medical and non-medical needs in Haiti. The report also notes that historically marginalised slums, which have been less secure, but have not been seen as having been hard hit by the earthquake, have received far less attention and assistance than the camps. It also singles out Cuban medical brigades as having been the most active, after MSF itself, in terms of cholera response, and criticises the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) for taking few concrete steps and making little visible progress towards coordinating the earthquake recovery process. In 2011 MSF will focus on running six hospitals and supporting two Ministry of Health hospitals. Cholera, says the report, is expected to remain in the country for years to come.

This article was amended on 13 January. We included two summaries of the same Oxfam report. This has been amended.