Ashley King Professor Campbell English 1103 6 November 2012 Haiti: Why the Worlds Disaster Relief Was

a Failure and Why Were Choosing to Ignore It On the afternoon of January 12, 2010 a massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake rattled Haiti. The forty second long quake killed more than 250,000 people and injured around 300,000 in what is said to be the most destructive natural disaster in modern times" (Quifley, Ramanauskas). The already destitute country soon had millions of homeless survivors and around 11 million cubic meters of rubble. International communities and governments immediately responded to Haitis cries for help. Non-governmental and nonprofit organizations (NGOS) like the American Red Cross held large fundraisers, 50% of American households donated money to relief efforts, and countries such as the U.S. and the U.N. pledged billions of dollars to help Haiti. The world wanted to fix this already broken country, and as former president Bill Clinton put it, build Haiti better. Now, almost three years after the disaster, there is still much improvement to be made. Progress has been slow. A year after the earthquake, over 1 million people were still living in temporary tent camps, and today they currently house some 370,000. Half of the rubble still lies in the same place as it did 34 months ago and an outbreak of Cholera has killed thousands (Wong). The prospect that the once failed country of Haiti could be repaired has left many scratching their heads wondering what went wrong. Haiti sits on two seismic fault lines and is located 600 miles off the coast of Florida in the warm waters of the Caribbean (Buss). Unfortunately, this country is no stranger to natural

disasters. Since the January quake, several hurricanes and tropical storms have struck Haiti. Sandy, the hurricane that just hit Haiti last week, is said to have destroyed more than 70% of its crops, foreshadowing a major food shortage for the Haitians (Watts). In many ways this is a country that cant seem catch a break. Not only has Haiti been battered down by a long history of natural disasters, the Haitian government, or lack of one, has contributed to its countries failures as well. Haiti has had several dictators which have been overthrown by the Haitian people and then soon regained by more dictators. The U.S. has stepped in twice in the past century, in 1986 and 1994, in order to remove these repressive leaders (Buss). Despite having a democratic system currently in place, the Haitian government recently received the rating of a 1.8 out of 10 by the Transparency International Corruption Index, deeming it a highly corrupt country (Valbrun). Even after receiving billions of dollars in aid prior to the 2010 earthquake, Haiti was, and still is today, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Prior to the catastrophe in 2010, 75% of its population made less than $2 a day. As a result of Haitis governments limited capacity and weak national institutions the NGOs have risen to the occasion and as a result established a privatized parallel state. Currently, it is estimated that Haiti has the highest number of NGOs per capita in the world. Even before the earthquake an estimated 70% of healthcare and 85% of education in Haiti were ran by NGOs (Ramachandran). While this may sound like a good thing, its actually considered to be one of the attributing factors to the slow and insufficient progress in Haiti. After the tragic earthquake, The United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti estimated that over $3.6 billion had been given by international donors alone (Valbrun). Now, amidst the still

tragically slow recovery, people have attempted the arduous task of locating where this large sum was spent. Immediately following the earthquake the U.S. government designated $379 million to Haiti. Soon after it was discovered that this money was not all going to Haiti. In fact from every dollar spent 33 cents was actually given back to the U.S. government to reimburse it. Less than 1 percent of the aid was given to the Haitian government while the majority of the funds went to NGOs. Following the U.S.s immediate response, congress allocated even more money, about 1.14 billion, to reconstruct Haiti. Despite desperate conditions, by May 2011, thats 17 months later, the U.S. had only spent 20% of this money (Quigley, Ramachandran). Some of this money has still yet to be spent. Other governments, such as Venezuela and the UN, have promised millions of dollars and follow the same patterns. The negligent and unreliable funding from major governments is believed by many to be the cause of slow development since the earthquake. This is for the most part untrue. While it is frustrating to see the spending of these funds prolonged, what has really hurt Haiti the most is where the money has been given and spent. As stated before, most of the money from international governments was entrusted to NGOs. The Red Cross, which is the largest NGO in Haiti, received over $486 million in donations alone, not including the money from the U.S. government. Many people applauded the large amounts of money that NGOs were given and immediately after the disaster but now, several years after, the once appreciative Haitians and the high hoped public stand disappointed. There is said to be a long and deep thread of anger towards NGOs especially in the Haitian society (Valbrun).

Unlike governments that receive or give money, the money that NGOs receive is untraceable. There are usually few expense reports, and if by some chance an organization does decide to report where the money has gone this usually lacks detail. With companies like the Red Cross CEOs earning $500,000 a year, many people begin to question which funds go where. These agencies have been anything but transparent (Quigley, Ramanauskas). No one can track the money and where or how its been spent. From the beginning it is said that many NGOs looked at the disaster in Haiti as a business opportunity. Private groups in the U.S. started lobbying for a share of the governments money and many received just that (Muhammad). Like the government, many NGOs are accused of being corrupt and even competitive with one another. Across from one of the biggest tent cities in Port au Prince there are a few fancy restaurants. After a long hard day of work many volunteers can be seen dining here, right across from the poverty that they are supposedly there to eliminate. In a scholarly article written by several doctors, a story is told about a medical team that arrived immediately after the quake occurred. They were seeing and treating many injured patients in an organized and successful manner, until another team with a camera crew arrived. With no plans and no organization the new teams most important goal seemed to be to catch good video footage. Soon, a doctor who hadnt performed surgery in twenty years began operating on an elderly man. This man passed away at the hands of the inexperienced doctor. The authors of this article classified this doctor as a disaster tourist, which is a person who heads to the site of a disaster to see destruction, take pictures and obtain bragging rights and get a shoulder badge( Docrat, Hoving, Vries). This is often how the NGOs volunteer are depicted, only seeking fame and money.

However, not all NGOs are created equal. Some are effective, most arent. Even the NGOs with the best intentions can have the worst results. Bringing real relief is not a quick fix, it takes time and a plan. Many NGOs lack this plan and as one Haitian put it the NGOs go from project to project without taking the time to develop a strategy, at the end of the projects everything vanishes and were back to where we started.(Valbrun). Rather than staying and developing one place at a time, NGOs mostly hop around from place to place, giving handouts that dont actually make a difference. It all goes back to the well-known saying if you give a man a fish youll feed him for a day and if you teach him how to fish youll feed him for his life. Following the earthquake, Haitis government prepared and presented a post-disaster action plan for national recovery and development of Haiti. Despite their efforts, the government was unable to reach every single one of the thousands of NGOs and was ignored by those it did reach. As a result these organizations began walking on a different path towards recovery. Because of the lack of team work and collaboration with one other NGOs have limited their ability to help the suffering Haitians. Mostly, by completely avoiding the governments recovery plan, NGOs have hurt the already unstable Haitian government. They have done this by keeping the Haitian government from building its own capacity by fostering long term dependency (Valbrun). The government is unable to take back control from powerful NGOs and Haiti is stuck relying on these organizations ineffective handouts. Haitians themselves havent been involved in their own recovery. One of the biggest mistakes made by nonprofit organizations as whole is what the authors of when helping hurts call paternalism. This is when volunteers with good intentions do things for others that they could have done for themselves (Corbett, Fikkert, Perkins 156). Bob Lupton, the author of Toxic

Charity, said that Giving to those in needs what they could be gaining from their own initiative may well be the kindest way to destroy people. Sure its true that many Haitians could not help themselves after the earthquake and emergency assistance was required. Not only was doing this degrading but when the organizations left the relief efforts did too. Completely voiding the Haitians and their government of the process was where these organizations went wrong. NGOs bring free goods, such as water bottles and rice, from the U.S. This puts the seller of those same goods in Haiti out of businesses because their usual customers can get them for free. The U.S. government is guilty of not including the Haitians by giving less than one percent of aid to their government and by doing things like giving 1490 construction firms contracts to aid in the reconstruction of Haiti, however out of these only 23 were actual Haitian companies, the rest were American (Quigley, Ramanauskas). A few months after the earthquake there was a massive outbreak of the water borne illness cholera. The outbreak was traced back to the Nepalese troops in the UN dumping waste in one of the main rivers in Haiti. Over 7,000 people died and 500,000 people were infected (Haiti Earthquake Facts and Figures). The UN made no apology for causing this outbreak and continued to deny that they were at fault. The UN forces, which have been in Haiti since before the quake, are there with the stabilization mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Besides causing a cholera outbreak they have been involved in several other scandals, including videos released of UN soldiers raping teenage boys and several other cases involving rape. They are widely disliked by Haitians. In a survey done in Haitis capital in Port Au Prince over half of the Haitians said that the UN does not contribute to security and consider the presence of the troops a bad thing (Schuller). MINUSTAH will be there until the unorganized police force turn into a professional

and reliable one, and this is not likely to happen without the growth and stability of their government. The earthquake relief failed because the government was and is still broken, the NGOs and other countries were more influential than the government themselves, and these organizations didnt have a plan. The earthquake didnt so much destroy Haitian society as it exposed how deeply broken that society already was. Haiti was not able to be built back better because the things that needed to be changed, like the weak government and the powerful NGOs, were just furthered with the relief efforts (Valbrun).