Haiti Earthquake - Q&A
Haiti Earthquake - Q&A
Updated: July 2010
- Nearly six months have passed since the earthquake. Why are there still well over one million people living in camps?
- So why isn’t there enough land in Haiti?
- What is the Government’s role in all of this? Are they doing anything?
- Many people are living in desperate conditions. With all the aid money given to NGOs, why are people still suffering?
- Do people in camps have homes to return to?
- How do you think the government of Haiti has done six months on? Are they to blame for all the problems Haiti still faces?
- Given years of mismanagement, corruption and weak government, why should the rich world pour money into the Haitian state?
- How is Oxfam being accountable and transparent in its activities?
- How much money have you raised to date?
- What is Oxfam exactly doing in Haiti?
- With so many NGOs operating in Haiti are there problems with coordination? Do you think one organization or the UN should take charge? Do you accept that NGOs might be part of the problem?
- Why is there so much rubble still all around? Shouldn’t the rubble be cleared away by now?
- Is Haiti a lost cause? Are we losing our chance to use all the money to rebuild Haiti? Do we have to look at more drastic measures - a UN administration, for instance?
- If we can't clear rubble or get homes built six months on, are officials/NGOs prepared for coming disasters from hurricanes? Where will people go when their tents have blown away?
- There have been reports of many rapes in informal settlements. What do you know/think about this?
There are a few reasons people are still in camps: lack of land for people who have no homes to return to, rubble blocking new construction or returning home, and a lack of incentives for people to leave camps where they have access to services like water and toilets.
NGOs cannot resettle displaced people, because this requires secure access to land, which only the state can organize. It is the responsibility of the Government to implement a strategy for relocation so people can begin to rebuild communities.
To date, around 7,000 people have been resettled from camps evaluated to be at high risk for flash flooding. The selection of the largest resettlement site, Corail Cesselesse, did not happen with sufficient planning and coordination. Resettlement of displaced people cannot happen at the last minute. Resettlement must be carried out in a way that ensures the rights and human dignity of the people who are being moved.
Building permanent housing for homeless people will require secure access to land. Before the quake, around 80 percent of people living in urban areas, like Port-au-Prince, lived in slums.
Some people also stay in camps by choice. Over 60,000 houses have been evaluated by engineers to be safe to return to. However, we know they are not all inhabited. There are several reasons for this.
In many cases, this is because people have better access to basic services, like water and latrines, at camps than they do in their homes. Prior to the earthquake, less than one-quarter of Haitians had sufficient access to toilets, and less than half of Haitians had access to clean water. When people are remaining in camps for services, NGOs can help by changing the way they provide services to focus on restoring services in communities, rather than in camps. For example, Oxfam is working with the Haitian water authority, CAMEP, to repair and extend the piping network in Port-au-Prince that brings water into homes.
In other cases, people are afraid to return to their homes because they were renters and they are afraid they will have to pay for repairs to the home, or that their rent will go up, given that housing is now more scarce than before. Before the quake, most Haitians were renters or squatters.
2. So why isn’t there enough land in Haiti?
Most of the land in Haiti is owned by very few people. Land ownership has been unequal since colonial times. When Haiti’s first president tried to distribute land more equally, he was assassinated.
Land tenure – meaning who has access to own land, and the security of that ownership – must be reformed in Haiti. But this is not a new idea – reform has been tried multiple times by multiple Haitian leaders. Comprehensive reform is not going to happen in six months – it will take years.
What the Government can do now is enforce existing laws so renters can return to their homes without worrying they’ll have to pay for repairs, or get into a bidding war and face inflated prices. With the support of international and national organizations, the Government can also prioritize the resolution of property and settlement disputes at the over 1,000 spontaneous settlement sites in Haiti. Prioritizing these sites will prevent worst-possible scenarios for the most vulnerable people, like forced evictions. The Government can free up land by declaring eminent domain.
For the longer-term, making land available in Haiti will require the Government to take advantage of public support for changes post-quake, and implement land tenure reform.
3. What is the Government’s role in all of this? Are they doing anything?
The Government’s role is to be the leader of the reconstruction. Setting up a parallel governance system of international organizations or foreign governments would be neither sustainable, nor effective, nor legitimate.
As the sovereign state, the Government has responsibilities to its people. At this time, one of those responsibilities is to urgently develop and implement a housing and resettlement strategy for the country, as well as a job creation strategy. Only the Government can implement such a plan, for its people and in consultation with its people.
We know the Government was weak before the earthquake, and their capacity was heavily reduced in the earthquake due to destruction of offices and loss of key staff. They will need support from national and international organizations, and from donors, to ensure they can make timely, necessary decisions and rebuild Haiti in a way that promotes equality and sustainability.
Oxfam has been working around the clock since the earthquake to provide water, latrines, emergency shelter, and other basic needs for earthquake survivors. We are currently reaching over 440,000 people, which is over 20 percent of the total earthquake-affected population of 2 million people.
The scope of this disaster is unlike almost any other we’ve ever seen. Oxfam has been doing humanitarian emergency response for 55 years. We’ve run large operations in Aceh after the tsunami, in Iran after the Bam earthquake, and in Myanmar after Cyclone Nargis. Even with the support of the entire organization strongly behind this operation, we are challenged.
This is a unique disaster. A massive earthquake struck an overpopulated, densely built urban area in a country that had long been crippled by poverty and lack of services and infrastructure. The Government is weak and was severely affected by the quake.
Even in a humanitarian response of this size, money can’t solve all our challenges. How do you install a latrine when the landowner won’t allow any digging or installations on the site? How do you remove rubble from a street so narrow, cracked and filled with potholes that you can’t fit a bulldozer? How do you settle a family when no land has been allocated?
We are not saying that these challenges are insurmountable. But, the scope of this disaster is an incredible challenge to the entire humanitarian community. We are working as urgently as possible to meet people’s current basic needs. The Government must also develop and implement a strategy for resettlement and reconstruction so that we have a clear, coordinated path forward to help Haitians rebuild their communities and their lives.
5. Do people in camps have homes to return to?
Based on what OCHA and UNOPS have told us, over 40 percent of buildings are safe to return to. Many of these people may be willing to become hosts to homeless people as well, thereby further increasing the number of people who could leave sites.
One major problem is that most services are being provided in camps - not in communities or to host families. As an international community, we need to develop services around communities, to encourage lasting social structures, rather than around camps, which are not sustainable for the long-term.
The government needs to take a lead in developing a strategy with the international community to help people move back into homes that are safe so they can get started rebuilding communities.
The short answer is that the government, to date, has not proved capable of leading an effective relief and reconstruction effort, but this must be set in context.
First of all, responding to a complex emergency such as the Haiti earthquake is extremely difficult. Look how much the US authorities struggled to deal with Hurricane Katrina.
In Haiti’s case, the state has never been able to deliver basic services, economic development and security to most of its population. This historic weakness has been exacerbated by the earthquake, in which perhaps one third of its 60,000 civil servants died, and 13 of 15 ministry offices were lost There was also massive damage to police stations, the supreme court, the parliament, the land registry and so on.
At the same time, donors and international aid agencies have not done as much as they should to increase government capacity or leadership. Too often donors and agencies have done things for the government instead of with it, whether at the national or local level. Practical aid to restore government infrastructure and functionality was slow in coming.
And of course some parts of government are working more effectively. Oxfam is collaborating successfully with DINEPA, the national water and sanitation authority, on restoring water and sanitation systems, while at the same increasing DINEPA’s own capacity to deliver services. And some of the local mayors in the earthquake-affected zone are working tirelessly for their communities.
Whatever the weaknesses of government, it remains the sovereign authority in Haiti, and there are many aspects of relief and reconstruction that only it can address, such as land rights. Whatever is achieved in the relief and reconstruction effort is only sustainable if underpinned by the state’s engagement. For this reason, all international actors should seek ways to support the government to meet its responsibilities.
Corruption is both cause and consequence of the weakness of the Haitian state. For too long, international organizations and donor countries have bypassed the government. This may have had some short-term success, but in the long-term, it weakened the government and made it less responsible for the needs of its people and less accountable to them. The international community needs to work in partnership with the state so that it can rebuild trust with its citizens.
The Prime Minister of Haiti told Oxfam that he had, “no illusions about the perception of corruption and inefficiency” in Haiti. Tackling corruption and increasing transparency and accountability at all levels must be integral to the reconstruction effort.
There must be careful monitoring of reconstruction projects and information must be made public, not only by the Government but also by NGOs and donors.
Some Government agencies have worked well after the quake, for instance the water and sanitation authority DINEPA.
8. How is Oxfam being accountable and transparent in its activities?
Oxfam is committed to accountability to Haitians, our donors and supporters worldwide. We promote transparency in a number of ways.
For instance, we have a special free 400 number that Haitians can call to make complaints or make recommendations about our programs in the field. We strive to be highly responsive to these calls and messages. We received over 1,400 calls to this number between March and May.
In most of our programs, we work in close partnership with national, governmental and community organizations. We currently have over two dozen local partners for programs in water, sanitation, hygiene, emergency food, livelihoods, protection, and psychosocial activities.
As a third example of how Oxfam is transparent and accountable, we maintain strong ties with government officials and we have regular meetings with them to hear their views and to inform them of our activities and views.
Finally, we make annual reports of our activities to the Government of Haiti and our stakeholders via the Oxfam annual report.
9. How much money have you raised to date?
We’ve raised about $90 million across the world for the emergency response in Haiti. We intend to spend this money over about a three-year period.
10. What is Oxfam exactly doing in Haiti?
Oxfam’s strategy for the first six months focused on water/sanitation/hygiene, emergency shelter, and emergency food security and livelihoods. The geographic area of focus included the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area as well as outside of Port-au-Prince.
We are currently reaching over 440,000 people, or over 20 percent of the total earthquake-affected population of two million people.
Over the next six months, we will continue to meet people’s basic water/sanitation/hygiene needs, and we will scale up our livelihoods programs to help more people earn incomes so they can be self-sufficient and meet their own needs.
The UN humanitarian coordination agency (OCHA) is responsible for coordination of NGOs and UN agencies in Haiti. Oxfam actively supports the sectoral coordination mechanism and is a member of the Humanitarian Country Team, which is a high-level coordination group of leaders from UN agencies and some large NGOs.
There is always room for improvement. For hurricane season particularly, aid agencies will have to coordinate their contingency planning to ensure the best possible planning and response.
It’s true that there are many NGOs operating in Haiti. A proliferation of small NGOs doesn’t necessarily help the response. Aid agencies operating in Haiti should focus on their core competencies and honestly assess their added value for the recovery effort.
12. Why is there so much rubble still all around? Shouldn’t the rubble be cleared away by now?
A lot of the rubble has been cleared, and there is still a lot remaining in streets and on plots of land. The earthquake created approximately 19 million cubic meters (25 million cubic yards) of debris that has to be removed. It would take someone in a standard pick-up truck more than 8 million trips to a waste facility to move this amount of debris. The majority of Haitians are removing the debris from their plots by hand. This is mostly because most of the streets and areas where the debris is are too narrow to accommodate large machinery.
In some cases, property owners do not want to remove rubble from their land until they are sure they have a way to pay for rebuilding of structures, like houses, that once stood there. In Haiti, security of property ownership is very weak. It is a common practice to use a physical presence on a plot of land (which could be rubble) as the best insurance against someone squatting on your property.
At Oxfam, we are working to clear rubble both by hand, in cash-for-work programs, and, as the situation allows, with heavy machinery. In some cases, we reuse the rubble to build barriers in ravines to slow down the flow of water during heavy rains.
We cannot lose hope in Haiti. It would be unconscionable and inappropriate.
For too long, agencies and governments have gone around the Haitian government in providing aid to this country. This is a major reason the State is so weak today and struggling to implement recovery programs.
Over half of Haitians lived on less than $1.25 per day prior to the quake. Our task must be to alleviate poverty and improve equality in Haiti and a major part of doing that means supporting a capable and fair government. Oxfam would not support a UN administration or a parallel government of any kind.
For a few years preceding the earthquake, Haiti was stabilizing. It had a falling crime rate and improvements in problems such as acute malnutrition (fell from 9% in 2008 to 4.5% in 2009). We cannot allow this disaster to derail the progress already made.
The Government and aid agencies plan together every year for hurricane season. When the quake struck, Oxfam was still working on recovery from the heavy hurricane season in 2008.
High-risk sites have been identified and mitigation works – like sandbagging and canal digging – are happening now. Aid agencies and the UN are compiling contingency stocks of food, tarps and medicines. The UN has also put together a disaster response team. Aid agencies are currently distributing extra tarps and ropes and rubble is being repurposed, all to reinforce existing shelters.
For months, Oxfam has been clearing several large drainage canals in Port-au-Prince that were blocked with trash well before the earthquake. By our calculations, our recent completion of a clearing of a 1.7-kilometer canal running through the Cite Soleil area protects 80,000 people from flooding during heavy rains. The threat from hurricanes, of course, makes it even more urgent that we move to get people back into real homes, whether their homes or host families, or into transitional shelters.
When people are thrown together in improvised camps, and when families and support networks are broken up by death or physical displacement from homes, women become particularly vulnerable to violence. Haiti unfortunately has a longstanding problem with violence against women. Family structures that protect women, especially young women, have been ruptured in many cases by the earthquake.
When we build water access points, latrines and showers, we take the utmost care to help ensure people’s security, privacy and dignity. We always build separate facilities for women located where they feel most secure. Oxfam also carries out awareness-raising campaigns in communities and camps on gender issues and HIV/AIDS. We call on all agencies working in camps to incorporate violence prevention measures in their planning.
To date, there has been no comprehensive assessment of violence against women since the earthquake. This type of assessment must be undertaken on a broad scale to inform measures taken to protect women and programs that national and international organizations, and the Government implement to improve security for vulnerable people, including improved policing.
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