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Blog Post: Posted January 26, 2010, 7:43 pm by Neal Keny-Guyer

Lessons from Haiti

Country: Haiti

Topics: Emergencies

Neal Keny-Guyer and Nancy Lindborg accompany Mugur Dumitrache, water and sanitation expert (in black t-shirt) and Richard Jacquot, team leader. The group is visiting spontaneous tent camps to make sure the communities have access to water. Mercy Corps is also planning to start cash-for-work and other programmes in these communities, as needed.
Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

Yesterday I left Port-au-Prince after spending a few days with the Mercy Corps team. My next stop is a world away: The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The two places couldn’t be more different, but even in Davos, Haiti is front-and-centre in people’s minds.

Haiti is filled with tremendous devastation and suffering, as well as amazing examples of human resilience. Against a backdrop of so much tragedy and a growing number of triumphs, a few things come into sharp relief. These are my lessons from Haiti:

This disaster is different. I talked to Mercy Corps’ team of experts and many other seasoned disaster responders, and all agreed that this is one of the toughest challenges they’ve ever faced. The earthquake dealt a traumatic blow to Haiti’s government, the UN and many of our peer NGOs. It choked off supply routes, and despite valiant efforts, flows of aid have been slower and more complicated than any of us would have liked.

Locals must lead, the international community must support. I’m heartened by the outpouring of support from across the globe to help Haitians. But at the end of the day, it is the people of Haiti and their government who must rebuild this country in a way that’s sustainable, economically viable, and less likely to be crippled by a similar disaster in the future. It’s our job to support them along the way.

People are resilient. Everywhere we went in Haiti, we saw communities coming together and working toward their own recovery. In one neighborhood, locals had developed a detailed database of the population, their resources and their needs. In another, people quickly organised a committee to work with our water expert and had salvaged all possible bits of their damaged and destroyed homes. Despite their incredible losses, Haitians are not victims but empowered actors who only lack resources and opportunities.

As I left Haiti, shelter for as many as 800,000 new homeless was the most pressing need. There are few tents, and neighborhoods are usually a muddled mix of total destruction, dwellings desperately in need of repair, and some lucky homes standing intact. The challenge of finding housing for so many people – in a way that preserves their dignity – is enormous. But it’s only one in a long line of challenges that Haiti will face.

Neal Keny-Guyer's blog

On Wednesday, January 27, 2010 (1:26 pm), Bahar Salimova wrote:

Dear Neal,

Thanks a lot for an interesting posting. Haiti’s recovery process is not going to be easy to tackle and will require a lot of effort both from the international community and from local people. Thus, it is important not to forget lessons learned from the previous disaster responses and to integrate them into work in Haiti early on. The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) has prepared an interesting note on the World Bank Group Response to the Haiti Earthquake: Evaluative Lessons. Some of the main lessons highlighted in IEG’s note are the following:

• Temporary shelters need to preserve existing social relationships. For instance, the layout of temporary shelter structures can reduce crime and violence against women if care is taken during the relocation process to ensure that as many doors as possible face a common and well-lit area.

• Providing survivors with employment and cash transfers early on has had good results. For instance, taking the time to ensure that all usable building materials are recovered and recycled is a way to ensure that the poor will be able to afford to rebuild. The general population can be helped to recover emotionally through this process with paid work.

• Donor coordination has always proved to be vital. Ways must be found for involved donors to work together or in parallel – in the short term – on a clearly defined set of activities with the same eligibility requirements and benefits.

• Design of disaster projects should be simple, based on local participation and taking into account local capacity.

• Streamlined decision-making and procedures for contracting civil works will help avoid delays. For instance, either a high-powered unit developed for the purpose or existing institutions can provide continuity in planning, coordination, and monitoring.

• Damage assessments need to be simple and tailored to local construction types, with damage awards closely tied to actual costs.

• Post-disaster operations need to include measures to reduce long term vulnerability and deal with land ownership issues. Reaching agreement on mitigation measures with the government within the first three months is important, because it becomes harder to get politicians to focus on disaster once the memory of the emergency recedes.

• Owner-driven housing construction can be more effective than the use of contractors.

• Leveraging existing private sector capacity is critical for effective emergency response. The private sector can play a key role in infrastructure and logistics, local banking, and provision of physical capacity.

To read the full version of the note, please click on the following link: http://www.worldbank.org/ieg/haiti.html.