Huffington Post: Haiti Earthquake Anniversary: Little

Progress, Broken Promises

by Marcus Baram
January 7, 2011

NEW YORK -- It's been almost a year since a catastrophic earthquake killed more than 230,000 people
and left more than a million homeless in Haiti. But from the slums of Port-au-Prince to the rural Central
Plateau, this impoverished country continues to suffer -- buffeted by Hurricane Tomas in November, a
cholera epidemic that left over 3,600 dead and the violent chaos of political stalemate.
Though countries around the world promised billions of dollars in aid and nonprofit organizations raised
hundreds of millions in the weeks after the disaster, many have not delivered on their promises and
crucial funds have been misspent. In the last year, Americans gave more than $1.4 billion to relief aid to
the country, but only 38 percent of that has been spent to provide recovery and rebuilding aid, according
to a Chronicle of Philanthropy survey of 60 major relief organizations. (By comparison, after Hurricane
Katrina, a domestic disaster, charities spent about 80 percent of the money they had raised.)
The Huffington Post contacted each of the organizations to find out how they have spent the
money raised for Haiti relief - click here to see the list.
This week, a leading international charity slammed the relief effort as a "quagmire", sharply criticizing the
recovery commission chaired by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, saying that the much-praised panel
"failed to live up to its mandate." And some problems have worsened -- rape is prevalent in Haiti's tent
camps that were set up all over the country in the wake of the earthquake, according to a report by
Amnesty International, which interviewed more than 50 victims of sexual violence.
Soon after the earthquake, leaders from around the world gathered in New York for a donors conference
in March, pledging almost $6 billion in aid for 2010-'11. "Today, the international community has come
together, dramatically, in solidarity with Haiti and its people," United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-
moon said in his closing remarks at the conference. "Today, we have mobilized to give Haiti and its
people what they need most: hope for a new future. We have made a good start, we need now to deliver."
Nine months later, however, the results have been disappointing. Only 63.6 percent of the money
pledged for 2010 was actually disbursed, according to the Office of the U.N. Special Envoy for Haiti, and
some countries have reneged on their promises, sending less than 1 percent of the amount they pledged
to spend on aid. U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal have been blamed for causing the cholera outbreak by
dumping human waste into a river used by locals as a water source. (While the U.N. has called for an
independent probe of the outbreak, French epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux concluded that the disease
was brought into Haiti by outsiders, stating, "There is no other possible explanation for the emergence of
the epidemic in a country where it was absent."
But the world seems to have turned its attention elsewhere. The U.N. made a $174-million emergency
appeal to help stem the cholera epidemic, but has only raised 20 percent of that.
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Speaking on the phone from Haiti, Julie Schindall, a staffer with the antipoverty organization Oxfam
International, was emphatic in her outrage. "Big promises were made and there was very little follow-
through, that's very typical of how things work in Haiti," she told The Huffington Post. "People are dying
because promises are not being kept."
Schindall, who has been helping with water sanitation and hygiene efforts as part of the emergency
cholera response, acknowledged that such relief work is difficult and complicated after any disaster, let
alone in a poor country like Haiti with a dismal infrastructure and ineffective government. She said that
Oxfam has spent $68 million out of $98 million raised so far, providing emergency aid to roughly a million
people.
"One year on, progress is not as we had hoped. We knew that it would be difficult, but there were some
tangible steps that could have been done," she said, citing the failure of many NGOs to include Haitians
and their government in planning decisions. "We can't leave these people hanging in the balance and
dependent on emergency aid. We have to get them back on their feet and living their lives again."
An Oxfam report report released Thursday painted a bleak picture of the situation on the ground.
"As Haitians prepare for the first anniversary of the earthquake, close to one million people are reportedly
still displaced," the report said. "Less than 5 percent of the rubble has been cleared, only 15 percent of
the temporary housing that is needed has been built and relatively few permanent water and sanitation
facilities have been constructed."
The report took particular aim at the Clinton-led Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, which is meant to
coordinate relief action between international donors and the Haitian government. Concluding that the
IHRC, which has only met a few times, has failed in that mission, Oxfam blasted the commission for not
doing more to include Haitian ministries and people in the process.
As an example of the IHRC's aloofness, the Oxfam report claimed it often sends out documentation
printed in English to people in the French-speaking country. The commission's action plan was not
supported by more than 80 percent of Haitians questioned in a recent Oxfam survey.
Sam Worthington, the president of InterAction, the largest alliance of international NGOs -- which has
raised more than $1.2 billion in private funds and spent almost $530 million -- said that though he sees
progress in "very concrete ways," including 30,000 temporary shelters that have been set up around the
country, there is a long way to go.
"The fact that total pledges in year 1 has not been delivered is not good. We will have to shut down
services if resources don't flow," Worthington said, noting that many underfunded NGOs need to shift
resources intended for reconstruction to emergency relief. And the political instability of the disputed
presidential and legislative elections has exacerbated these problems, he said, noting that water trucks
were not being delivered to refugee camps where cholera remains a threat.
"It is crucial that we have a government we can work with, there has to be a leadership role so we can
align our efforts," Worthington said. "We're waiting for some clear signal for who is going to win this
election. In many ways, decision-making has been put on hold."
Most NGOs on the list compiled by HuffPost have spent hundreds of millions to provide water, sanitation,
shelter, food and other assistance to million of Haitians. And many have carefully planned their
expenditures, setting aside money for long-term projects that are crucially needed to rebuild the country.
But some organizations seemed vague in their plans for how to spend millions in their coffers.
Donors need to ask clear questions about how an organization will spend their money, said Oxfam's
Schindall, who cautioned that spending quickly is not always a good plan. "The way that aid money gets
spent is very difficult to explain to donors," she said. "It's irresponsible to spend all the money right away
but at the same time, it is their responsibility to make clear to donors how they're spending money and
why they're spending the money that way. If you haven't spend it all right now, why is that?"