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Following the earthquake that hit Haiti on 12 January 2010, the humanitarian response was rapidly put in place and aid funding mobilised with the generous help of countries across the world. On the other hand, the coordination of emergency responses was difficult and often criticised afterwards. What have we learned from our biggest emergency response yet?
To gain a better understanding, we interviewed David Dandrès, who was responsible at the time for Terre des Hommes' emergency action in Haiti. In his view, these are some of the issues that might have hindered the organisation's actions and mitigated the results that were achieved.
- Coordination between NGOs and the Haitian government was very difficult: "Government representatives weren't always authorised to enter the United Nations' base at Port-au-Prince," explains David Dandrès. There wasn't free access to the NGOs' international coordination base, so people who didn't have a badge or ID papers couldn't get in. What's more, most of the meetings were held in English as the NGOs that were present came from all over the world. But the members of the government didn't always speak English, which led to comprehension difficulties. I should add that there was also a big turnover of humanitarian workers. They sometimes only stayed a few weeks before being replaced by colleagues who then needed to be briefed on what was going on.
- There was insufficient consideration of the local inhabitants: "In emergencies, we tend to turn up with ready-made solutions, but it's a mistake to work on such a systematic basis," David Dandrès acknowledges. Before deciding what to do, we should take more time to listen to the local inhabitants so that we can better understand their priorities and specific needs. Then, we should involve them more in putting projects in place and get them participating as much as possible. "It's a huge challenge, because in an emergency you have to act quickly. But listening to the local inhabitants and getting them involved is a better way of helping them in the long term."
- A lot of organisations tend to act as surrogates for too long: If we take healthcare as an example, Terre des hommes provided care for mothers and children in mobile clinics and kept these services going for several months to ensure that people living in remote areas had access to healthcare. "But that stopped us helping health facilities to get back up and running, which then took too long. We should have started getting health services working again earlier," David Dandrès concludes.
Terre des hommes has learned from these observations made in the aftermath of the Haitian disaster. The economic and political context is very different, which is why the emergency response in the Philippines in 2013 (see the "One Year after Haiyan" video) went more smoothly. There, the government played a key role in coordinating the emergency. The local population was very involved in rebuilding their houses and other infrastructure right from the start. Ultimately, the Filipino rescue and health services were able to act and help victims independently of the international NGOs.
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