Advocating for a rights-based approach to reconstruction and development
Since shortly after the earthquake, PIH and ZL have advocated consistently and forcefully for a human-rights based approach to relief and reconstruction.In February, PIH and ZL joined several partner organizations in issuing A Call for a Human Rights-Based Approach to Humanitarian Assistance for Haiti. A few weeks later, ZL Director of Operations Loune Viaud testified in support of the approach at the Inter-American Commmission on Human Rights. Other PIH/ZL staff presented at meetings and conferences in cities across the United States, testified at hearings and spoke at briefings on Capitol Hill and spent countless hours in Congressional offices and on the phone with Congressional staff and members – as well as governmental agency leadership and field staff – to describe and advocate for wider adoption of PIH/ZL’s approach of accompaniment and engaging Haitian citizens and communities in rebuilding their country.
PIH’s chief of mission in Haiti, Dr. Louise Ivers, and her senior aide, Kimberly Cullen, recently published the results of a human rights assessment conducted in April in Parc Jean-Marie Vincent, the second largest settlement in Port-au-Prince. PIH/ZL has operated a clinic in this settlement since late January 2010. The survey data confirmed the appalling conditions in the settlements, and documented how minimum established standards for disaster response were not being met in many key areas, including food, shelter, sanitation, and security. For access to toilets, for example, the minimum standard is one latrine for every 50 people; in Parc Jean-Marie Vincent, more than 400 people shared each latrine. Read the full assessment. Unfortunately,for many residents, conditions have only worsened since last spring. Progress on relocating IDP camp residents is minimal; and in many settlements, food distribution has halted and access to potable water and sanitation has deteriorated.
When the shanties and tents spread across every available patch of open ground last January, international relief agencies and the Haitian government hoped and expected to make better shelter available within months. But plans to provide transitional housing on a large scale foundered for many reasons, including complicated legal issues with landowners and the painstakingly slow process of removing rubble.
The Haitian government wants settlement residents to move back to their previous homes, if they are structurally sound, or to the land where they stood. But residents are understandably reluctant to go. Bad as conditions are in the camps, most residents in the April assessment reported that they had better access to some essential services, such as clean water and health care, than they did in the poor neighborhoods and slums where they rented sub-standard homes before the earthquake. Little wonder, then, that they are in no great rush to pay exorbitant rents to live in squalid slums without access to essential services like water, sanitation, schools, and health care.
So what could be done to break the logjam and kick start reconstruction? In a recent article published in Foreign Policy, PIH co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer offered five lessons from Haiti’s disaster that could guide a recharged recovery.
Jobs are everything.
More Haitians must have access to employment if the country is to rebuild itself. As Paul notes, “Haiti has 9.8 million people, and at least half were unemployed even before the earthquake.” Providing employment would help give people the means to relocate—especially if decent wages were paid for work that would lay the groundwork for healthy communities by removing rubble, building infrastructure like water and sanitation facilities, and planting trees in a country that is almost entirely deforested.
Don’t starve the government.
Local people know best – we need to empower and trust Haiti’s government, and the public sector generally. We must use aid to strengthen the public sector and the government, not to bypass them, and ensure that aid money is not just promised, but delivered.
Give them something to go home to.
At least 1.3 million people were made homeless by the earthquake and are now living in spontaneous settlements in and around Port-au-Prince. Neither the capital nor the country can build back better if its people do not have access to housing, water, food, and sanitation. Enticing people home will mean providing exactly what they lacked before: housing, education, and health care.
Waste not, want not.
The international community must keep its promises to Haiti. To date, the country has only received 38 percent of the money promised by foreign governments and NGOs for 2010. This support must actually reach its intended recipients without getting eaten up by overheads.
Relief is the easy part.
Disaster relief is not reconstruction. ‘Building Haiti back better’ means sustaining those temporary gains and adding education, health care, services, and good governance. Additionally, stimulating economic growth to provide a springboard for improving education, health care, services, and good governance is essential.
PIH and our partners will continue to advocate for long-term funding, and improved foreign aid distribution and implementation, to assist widespread recovery in Haiti.
