Some help may have been more of a hindrance in Haiti relief efforts.
Tons of rice and beans tell how the world is helping Haiti. Missing tents, tarps and toilets show how it is falling short.
Amid the misery, experts already are looking for lessons from the Haiti catastrophe – in time, they hope, for the next nightmare. Some voices call for an international humanitarian force to take charge in future emergencies.
Haiti’s Jan. 12 earthquake has tested man’s humanity to man more than any natural calamity in modern memory, challenging the ability of the community of nations and its global emergency network to meet an unprecedented volume of demands for food, water, medical help and shelter.
"This is a major test for all of us and we cannot afford to fail," U.N. humanitarian coordinator John Holmes told aid groups after his latest visit to the crippled Caribbean nation.
His private message Feb. 16 candidly acknowledged they were failing in one key area – working together. The U.N. undersecretary-general cited "steady improvement of coordination" in a subsequent Associated Press interview. But he added, "Does that mean we’ve got it all right? No, it doesn’t."
Holmes has ordered an early "real-time evaluation" of what has gone right and wrong in Haiti. The U.N.’s Geneva-based independent inspectors, meanwhile, plan their own longer-range review.
What went wrong with coordination has ranged from the elementary – ill-advised handouts of infant formula – to the complex, beginning with complaints the U.S. military turned away too many relief flights in the first days of crisis.
Learning the lessons of Haiti is taking on added urgency because planners expect the world’s natural disasters to grow in scope and frequency, as expanding populations crowd vulnerable coastlines and quake and flood zones, and climate change threatens more extreme weather events.
The military is expected to play a greater role, as the U.S. and other governments recognize that helping hands in uniform can boost their image and security ties to stricken nations. Since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the U.S. military has deployed 40 times to natural disasters worldwide.
Along with airlift and other assets, however, the military brings along a culture of secrecy and resistance to outside authority that sometimes partners poorly with civilian aid groups.
Almost seven weeks after the quake killed an estimated 230,000 Haitians, injured a similar number and left more than 1 million homeless, the picture remains bleak.
The first rush of food aid was randomly targeted and poorly coordinated, although distribution improved as weeks went by. As of Feb. 20, a food "surge" had delivered two-week rice rations to almost all 3 million people in need, the U.N. said.
Distribution of clean water also took weeks to reach most in need. Many still have little access, raising concerns over reports, for example, that ill-informed aid groups were handing out infant formula, potentially mixable with unsafe water.
As human waste builds up, almost 1 million displaced people in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere need emergency latrines, the U.N. Children’s Fund says. And as Haiti’s seasonal rains approach, the U.N. says only 30 percent of 1.2 million newly homeless have received tents or tarpaulins to shelter their families. Shelter planning among U.N. and other aid organizations and the Haitian government has gone slowly.
The distressing scenes prompted calls for a stronger "first responder" system. Returning from Haiti, the European Union aid commissioner, Karel de Gucht, said the time seemed right to consider an all-Europe rapid reaction force for global disasters.
The sometimes halting civil-military cooperation in Haiti, where the U.S. Southern Command deployed as many as 20,000 personnel to help the recovery, could be seen in a series of formal U.S.-U.N. agreements needed to clear away obstacles.
On Jan. 18, six days after the quake and after aid officials complained U.S. Air Force controllers at Port-au-Prince airport favored U.S. military flights over inbound relief supplies, the Pentagon reached an agreement with the U.N. giving priority to aid flights. Working out a "slot" system took days more.
On Jan. 22, the U.S. agreed to support priorities in Haiti identified by the U.N. – not unconditionally, but "as appropriate." That three-page document also said further coordination steps were needed. Not until Jan. 26, two full weeks after the quake, did the U.S. and U.N. set up a joint center to arrange security for aid deliveries, a concern from the start.
Holmes himself took to task OCHA’s own "clusters" in Haiti, the system devised after the Indian Ocean tsunami that assigns to single agencies the task of coordinating aid from many groups – UNICEF for the water cluster, for example, and the Red Cross for emergency shelter.
He said some cluster leaders had failed to devote enough hands and heads to coordinating up to 200 organizations.
"A huge emergency like this has brought out the extent to which managing these clusters is a full-time job," he told the AP.
Like nothing before, the enormity of the Haiti emergency swamped the world’s ability to help. Disaster specialists now will look into that swamp for clues to next time. But no one mistakes what the big problem was.
"What’s gone wrong in Haiti?" repeated Laurent Sury, an emergency operations deputy with Doctors Without Borders. "The earthquake, that’s what went wrong."
Said Holmes, "There are limits to being 100-percent prepared."
Copyright 2010 Associated Press
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