Description
Schuller led an independent study of eight displaced-persons camps in Haiti, compiling more than 150 interviews ranging from Haitian front-line workers and camp directors to foreign humanitarians and plenty of displaced Haitian people. The result is an insightful account of why the multi-billion-dollar aid response not only did little to help but also did much harm, triggering a range of unintended consequences, rupturing Haitian social and cultural institutions, and in truth increasing violence, especially against women. The book shows how Haitian people were removed from any real decision-making, replaced by a top-down, NGO-dominated system of humanitarian aid, led by an army of steadily young, inexperienced foreign workers. Ignorant of Haitian culture, these aid workers unwittingly enacted policies that triggered a range of negative results. Haitian interviewees also note that the NGOs “planted the flag,” and steadily tended to “just do something,” all the time with an eye to the “photo op” (in no small part as a result of the competition over funding). Worse yet, they blindly supported the eviction of displaced people from the camps, forcing earthquake sufferers to relocate in vast shantytowns that were hotbeds of violence.
Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti concludes with suggestions to help support humanitarian aid someday, perhaps most notably, that aid workers listen to—and respect the culture of—the sufferers of catastrophe.