In the four years since a massive earthquake devastated Haiti, the American Red Cross has spent, committed, or allocated about 86 percent of the $486 million donated to assist more than 4.3 million survivors and help build the country's capacity to respond to future disasters, the organization reports.
According to Haiti Earthquake Response: Four-Year Update (4 pages, PDF), the emergency relief organization has spent $144 million of the $186.6 million allocated to provide shelter to nearly 109,000 people; invested $65.8 million in healthcare services and infrastructure, including construction of and/or operational funding for eight medical facilities; and disbursed the $66.1 million allocated for emergency relief efforts. The organization also has spent $49.4 million of the $56.1 million allocated to provide clean water and sanitation services for more than 556,000 people; $44.1 million of the $45 million committed to bolstering disaster preparedness in Haiti; $32.4 million of the $39.5 million allocated to livelihoods assistance for more than 383,000 survivors; and $19.5 million of the $27.9 million committed to cholera response and prevention efforts, including the country's first cholera vaccination campaign.
In addition, ARC field staff and volunteers have collected data from a rural area in northern Haiti where the organization recently launched a program to strengthen communities and the ability of the local Red Cross chapter to serve those communities. Going forward, ARC will work with the communities to analyze and prioritize the challenges they face and identify ways to address them.
"The American Red Cross has supported the wide range of ongoing needs over the past four years with programs that include the relocation of vulnerable camp residents to safer homes, construction of hospitals and clinics, and economic programs to help people earn money and rebuild businesses," said ARC president and CEO Gail McGovern. "Recovery from such a devastating disaster takes time, so our programs have evolved to address changing community needs. The American Red Cross continues to utilize the generous donations wisely, efficiently and thoughtfully to help Haitians recover and rebuild their lives."
Red Cross under fire! Where’s the money for Haiti?
By Amadi Ajamu
March 30, 2010
This video was posted on YouTube April 1 by teslakontrol,
who wrote, “After the Red Cross released a two-month report
saying that they spent $106 million in Haiti, I went to look for
evidence that it was actually spent in Haiti.”March 30, 2010
Demanding an independent accounting, the Friday Haiti Relief Coalition protested at the American Red Cross headquarters in New York City on March 22. They’ll repeat that demand on Wednesday, March 31, at the United Nations in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 47th Street and First Avenue, during the Haiti Donors Conference at 9:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Another key demand is that Haitians must determine for themselves how they want to rebuild their nation.
In Haiti, recent rain presages the heavy tropical downpours of the coming rainy season and the hurricanes that may follow. In addition to the nearly 300,000 who died in the earthquake or from their wounds, thousands more could die this spring from exposure and water-borne disease. Time is of essence. Shelter is needed now.
Where is all the money going? That was the burning question asked by the crowd that converged on the doorstep of the American Red Cross on March 22 led by the Friday Haiti Relief Coalition. The coalition was organized by the December 12th Movement days after the earthquake and has raised funds and delivered a tractor trailer full of water to Leogane, Haiti. A second trip is being planned now.
With young people in the lead, the December 12th Movement’s Friday
Haiti Relief Coalition turned out in force – in the rain – March 22 on
the doorstep of American Red Cross headquarters in New York City to
demand that all the money donated for Haiti be spent in Haiti now –
especially for shelter from the rain. Extraordinary teachers in the
movement encouraging students to stand up and speak out for Haiti is
people’s education in action! – Photo: Amadi Ajamu
“We have been on the ground and we know the people are in need of shelter. The money collected by the Red Cross for Haiti is not getting there. We are tired of the excuses. That’s our blood down there and our money. We demand immediate shelter for our people,” said coalition member April Raiford. Red Cross personnel nervously scampered back and forth as the protesters chanted, “Stop stealing the money! Where’s the money!”
Omowale Clay of the December 12th Movement said: “We will keep organizing and mobilizing our people until the Haitian people get shelter and supplies. The American Red Cross has not been held accountable for the hundreds of millions they have collected in the name of Haiti and we won’t let them off the hook. They did the same thing during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The money donated to Haiti is for the people in Haiti, not the Red Cross CEO and executive bureaucrats. Haiti needs shelter now!”
The Friday Haiti Relief Coalition also has a committee looking into the possibility of a class action lawsuit against the American Red Cross. The coalition meets every Friday at 6:30 p.m. at Sistas’ Place, 456 Nostrand Ave., Brooklyn, NY. For more information, call (718) 398-1766.
Amadi Ajamu can be reached at amadi4@aol.com.
By Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune
January 29, 2012
"Haiti: Where Did the Money Go?" is a documentary by independent filmmaker Michele Mitchell that has been airing on PBS stations across the country.
Produced by her New York-based company Film At 11, the film paints a very grim picture of how much obviously has not been done. In a camp of 5,000 people, for example, only six toilets are provided — and no one to clean them. In separate visits on the first and second anniversaries of the quake, Mitchell found the camp's conditions actually had gotten worse.
"This is not just about Haiti," Mitchell told me after a screening before congressmen on Capitol Hill. "It's about the need for real reform. Because when you give money to a do-good organization, you expect them to do good with it. We need to do better."The film upset the American Red Cross with its implications of ineffectiveness and allegations of a lack of transparency. The organization released a statement charging the film with "inaccuracies." But after talking with David B. Meltzer, the organization's senior vice president for international services, I think the dispute boils down mainly to differences of opinion and emphasis. The Red Cross understandably wants to focus on the people it has helped. The film's focus, like mine, is on how many people the NGOs have missed, and why.
Haiti's earthquake, he pointed out, is the largest urban disaster since the end of World War II. It left 1.5 million people homeless in a city that already had hundreds of thousands living in squalor. The donations have been generous, but they don't begin to cover the total costs of Haiti's recovery.
"We've had big challenges," he said, "but we've also had big successes."True enough. But on the question of where the money went, Meltzer, like other officials, proudly directed me to the Red Cross website, where they freely disclose information required by law. Unfortunately, the law doesn't require many useful details, such as how much was spent on specific items like food, water and latrine services or where the money was spent.
Mitchell's film was defended by at least one watchdog group, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which also called for more disclosure and accountability by the Red Cross. Congressional hearings and oversight, which Red Cross officials say they welcome, would be an appropriate place to start.
Haitians ask the same question as many around the world “Where did the money go?”
AlterNet
January 3, 2012
Haiti, a close neighbor of the US with over nine million people, was devastated by earthquake on January 12, 2010. Hundreds of thousands were killed and many more wounded.
The UN estimated international donors gave Haiti over $1.6 billion in relief aid since the earthquake (about $155 per Haitian) and over $2 billion in recovery aid (about $173 per Haitian) over the last two years.
Yet Haiti looks like the earthquake happened two months ago, not two years. Over half a million people remain homeless in hundreds of informal camps, most of the tons of debris from destroyed buildings still lays where it fell, and cholera, a preventable disease, was introduced into the country and is now an epidemic killing thousands and sickening hundreds of thousands more.
It turns out that almost none of the money that the general public thought was going to Haiti actually went directly to Haiti. The international community chose to bypass the Haitian people, Haitian non-governmental organizations and the government of Haiti. Funds were instead diverted to other governments, international NGOs, and private companies.
Despite this near total lack of control of the money by Haitians, if history is an indication, it is quite likely that the failures will ultimately be blamed on the Haitians themselves in a “blame the victim” reaction.
Haitians ask the same question as many around the world “Where did the money go?”
Here are seven places where the earthquake money did and did not go.
One. The largest single recipient of US earthquake money was the US government. The same holds true for donations by other countries.
Right after the earthquake, the US allocated $379 million in aid and sent in 5000 troops. The Associated Press discovered that of the $379 million in initial US money promised for Haiti, most was not really money going directly, or in some cases even indirectly, to Haiti. They documented in January 2010 that thirty three cents of each of these US dollars for Haiti was actually given directly back to the US to reimburse ourselves for sending in our military. Forty two cents of each dollar went to private and public non-governmental organizations like Save the Children, the UN World Food Program and the Pan American Health Organization. Hardly any went directly to Haitians or their government.
The overall $1.6 billion allocated for relief by the US was spent much the same way according to an August 2010 report by the US Congressional Research Office: $655 million was reimbursed to the Department of Defense; $220 million to Department of Health and Human Services to provide grants to individual US states to cover services for Haitian evacuees; $350 million to USAID disaster assistance; $150 million to the US Department of Agriculture for emergency food assistance; $15 million to the Department of Homeland Security for immigration fees, and so on.
International assistance followed the same pattern. The UN Special Envoy for Haiti reported that of the $2.4 billion in humanitarian funding, 34 percent was provided back to the donor’s own civil and military entities for disaster response, 28 percent was given to UN agencies and non-governmental agencies (NGOs) for specific UN projects, 26 percent was given to private contractors and other NGOs, 6 percent was provided as in-kind services to recipients, 5 percent to the international and national Red Cross societies, 1 percent was provided to the government of Haiti, four tenths of one percent of the funds went to Haitian NGOs.
Two. Only 1 percent of the money went to the Haitian government.
Less than a penny of each dollar of US aid went to the government
of Haiti, according to the Associated Press. The same is true with
other international donors. The Haitian government was completely
bypassed in the relief effort by the US and the international community.
Three. Extremely little went to Haitian companies or Haitian non-governmental organizations.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research, the absolute best source for accurate information on this issue, analyzed all the 1490 contracts awarded by the US government after the January 2010 earthquake until April 2011 and found only 23 contracts went to Haitian companies. Overall the US had awarded $194 million to contractors, $4.8 million to the 23 Haitian companies, about 2.5 percent of the total. On the other hand, contractors from the Washington DC area received $76 million or 39.4 percent of the total. As noted above, the UN documented that only four tenths of one percent of international aid went to Haitian NGOs.
Three. Extremely little went to Haitian companies or Haitian non-governmental organizations.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research, the absolute best source for accurate information on this issue, analyzed all the 1490 contracts awarded by the US government after the January 2010 earthquake until April 2011 and found only 23 contracts went to Haitian companies. Overall the US had awarded $194 million to contractors, $4.8 million to the 23 Haitian companies, about 2.5 percent of the total. On the other hand, contractors from the Washington DC area received $76 million or 39.4 percent of the total. As noted above, the UN documented that only four tenths of one percent of international aid went to Haitian NGOs.
In fact Haitians had a hard time even getting into international aid meetings. Refugees International reported that locals were having a hard time even getting access to the international aid operational meetings inside the UN compound. “Haitian groups are either unaware of the meetings, do not have proper photo-ID passes for entry, or do not have the staff capacity to spend long hours at the compound.” Others reported that most of these international aid coordination meetings were not even being translated into Creole, the language of the majority of the people of Haiti!
Four. A large percentage of the money went to international aid agencies, and big well connected non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
The American Red Cross received over $486 million in donations for Haiti. It says two-thirds of the money has been contracted to relief and recovery efforts, though specific details are difficult to come by. The CEO of American Red Cross has a salary of over $500,000 per year.
Look at the $8.6 million joint contract between the US Agency for International Development (USAID) with the private company CHF for debris removal in Port au Prince. CHF is politically well-connected international development company with annual budget of over $200 million whose CEO was paid $451,813 in 2009. CHF’s connection to Republicans and Democrats is illustrated by its board secretary, Lauri Fitz-Pegado, a partner with the Livingston Group LLC. The Livingston Group is headed by the former Republican Speaker-designate for the 106th Congress, Bob Livingston, doing lobbying and government relations. Ms. Fitz-Pegado, who apparently works the other side of the aisle, was appointed by President Clinton to serve in the Department of Commerce and served as a member of the foreign policy expert advisor team on the Obama for President Campaign. CHF “works in Haiti out of two spacious mansions in Port au Prince and maintains a fleet of brand new vehicles” according to Rolling Stone.
Rolling Stone, in an excellent article by Janet Reitman, reported on another earthquake contract, a $1.5 million contract to the NY based consulting firm Dalberg Global Development Advisors. The article found Dalberg’s team “had never lived overseas, didn’t have any disaster experience or background in urban planning… never carried out any program activities on the ground…” and only one of them spoke French. USAID reviewed their work and found that “it became clear that these people may not have even gotten out of their SUVs.”
Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton announced a fundraising venture for Haiti on January 16, 2010. As of October 2011, the fund had received $54 million in donations. It has partnered with several Haitian and international organizations. Though most of its work appears to be admirable, it has donated $2 million to the construction of a Haitian $29 million for-profit luxury hotel.
“The NGOs still have something to respond to about their accountability, because there is a lot of cash out there,” according to Nigel Fisher, the UN’s chief humanitarian officer in Haiti. “What about the $1.5 to $2 billion that the Red Cross and NGOs got from ordinary people, and matched by governments? What’s happened to that? And that’s where it’s very difficult to trace those funds.”
Five. Some money went to for profit companies whose business is disasters.
Less than a month after the quake hit, the US Ambassador Kenneth Merten sent a cable titled “THE GOLD RUSH IS ON” as part of his situation report to Washington. In this February 1, 2010 document, made public by The Nation, Haiti Liberte and Wikileaks, Ambassador Merten reported the President of Haiti met with former General Wesley Clark for a sales presentation for a Miami-based company that builds foam core houses.
Capitalizing on the disaster, Lewis Lucke, a high ranking USAID relief coordinator, met twice in his USAID capacity with the Haitian Prime Minister immediately after the quake. He then quit the agency and was hired for $30,000 a month by a Florida corporation Ashbritt (known already for its big no bid Katrina grants) and a prosperous Haitian partner to lobby for disaster contracts. Locke said “it became clear to us that if it was handled correctly the earthquake represented as much an opportunity as it did a calamity…” Ashbritt and its Haitian partner were soon granted a $10 million no bid contract. Lucke said he was instrumental in securing another $10 million contract from the World Bank and another smaller one from CHF International before their relationship ended.
Six. A fair amount of the pledged money has never been actually put up.
The international community decided it was not going to allow the Haiti government to direct the relief and recovery funds and insisted that two institutions be set up to approve plans and spending for the reconstruction funds going to Haiti. The first was the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) and the second is the Haiti Reconstruction Fund (HRF).
In March 2010, UN countries pledged $5.3 billion over two years and a total of $9.9 billion over three years in a conference March 2010. The money was to be deposited with the World Bank and distributed by the IHRC. The IHRC was co-chaired by Bill Clinton and the Haitian Prime Minister. By July 2010, Bill Clinton reported only 10 percent of the pledges had been given to the IHRC.
Seven. A lot of the money which was put up has not yet been spent.
Nearly two years after the quake, less than 1 percent of the $412 million in US funds specifically allocated for infrastructure reconstruction activities in Haiti had been spent by USAID and the US State Department and only 12 percent has even been obligated according to a November 2011 report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The performance of the two international commissions, the IHRC and the HRF has also been poor. The Miami Herald noted that as of July 2011, the $3.2 billion in projects approved by the IHRC only five had been completed for a total of $84 million. The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), which was severely criticized by Haitians and others from its beginning, has been effectively suspended since its mandate ended at the end of October 2011. The Haiti Reconstruction Fund was set up to work in tandem with the IHRC, so while its partner is suspended, it is not clear how it can move forward.
What to do
The effort so far has not been based a respectful partnership between Haitians and the international community. The actions of the donor countries and the NGOs and international agencies have not been transparent so that Haitians or others can track the money and see how it has been spent. Without transparency and a respectful partnership the Haitian people cannot hold anyone accountable for what has happened in their country. That has to change.
The UN Special Envoy to Haiti suggests the generous instincts of people around the world must be channeled by international actors and institutions in a way that assists in the creation of a “robust public sector and a healthy private sector.” Instead of giving the money to intermediaries, funds should be directed as much as possible to Haitian public and private institutions. A “Haiti First” policy could strengthen public systems, promote accountability, and create jobs and build skills among the Haitian people.
Respect, transparency and accountability are the building blocks for human rights. Haitians deserve to know where the money has gone, what the plans are for the money still left, and to be partners in the decision-making for what is to come.
After all, these are the people who will be solving the problems when the post-earthquake relief money is gone.
Haiti: where did all the money go?
Issue 449
The Haitian earthquake prompted
an outpouring of generosity –
international donations totalled
more than $10 billion. But, two
years on, have those funds
been well spent? Nick Harvey investigates.
The thousands of Haitians who took to the streets in December, waving banners and chanting the unequivocal message ‘UN, go home!’ could be accused of biting the hand that feeds them. After all, Haiti currently relies on the UN and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to provide 80 per cent of its basic services. But the outpouring of anger, though partly in response to the cholera epidemic that was likely brought into Haiti by UN troops from Nepal, was also a result of wider frustrations with the painfully slow relief effort and the general state of the country. For despite billions having been pledged in aid since the 2010 earthquake, the lives of the majority of Haitians remain woefully threadbare.
‘Two years on and you have nearly half a million people still in tents or tarps, some 7,000 dead from cholera and hundreds of thousands more infected,’ says Ben Smilowitz, head of the Disaster Accountability Project, a non-partisan aid organization watchdog. ‘They’ve had to live through two hurricane seasons like this, which is simply unacceptable given the amount of money that was donated.’
Immediately after the quake, NGO fundraisers got to work and the money surged in. Ordinary people around the world dug deep and, along with pledges from foreign governments and other international donors, around $10 billion was raised. The thousands of NGOs already embedded in the country – more per capita than anywhere else in the world – began a massive relief effort, loosely co-ordinated by the UN. It was a daunting task, due both to the enormity of the disaster and the weakness of local institutions. But two years later, with only a fraction of the estimated million internally displaced people (IDPs) rehoused and few signs of any real reconstruction, many are wondering where, exactly, all that money went.
Only 40 per cent of the $5.6 billion pledged by foreign governments to be used in the first 18 months had been dispersed by September 2011
One of the biggest problems was that much of the money failed to reach Haiti. Only 40 per cent of the $5.6 billion pledged by foreign governments to be used in the first 18 months had been dispersed by September 2011.
‘Aid organizations see disasters as a huge fundraising opportunity and they will raise money whether they can deliver it or not,’ says Ben Smilowitz. ‘If they can’t deliver the services then they will take a nine or ten per cent cut and pass the money to another organization. This can happen numerous times before it gets to where it should be, so the amount they end up with is a fraction of what was actually raised.’
Brand recognition
One of the most notorious examples of this disparity in the delivery of funds came from the American Red Cross. Despite collecting $255 million in private donations, only $106 million made it to its Haiti relief project. When the earthquake struck, the organization had just 15 staff members working there. Compare this with Partners in Health, another NGO which, despite having 5,000 (mostly Haitian) staff, received less than $40 million. NGOs come in all shapes and sizes – and can have very different approaches.
‘Simply put, the wrong groups raised the most money in Haiti,’ explains Ben Smilowitz. ‘Groups that may not even be in Haiti and have very little capacity to deliver get the cash because of their incredible brand recognition.’
And while billions of dollars have undoubtedly managed to filter through, a lack of interaction between NGOs and locals means very little of it ends up in Haitian hands. Studies have shown that only 2.3 per cent of reconstruction aid went to Haitian firms. Haitians have, in many ways, simply been excluded from the rebuilding of their own country.
‘The structure of the humanitarian system works against the actual participation of local people,’ says Mark Schuller, an anthropologist working in Haiti and co-editor of Tectonic Shifts: Haiti since the Earthquake. ‘Decisions are made in Brussels, London, Washington and Ottawa. The UN Logistics Base was a place where Haitians were simply not invited, even government members, and within NGOs you have decisions made in English that often can’t be communicated to the creole speakers on the ground.’
‘Youn ede lòt’
While Haitians remain frozen out from the reconstruction process, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the first response to the emergency came from the Haitian people themselves. Demonstrating the country’s longstanding tradition of youn ede lòt (‘helping each other’), it was Haitians who leapt into action after those devastating 35 seconds that tore down their country on 12 January 2010.
‘When the earthquake first happened there was a lot of solidarity among Haitians,’ says Prospery Raymond, head of Christian Aid in Haiti. ‘I was under the rubble for two hours and it was the local youth who risked their lives to get me out. Thousands of people were saved by fellow Haitians that day.’
Prospery argues that the most successful aid initiatives have been those that forwarded funds straight to Haitians. ‘After the earthquake we distributed cash directly to those who needed it,’ he says. ‘It was crucial that they got this money because there was food available at the markets, so people could eat and it helped keep the local economy afloat.’ Christian Aid aims to work with local partners rather than, as many other agencies do, sending in teams of foreign ‘experts’.‘Now is the time for the international community to help Haitians do what they really want to do, rather than carry on with these pre-prepared projects from abroad’
The absence of a functioning government prevented Haitians from taking more of a lead in their own affairs after the earthquake. A lengthy and disputed presidential election – followed by a five-month delay in forming a new government – had a huge impact on the first year of the reconstruction process. The lack of government structure, combined with a US policy stretching back to the 1980s that favoured putting aid into the hands of NGOs rather than Haitian presidents, meant that only one per cent of the aid went to the Haitian government. Now that a new government is in place, there is hope that Haiti can begin to take control of its own future.
‘Now is the time for the international community to help Haitians do what they really want to do, rather than carry on with these preprepared projects from abroad,’ says Prospery Raymond. ‘They need to work closely with the government to help strengthen its capacity, because NGOs are not the long-term solution.’ Others agree that this should have been the approach from the start.
‘Donors such as the European Union and USAID, and their contracting NGOs, could have changed the rules of the game so that they rewarded local participation,’ says Mark Schuller. ‘They could have imposed a tax on their own aid – say, three per cent – and used that money to support government ministries that are performing well but are understaffed.’
As well as political instability, other reasons for lack of progress in reconstruction and resettlement commonly cited by NGOs are long customs delays for materials at the airport and the diversion of funds to deal with the cholera epidemic. Delays clearing the rubble and problems determining who owns land (which makes it difficult to find places to build houses) are also regularly blamed for reconstruction inactivity. But others argue that these excuses do not stand up to interrogation.
‘Most of these problems could have been resolved with collective public solutions,’ says Mark Schuller. ‘Take the land tenure issue, one of the so-called biggest barriers. The government and the donors could have arranged local hearings to see who really owns the land, but these things have simply not been made a priority.’
Time bomb
Many working within the NGO sector argue that the criticism directed towards them is unfair. They say that talk of a lack of progress is misdirected due to both the sheer enormity of the task and the unique history and circumstances surrounding the disaster.
‘If you’re going to accuse people of being slow, then you have to have some real-life comparisons to back this up,’ says Philippe Verstraeten, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Haiti. ‘If you compare it to either Ground Zero in New York or the Asian tsunami two years on, then progress in Haiti hasn’t been that slow. We’ve cleared half the rubble, we’ve reduced the number of people in camps from 1.5 million to around half a million, and we’ve provided shelter for 125,000 families, which is significant progress.’
Facing off. This clash
happened in the wake of
elections but there is also
popular dissatisfaction
with the behaviour of
UN troops, including
numerous allegations of
sexual assault.
Allison Shelley / Reuters
‘Most people are back in their houses, even the ones that are marked as ‘red’ [so damaged that they require demolition],’ says Tim Schwartz. ‘It’s a little late to talk about fixing houses now, because the big opportunity to do this properly has passed.’
With families forced to return to their battered homes and others choosing to rebuild their own homes rather than wait any longer, many remain severely vulnerable. With funding running dry, aid agencies are beginning to leave, yet there is a real sense that Haiti is in no better position should another disaster strike.
‘It’s like a time bomb,’ says Schwartz. ‘As well as the houses being unable to face another earthquake, all the exact same social problems are still there. It’s like they’ve just put a Band-Aid on it until the next disaster, when the same thing will happen all over again, like a nightmare déjà vu.’
Filmmaker Michele Mitchell presented her documentary, “Haiti: Where Did the Money Go?” at a congressional briefing sponsored by Rep. Yvette Clarke, Rep. Barbara Lee, and Rep. Donald M. Payne (CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot spoke at the briefing, and CEPR helped to publicize the event.) Through visits to Haiti in 2010 and 2011 in which she conducted interviews with IDP camp residents, NGO spokespersons, aid workers, and others, and through other background research, Mitchell examines why so many people (currently half-a-million) remain stuck in tent camps with few services, despite the billions of dollars pledged for relief following the earthquake. The film is currently airing on dozens of PBS stations around the U.S.
One NGO that Mitchell focuses on, in interviews, and in on-the-ground examination of the situation in IDP camps, is the Red Cross. Mitchell notes that the Red Cross is the biggest NGO operating in Haiti, and American Red Cross (ARC) Senior Vice President International Services David Meltzer is provided with a significant portion of screen time to explain the Red Cross’ activities in Haiti, and why some services – such as shelter and sanitation – appear to be so sorely lacking. As the Huffington Post’s Laura Bassett describes:
A senior Red Cross official for international aid is interviewed extensively throughout the film, and Mitchell said she repeatedly asked ARC to answer questions and corroborate facts during the production process.Despite the prominent role that Meltzer has in the film, and Mitchell’s apparent reaching out to the organization, staff from the American Red Cross attended the briefing yesterday, handing out copies of a document titled “Correcting Film@11’s Errors and Distortions on the Haiti Response” (which we have posted here in PDF format). The several ARC staffers from the Washington office also interrupted a panelist (see video here, at 50:40) by complaining that the film was imbalanced and that Meltzer was not given sufficient notice ahead of the event (he was invited six days earlier, according to organizers).
But most of the “inaccuracies” to which the ARC refers actually appear to be differences of opinion, or different interpretations of observations on the ground. Despite the good deal of screen time Meltzer receives in the film, the ARC suggests, according to the Huffington Post, that its services were not “presented in a balanced and accurate manner,” and has reportedly urged PBS stations not to show the documentary. The ARC’s handout even goes so far as to refer to “Haiti: Where Did the Money Go?” as a “so-called documentary.”
Of course, scrutiny and criticism of the Red Cross’ efforts in post-quake Haiti are not new; this blog has chronicled some of them going back to just months after the quake. And Mitchell’s questions, and overall conclusion that the recovery and reconstruction effort has failed many Haitians is not a unique one. Most two-year retrospectives in the media this month made many of the same points.
Mitchell told the Huffington Post:
“The thing is, I went to Haiti twice ten months after the earthquake to see what was happening, and then at the 20-month mark, and we have pictures,” she told HuffPost. “The camp situation had deteriorated. There were camps of 5,000 people with six toilets between them. There were millions of people in tents during the hurricane, and they were terrified. I like happy endings, and I wish I could report that ‘disaster relief 2.0′ had worked, but the picture tells a different story.”Portions of the film were previously available as web reports, yet “ARC spokesperson Laura Howe said people at the organization were ‘blindsided’ by Mitchell’s film and disappointed that they weren’t able to see it before it was delivered to PBS.”
But Red Cross staff in Haiti have not always been willing to talk to journalists, as Aljazeera’s Sebastian Walker shows in his September 2011 report, “Haiti After the Quake”. His attempts to interview Red Cross staff on camera at one IDP camp are rebuffed; the men get into a car and drive away. Mitchell, as described, had much better luck, interviewing Meltzer at length.
So what does the Red Cross find so objectionable?
First, the ARC takes issue with the statement that “The money was raised quickly and the clear implication is that it would be spent quickly,” saying, “The American Red Cross repeatedly informed the public and donors in writing that its relief and recovery efforts in Haiti would last three to five years.” This may be true, but it was appeals stressing emergency relief that doubtlessly reached the great majority of people who gave to the ARC in the days and weeks following the quake, when presumably the ARC raised the majority of funds for Haiti relief. Third party appeals also stressed this, such as from the White House (“You can also help immediately by donating to the Red Cross”) and CNN (“The American Red Cross’ primary focus during the initial response of an emergency is food, shelter and meeting other basic needs”).
The ARC objects to the narration, “We see tarps but they are torn. We did see pots, but many were being sold for food,” stating “The global Red Cross network distributed more than 1 million relief items such as tarps, tents and kitchen sets in Haiti. We continued to distribute tarps to camps up until the fall of 2011.” But the expected life span of a tarp is six months at most; the majority of the 500,000 people who remain displaced will continue to need new ones, as long as they are forced to live under them. Shelter provision has been woefully lacking for the great majority of IDP camp residents.
The ARC takes issue with the statement, “We did see water but most wasn’t clean enough to drink,” which in the context of the film refers to water in IDP camps. Surprisingly, the ARC says that it s “has never received a report – substantiated or unsubstantiated – that ‘most’ of the water ‘wasn’t clean enough to drink.” The ARC is part of the Water Sanitation and Hygiene Response (WASH) Cluster, so it should receive updated information on potable water from the UN, including bulletins from the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which reported in October 2011 [PDF] that “In August, only 7 per cent of the people [in IDP camps] had regular access to drinking water, compared to 48 per cent in March.”
But even worse, as shown in this Aljazeera report, there are camp residents who reported becoming ill after drinking water provided by the Red Cross. Ricardo Caivano, country director in Haiti for the American Red Cross, admitted in the Aljazeera interview that the water the ARC was delivering was not necessarily safe to drink, and that the Red Cross recommended boiling it first.
The ARC claims it “false” to say that “No one knows how credible or effective NGOs are because they don’t report to anyone,” saying the ARC “is congressionally chartered, is audited, must file annual tax returns with the IRS, is monitored by watchdog groups and is transparent with the public and donors who entrust their contributions with us.”
But to our knowledge, the ARC does not report to any authorities in Haiti about its activities. It is also ironic to note that ARC cites that it “is monitored by watchdog groups” in its defense. While audits of NGOs generally make sure the numbers add up, they don’t audit effectiveness or what percent of funds are spent on in-country overhead, for instance. The same can be said for the IRS Form 990 which NGOs fill out. While it is interesting to see that the CEO of the Red Cross received a million dollars in reported income, it tells you nothing about specific relief efforts.
The trend seems to be for the ARC to have become less transparent about its activities in Haiti. An NPR report on Haiti this month stated, “A spokeswoman for the American Red Cross declined to provide a local overhead breakdown.” Although ARC did provide the Chronicle of Philanthropy with updated numbers on money “pledged or spent” on Haiti relief and reconstruction in 2011, a “spokeswoman declined to specify what share has actually gone out the door.” Perhaps this is because last year in talking to the Chronicle, there was an almost $100 million difference between the amount the ARC said was “committed” to be spent in 2010, and how much actually was spent – a huge sum by any standard. (The Chronicle reported last year that the ARC “expects to have committed $245-million by the one-year anniversary of the earthquake.” They ended up spending only $148.5 million.)
One aid shortfall that the film focuses on is provision of latrines. The ARC used to provide updates on how many latrines they have built in Haiti, which have been pretty few, but has not done so since 2010. Their one-year report [PDF] after the earthquake stated simply that they had built “hundreds of latrines.” Their two-year report [PDF] uses a much more vague figure, stating that “364,300 people benefited from water and sanitation activities”. “Water and sanitation activities” is a very broad category, and the ARC does not break down this number further, to describe how people might have benefited.
The ARC objects to the “Claim that ‘the Red Cross is the decision maker’ in Camp Caradeux, calling it a “false conclusion.” But the filmmakers do not make this claim; this is a statement made by Wilma Vital, actually a resident of camp Toussaint L’Ouverture, which is comprised of former Camp Carradeux residents who were forcibly displaced and who do not enjoy the T-shelters, latrines, or other services now available in neighboring Camp Carradeux.
The Red Cross is the biggest NGO in Haiti. Wilma’s statement that the Red Cross “is the decision maker” where she lives, in a camp badly in need of more and better services, is her opinion, and certainly one that has merit.
The ARC objects to the statement that “NGOs effectively shut out the overwhelming majority of the public by holding meetings and discussions in English and French, not Creole, the language of the people of Haiti.” But the ARC’s response doesn’t even address this claim, as it refers only to the ARC’s efforts to distribute a selection of texts in Creole. As the ARC must realize, the claim here is a reference to the meetings of NGOs within the UN Cluster system – where key discussions on coordinating efforts on issues like shelter, water distribution and rural needs take place. These discussions – as everyone, including the Red Cross, is well aware – take place in French and English only.
Overall, the ARC’s response to the film is unfortunate, in that it appears defensive – an attempt at saving face instead of a sincere evaluation of both successes and shortcomings. If the ARC truly welcomes the tracking of its efforts “by watchdog groups,” it should welcome the questions raised in the Film@11 documentary. Hopefully the film will lead to a more productive debate on the role of NGO’s in Haiti’s relief and reconstruction process where it is, after all, the well being of the people of Haiti — and the country’s future capacity to be sovereign and independent — that should always be the main concern.
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