The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti Patrick Linton 2 Patrick Linton Abstract On 12 January 2010, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, causing severe destruction in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas. Individuals, organisations, and governments donated over US$6 billion of aid to Haiti. However, the international humanitarian response to the earthquake was characterised by western media as a logistical disaster. Years after the earthquake, hundreds of thousands of Haitians still inhabited “temporary” camps where they sought refuge after the earthquake, rather than returning to their neighbourhoods. Why did the international relief and recovery effort fail? This author argues that the international humanitarian community’s failure to collect, utilise, and share data led to shortcomings in aid delivery. Based on de Ville de Goyet’s hypothesis that supply and personnel distribution is largely driven by the discursive framework of the media rather than by evidenced need, I conducted an analysis of the American and Canadian media’s discourses following the earthquake. This study identified a strong correlation between media discourse and aid distribution, confirming that it is probable that donors and international humanitarian aid workers made decisions based on an understanding of the situation gleaned from western media. The international community’s fears of Haitian corruption, inefficiency, and poor governance meant that rather than supporting the Haitian government, the international community circumvented it. Implementing their own agendas without the input of Haitians, they infringed upon the sovereignty of the Haitian state. Keywords: data, disaster recovery, disaster relief, earthquake, Haiti, humanitarian aid, information management, international development, media discourse, USAID The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 3 Acknowledgements I would like to Jessica Hope and John Birchall for their helpful comments. 4 Patrick Linton Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................. 3 Introduction............................................................................................................. 6 Background ......................................................................................................... 10 Chapter Outline .................................................................................................. 13 Chapter 1. The discourses of the media and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti ......... 16 Literature Review ................................................................................................ 17 Methodology and Method ................................................................................. 21 Findings .............................................................................................................. 23 Material needs ................................................................................................ 24 Logistics .......................................................................................................... 25 Governance .................................................................................................... 26 Violence .......................................................................................................... 27 America and Canada ...................................................................................... 28 The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 5 Religion .......................................................................................................... 29 Discussion and analysis ..................................................................................... 30 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 33 Chapter 2. The allocation of resources and personnel after the earthquake ..... 34 What kind of aid was dispatched? .................................................................... 37 How was aid distributed? .................................................................................. 40 Who decides? ..................................................................................................... 44 What data were available? ................................................................................ 47 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 51 Chapter 3. The efficacy of the humanitarian response to the earthquake ..........53 Three paradigms ................................................................................................ 55 The use of data ................................................................................................... 58 Whose data? ........................................................................................................ 61 Beneficiary Feedback ......................................................................................... 62 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 65 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 66 Recommendations ............................................................................................. 69 Future Research ................................................................................................. 73 Closing Remarks ................................................................................................ 74 Bibliography ........................................................................................................... 75 6 Patrick Linton Introduction “When I came in, Haiti was not governed by Haitians anymore. Probably mostly by NGOs. And that has done what to Haiti? It has weakened our institution.” - Michel Martelly, president of Haiti On 12 January 2010, at 4:53pm, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake, known by Haitians as Goudougoudou, struck Haiti for 35 seconds in what was the third- most fatal natural disaster in recent history (Gros, 2011, pp. 131-132; Bellegarde- Smith, 2011, p. 265). The earthquake, whose epicentre was a shallow 16 kilometres below the town of Léogâne, caused severe destruction in Léogâne, Port-au-Prince, Gressier, Petit-Goâve, Grand-Goâve, Jacmel, and Miragoâne, killed approximately 222,570 people, injured 300,000 people and left 1.5 million people homeless (Benjamin, et al., 2011, p. 307; UN Office of the Secretary- General, 2010, p. 1). The destruction of infrastructure in Port-au-Prince, including the headquarters of most government ministries, the Parliament, the courts, and the National Palace, significantly undermined the capacity of the Haitian government. Homes and businesses collapsed, roads were blocked by The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 7 debris, communications systems were down, and the port for which the city is named was closed. Damages and losses due to the earthquake were estimated to be equivalent to 120% of Haiti’s 2009 GDP. Over one million Haitians moved into 460 temporary settlement sites (or “camps”) in Port-au-Prince. An unknown number moved into camps elsewhere (UN Office of the Secretary- General, 2010, pp. 1-2). Cholera, which had already been a public health issue in Haiti due to inadequate water sanitation infrastructure, spread rapidly through camps and refugee settlements (Ivers, et al., 2010, pp. 2048-2049). There was an immediate outpouring of aid from the international community, surpassing the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami to become the largest ever humanitarian response to an acute natural disaster (Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S50). Within 72 hours, the United States, Canada, Cuba, and several other countries had begun sending emergency relief personnel to Haiti. The United States and Canada sent military troops, and Cuba sent medics (UN Office of the Secretary-General, 2010, p. 2; Bellegarde-Smith, 2011, pp. 269-270). The World Food Programme, which had emergency rations stored in a warehouse in Port- au-Prince, provided initial food assistance to 3.5 million people (UN Office of the Secretary-General, 2010, p. 3). Aid workers distributed emergency tents and other supplies to hundreds of thousands of families. In an emergency appeal by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), $5.5 billion was pledged by various countries and intergovernmental organisations for earthquake relief and recovery. (UN Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, 2012). The western media’s response to the earthquake was problematic, containing much incorrect information and speculation (Lundy, 2011a, p. 128). First, the media paid significant attention to those public figures with 8 Patrick Linton sensationalist explanations of the earthquake—for example that it was the result of God’s punishment for the Haitian slave revolt and revolution of 1804 or a United States military exercise—rather than those questioning issues of planning and infrastructure. Secondly, the media was often blatantly racist, speculating that Haitians would begin to loot and become violent. On several occasions, stories were published stating that looting and violence had actually begun, only to later be found to be untrue or exaggerated (Bellegarde-Smith, 2011, pp. 271-272). Finally, the media presented a paternalistic image of the situation which situated westerners as heroes and Haitians as victims. This positioned it to speculate on the needs of those affected by the earthquake, often with little or no evidence of that need. In this dissertation, I suggest that the media’s influence affected the kind of aid that was received by Haiti. This is in line with Claude de Ville de Goyet’s (2008a) theory that the media has a greater influence on the direction of aid than does evidenced need, and will be further investigated in the first chapter. Much of the press coverage regarding the earthquake was in regards to logistical problems faced by international aid workers in Haiti, which stemmed in part from an unfortunate lack of data collection, sharing, and usage in the relief and recovery efforts. Data were often not collected because NGOs did not consider it to be a priority, because they believed that they had a sufficient grasp of the situation, or because they simply did not have adequate means to carry out data collection (Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S63). Data that did exist were rarely shared by organisations, especially large ones, or were often nonstandard or incompatible with other data. Most importantly, there was no official central coordinating body to maintain data, delegate tasks, and regulate the aid that was dispatched in Haiti. Collecting and sharing information about The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 9 locations of buildings and survivors, hospital capacity, needs for secondary care, stocks of supplies, unidentified bodies, disease, and housing between aid organisations is essential for coordinating disaster relief (de Ville de Goyet, 2008a, pp. 33-52). Just as many Haitians viewed the aid community as one collective agency (Ramachandran & Walz, 2012), the aid community should have functioned as one collective agency in order to effectively and efficiently implement disaster relief and recovery aid; data collection, sharing, and usage is essential in order to make this happen. International disaster relief and recovery aid (also known as international humanitarian aid) is similar to international development aid, in that foreigners—whether for attention-seeking, public image-minded or kind- hearted reasons—see a need and feel a desire to assist. Both present outsiders with the difficulty of determining where there is a need, and both often involve feeding and housing a large number of people, providing medical care, and installing infrastructure. On 20 January 1949, President Truman brought the term “underdevelopment” into popular usage (Esteva, 1992, pp. 6-7; Sachs, 1992, p. 2), and governments, NGOs, and IGOs rushed to aid the “underdeveloped” countries in modernising their economies and alleviating poverty. However, the gap between developing and industrialised countries widened, more than doubling between 1960 and 1980 (Sachs, 1992, p. 3). Given that in almost seven decades long-term international development aid, which has the benefit of longer time scales, has been unsuccessful in its goals of meeting the needs of people living in poverty, it is not surprising that international disaster relief and recovery aid, a kind of “emergency development,” struggles even more to meet the needs of its beneficiaries. The media buzz around an acute incident such as a natural disaster can have a positive effect, as it prompts an influx of resources, 10 Patrick Linton whereas traditional international development aid may have difficulties attracting donors for more long-term projects. However, given the quick response time necessary in the wake of acute disasters, there is an extra layer of complexity in international disaster relief aid, magnifying the need for good data. Background In order to understand why Goudougoudou had such a devastating impact on Haiti it is important to situate it within Haiti’s history, which is one of colonialism and authoritarian rule. The Haitian people have been repeatedly stripped of their right to self-determination: first, as slaves under French colonialism; then, as indentured servants paying a debt to the French Republic; later, living under authoritarian regimes such as those of “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc” Duvalier; finally, under a new form of imperialism in which NGOs take on roles that the Haitian government should hold, thus de-democratising and de- politicising the development of Haiti. Each of these stages has contributed to Haiti’s inability to prevent the devastation of the earthquake and to manage the relief and recovery efforts. Haiti’s problems had already begun at the time of independence. In 1804, La Perle des Antilles (the Jewel of the Caribbean) fought a bloody revolution to become the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere (Pierre-Louis, 2011, pp. 187-188). However, Haiti’s freedom came at great cost. Not only was its infrastructure completely destroyed by the war, but in 1825, when its independence was finally recognised by France, Haiti was forced to pay reparations to France (Fatton Jr., 2011, p. 160). During the 80 years it took to pay the 150 million French francs in reparations (about US$21 billion in today’s The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 11 money) that France had demanded, none of its tax revenue could be used to build schools and infrastructure (Pierre-Louis, 2011, pp. 188-189). Haiti was essentially trapped in a new form of colonialism, its status in relation to France transformed from slave to indentured servant. Scholars often attribute Haiti’s modern-day poverty to the decision to pay this debt to France more than a century ago (Pierre-Louis, 2011, p. 189). Post-independence, Haiti was plagued by despotism as French colonisers were replaced by Haitian authoritarian regimes. Most notable of these were the regimes of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who ruled from 1957 until his death in 1971, and his Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who succeeded him until 1986 when he was overthrown by a popular uprising (Pierre-Louis, 2011, pp. 189-190). During the dictatorships, the Haitian government invested very little outside of Port-au-Prince. Its rural towns served as satellites to the capital, much as how Haiti had once served as a satellite of the French Republic, and so remained in a less developed state (Frank, 1966). Centralisation of resources meant that Haitians were likely to find a better life in the capital than in rural areas, so Haitians began migrating to the city. Beginning during Papa Doc’s rule, Port-au-Prince, a city built to hold 250,000 people at most, ballooned to a population of almost three million inhabitants (Gros, 2011, p. 141). By the time Jean-Claude Duvalier inherited power, Haiti had become increasingly dependent on foreign aid, as the Haitian government was unable to collect sufficient revenue. However, around the same time, the international community decided to limit aid to the Haitian government on the basis of claims of corruption (Pierre-Louis, 2011, pp. 189-190); according to a 1983 World Bank report, at least 40% of aid given to the Haitian government could not be accounted for (Gros, 2011, p. 142). 12 Patrick Linton Instead, aid was outsourced to NGOs, a pattern that has continued into the 21st century. There are currently between 10,000 and 11,000 NGOs working inside Haiti, an increase from 200-300 in 1984 and 800 in 1994; only Afghanistan has a greater number of NGOs. (Gros, 2011; Pierre-Louis, 2011; Fatton Jr., 2011; Bellegarde-Smith, 2011). Of these, 51% are headquartered in the United States (Ramachandran & Walz, 2012, p. 17). These NGOs fulfil many of the roles that the state should, but cannot, fulfil; though certain important roles—such as policing, politics, and bureaucracy—are necessarily outside of their scope.1 Development aid thus serves as a sort of modern-day replacement for the colonialism and authoritarian rule of the past, in which outside actors not only decided that the Haitian government was corrupt (which it may have been) and underdeveloped, but they also determined which projects were necessary in order to improve the wellbeing of the Haitian people. The discourse of development created a structure of paternalism, with aid agencies making decisions that should be made in a democratic manner by politicians, such as how to educate children, where and how to build infrastructure, or how to fix the economy. Development, then, performs all sorts of political operations while “depoliticising everything it touches” (Ferguson, 1990, pp. xv, 25). Development aid also reinforced the unequal investment of the Duvaliers; CARE’s Food for Work programme damaged the agricultural industry by introducing cheaper, foreign surplus food, causing Haitian farmers to abandon their farmland for the city and to fall into dependency (Pierre-Louis, 2011, p. 196). 1 According to Peter Evans (1995), the roles of the state are making war, enforcing internal order, and economic transformation. While NGOs attempt the third role, only the state possesses the power to create economic policy. The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 13 Thus when the earthquake struck in 2010, Haiti was left unable to recover on its own due to policies that predate the earthquake (Lundy, 2011a). According to Max Weber, the purpose of the state is to protect citizens against certain adverse conditions for which there are not individual solutions (Gros, 2011, p. 136). Because the Haitian government had centralised its resources primarily in the capital, when Port-au-Prince was destroyed the government was left unable to respond to the emergency and send resources from other parts of Haiti (Gros, 2011, p. 143). In coordinating disaster relief, governments are the most legitimate actor. But as the Haitian government was left unable to respond, the humanitarian response to the earthquake was uncoordinated. The coordination of the distribution of aid received by thousands of NGOs is not a role that any NGO possesses the capability or authority to handle; nor were NGOs ready to respond immediately after the disaster. The extreme centralisation of Haiti also contributed to the immensity of the disaster caused by the earthquake. The fact that most resources were spent on Port-au-Prince is what led to the city becoming home to nearly a third of the country’s population. Homes were built everywhere, from mountainsides to riverbeds, often by unqualified builders with disregard to building codes; the government did not have the resources to enforce these regulations. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith (2011) was correct in calling this earthquake a manmade disaster. While seismic activity is a natural phenomenon, the toll that it took on the lives of Haitians was due to human causes. Chapter Outline This chapter outline will divide my research question into three smaller sub-questions: How was the 2010 earthquake in Haiti reported upon by the 14 Patrick Linton international media and by international humanitarian aid organisations? How were resources and personnel actually allocated in Haiti in the wake of the earthquake? How effective was the response, and how could data have helped to determine what kind of aid response was necessary? In the first chapter, I explore the discourses of the media and NGOs with regards to the disaster. Based on de Ville de Goyet’s (2008a) theory that the pressure of the media, rather than evidenced need, influences the direction of humanitarian aid, I will conduct a discourse analysis of newspapers and television broadcasts from donor countries regarding the earthquake and relief efforts. This will allow me, in the following chapter, to analyse whether there is a correlation between media discourses around the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the humanitarian aid distribution that followed. The second chapter examines what actually happened during the relief and recovery efforts in Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake in contrast to how the earthquake was reported internationally. In this section I discuss how resources were allocated; the politics of control between NGOs, IGOs, and governments; and how communication networks functioned between them. In addition to addressing questions of the kind of aid dispatched and the distribution of resources and personnel, I consider who determined the direction of aid and why they appropriated this authority. Finally, I examine the kind of information that was available at the time and how it was used, such as: how many people were affected (displaced, injured, unemployed) by the earthquake? How much food and water was available in Haiti and was it accessible? What were the medical needs of those affected by the earthquake? Using the advantage of hindsight, the third chapter critically examines the efficacy of the humanitarian aid response to the earthquake. In this section, The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 15 I explore what worked (and why), what could have been better, what was neglected (and why), and how the use of data could have helped aid organisations to more efficiently and effectively provide aid. In answering these questions, I address whose data were used (and why), what data were used (and why), and why data were not used in certain instances. I also discuss studies on aid beneficiary feedback, as the input of beneficiaries is essential to evaluating the efficacy of humanitarian aid. Finally, I suggest solutions for more useful data collection. This project embarks on an exploration of the use of data in determining the need for resources and personnel in Haiti following the earthquake in 2010, but it has wider implications. It is of utmost importance to question how to determine the needs of those affected by natural disaster. By examining the shortcomings in the humanitarian response to this particular natural disaster, it will be possible to take a more critical approach to preparedness for the next natural disaster. This project has relevance along several lines: it will provide an insight into the rationale behind disaster relief allocation, it will provide information on the kinds of data needed prior to dispatching international disaster relief and recovery aid, and it will offer some foundations upon which disaster recovery may be made more sustainable long-term. 16 Patrick Linton Chapter 1. The discourses of the media and the earthquake in Haiti I think Haiti is a place that suffers so much from neglect that people only want to hear about it when it’s at its extreme. And that’s what they end up knowing about it. - Edwidge Danticat, Haitian-American author Given the billions of dollars of aid in the form of food, water, supplies, and workers that flowed into Haiti after the earthquake, it seems inconceivable that the needs of those affected remained largely unmet. Yet in the wake of the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal, there have been a number of news stories concerned with learning lessons from Haiti’s mismatched and misguided aid effort. Newspaper editorials suggested that media coverage of natural disasters often guides aid to the wrong places (Katz, 2015) and that humanitarian aid workers often have no idea whether their work is effective (Kirsch, 2015). This is not a new concept, but is in line with Claude de Ville de Goyet’s (2008a, p. 53) suggestion that the priority given to speed over information in urgent The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 17 situations means that supply and personnel distribution is largely driven by the discursive framework of the media rather than by evidenced need. Based on de Ville de Goyet’s assertions that the pressure and rhetoric of the international media has a greater impact on the flow of humanitarian aid than does data-based evidence of need, I will conduct a discourse analysis in this chapter that examines the language used in several major newspapers and television news channels from the United States and Canada, where the greatest amount of donations originated (Ramachandran & Walz, 2012, p. 6), with regards to the earthquake. The purpose of this analysis is to explore how this discourse regarding the earthquake and the subsequent relief efforts in Haiti compares with the actual allocation of resources and personnel, and with evidenced need. I hypothesise that there will be a greater correlation between the discourses of the media and the aid received than between the evidenced need and the aid received or between the media discourse and the evidenced need. Literature Review Existing academic literature on the media’s coverage of the earthquake indicates that media narratives were often misinformed. Garvey Lundy (2011a, p. 128) states that media coverage of the Haitian earthquake was full of speculation, misinformation, and racial caricature, and adds that while experts were sometimes called upon to comment, they were given inadequate time, often under one minute, to explain the situation, even on twenty-four hour news networks. Other academics noted that the earthquake coverage in American media focused more on Americans than Haitians, often portraying Haitians and Haitian culture as inferior. 18 Patrick Linton Patrick Bellegarde-Smith (2011, pp. 267-272) discusses several problematic issues with the Western media’s coverage of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. One is the presence of a narrative of cultural inferiority. Bellegarde-Smith compares the discourse of New York Times columnist David Brooks to Times narratives of “black savages” in the late 19th century and of “tribal rule and superstition” the 1950s. After the earthquake, Brooks blamed the “progress- resistant” Haitian culture for the destruction caused by the earthquake and suggested that “intrusive paternalism” is the only solution to Haiti’s problems (p. 268). Bellegarde-Smith argues that Brooks is masking racism with culturalism, citing the fact that the arguments that have been made for generations have remained the same but have simply substituted race for culture. Murali Balaji (2011) takes a linguistic approach to argue that the words and images presented in the media following the 2010 earthquake, as in other disasters, were racialized. The coverage of the earthquake was characterised by words such as ‘chaos’, ‘dysfunction’, ‘violence’, and ‘hopelessness’, designed to evoke pity (and consequently power over the pitied) rather than empathy toward the black victims (Balaji, 2011, p. 51). This racism was further manifested in an expectation of violence, which was expressed almost hopefully by the media; several reports made speculative comments such as “Haitians were expected to riot because of the delays in providing them with water and food after the earthquake, hence the delay in providing them with water and food” (Bellegarde-Smith, 2011, pp. 271-272). However, they did not riot. Bellegarde- Smith compares this to media expectations that black people in New Orleans would riot following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 19 Another issue discussed by both Balaji and Bellegarde-Smith is how the story of the earthquake was altered by Western media, which focused on the generosity of American and European NGOs and individuals as the subjects of stories, while Haitian earthquake victims were merely the targets of their good deeds (Balaji, 2011, pp. 55-57). While the first foreign responders to the earthquake were Cuban, not American, this was not acknowledged by the U.S. media. In fact, the U.S. media misidentified Cuban doctors as Spanish; likewise, light-skinned Haitian doctors were misidentified as French (Bellegarde-Smith, 2011, pp. 269-270). Bellegarde-Smith notes that when the U.S. military arrived in Port-au-Prince, they took control of the airport against the wishes of the Haitian government, who was unable to respond. The United States military blocked Venezuelan (and sometimes even French) attempts to deliver aid, as it controlled the only major airport in Haiti (Bellegarde-Smith, 2011, pp. 269-270). Meanwhile, the U.S. military was presented in the American media as the coordinator of international humanitarian relief aid. This west-as-rescuer discourse was also present in the narrative that surrounded “quake babies”; Bellegarde-Smith notes that the Canadian media presented American and Canadian “adoptions” of Haitian babies as rescues, when in fact thousands of Haitian children were taken without knowledge of the location or wellbeing of their parents (Bellegarde-Smith, 2011, pp. 270-271). Most notably, Laura Silsby of New Life, an Idaho-based Christian group, was arrested by Haitian authorities for kidnapping and trafficking Haitian children under the guise of ‘the Lord’s plan’ to rescue them. Many in the media defended her actions. Balaji also notes that while self-congratulatory stories focused on the donors, they never showed how the donations were actually 20 Patrick Linton used by the victims, citing the fact that many donations are often of little use to disaster victims (2011, pp. 58-63). One prominent narrative present in the media following the earthquake was that of American Christian televangelist Pat Robertson (and other Protestants), who blamed the earthquake on a “pact with the devil” allegedly made by the Haitian people in exchange for freedom from French slave-owners in the early 1800s. Jean-Germain Gros (2011, pp. 132-133) notes that the majority of Haitians are Christians (albeit mixed with some Vodou influence) and dismisses Reverend Robertson’s theory as bigotry and theological revisionism. Felix Germain (2011, p. 250) adds that blaming the destruction, injury, and loss of life caused by the earthquake and other natural disasters on Haitian Vodou conveniently ignore the role that the US, France, and other countries play in Haiti’s economic dependency. He also notes that the Western media selectively displayed the Christian faith of many earthquake survivors, displaying Haitians singing hymns and praying, while largely ignoring the survival of Houngans and Mambos of Vodou (Germain, 2011, p. 255). This is ironic given that Vodou in Haiti is typically an obsession in Hollywood and the media. Media coverage of the earthquake was not only misinformed, but at times deliberately so. Speculation on violence suggests a desire to confirm preconceived views about Haitians held by the American and Canadian publics. Blaming a “pact with the devil” for the earthquake pushes blame onto the Haitian people, undermining the ability of the public to empathise. Meanwhile, misrepresentation of the needs of the Haitian people led supposedly well- meaning groups to traffic children out of Haiti under the guise of rescuing them. Finally, paternalistic representations of Haiti as a nation that cannot care The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 21 for itself allowed the U.S. military to present its takeover of Port-au-Prince’s airport as a rescue story. Methodology and Method I will begin the discourse analysis by gathering information about the producer of each newspaper or television broadcast, including political position, target audience, genre, and layout. I will then analyse how specific words and images are used, and the ideas with which these words and images are associated, coding data into categories based on the themes that emerge from the media. It is important to pay particularly close attention to the images and title, as these have a particularly strong impact on the audience (Mautner, 2008, p. 38). Most importantly, I will note any calls to action or references to specific needs made by the news report, as these would be most likely to influence actions taken by individuals and organisations if de Ville de Goyet (2008a, p. 53) is indeed correct in his assertion that aid and supply distribution is driven by media pressure. It is important to note a limitation of this type of research: this discourse analysis is unable to show what readers of these newspapers and viewers of television broadcasts thought or whether readers and viewers responded in the way suggested. This study will merely attempt to gauge whether there is a greater correlation between need identified by the media and where aid was actually dispatched, or between need identified by data and where aid was dispatched. Thus this research is not meant to be explanatory, but descriptive. Even if a correlation is found, it does not necessarily mean that the media was the cause of, or a factor in, the mismatching of aid; in fact, it is entirely possible that a confounding factor played a role in what journalists believed to be 22 Patrick Linton necessary and in how earthquake relief aid was distributed in Haiti. However, if a correlation is found, a quantitative study looking into the causality would provide a compelling direction for future research. The presence of any discrepancies should be taken into account both in humanitarian aid evaluation and in future planning. For this analysis, after reviewing approximately 150 news reports and tracking themes, 22 news reports were chosen from eight American and five Canadian news media outlets, for a total of fifteen American reports and seven Canadian reports. These twenty-two were chosen because they were representative of the media outlets, topics, and tone of the greater set of media reports. Due to syndication, reports by wire services such as AP and Reuters might be published on 35 different news sites. To account for this, news reports that were very similar to others were not included. The news media outlets chosen included eight newspapers (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and La Presse), four television news stations (Fox News, CNN, CBC News, and CTV News), and one radio station (NPR News). These sources were selected because they are among the most read, watched, and listened to news outlets in the United States and Canada. They include a mixture of right- leaning (such as Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and New York Post) and left-leaning media (such as the New York Times and Los Angeles Times). Other popular news outlets such as the Washington Post, USA Today, MSNBC, and Le Journal de Montréal were not included either because of a lack of earthquake coverage or archives that were not easily accessible. The media reports were selected conducting a Google search with the terms "Haiti earthquake" (or "Haïti séisme" for news sources in French), The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 23 restricted to dates between 12 January 2010 and 12 February 2010, the time during which most articles about the earthquake were written, and restricted to the domain name of the news source (e.g. "Haiti earthquake site:nytimes.com daterange:2455209-2455240"). From these results, media reports were selected based on their relevance to the earthquake and relief efforts. Selecting first- page results from Google ensured that the most widely-viewed and widely- shared reports from each news source are included in the study, rather than reports that may have received a limited audience. A limitation to this method is that the results are restricted by the Google algorithm, whose inner workings are not open to the public, though as Google is the most-used search engine in the United States and Canada, this is likely to mirror the way in which news was accessed and shared by readers. Another limitation to this method is that media outlets may have made some pages unindexable. Finally, 24-hour news networks such as Fox News and CNN do not make all reports available online in the format in which they were initially presented. These news reports were uploaded into the NVIVO software and tagged with the emergent themes found in the reports. This software was used because it allows for coding and tagging of text, images, and other multimedia used in qualitative research. Findings Within the American and Canadian news reports, I identified six emergent themes: the material needs of the survivors of the earthquake; logistical problems encountered in distributing aid among the earthquake survivors, either because of the damage caused by the earthquake, the bottleneck created by the volume of international aid suddenly flowing into the 24 Patrick Linton country, or by pre-existing infrastructural problems; corruption or the lack of ability to govern; reports of looting and of the potential for violence; stories that present Americans or Canadians as heroes in Haiti and stories of how the earthquake affected Americans or Canadians in Haiti; and religion. Most of these themes point either directly or indirectly to perceived needs within Haiti. Reports of the lack of water, food, and shelter suggest the need for particular aid supplies to be brought to Haiti from donor countries. Reports of logistical problems suggest the need for humanitarian aid experts to be brought in to assist in untangling the mess in Haiti. A focus on corruption and poor governance in the Haitian government suggests a need for an alternative decision-making body for aid coordination. Stories of looting and the potential for violence suggest the need for order in the form of an outside policing body. Material needs Most media reporting in the aftermath of the earthquake included either explicit or implicit descriptions of the material needs of the people in Port-au- Prince. Of those needs, water and food were mentioned most frequently, appearing in two-thirds of the news reports that explicitly stated a material need (Woods, 2010; Pasztor, et al., 2010; De Córdoba & Luhnow, 2010; CNN, 2010b; Schapiro, 2010; Romero, 2010; Fox News, 2010a; CTV News, 2010). However, by 27 January US military officials were reporting that food was no longer a critical need, stating that it could be found in markets (Burnett, 2010). Another frequently mentioned material need was medical supplies and doctors, mentioned in one-half of all reports that explicitly stated a material need (Woods, 2010; CTV News, 2010; De Córdoba & Luhnow, 2010; CNN, 2010b; Schapiro, 2010; Romero, 2010). CNN (2010b) included a direct appeal from former US President Bill Clinton, the UN Special Envoy to Haiti, highlighting The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 25 the need for donations to organisations supplying food, water, shelter, and medical supplies. Other material needs mentioned in news reports were shelter (CNN, 2010b; CBC News, 2010), basic sanitation (Woods, 2010; Schapiro, 2010; Romero, 2010), electricity (Pasztor, et al., 2010; Paperny & Ibbitson, 2010; CNN, 2010b; Schapiro, 2010; Wilkinson, 2010), communications infrastructure (Paperny & Ibbitson, 2010; Wilkinson, 2010), body bags (Fox News, 2010a), helicopters (CTV News, 2010; CNN, 2010b), aircraft fuel (Pasztor, et al., 2010), and heavy machinery (CNN, 2010b). Media reports also reported heavily on the types of material aid flowing into earthquake-affected areas. Among the material aid distributed in Haiti were food and water (CTV News, 2010; Romero, 2010; Fox News, 2010a; Smith, 2010), medical supplies (CTV News, 2010; Romero, 2010), women’s sanitary products (Smith, 2010), helicopters (Fox News, 2010a), and heavy machinery (Fox News, 2010a). Logistics Many news reports noted problems in the distribution of aid resources to those affected by the earthquake. These included titles such as “Clogged airport, ruined seaport delay aid after Haiti earthquake” (Pasztor, et al., 2010) and “Good intentions gone wrong” (Waldie, 2010). Approximately a third mentioned problems in the distribution of aid resources (CNN, 2010a; Woods, 2010; Pasztor, et al., 2010; CNN, 2010b; CBC News, 2010; Fox News, 2010a; Burnett, 2010; Waldie, 2010). One NPR News report stated that “information is confusing and contradictory in post-earthquake Haiti” and claimed that there were, in fact, sufficient water and medical supplies, but that the problem was in the distribution of these resources (Burnett, 2010). One article in The Globe and 26 Patrick Linton Mail begins with the frustrations of a Canadian woman who noticed nearly 100 pallets loaded with bottled water sitting idly on the tarmac of the airport in Port-au-Prince while hundreds of thousands of earthquake-affected Haitians waited thirsty (Waldie, 2010). Anecdotes such as this were typical of news reports involving logistics. Areas in which the media suggested there were logistics and aid distribution problems were water (CNN, 2010a; Waldie, 2010), food (Fox News, 2010a; Burnett, 2010), and medical supplies (CNN, 2010a; Woods, 2010). Reasons listed for these problems included clogged runways at the airport (Woods, 2010; Pasztor, et al., 2010; Waldie, 2010; CBC News, 2010; Fox News, 2010a), a lack of coordination between aid agencies (Waldie, 2010; Fox News, 2010a; Waldie, 2010), the destroyed seaport (Woods, 2010; Pasztor, et al., 2010; CBC News, 2010), blocked roads (Woods, 2010), corruption (Burnett, 2010; Woods, 2010), and the Haitian government’s inability to coordinate aid (Waldie, 2010; Woods, 2010). Governance Corruption in Haiti and the government’s incapacity to coordinate aid were oft-mentioned themes in news reports involving Haiti. One editorialist recommended that the United States government should not provide aid to the Haitian government because it would be subsidising Haitian corruption (Whiton, 2010). In his editorial, former US Department of State official Christian Whiton (2010) pointed out that Haiti was ranked as one of the world’s most corrupt countries by Transparency International, and suggested that since the US had no interests in Haiti and no fault in its poverty, the US government had no reason to be in Haiti. The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 27 Other media reports suggested that the key to successful disaster relief is a strong national government that can coordinate aid, but that Haiti lacked this (Woods, 2010; Waldie, 2010). Any capacity that the Haitian government had prior to the earthquake had been diminished when its ministerial headquarters were destroyed. Instead, they suggested, NGOs had taken charge of the country, which was problematic because of the lack of a single, central coordinating force for the distribution of aid (Waldie, 2010). Violence Much media attention was paid to earthquake survivors who searched for food in the rubble of supermarkets and other places of business, calling them “looters” (CNN, 2010a; Montero, 2010; Fox News, 2010a; Smith, 2010). News reports had titles such as “’A frenzy of looting’ seen in Haiti’s capital” (CNN, 2010a), “Desperados are spreading fear in quake-ravaged Haiti” (Montero, 2010), “Haiti nears breaking point as aid is snarled, looters roam” (Fox News, 2010a), and “Mob justice in Haiti” (Smith, 2010). Reporters, such as CNN’s Anderson Cooper, speculated that looters were stealing items in order to sell them later (CNN, 2010a). Early reports had incorrectly stated that looters had cleared out the UN World Food Programme’s long-term food storage from its Port-au-Prince warehouse, rendering the WFP unable to distribute food. Corrections showed this to be mostly untrue (Fox News, 2010a). This was met with editorials demanding that the media stop calling earthquake victims “looters,” drawing comparisons between the media response to the Haitian earthquake and that of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, where black people taking food from flooded supermarkets were said to be looting while white people doing the same were ‘finding food’ (Charles, 2010). 28 Patrick Linton Reports of looting were often coupled with reports of the potential for an outbreak of violence, especially over a lack of food or water (De Córdoba & Luhnow, 2010; Fox News, 2010a), or with reports of news correspondents hearing gunshots in the distance (Montero, 2010; CNN, 2010b). One article described people as “almost fighting” over water distributed by aid workers (Fox News, 2010a). It is worth noting that the media that dedicated the most time and space to looting and potential violence were the Murdoch-owned, conservative news broadcaster Fox News and the Murdoch-owned, conservative newspaper The New York Post. However, with one exception of “mob justice” wherein a group beat a thief with a stick (Smith, 2010), none of the news reports listed any actual eyewitness accounts of violence. America and Canada Within the American media there was significant focus on Americans. This was divided between stories of the experiences of American citizens who survived the earthquake in Haiti (McKinley, Jr. & Skipp, 2010) and coverage of the generosity of the American people and government (Pasztor, et al., 2010; Montero, 2010; Whiton, 2010; McKinley, Jr. & Skipp, 2010; CNN, 2010b; Fox News, 2010a). Six of the 22 media reports included in this study included direct mention of American aid (not including mentions of aid by US-based NGOs). Americans, both earthquake survivors and those who had come to provide emergency aid, were generally portrayed as heroes coming to the rescue of hopeless Haitians. A Fox News (2010a) report, entitled “Haiti nears breaking point as aid is snarled, looters roam” repeatedly jumped back and forth between stories of Haitian earthquake victims looting for food and stories of how the United States government was coordinating aid and providing food, water, and security, portraying Americans as saviours and Haitians as savages. The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 29 Likewise, the Canadian media focused on the generosity of Canadians. One article in the Quebec-based, Canadian newspaper La Presse, entitled “Haïti: les Canadiens, les plus généreux?” [“Haiti: Canadians, the most generous?”] highlighted the fact that Canadians gave an average of $7.51 per person (figures in Canadian dollars) compared to an average of $2.56 per person in the United States and $0.73 per person in France (Dion-Viens, 2010). One strange event that garnered media attention was the claim by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez that the earthquake could be blamed on a United States military experiment. Chavez argued that the United States was testing a system that could create “weather anomalies” such as earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts, and floods, and that the US was using this as an excuse for its military occupation of Haiti (Fox News, 2010b). Religion Hugo Chavez was not the only public figure to cast blame for the seismic events that occurred in Haiti. Pat Robertson, a prominent evangelical leader and host of The 700 Club, suggested that the earthquake was God’s punishment for the Haitian slave rebellion over two-hundred years ago. Robertson claimed that the reason for Haiti’s poverty and natural disasters is that the Haitian people made a “pact with the devil” in order to secure their independence from French colonisers over two-hundred years ago (CNN, 2010c). Other stories involving religion focused on the faith of the Haitian people and its significant role in their lives, especially in the wake of the earthquake. They portrayed Haitians singing hymns (Montero, 2010) and praying (CBC News, 2010) or feeling abandoned by God (Charles, 2010). 30 Patrick Linton However, none of the news reports analysed in this study made any mention of the Vodou religion. Discussion and analysis Existing scholarship on the media’s representation of the earthquake in Haiti was reflected and reinforced by my findings. There was a large media focus on poor logistics and Haiti’s lack of ability to govern. There was also a significant focus on violence and looting, despite the lack of actual occurrences. These provided the international community with a rhetorical ‘probable cause’ to effectively take over the Haitian state and occupy Haiti under humanitarian auspices. The media also prioritised American and Canadian experiences and interests over Haitian ones. One theme identified in the literature review, the adoption/kidnapping of “quake babies” was not found in this study. However, this study is concerned with some main themes and is not representative of the full range of topics covered by the media in relation to the earthquake. News reports on the needs of post-earthquake Haiti were rather straightforward. However, they focused primarily on short-term needs, rather than long-term recovery. This is likely due to the short time frame of this study, which focuses on the first month after the earthquake. While they did at times identify the source of requests for certain supplies [e.g. Haitian President Rene Preval requested help clearing streets and Bill Clinton requested food, water, shelter, and medical supplies (CNN, 2010b)], there was no information about whether surveys or needs assessments had been carried out, or how sources had identified particular needs. Certain needs tended to be taken by the media as given, while logistical problems were emphasised as the main problem in aid distribution. The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 31 Widespread belief in the Haitian government’s inability to govern had implications beyond the media audiences to the international community. American and Canadian journalists reported at length on corruption, inefficiency, and a lack of capacity in the Haitian state. The presentation of a foreign country as unable to govern itself is perhaps likely to elicit sympathy toward efforts to assist that country. For instance, prior to (and during) the war in Iraq in 2003, reports of human rights atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein’s regime proliferated in the Western media. Human rights violations, widely considered a result of poor governance, allowed popular support (by both conservatives and liberals) for invasion when the threat of weapons of mass destruction was not sufficiently shown. Similarly, media portrayal of a Haitian state that could not care for itself helped create conditions by which Western support for governments and NGOs to enter Haiti and take control of institutions formerly in the hands of the Haitian government could be rhetorically justified. The United States military’s takeover of the Port-au- Prince airport was uninvited by the Haitian government, yet was not protested by the American public. It was, however, seen by the French government as an intrusion (Bellegarde-Smith, 2011, pp. 269-270). Similarly, unconfirmed (and later shown to be incorrect) reports of looting and violence may have been related to the United States military’s decision to send thirty thousand troops to Haiti after the earthquake (Ramachandran & Walz, 2012, p. 9). Therefore, rather than allowing the Haitian government to direct the flow of aid according to its own priorities, it was the international community who decided how aid should be managed and how Haiti should be rebuilt. The literature review was accurate regarding representations of Americans and Canadians in Haiti. Balaji (2011) wrote that the media focused 32 Patrick Linton on black, Haitian victims and American saviours. The Fox News (2010a) report that oscillated back and forth between Haitian “looters” and American aid was a perfect example of this. Also of note were an American article telling the story of an American volunteer injured in the quake (McKinley, Jr. & Skipp, 2010) and a Canadian article that suggested that Canadians were the world’s most generous people (Dion-Viens, 2010). The fact that each national media focused on its own country is particularly significant because it could foster popular support for foreign aid to Haiti; when Canadians see themselves as more generous, they may be more likely to support Canadian government aid to Haiti in order to maintain a reputation of generosity (Bekkers & Wiepking, 2011, pp. 936-941). However, while the La Presse article found that Canadians gave, on average, more than people from other countries, it failed to mention that the most of the aid given by Canada went to Canadian companies and was spent on Canadian survivors (Bellegarde-Smith, 2011, p. 266). Similarly, the American press dedicated much space to profiling the experiences of Americans that had either been injured in the earthquake or were helping with the recovery effort. Seeing other Americans in Haiti made the situation more relatable for Americans than it would have been had the stories only focused on the lives of Haitians; people who can relate to the subjects of news stories are more likely to continue reading or watching (Balaji, 2011, pp. 58-59), and might be more likely to support aid to Haiti (Bekkers & Wiepking, 2011, pp. 938-940). Religion was often mentioned in media coverage of the earthquake, as Bellegarde-Smith, Gros, Asante, and Germain have suggested. However, while the media’s coverage of Pat Robertson’s statements about Vodou and the Haitian revolution was discussed by many academics, it did not dominate the media as suggested by Gros and Bellegarde-Smith. In fact, neither of the The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 33 narratives discussed by Gros received a great deal of media attention. Although Christianity was mentioned in multiple news reports (including mentions of Haitian Christians’ faith and of American and Canadian missionaries), none of the news reports in this study mentioned Vodou, a religion of great historic and modern importance to Haiti, with the exception of Pat Robertson’s statements. Conclusion This discourse analysis found six emergent themes in the media coverage of Haiti: the Haitian people’s needs, logistical problems in distributing aid, poor governance in Haiti, the expectation of violence, a focus on non- Haitians in Haiti, and religion (Christianity, not Vodou). It is possible that misconceptions about the disaster spread by the media, coupled with over- coverage of certain aspects may have contributed to the mismatched aid response in Haiti. However, it is equally possible that the media portrayal of Haiti may have been influenced by the aid response in Haiti, or that both were influenced by some external factor. The following chapter will discuss what actually happened in the wake of the earthquake, examining both the evidenced need in Haiti, and the kind of data the international humanitarian community collected and/or utilised in the relief and recovery efforts. 34 Patrick Linton Chapter 2. The allocation of resources and personnel after the earthquake “True compassion is not flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that the edifice that produces beggars is in need of restructuring” - Juan Arévalo, former Guatemalan president Following the 2010 earthquake, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), founded in 1992 by UN resolutions A/RES/46/182 and A/RES/48/57 as the primary mechanism for coordinating humanitarian assistance, conducted a multi-cluster Rapid Initial Needs Assessment for Haiti (RINAH) between 23 January and 06 February (ACAPS, 2010). The report did not give information on a detailed, disaggregated level, such as the individual- or household-level, but on a per-camp level (e.g. 36% of sites within Port-au-Prince reported outbreaks of influenza). The report noted that temporary shelters provided little privacy or protection from the elements (Stoianova, 2010, p. 11), that access to water was difficult and time consuming, that food prices had increased, and that most Haitians ate fewer meals per day than they had prior to the earthquake. The The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 35 report also suggested that food availability should be better adapted to the needs of vulnerable populations in particular, such as children, the elderly, and the disabled (ACAPS, 2010, pp. 37-38, 41-43, 46, 50-57). There were high rates of flu, diarrhoea, and malaria (yet few households possessed mosquito nets); access to medical care was especially difficult outside of Port-au-Prince (Stoianova, 2010, p. 11). While the RINAH report focused on the immediate needs of Haitians after the earthquake, academic literature focused more on the long-term needs of Haiti. François Pierre-Louis (2011, pp. 199-200) suggested that Haiti’s biggest post-earthquake need was the coordination of the distribution of aid. Haiti’s NGOs lacked the ability to coordinate disaster relief needs such as the establishment of order, the distribution of food, and ensuring citizens’ safety. This, he argued, was because outside neoliberal influences on Haiti had encouraged the minimisation of government (p. 198) in favour of the private and non-profit sectors, leading to a weakened state unable to respond to national emergencies. Robert Fatton Jr. (2011, pp. 171-173) argued that for real recovery to occur, humanitarian aid must focus on the long-term needs of Haiti. He suggested a focus on infrastructural development, agricultural transformation, and food self-sufficiency in order to create employment, alleviate poverty, and bridge the wealth gap. He also suggested that this must be led by government in a democratic manner, rather than by NGOs, as they are undemocratic, not accountable to the Haitian public, and infringe on the sovereignty of the Haitian state when they make decisions without public consultation. Fatton argued that narratives of the corrupt nature of Haitian government, whether true or false, have caused aid to Haiti to flow into NGOs rather than in the form 36 Patrick Linton of assistance to the government. Reliance on NGOs has led to further urbanisation of Haiti and its dependence on imports for food (pp. 173-175). Shifting foreign aid to the government rather than NGOs could strengthen the Haitian government to the point that it would be capable of coordinating development. In this chapter, I will examine the aid that was dispatched in Haiti by the international community (food, water, medical care, security, etc), in relation to evidenced need (that is, compared to available data) and to the various discourses of the media. I will discuss where and how aid was distributed in Haiti, as well as the problem of organisations failing to maintain accurate records. I will also discuss how the decision-making process left the Haitian government essentially disempowered. Finally, I will examine the amount and nature of data that were actually available at the time in relation to these issues. Aid was primarily distributed in Port-au-Prince, largely ignoring other cities and towns affected by the earthquake and leading to discrepancies in unmet needs. The humanitarian aid that was disbursed was distributed at temporary settlement camps in and around Port-au-Prince. Vulnerable populations such as children and the elderly were generally not prioritised in the distribution of aid. Responses to the Haitian government’s plan for recovery indicate the influence of funding source on aid distribution and the associated undermining of governmental authority. Several countries and intergovernmental organisations pledged donations to Haiti in an emergency appeal held at the United Nations in March 2010, where the Haitian government presented a hopeful budget detailing how it would like to proceed with the recovery process. However, donor countries and intergovernmental organisations The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 37 donated funds to specific parts of the budget, far exceeding the requested amount in some areas, and coming far short of what was required in other areas. As Haiti relied on the international community to provide the disaster relief and recovery aid it needed, this response of donations-with-conditions meant that the international community essentially decided how aid would be distributed in Haiti. Outside the government’s requests, insufficient data regarding the needs of the Haitian people characterised the recovery process. The RINAH report provided information about initial needs in Haiti, but due to a “lack of understanding of partners,” “organisational difficulties,” and “security restrictions,” it was too little and too late (Rencoret, et al., 2010, p. 25). There was even less information available regarding the aid distributed. Country-wide reports, such as those conducted by UN agencies, contained seemingly conflicting information. Reports by NGOs used measures that presented the NGO’s work in a positive light in order to please donors, and lacked more comprehensive indicators. Even where post-earthquake data were available, baseline data from before the earthquake were unavailable, making comparison impossible. What kind of aid was dispatched? It is difficult to estimate exactly how much and what kind of aid was dispatched in Haiti. Most of the dispatched aid was distributed in the 500+ temporary settlement camps. This is especially noticeable in the RINAH report, which differentiated aid provided to camps and non-camp locations. One such distinction is apparent in terms of access to protected water sources. While 72% of water sources in camps were protected, only 47% of water sources in non- 38 Patrick Linton camp locations were protected (Stoianova, 2010, p. 11). However, camps did not always keep accurate records and unsolicited goods and individuals unaffiliated with NGOs could not be accurately tracked. In addition, most NGOs in Haiti were not registered with the government and did not keep full information on their work. Much of the untraceable aid distribution took place in the early stages of the relief effort, in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. In contrast, there is more data available regarding the aid given by governments and intergovernmental organisations. Unlike in Guatemala, where all disaster relief aid organisations are required to register all of their disaster relief supplies with the logistics support system or be denied customs clearance (Amin, 2008, p. 12; de Ville de Goyet, 2008b, pp. 83-84), the 10,000+ NGOs working in Haiti seemingly kept little record of supplies and workers. Moreover, thousands of individuals unaffiliated with any organisation sent supplies (or themselves), unsolicited, to assist in the relief effort. Unsorted, unsolicited supplies occupied valuable space and added to the logistical problem when there was no one to coordinate distribution of those supplies once they had arrived in Port-au-Prince (Pierre-Louis, 2011, pp. 199-200). The needs of unaffiliated, though well-meaning, individuals compounded the housing shortage that already existed in Port-au-Prince due to the earthquake (Sauer, et al., 2014, pp. 65-66). According to the secretary-general’s report on the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) to the Security Council (S/2010/200), UNOCHA reported that as of April 2010, three months after the earthquake, 376,000 tarpaulins and 45,000 family-sized tents had been distributed by various organisations as temporary housing for Haitians living in camps. Also distributed were hygiene products, kitchen equipment, ropes, The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 39 blankets, and mosquito nets. This accounted for 90% of those in need (p. 3). Three and a half million Haitians had received food assistance from the World Food Programme and its partners, 4 million litres of drinking water had been distributed and 5,347 latrines had been installed (p. 3). The World Health Organisation and the Pan-American Health Organisation deployed 60 medical personnel to provide medical services and vaccinations to 300,000 Haitians (p. 3). The 2010 United Nations report Haiti: 6 months after reported that as of the time of the report, a further 257,000 tarpaulins and 25,000 family-sized tents had been distributed (p. 5). In addition, over three thousand traditional shelters had been built (with another 122,000 planned) (p. 5). More than 916,000 vaccines had been administered, 345,000 boxes of essential medicines had been distributed, 4,000 amputations had been carried out, and 2,500 units of blood had been imported (p. 9). Within the first two months after the earthquake, 18,700 metric tonnes of food had been distributed, and 87,500 Haitians were enrolled in “Food for Work” programmes2 (p. 13). 1.2 million Haitians received five litres of water per day from the WASH cluster (p. 25). Additional supplies included 1,300 trucks driven from the Dominican Republic (p. 29); 1,800 tonnes of seeds and 87,500 hand tools for farmers (p. 33); 1,600 school tents for 200,000 students (p. 15); training for 2,300 teachers and 3,000 education personnel (p. 15); 8,500 peacekeepers (p. 35), and 2,775 police officers (p. 35). The peacekeepers distributed food and water, removed debris, and paved roads (p. 35). 2 The 2011 United Nations Development Programme report Haiti: 1 year later reports that 240,000 Haitians were employed by UNDP and WFP in “Cash for Work” or “Food for Work” programmes (United Nations Development Programme, 2011, p. 6). 40 Patrick Linton Following the earthquake, there was an overemphasis on security. One- half of the United States government’s aid went to sustaining the thirty- thousand American troops that arrived, uninvited, during the response to the earthquake (Ramachandran & Walz, 2012, p. 9; Bellegarde-Smith, 2011, p. 266). The United States was not unique in this regard; of the relief funding from all donors, 39% went to the donor’s own military (Ramachandran & Walz, 2012, p. 9). Although crime tends to decrease after a major disaster, contrary to popular belief, the time and resources that could have been spent on rescue and medical relief are often instead spent on excessive security (Benjamin, et al., 2011, p. 314). The governmental focus on security matches the media’s focus on violence, as referenced in the previous chapter, where American and Canadian media spoke of looters, violence, and gunshots. How was aid distributed? Despite the fact that over $6 billion in aid had been distributed in Haiti by 2012 (Ramachandran & Walz, 2012, pp. 5-7) and earthquake damages and losses were estimated at $7.8 billion (United Nations Development Programme, 2011, p. 2), Haiti has not recovered as fully as might be expected. Instead, aid distribution was uneven. Aid was concentrated, leaving large areas of affected Haitians without assistance. Aid was also distributed haphazardly, without regard to special needs groups, such as the elderly. Aid was also distributed selectively to contractors from the donors’ own countries, rather than to the Haitian government, leaving the Haitian economy unstimulated after the earthquake. This is especially significant because Haitians wanted jobs, income, and access to credit more than they wanted food (Kirsch, et al., 2012a, pp. 85- 86). The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 41 In addition to Port-au-Prince, the earthquake destroyed Léogâne, Gressier, Petit-Goâve, Grand-Goâve, and Jacmel (Benjamin, et al., 2011, p. 307). However, aid was primarily distributed in the capital (Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S60). Areas outside of Port-au-Prince, and even some areas within it, were neglected. This was largely for logistical reasons, as those areas were more difficult to access due to debris and road conditions. However, centralised earthquake relief matched the centralised nature of the Haitian state and replicated its problems. Aid was also often distributed without prioritising certain groups, such as the pregnant, elderly, or disabled, over others (Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S63). Aid workers argued that this was because almost everyone had similar needs. However, this could neither be proved nor disproved, as there was a lack of accessible collected data. Organisations such as the British Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) did not prioritise data collection in their camps, claiming that lifesaving activities must take priority (Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S63). This is in line with de Ville de Goyet’s assertion that speed takes priority over information during emergency operations. Because of this, many organisations lack information on who is in their camps, what kind of injuries they have sustained, how many pregnant and breastfeeding women there are, or how much medical care was given, resulting in ad hoc allocation of resources. It is a possibility that aid organisations use simple measures of output, such as the number of people served, rather than more complex performance measures because of how they are funded (Kirsch, et al., 2012a, p. 85; Kirsch, et al., 2012b, pp. 280-281). The development sector is unique in that it is not funded by its beneficiaries. In the food and beverage sector, customers who are 42 Patrick Linton unsatisfied with the quality of the products they consume can choose to take their business elsewhere. Businesses that consistently perform poorly lose market share and eventually go bankrupt (Kirsch, et al., 2012b, p. 281). Aid recipients who are unsatisfied with aid are not typically provided with an opportunity for feedback (Kirsch, et al., 2013, p. 565). Instead, NGOs create reports on simple outputs. More complex measures focused on quality may show less attractive results, and NGOs whose performance is seen as sub-par are not attractive to donors. Very little of the aid money distributed went to the Haitian government or to Haitian organisations and companies. Of the aid that Canada gave three- fourths went to Canadian companies in Canada, and was spent on Canadian survivors (Bellegarde-Smith, 2011, p. 266). Of all the aid given by all donors, only about one percent was given to the government of Haiti; donors were reluctant to give to the Haitian government due to concerns of corruption, inefficiency, and lack of capacity. International NGOs and contractors received 57% of the aid given. The remainder went to the donor country’s own militaries. While the private contracting process was a gold rush for international NGOs, Haitian-led NGOs tended to be excluded, receiving only $9.45 million in USAID contracts while three-fourths of USAID funding went to private contractors headquartered in the Washington, DC area. Many of those DC-area contractors, such as Chemonics, Development Alternatives Inc (DAI), CH2M Hill Constructors, Flour Enterprises, The Shaw Group, MHW Americas, and Agility Logistics have been involved in controversies in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Hurricane Katrina relief.3 However, USAID does not have data on how the money given to contractors was spent (Ramachandran & Walz, 2012, pp. 9-13, 3 See corruption, inefficiency, and lack of capacity. The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 43 24-27). The fact that donors held a deep mistrust of the Haitian government reflects the same mistrust of the Haitian government held by the American and Canadian media, where journalists wrote of corruption, inefficiency, and lack of capacity. It is unsurprising that the vast majority of USAID funding for earthquake relief in Haiti went to American companies. While USAID is the international development arm of the United States government, its mandate, the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, was enacted in the context of American security and economic interests (Weisenfeld, 2011, p. 1103). It therefore should come as no surprise that the United States military and American contractors took the opportunity to rush into Haiti immediately following the earthquake. The American military’s presence in Haiti provided not only security for American citizens in Haiti (many of whom were housed on US embassy grounds before being flown out of the US-military-run airport in Port-au-Prince immediately after the earthquake), but also provided an extra military base for the United States. As in Canada, American economic interests were also served with the use of American contractors. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has a similar mandate to that of USAID. Just as the American and Canadian media focused a great deal on their own citizens affected by the earthquake rather than on Haitians, American and Canadian government aid focused a great deal on their own economic interests, rather than the economic wellbeing of Haitians affected by the earthquake. It is conceivable that Haiti would look quite different today if aid had been distributed differently. If aid focused on all affected areas, rather than focusing primarily on the easy-to-access areas in Port-au-Prince, there would not be hundreds of thousands of Haitians still living in nearly 500 “temporary 44 Patrick Linton camps” (Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S64). Had organisations such as the Red Cross and MSF prioritised data collection and documentation, and focused on complex performance measures, such as impact, quality, and satisfaction, they may have been able to more efficiently and effectively distribute aid to the Haitian people (Kirsch, et al., 2012a, p. 85). In addition, those data would have been invaluable in deciding how to approach future disasters, such as the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal. And had USAID, CIDA, and other aid agencies given aid directly to the Haitian government or used more Haitian contractors, it is possible that the Haitian economy could provide those jobs that the Haitian people needed. Who decides? According to a recovery sector analysis by the United Nations Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, the Government of Haiti had in place an 18-month budget that detailed those areas in which they wanted to focus the recovery. As the Haitian government could not fund the recovery itself, it had to rely on donations by individuals, NGOs, and governments. At the International Donor’s Conference in New York in March of 2010, $5.5 billion was pledged by countries and intergovernmental organisations. However, donor pledges and disbursement did not match the recommendations of the budget. In certain sectors, such as reconstruction, financial and economic recovery, and institutional rebuilding, pledges and disbursements were only a fraction of what the Haitian government had requested. For reconstruction, the Haitian government had requested $780 million (UN Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, 2012). Finland, France, Germany, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Luxembourg, Qatar, Spain, and The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 45 Switzerland pledged $128.8 million; between 2010 and 2012, $100.1 million of that was disbursed (UN Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, 2012). For financial and economic recovery, the Haitian government requested $200.0 million; of that, $64.9 million was pledged, but only $12.8 million was disbursed (UN Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, 2012). In other sectors, such as transport, and water and sanitation, the pledges and disbursements had far exceeded the requests of the Haitian government. For the transport sector, the Government of Haiti only requested $180 million; however, Brazil, Canada, France, the European Commission (EC), the IDB, Japan, the United States, Venezuela, and the World Bank pledged $998.1 million, and had disbursed $512.8 million between 2010 and 2012 (UN Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, 2012). For water and sanitation, the Haitian government requested $160 million; $261.4 million was pledged and $224.4 million was disbursed (UN Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, 2012). Likewise, where Haiti requested $372 million for strengthening the administration, $155 million for democratic institutions, and $20 million for support to parliament, only $46.3 million, $23.9 million, and $2.2 million respectively were disbursed (UN Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, 2012). The lack of support for institutional rebuilding highlights the international community’s distrust in the governance capabilities of the Haitian government. 46 Patrick Linton Figure 1. Recovery grant activities by sector as of December 2012 in USD millions. Government of Haiti 18- month budget vs. pledges made at flash appeal at New York donors' conference vs. total disbursed 2010-2012. Source: UN Office of the Special Envoy to Haiti 0 200 400 600 800 1000 TERRITORIAL REBUILDING Disaster management and prevention Energy Reconstruction Regional hubs and urban development Transport General ECONOMIC REBUILDING Agriculture Financial and economic recovery, jobs Job creation Industry and commerce General SOCIAL REBUILDING Culture Education Food security Health Housing Social protection Water and sanitation Women and children General INSTITUTIONAL REBUILDING Strengthening the administration Democratic institutions Justice and Security National planning and local development Support to parliament PILAR NOT SPECIFIED GoH 18-month budget Total allocation Disbursed 2010-2012 The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 47 The donors, which included the governments of several countries such as the US, Canada, Spain, Brazil, and France, and intergovernmental organisations such as the EC, IDB, the World Bank, and the Organisation of American states, were clearly directing the distribution of recovery aid. Had these governments and IGOs given their aid directly to the government of Haiti, the aid distribution would have looked very different. The donor countries and organisations directed the flow of recovery aid because they provided the funding, and the funding they provided was directed at specific areas. The actor best suited to lead disaster recovery is the state (Amin, et al., 2008, pp. 17-18; de Ville de Goyet, 2008a, pp. 24-25); the removal of this capacity is disempowering to the state. In addition, the inability of the Haitian government to direct the earthquake recovery effort left aid organisation with no central government coordinator, and placed it under the control of multiple actors working independently of each other. The lack of a central coordinator meant that no master planning could occur. What data were available? The 2010 earthquake in Haiti killed either 222,570 people (Fatton Jr., 2011, p. 164; Pierre-Louis, 2011, p. 187; Orelien, et al., 2013, p. 29), 230,000 people (Bellegarde-Smith, 2011, p. 265), 250,000 people (Lundy, 2011b, p. 204; Gros, 2011, p. 132), 316,000 people (Weisenfeld, 2011, p. 1099), or somewhere between 230,000 and 316,000 people (Benjamin, et al., 2011, p. 307), according to different academic sources . Some of these different estimates are from the same issue of one journal, highlighting the significant lack of confidence in available data. Official government reports say 222,570 people were killed in the earthquake (UN Office of the Secretary-General, 2010, p. 1). Over one year post- 48 Patrick Linton earthquake, mortality estimates still varied by over 40 percent. This highlights the fact that there were serious impediments to collecting sufficient information for decision-making and coordination in the earthquake’s aftermath. Impediments to decision-making included a lack of prioritisation of data collection, which was linked to the urgency of the initial relief response in the earthquake’s aftermath. The inaccessibility of areas both within and outside of Port-au-Prince meant that data were not collected in those areas, making the provision of adequate aid problematic. Data were often unreliable, especially with regards to the time-sensitive operations necessary within the first few hours and days of the disaster relief operation; often, aid agencies did not prioritise the collection of data, claiming that their time and resources were more efficiently used in saving lives. By the time needs assessments were conducted, compiled, and released, they were outdated. For example, the Rapid Initial Needs Assessment for Haiti (RINAH), conducted between 25 January and 6 February, was released so late that the information was no longer usable (Grünewald & Renaudin, 2010, p. 30; Rencoret, et al., 2010, p. 25). Crowdsourcing and social networks were a cheap, quick method of gathering data post-disaster in the aftermath (Barbier, et al., 2012, pp. 258-259; Gao, et al., 2011, p. 10; Yang, et al., 2014, p. 2025), however, they lacked a ‘common information system’ that could coordinate information for all response groups (Barbier, et al., 2012, p. 259). Furthermore, crowdsourced data were also unreliable, as it was difficult to verify the source of the data (Barbier, et al., 2012, p. 262; Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S62; Gao, et al., 2011, pp. 11-12). Where data did exist, the relief effort was hampered by a failure to make it accessible. Many decision-making meetings were held at the UN Stabilization The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 49 Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) base, which was difficult to access from certain parts of Port-au-Prince and was kept under tight security, leaving many NGOs unable to participate in information sharing. Furthermore, meetings were held in English rather than French (or Haitian Creole), the official language of Haiti, which effectively excluded those Haitian NGOs whose employees did not speak English (Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S60). Some organisations that had collected data (especially large, well-funded organisations) were unwilling to share that data with other organisations (Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S63). As these organisations had seemingly unlimited funds, they did not see the need to share their data with other organisations because they did not need anything in return. This led to overlaps and redundancies, as multiple organisations would survey the same areas and collect the same information, while other areas remained un-surveyed and unserved. When data were shared, it was often inconsistent. Data collection and analysis often did not use uniform definitions across agencies (or sometimes even within agencies themselves) (Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S62). Concepts such as ‘affected populations’ were ambiguous, lowering the reliability of information (Rencoret, et al., 2010, p. 26). Agreement on definitions, codes, and categories is essential for good information management (Amin, et al., 2008, pp. 13-14). Furthermore, NGOs that did share data often used different information-sharing systems. While UN OCHA uses the OneResponse website for aid coordination, many NGOs often used Google Groups and Google Docs, storing their information on simple spreadsheets (Altay & Labonte, 2014, pp. S62-S63), rather than a purpose-built database. These impediments to disaster relief decision-making and coordination meant that there was not a great deal of information available in the immediate 50 Patrick Linton aftermath of the earthquake. The lack of data affected disaster relief efforts at every stage. The World Health Organisation and the US Federal Emergency Management Agency both identify four stages of a disaster. They are: mitigation (prevention), preparedness (planning), response, and recovery (Benjamin, et al., 2011, pp. 306, 308). Mitigation and preparedness are essential, clearly evidenced by the difference in the impacts of the 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Port-au-Prince in 2010, a similar earthquake in San Francisco in 1993, which killed fewer than 100 people, and the 8.5-magnitude earthquake in Concepción, Chile, in 2010, which killed fewer than 1000 (Pierre-Louis, 2011, p. 187). The response phase is the most crucial phase after a disaster occurs. The first 24 to 48 hours after a disaster is when lifesaving attempts are both most effective and most difficult, as infrastructure is often destroyed and roads are blocked by debris. It is because of this that most survivors are saved by their neighbours (Benjamin, et al., 2011, p. 309). The recovery phase describes the attempt to return to normalcy, but is also an opportunity to rebuild in a way that may prevent or mitigate future disaster. While mitigation and preparedness fall outside of the scope of this dissertation, it is important to note that they perform an important role in the response stage. Preparedness involves collection of baseline data, such as accurate maps of communities (especially those in remote areas), demographic data, and housing information (Amin, et al., 2008, pp. 13-14, 18-19). Lacking this information, first responders in Port-au-Prince did not know who they were looking for and what their needs might be. For example, relief workers who were unaware of systems of food and water flow in Haiti prior to the earthquake made assumptions that led to an influx of food and water from various humanitarian aid organisations. There was no data, however, to suggest The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 51 that there was a food shortage, especially as the earthquake caused only limited damage to farmland, and the United Nations World Food Programme already had hundreds of thousands of meals in storage in warehouses in Port-au-Prince (Katz, 2015). Furthermore, there was no data to suggest that there was a drinking water shortage; Port-au-Prince lacked the piping infrastructure that would have been vulnerable to earthquake damage (Katz, 2015). Housing, however, had taken a disastrous hit, and millions of people were left in poorly- constructed temporary camps. The cost of food and water aid and the associated flow of personnel could have been better diverted toward dealing with this more pressing issue. Instead, relief efforts were characterised by a problem of logistics and a lack of data regarding what was actually needed. Conclusion The allocation of resources and personnel in the relief and recovery efforts after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti matches, in part, the discourses seen in the American and Canadian media, especially in the areas of violence, governance, needs, and Americans’ and Canadians’ interests in Haiti. While there was very little looting or violence, the United States sent tens of thousands of troops to Haiti in order to ‘secure’ the country. When Haiti appealed to the international community for funds for institutional rebuilding, such as strengthening the administration and support to parliament, they were largely ignored due to fears of corruption and bad governance, matching the discourses of Haitian governance as portrayed in the media. Distribution of aid was clumsy, and many of those affected by the earthquake reported dissatisfaction with the aid received. Finally, just as many of the stories in American and Canadian media focused on American and Canadian experiences 52 Patrick Linton in Haiti, with Haitians as a backdrop, much of the their aid to Haiti was focused on American and Canadian survivors. Furthermore, the vast majority of this aid also went to American and Canadian contractors.4 4 This is not all to say that the international humanitarian effort in Haiti was directed by the American and Canadian media. I simply note a correlation. It is entirely possible that the American and Canadian media, USAID, CIDA, and the thousands of American and Canadian NGOs operating in Haiti are influenced by the another factor, or that the media is influenced by the aid typically sent by their countries. This was not a quantitative study, although a quantitative study would make an interesting future project. The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 53 Chapter 3. The efficacy of the humanitarian response to the earthquake You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data. - Daniel Keys Moran, American science fiction author This chapter will discuss the efficacy of the humanitarian response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, examine three paradigms suggesting why this was not as effective as it could have been, consider whose data were used, and look at beneficiary feedback as an alternative means of evaluation of the humanitarian response. In order to evaluate the efficacy of the humanitarian response to the earthquake, it is essential to take into consideration whether the goal of recovery is to restore pre-disaster levels of service (that is, to return Haiti to what it was on 11 January 2010) or to seize the opportunity to develop (de Ville de Goyet, 2008a, p. 33). As Haiti was the least developed country in the 54 Patrick Linton Western Hemisphere as well as a republic of NGOs—purportedly working toward development—prior to the earthquake, the goal of recovery should have been to redevelop Haiti to a greater state than it had been in before; this would ensure a better standard of living for the Haitian people and mitigate the potential damage of a future earthquake or other natural disaster. By either standard, the humanitarian response was deeply flawed. Haiti has failed to return even to pre-earthquake conditions in the five years since the disaster.5 Humanitarian aid workers in Haiti were somewhat successful in the immediate response to the earthquake in that they were able to relocate hundreds of thousands of earthquake-affected Haitians to camps away from the danger caused by structural damage. Although they provided food, water, medical attention, and supplies to families, it could have been done with greater efficiency. The relief effort in Haiti was plagued by logistical problems and a lack of organisation, as has been outlined above. Haiti, however, failed to graduate from the relief stage to the recovery stage. Six months post-earthquake, over a million Haitians still resided in camps, despite the more than one billion dollars in aid that had been given by that time (Pierre-Louis, 2011, p. 199). One year later, almost half of all Haitians who had moved into camps after the earthquake still resided in camps, rather than returning to their neighbourhoods (Kirsch, et al., 2012a, p. 91). Even a full three years post-earthquake, hundreds of thousands of Haitians still lived in nearly 500 camps across Port-au-Prince (Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S64). It is of little surprise that the recovery process in Haiti has been significantly slower than the immediate response. For the “business of aid” (Birdsall, 2008, p. 516) to 5 Disaster recovery is not a quick process. After Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, the city took nearly a decade to return to normalcy. Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas had significantly less preparation and governmental resources available than did New Orleans. The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 55 be sustainable, humanitarian aid must be required for the long term. When disaster victims no longer need the assistance of humanitarian aid workers, those workers no longer have a job; thus, rather than moving into recovery as soon as possible, humanitarian aid agencies remain in the relief phase until relief funds have run out (de Ville de Goyet, 2008a, p. 32). Three paradigms Most existing academic literature relevant to Haitian disaster recovery fall into three camps: The academics in a special edition of the Journal of Black Studies (JBS) from one year after the earthquake in Haiti cited an over- intrusion by NGOs and foreign agendas as the reason that Haiti failed to recover from the earthquake (Lundy, 2011a; Gros, 2011; Fatton Jr., 2011; Pierre- Louis, 2011; Bellegarde-Smith, 2011; Germain, 2011). The contributors to a 2008 World Bank compilation, Data Against Disasters: Establishing Effective Systems for Relief, Reconstruction, and Recovery believed that NGOs’ lack of use of (or underutilisation of) data is the critical shortcoming in humanitarian aid efforts (Amin, et al., 2008; de Ville de Goyet, 2008a; McDonald & Gordon, 2008). A group of researchers from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, who published a series of articles on humanitarian aid evaluation, argue that humanitarian aid efforts fail because they are being assessed incorrectly, therefore appearing as successes in yearly reports, and that more nuanced assessments including the feedback of aid beneficiaries and complex measures would lead to more successful humanitarian aid; another argument that emphasises the importance of data (Kirsch, et al., 2012a; Kirsch, et al., 2012b; Kirsch, et al., 2013; Weiss, et al., 2014). 56 Patrick Linton The Journal of Black Studies contributors suggest that the intrusion of foreign NGOs, governments, and international financial institutions led Haiti into dependency, holding it in a cycle of poverty, and that continuation of these policies post-earthquake pushes Haiti further into dependency. JBS contributor Jean-Germain Gros (2011) believes that much damage could have been prevented if Haiti had been able to enforce existing building codes and provide emergency care, but internationally-imposed anti-state policies dating from the 1980s, which channelled development aid through NGOs instead of state- building, allowed Haiti to become a failed state (pp. 133-134). The very same NGOs and governments that created Haiti’s problems were now taking charge of its redevelopment. He suggests that the only adequate solution is a reorganisation of the government, focusing on decentralisation but not devolution, and a military capable of deploying quick aid; only the Haitian government can sufficiently rebuild Haiti (pp. 148-154). Like Gros, Robert Fatton Jr (2011) writes that the earthquake’s effects on Haiti were the result of over-intervention from foreign NGOs and international financial institutions (IFIs). For the past three decades, more than ten thousand NGOs, undemocratic and unaccountable to the Haitian public, have been carrying out the development work normally done by a state; IFIs contributed to the problem by prompting a transition from agriculture to garment manufacture, causing Haiti to urbanise and became dependent on imports for food (pp. 171-175). Haitians see the failed recovery effort as a missed opportunity to develop Haiti and a continuation of the status quo (p. 171). François Pierre- Louis (2011) notes that NGOs had taken on the social, political, and economic roles normally handled by the state, including democracy enhancement, conflict resolution, and economic projects (pp. 190-193). However, certain roles The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 57 could not or were not filled by NGOs. At the time of the earthquake, Haiti lacked any emergency management system; foreign neoliberal influence to minimise government could have been the cause of this (p. 198). NGOs were unable to address needs such as establishing order, distributing food, and ensuring citizens’ safety after the earthquake, and there was insufficient coordination between NGOs to distribute aid (pp. 199-200). Like the JBS contributors, the authors of the World Bank compilation believe that national authorities are the appropriate principal actors in disaster relief, and thus capacity building is essential (Amin, et al., 2008, pp. 17-18; de Ville de Goyet, 2008a, pp. 24-25). However, they argue that failures in disaster relief and recovery primarily stem from failures to utilise data before, during, and after a natural disaster (McDonald & Gordon, 2008; Amin, et al., 2008, p. 2; de Ville de Goyet, 2008a). They emphasise that it is essential to have a disaster information management system in place with baseline data available in advance of any potential disaster (Amin, et al., 2008, pp. 18-19). Claude de Ville de Goyet argues that although information gathering is fundamental to addressing the needs of those affected and displaced by a disaster, time pressure constrains the ability of aid workers to collect data in the aftermath. He also notes that while acting quickly is necessary, organisations do not take time to gather information even after the most critical time period has passed (de Ville de Goyet, 2008a, pp. 52-53). Many inappropriate disaster responses may have been avoided had data been collected and analysed. The team from Johns Hopkins University identify the use of the correct indicators as a key factor in disaster relief and recovery. They argue that while a great deal of money was spent on humanitarian aid in the wake of the earthquake, the impact of relief and recovery efforts were poorly documented, 58 Patrick Linton and generally focused on measurement of outputs, such as number of meals served, number of amputations performed, and quantity of tarpaulins distributed, rather than more complex measures that indicate the overall wellbeing of populations under the care of NGOs, such as the time spent daily to collect water from a protected source after the earthquake compared to before the earthquake (Kirsch, et al., 2012a, p. 85). They emphasise that this is because disaster relief is an unregulated industry and humanitarian agencies are accountable to donors rather than beneficiaries; they stress that “accountability to donors should not be mistaken for quality assurance” (Kirsch, et al., 2012b, p. 281). Instead, they suggest that beneficiary satisfaction surveys be taken into account when evaluating the effectiveness of humanitarian aid (Doocy, et al., 2013; Kirsch, et al., 2012a; Kirsch, et al., 2012b; Kirsch, et al., 2013; Weiss, et al., 2014). Qualitative and quantitative assessments of beneficiaries would ensure greater accountability to beneficiaries as well as to donors. The use of data As it was one of the first major disasters in the new age of big data, there were several attempts to collect and utilise data in the humanitarian efforts following the earthquake. The Rapid Needs Initial Assessment for Haiti (RINAH) report, mentioned in the previous chapter, attempted to gather rough estimates of earthquake damage and displacement, but it was released in an untimely fashion. Crowdsourced Crisis Camp “Hackathons for Haiti” were another attempt to collect and utilise data for humanitarian aid in Haiti, but were plagued with issues of incompatibility, meaning that humanitarian aid workers were unable to manipulate and make use of the data in the manner they saw fit. Finally, there were hundreds of evaluations made by international The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 59 humanitarian organisations;6 however, many evaluations used overly simple indicators, as discussed in the previous chapter. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) conducted RINAH from 23 January to 06 February 2010. However RINAH was not as rapid as its name would convey; it began almost two weeks after the earthquake and was published almost a month after the earthquake. The data that it provided was outdated and unreliable by the time it was disseminated, as it concerned the short-term needs of those affected by the earthquake (Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S65). An initial needs assessment is essential following any disaster. However, as time is of the essence, it should be deployed immediately, conducted and compiled quickly, and disseminated without hesitation. There was significant media attention regarding “Hackathons for Haiti” wherein tech-savvy individuals gathered with the intention of using data- centric solutions to help with humanitarian efforts, despite not actually knowing what they were attempting to create in advance of the hackathon (Brewer, 2010; Pool, 2010). In collaboration with Ushahidi, a non-profit software company with the slogan “crowdsourcing crisis information”, ‘hackers’ used OpenStreetMap (OSM) to overlay crowdsourced data onto a map. Unfortunately, OSM and Ushahidi’s software were not fully interoperable, meaning that data were not searchable, lists could not be generated, and the hackathon’s efforts were of little use to those aid workers who would have benefitted from these data (Heinzelman, et al., 2011, p. 2). Despite these early issues, the hackathon was an innovative idea that has great potential for future use in humanitarian aid. Crowdsourcing has the potential to involve many 6 Many of these may be found at Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action’s website, via http://www.alnap.org/current/haitiportalresources 60 Patrick Linton more remote international humanitarian workers assisting in disaster relief and recovery without many of the problems associated with spontaneous volunteers, such as the need to feed, house, and train them. It also has the potential to include local residents, allowing them to express needs, offer local knowledge, and provide feedback about existing aid. In the future, greater consideration must be given to the goal of the hackathon, the platform that will be used by humanitarian workers (Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S62), and the reliability of crowdsourced data (Barbier, et al., 2012, p. 262; Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S62; Gao, et al., 2011, pp. 11-12). The collection, utilisation, and sharing of data could have helped aid organisations to more efficiently and effectively provide aid. Maintaining data on survivor locations and checked buildings/neighbourhoods could have avoided the redundancy of double- and triple-checking locations during the time-critical search and rescue operations in the crucial first 72 hours after the earthquake. This would have allowed teams to work faster to ensure that every building in Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas was accounted for. Sharing these data with other aid organisations could have prevented doubling up of efforts (de Ville de Goyet, 2008a, p. 35). Tracking supplies entering Haiti at customs, in conjunction with maintaining a central list of supply needs, would have been a practical means of matching supplies, especially unsolicited ones, with the people in need of them. As the international humanitarian response to the earthquake was characterised by western media as a logistical nightmare, a system of tracking supplies and needs could have avoided situations such the incident described in The Globe and Mail where dozens of pallets loaded with bottled water remained idly on the tarmac of the Port-au- Prince airport as hundreds of thousands of people went thirsty (Waldie, 2010). The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 61 Whose data? When considering the use of data in disaster relief and recovery, it is important to consider whose data were used, whose data were not used, and the reasons for this. Most of the data that were used by individual humanitarian actors in Haiti were produced by foreign entities rather than Haitian organisations or Haitian government ministries. Furthermore, most of the data used by humanitarian actors were produced by the organisations themselves, as a result of a low level of data sharing. These organisations assumed, from the beginning, that no data were readily available. Had there been greater data sharing and coordination among organisations, some redundant data collection may have been avoided, and many organisations that had not utilised data because of the difficulty or cost of data collection may have been able to utilise data in their operations. Data from local Haitian NGOs (or from the Haitian government itself) were not widely used. As many decision-making meetings were held in English at the difficult-to-access MINUSTAH base, many Haitian NGOs were not able to participate, either because their personnel could not access the site or because they only spoke French or Haitian Creole7 (Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S60). This kept Haitian earthquake efforts separate from the international community’s efforts, limiting the potential of local institutional knowledge to contribute to planning and organisation. Many aid workers do not find it necessary to know the society and culture in which they work; for many, it is simply enough to “know development” (Ferguson, 1990, p. 260) or, in this case, to “know disaster relief,” and do what they know how to do, rather than 7 It is worth noting, however, that the despite the English-language title, the Rapid Initial Needs Assessment for Haiti (RINAH) report was released in French (ACAPS, 2010). 62 Patrick Linton utilising the best strategy for the local culture and climate (Altay & Labonte, 2014, p. S64). However by not prioritising local institutional data and information, and using only imported knowledge, humanitarian aid workers may have had a damaging impact. It is possible that local institutional knowledge was ignored for many of the same reasons that data, in general, was underutilised: it was considered too difficult and too time-consuming. Utilizing local institutional knowledge requires foreign aid workers to liaise with local aid workers. Most foreign aid workers spoke English, as the majority of them came from the United States and Canada and used English as a lingua franca. Liaison would require finding local personnel, hiring translators, and holding information-sharing meetings, a time-consuming process. Alternatively, aid workers could rely on assumptions based on prior knowledge from other projects. While this may prove to be advantageous for the short-term, it can have a long-term detrimental impact, may take longer (and therefore add greater financial cost) and beneficiaries may not be satisfied with the aid received. Beneficiary Feedback It is important to include the feedback of beneficiaries at all stages of the humanitarian aid process. Much like the utilisation of local institutional knowledge, it can both empower the local population and provide useful data. Of course, feedback alone is by no means transformative or a sign of empowerment;8 it is, however, representative, giving a voice to those communities that receive aid (Michener, 1998, pp. 2106-2107), and is also a 8 A community following the will of an NGO certainly is not empowered (Michener, 1998). Nor is one that is told what they need in order to be empowered; that is disempowering (Rahnema, 1992). The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 63 means of keeping humanitarian aid agencies accountable to the communities in which they work. A team of researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have conducted a series of medium-term surveys of beneficiaries of humanitarian aid following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti (Kirsch, et al., 2012a), the 2010 floods in Pakistan (Kirsch, et al., 2013), and other disasters (Kirsch, et al., 2012b). They found that beneficiaries were generally unsatisfied with the quality of aid that they had received; this is consistent with trends that de Ville de Goyet (2008a, pp. 22-23) noted. Significantly, this is in contradiction to reports made by NGOs. This contradiction can be attributed to differences in methodology. Nongovernmental organisations rely on the support of donors in order to continue to stay in business. Therefore, when electing which information to include in yearly donor reports, NGOs opt to use indicators that represent themselves in a good light. The Johns Hopkins team (Kirsch, et al., 2012a) found that Haitians who were still living in camps in January 2011, one year after the earthquake, were much slower to recover than those who had returned to living in neighbourhoods. Those still living in camps experienced a 56% reduction in income, compared to a 35% reduction in income among those living in neighbourhoods (p. 87). They also found that those still in camps were of a lower pre-earthquake socioeconomic status than those who had moved back to neighbourhoods (p. 87). These in-camp households, while more likely to have received assistance, were still less economically secure than households that returned to neighbourhoods (p. 92). Reports from NGOs are likely to have mentioned that the NGOs continue to house and feed hundreds of thousands of Haitians, but are unlikely to report that residents of their camps have fared 64 Patrick Linton worse than those outside of the camps. More unsettling is that worldwide, the number of people in internally displaced persons camps has been increasing, as has the duration of their stay in these camps. It is important to note that efficacy evaluations should not be based solely on beneficiary surveys. Because many Haitians view foreign aid as one collective agency, those interviewed may be referring to a combination of projects rather than the specific project under evaluation (Ramachandran & Walz, 2012, pp. 31-32). Furthermore, in top-down approaches to development it is possible that beneficiaries respond in a manner that they believe aid workers would want to hear, either portraying the aid as overly successful in an effort to make aid workers look good and to keep them around, or as not successful enough, to make it seem as though the aid work is not yet finished, in order to continue receiving it (Michener, 1998, pp. 2112-2114; Johnson, 1999, p. 171). The International Committee of the Red Cross did survey Haitians to learn what their priorities were following the earthquake. Haitians were reported as wanting jobs, income, and access to credit, as labour demand had decreased (Kirsch, et al., 2012a, pp. 85-86). Manuel Orozco and Elisabeth Burgess (2011, pp. 237-243), whose study focuses on remittances of Haitians living abroad, suggest that access to financial services is a key development tool.9 However, the humanitarian effort did not focus sufficiently on financial and economic recovery. In fact, during the March 2010 flash appeal at the International Donor’s Conference, Haiti had requested $200 million in the category of “financial and economic recovery, jobs”; it only received $12.8 9 Where the international humanitarian community failed to provide financial services, the Haitian diaspora was able to step in. Orozco and Burgess found a ten percent increase in remittances to Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake (2011, p. 226). Lundy also noted this increase in remittances (2011b, pp. 210-212). Orozco and Burgess see the Haitian diaspora as playing an important role in the development of Haiti (2011, pp. 243-245). The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 65 million for this sector. Had beneficiary feedback been taken into consideration by donor countries, the amount of money given in this sector would have exceeded $200 million. It is also likely that Haitians, with renewed access to jobs, income, and credit, would have been able to return to normalcy much more rapidly. Conclusion The recovery following the earthquake was largely a failure. While aid workers did manage to save thousands of lives and provide food and shelter to hundreds of thousands of Haitians, they failed to revitalise the economy of Haiti. This can be attributed, at least in part, to three reasons: the overreliance on NGOs, rather than the Haitian state, to coordinate the recovery process; the failure to gather, utilise, and share appropriate data; and the failure to include local institutional knowledge and the input of Haitian people. Improvements to the timeliness, format, and platform of existing data collection would have been likely to improve rates of utilisation and sharing of data in the humanitarian aid response. Finally, the scale of mismatched aid in Haiti indicates the importance of including beneficiary feedback at all stages in the humanitarian aid process in order to ensure that disaster recovery is actually being delivered. 66 Patrick Linton Conclusion The future of Haiti must be linked to the respect of the rights of every single citizen. - Jean-Bertrand Aristide, former president of Haiti The 12 January 2010 earthquake known to Haitians as Goudougoudgou had a devastating impact on Haiti, sending more than a million Haitians to temporary settlement camps. Following the earthquake, generous individuals, organisations, and governments donated over $6 billion of aid to the Haitian people. However, the allocation of resources and personnel was not based on data of evidenced need. Aid workers claimed that they were too busy saving lives to worry about collecting data. It is probable that humanitarian aid workers made decisions based on Western media pressure—this study identified a strong correlation between media and donations—or based simply on what aid workers knew how to do. A lack of prioritisation, utilisation, and sharing of data and information led to the failure of the international humanitarian effort. This failure is evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 67 Haitians that remained internally displaced persons for several years after the earthquake, rather than returning to normal life. Following the hypothesis that media rhetoric directs aid, a discourse analysis of the American and Canadian media’s coverage of the earthquake was conducted. Six emergent themes were found: the needs of the earthquake survivors, logistical problems in aid distribution, corruption and/or the Haitian government’s inability to govern, stories focusing on Americans or Canadians as heroes, reports of alleged looting and the potential for violence, and religion (praising Christianity and demonising Vodou). The immediate material needs of Haitians as portrayed by the media were only partially supported by the RINAH report, and the media’s portrayal of needs matched the type of aid that was distributed in Haiti in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. The media’s coverage of logistical problems encountered in aid distribution also proved to be accurate. The international community’s fears of corruption, inefficiency, and poor governance mirrored the concerns expressed by the media. Donor countries and organisations were reluctant to support the government of Haiti; instead, they created their own plans for recovery and gave their money to NGOs, completely circumventing Haiti’s 18-month recovery plan. American and Canadian government aid focused on those countries’ own economic interests more than the economic wellbeing of earthquake-affected Haitians; American and Canadian “aid to Haiti” went mostly to American and Canadian contractors, rather than providing the jobs that Haitians desired. Unfounded speculation of looting and violence provided the rhetorical public justification to the United States military to send thirty- thousand troops to Haiti following the earthquake. Absent from the media (and 68 Patrick Linton largely absent from the humanitarian effort in general) was the use of data in the decision-making process and the input of Haitians themselves. Had decisions about the direction of aid been based primarily on data rather than on media pressure, assumptions, aid workers’ own knowledge, or political agendas, Haiti may have had greater success in recovery. However, the effective use of data requires good baseline data, standardisation of definitions of terms such as ‘displaced’, consistency in the format in which the data are held, and reliability of data. In order for this to occur, the collection and sharing of data must be made a priority. In addition, in order to ensure beneficiary satisfaction, the international humanitarian community must take into consideration the input of the affected populations, as these are very important data. Throughout history, the Haitian people’s right to self-determination has been repeatedly stripped away, from French colonial slavery to authoritarian regimes to occupation by the US to more authoritarian regimes to modern-day imperialism in the form of aid. Rather than being voted upon by the electorate, Haitian planning decisions are made by the foreign NGOs that implement large-scale projects, and thus by the donors that fund the NGOs. In the process, Haitians are seldom consulted. Therefore, it is of little surprise that Haitians expressed dissatisfaction with aid received post-earthquake. While Haitians wanted jobs, income, and access to credit, the international donor community paid little attention to economic recovery and instead emphasised the short- term ‘needs’ suggested by the front pages of newspapers. The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 69 Recommendations In the earthquake relief and recovery effort, the international and NGO community’s decisions about the recovery process constituted an infringement on Haitian sovereignty. In order to avoid this situation, countries should maintain a record of aid supplies and personnel that enter the country after a disaster, through their existing customs and immigrations services, by requiring that all aid be declared upon arrival; this system has already been successfully implemented in Guatemala since the 1980s. Countries should also require that all aid organisations be registered with the government, perhaps in an existing ministry that regulates businesses and non-profit organisations, with robust reporting requirements that ensure that aid agencies collect standardised, accurate data about their work. Haiti was also unprepared to respond to the earthquake. Mitigation and preparedness are essential in order to ensure minimal loss of life and property in the event of a disaster. Port-au-Prince had become a death trap due to rapid “urbanisation without industrialisation” (Gros, 2011, p. 142), was overly centralised, and lacked sufficient disaster preparation (Pierre-Louis, 2011, p. 198). Thus built into recovery processes must be the establishment of mechanisms of mitigation (such as enforcing existing building codes more strictly) and preparedness (such as early warning systems and evacuation plans, for example). A trained, local military would be the ideal unit to quickly deploy aid (Gros, 2011, pp. 148-152). Geographic organisation, such as dividing the country into postcodes or other similarly-sized units and giving street names and house numbers to every building in the country would be one method of facilitating the collection of baseline data, such as the number of households expected to reside in each particular postcode. A collection of such baseline 70 Patrick Linton data would be useful post-disaster in search-and-rescue efforts and supply distribution. Following a major disaster, developing countries, especially least- developed countries (LDCs), may lack the capacity to respond themselves. Because there may have been little to no mitigation or preparedness, these disasters tend to be the worst disasters in terms of the number of lives lost and the amount of infrastructural damage (Amin, et al., 2008, p. 1). In the poorest countries, otherwise-typical day-to-day tasks may be prohibitively costly; there is no room in the budget for disaster preparedness when there are not even sufficient funds to educate and provide medical care for the population. Instead, these countries live disaster-to-disaster. In such cases, it is important for the international humanitarian community to intervene in order to protect life. However, it is essential to intervene without infringing on the sovereignty of countries. This author proposes an international organisation responsible for the collection of data, the storage of data, and the coordination and distribution of aid, at the invitation of the disaster-affected country. This would not be a new organisation, but a new function of existing United Nations agencies that already have legitimacy and recognition in the area of humanitarian aid. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) would be the obvious choice, as it is the principal humanitarian aid coordinating body between UN organisations (FAO, UNFPA, UNDP, UNOCHA, UN-HABITAT, WFP and the WHO, among others) and non-UN partners such as the ICRC and the IFRC (McDonald & Gordon, 2008, p. 59). Under this new mandate, the IASC (or an organisation that it delegates) would regularly collect good baseline data in LDCs, such as geography and demographics, at a precise level of disaggregation, before any The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 71 sort of disaster occurs. When a disaster does occur, there will be sufficient information, such as where communities exist and how many people can be expected to be found there. When a disaster occurs, the head of government (or the acting head of government) could request assistance in data collection (such as a rapid initial needs assessment) to be performed by United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC), data storage (in a central repository), and/or the coordination of the distribution of aid. If data collection assistance is requested, the IASC could work with its partners to survey the affected area, while ensuring the use of consistent methods, measurements, and definitions. The IASC, UNDAC, or the disaster-affected country would delegate villages or neighbourhoods to partner NGOs for data collection in order to ensure that no populated areas are overlooked and that resources are not wasted double- or triple-surveying areas. These surveys would gather information such as (but not limited to) building damage, survivor numbers and locations, and availability of food and water, in a standardised format. This information would be stored in the repository to be compared against baseline data. If coordination in the distribution of aid is requested, aid organisations that wish to help in aid distribution would be required to register with the IASC, noting their supplies, personnel, and expected aid capacity. The supply- registration requirement would ensure that it is known precisely what resources are available and where they are. It would also avoid mismatches in the donated supplies that arrive in a country after a disaster. Larger organisations would be allocated villages or neighbourhoods in which to work, and smaller organisations would be grouped and allocated areas in which to work. Each organisation would be required to collect and submit standardised 72 Patrick Linton data on their work, supply levels, and beneficiaries. The data that they would be required to provide would not be simply measures of output, but more complex measures such as impact, quality, and satisfaction. Under this plan, policies must be implemented in order to respect the sovereignty of the disaster-affected nation (as specified in the IASC’s mandate by the third point in the “Guiding Principles” section of A/RES/46/182). First, this assistance must only come at the request of the disaster-affected state. Neither the IASC nor any states or organisation may enter uninvited, as the US military did in its takeover of the Port-au-Prince airport. Secondly, the disaster- affected state may choose those areas in which it desires assistance, and may reject any proposals. Third, while the IASC may advise on the allocation of resources, the government decides where it deems assistance necessary. This would avoid the scenario in which Haiti found itself at the flash appeal, wherein it had presented an 18-month budget detailing specific areas of focus for recovery, but donor countries and organisations directed their money toward other areas. Giving the IASC the role of emergency surveyor and coordinator would relieve the government of the disaster-affected country of the burden of managing disaster relief on its own. Keeping the country’s government in charge of decision-making regarding the allocation of aid resources and personnel would ensure that the country’s sovereignty is not infringed upon. Delegating disaster relief and recovery aid work to NGOs would ensure that NGOs could continue to use their expertise, albeit more efficiently, with the help of data. The partnership between the disaster-affected country, the IASC, NGOs, and the international community, with the use of open, easily-accessible data, would build transparency in the disaster relief and recovery process. The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 73 There are certain problems for which this proposal does not yet provide a solution. This proposal does not solve the problem of NGOs and contractors bringing in foreign products rather than purchasing local ones (although the disaster-affected country could restrict or limit the import of food aid if it determines that the local supply of food is enough, for instance). This proposal also does not solve the problem of jobs, income, and access to credit for disaster survivors, although the country could decide that a certain amount of the resources be directed toward this. It would also be necessary to develop means of data collection and reporting that would be compatible with the need for urgency in the initial aftermath of a disaster. Future Research An interesting follow-up study would be an examination of the use of data in the international relief and recovery efforts following the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. In the five years since the earthquake in Haiti, “big data” and “open data” have become hot topics in business and government, and new technologies have emerged allowing better analysis of data. It would be interesting to see whether the actors working in the international humanitarian response to the 2015 earthquake in Nepal utilised and shared data to a greater extent than those who aided in the international humanitarian response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Another important future study would be an examination of ethical issues surrounding the use of “big data” in the field of international humanitarian aid. Just as people in the industrialised world have qualms about questionable uses of big data, privacy, safety of personal information from hackers, the characterisation of individuals into categories, et cetera (Martin, 74 Patrick Linton 2015), victims of disasters in developing countries may also hold reservations about having their information stored in a database. Closing Remarks This research is of particular importance because as climate change worsens, natural disasters are becoming increasingly common. When a disaster strikes, kind-hearted individuals around the world donate their time, money, and expertise to help those affected by the disaster. In recent years, there have been great advances in information and communication technology that can assist in making disaster relief and recovery more efficient, saving lives and ameliorating outcomes for victims of disaster. However, these tools are being underutilised in favour of discourse and political agendas. Knowing why data are underutilised, and where they can be better utilised, is an important first step in encouraging future humanitarian aid workers to use data to their—and to their beneficiaries’—advantage. The use of data in international humanitarian responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti 75 Bibliography ACAPS, 2010. 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