WITH ONE of the most extensive disaster relief operations ever mounted under way in Haiti, governments and aid agencies face some colossal logistical and strategic questions, writes RUADHÁN MAC CORMAICin Paris
In trying conditions and with little time to spare, logisticians and planners must debate how to harness the extraordinary influx of manpower and money pledged from across the globe, knowing that the current emergency will soon give way to a long-term reconstruction that will continue for decades.
Thoughts will inevitably turn to the lessons learned in the aftermath of another major disaster, the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, where relief and aid specialists faced similar questions in another forbidding environment.
In the badly hit Indonesian region of Aceh, where some 160,000 people were estimated to have died, initial progress was mixed. But a determined global mobilisation meant that after five years, some 130,000 new homes were built, along with schools, roads and a major port.
Some mistakes were made – so many new boats were supplied that the waters around Aceh’s coast suffered from overfishing, for example – but audits have generally praised the effectiveness of the reconstruction.
A major report published in April last year was broadly positive about what had been achieved in the five countries worst affected by the tsunami.
In most disasters, the scarcest resources are co-ordination and information. Work is duplicated and agencies get in each other’s way. But the report, commissioned by a consortium of those five states as well as the United Nations and the Red Cross, found that one “critical breakthrough” in the tsunami relief effort, where the estimated €10 billion in aid demanded intensive strategic co-ordination, was the establishment of single well-staffed bodies in each country to co-ordinate all recovery efforts.
Despite that, however, the rush to distribute aid meant those who needed it most were not always reached.
“Often, tight deadlines imposed by the need to deliver fast had the effect of . . . the wrong projects being taken up by the wrong organisations for the wrong reasons,” the report said, adding that the needs of women and the poor tended to be most overlooked.
It also stressed the importance of involving the local community in decisions about recovery, observing “too often those most in need after the tsunami were not seriously consulted about planning or implementation of relief and recovery”.
A separate study commissioned by the French ministry of foreign affairs found that another obstacle was the competition between aid organisations, under pressure from media and donors, to be seen to act quickly.
“It was a race, disturbing at times, to see who could identify beneficiaries and design projects first, resulting in significant incoherence in humanitarian practices,” the report observed.
Nonetheless, some in the disaster-zone showed self-restraint: at one point, for instance, Médecins Sans Frontières told donors it had received as much money as it could spend.
With large amounts of cash and goods in motion, and agencies under pressure to hire fast and spend fast, corruption is always a threat during a humanitarian crisis. In a survey published last December, Transparency International claimed that almost half a billion dollars in tsunami aid for Sri Lanka was unaccounted for and more than $600 million was spent on projects unrelated to the disaster. The Sri Lankan government has denied this.
The report commissioned by the UN and the Red Cross gave a more upbeat assessment overall, noting that “despite the influx of billions of dollars in tsunami- affected communities, corruption levels across the board were kept remarkably low” – partly thanks to measures developed after previous crises.
Perhaps the lesson the aid world has struggled most to learn, the UN/Red Cross report concluded, was that “when everyone shares the same ethical values, development goals and strategic objectives”, that can be instrumental in helping disaster victims rebuild their lives.
“We have learned all this, and we have changed. In the future, we are going to have to do it together and do it better.”
Haiti’s catastrophe may show the extent to which such lessons have been absorbed.