Was communication, community engagement and accountability considered in the 2021 Haiti Earthquake response? by Michelle Betz

The humanitarian and communication, community engagement and accountability (CCEA) response to the 2010 earthquake was to have been a watershed in terms of lessons learned, and for a while it seemed that would be the case.  

Unfortunately, the August 2021 earthquake revealed how quickly institutions can fall apart, how deep lack of trust can be and how we often are too reliant on individuals to ascertain the success of much of what we do. That is one of the lessons learned in a recent CDAC learning snapshot of the CCEA response to last year’s earthquake. The study aims to identify common themes and critical questions that response actors should be asking to improve sustainable, collective, localised action in CCEA moving forward. A number of recommendations are put forward for consideration going forward. 

Let’s back up. Between the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew in 2016, a reasonable disaster risk reduction (DRR) coordination structure was in place.

Local agencies and organisations, including the Direction Générale de la Protection Civile, the Haitian Red Cross, local NGOs and faith-based organisations were quick to respond however, it is unclear to what extent these organisations implemented communication and community engagement activities. Once the internationals began to arrive, at the request of the Government of Haiti, they identified a variety of needs to improve accountability towards people affected by crisis (AAP) and communication with communities (CwC) and worked with the DGPC and others to implement. 

Yet interviews with a variety of stakeholders suggest that once the internationals arrived there was little, if any, consultation with local communities. But, to be fair, many communities affected were in hard-to-reach areas. Insecurity and violence hampered the travel of nearly anyone working for an international non-governmental organisation (INGO) or United Nations (UN) agency while severe fuel shortages meant that much of the country, where the electrical grid is unreliable and all the services and institutions that used generators to keep the country running, had no power.

As a result, while there was some coordination between DGPC and international organisations, there were many other Haitian organisations that felt they were largely ignored, that aid provided was not appropriate to the context or the population.

But perhaps most problematic was that any institutional capitalisation that preceded the August quake was now long gone. “It was like no one remembered anything”, said one informant. Indeed, post-2010, significant effort had gone into integrating CCEA work with the national DRR mechanism. This collaboration led to a certain level of trust and understanding between local and international actors thereby successfully enabling the effective integration of the CwC working group during Hurricane Matthew. Unfortunately, much of this appeared to be personality driven and as personnel changed, the structure crumbled. 

As a result, a lack of pre-positioned CCEA structures, or the dissolution of previous such structures, hampered an integrated response to the 2021 quake. 

 Going forward, more needs to be done to address long-term coordination in the area of CCEA, coordination that is not determined by personalities but rather by a locally-led CCEA platform that links to the national disaster and management architecture. 

This is just one of the recommendations made in the report. You can read the full report by Michelle Betz here: Haiti six months on: good intentions, bad memories, and local frustrations.