Analysis of different phases of humanitarian response in the context of the earthquake in Haiti

The Haitian earthquake of January 2010 left the cities of Léogane and Port-Au Prince  Devasted and ruined. It resulted to or compounded to the poverty and instability of the Caribbean nation. However, there were several responses and recovery plans that were introduced to heal the situation of the people living in that affected areas.  One of the responses was related to humanitarian aid efforts which typically address visible damages and allowed people to arrange food, water, and shelter. In this report, analysis of responses of Haitian earthquake of January 2010 has been given. After that lean/agile principles have also been described. In the end, list of recommendations is given which could have been better support or responses to the people affected by Haitian earthquake.

There were several humanitarian responses have been provided by the institutions, government and other bodies for the support of the people affected by the earthquake in Haiti (Soden, & Palen, 2014).

Haitian government Responses

As a response to the support of the people affected by the earthquake in Haiti, the government took assistance for the international bodies and countries. Formulated bodies at that time helped people affected by that earthquake either by providing food, shelter or water. Many other bodies such as Haitian ministries were indulged in long-term housing support for the homeless people. The long-term development was also started by the Haitian ministries and government with the collaboration of the international bodies for supporting the affected people (Lemoine, et al. 2017).

U.N. Stabilization mission support as the humanitarian response

The U.N. Security Council was also created to stabilize the positive condition in Haiti. It was intended to support the people and save them from the psycho-social trauma and damages (Yates, & Paquette, 2011).

There are other several phases of humanitarian response which were introduced with a view to supporting the people affected by the earthquake (Meier, 2015).

Principle activities during the different phases of the emergency humanitarian response support the people affected by the earthquake (Altay, & Labonte, 2014).

First step	This phase of the emergency humanitarian response covers the contracts and subsidies issued by the Haiti government for the support of the people affected by the earthquake. Government bodies and institutions managed to set up initial rapid assessment to evaluate the conditions and required recovery plan.
Emergency humanitarian response	It was related to the arrangement of the emergency shelter, food, health safety program, logistic work chain, protection of the people from the earthquake.
Continuing plan	This humanitarian response was related to implementing proper resources mobilization, maintaining the support staff and develop contingency plan for better arrangement of the resources as humanitarian response in Haiti (Shelton, et al. 2014).

However, the above given humanitarian responses were not as per the accorded plan and Haiti government failed to implement the lean/agile principles in the work process. It is observed that lean/agile principles are deemed to be followed when the humanitarian response was formulated by undertaking the economic view, need of the concerned person, the viability of the support, unlock the intrinsic motivation towards the responses and decentralized the support or humanitarian response. At the time of providing the humanitarian response, it is analyzed that Haiti government took the steps of providing the humanitarian response without any prior management process. It resulted in the failure to provide the possible support to the people affected by the Haiti earthquake (Qadir, et al. 2016).

Whether the responses were lean or agile

The responses given by the organization is more focused to be agile which was intended to strengthen the many teams and process system more extra focuses to create value on creating value for the affected persons. It is estimated that government intervention and proceeded work focused on the created work practice and increased support level to the people affected by the earthquake in Haiti.

List of what has worked and what has not worked in each phase by providing facts and figures for each statement

Phases of the humanitarian response	Worked plan	Not worked plan
First step	Haiti government easily arranged the funds from the international humanitarian funding from the various countries Many organizations as international support came up within very less time with the high amount of stockpiles for the distribution in Haiti. US Airforce came with their Air support to serve better to the needy people in Haiti. Efforts were successful for the humanitarian relief plans and international donor community also proposed donation of $10 billion five-year assistance program for Haiti.	Haiti government failed to provide the possible details of the people saved from the earthquake program which resulted in failure to develop proper initial need necessary for planning long-term support program of Haiti.   Haiti could only take the $100 million in emergency grant funding from the World bank as support.
Emergency humanitarian response	Emergency shelter, food, health safety program, logistic work chain, protection of the people from the earthquake was easily provided by the Latin American countries. The members of the various organization pledge financial and other assistance for its long-term recovery planning.	The program of emergency failed due to the non-effective long-term planning and support system.
Continuing plan	The continuing plan to save the people in Haiti included the use of TERA support. This network plan assisted in saving more life by delivering timely targeted advice to disaster-affected communities (Savage, & Harvey, 2007).	Haiti earthquake generated more than $ 9 billion money in response but the uncertainty about the scale and outcome of spending following Haiti was the biggest shortcoming.  In addition to this, transparency was also one of the other issues which resulted to the failure of the case (Liberatore, et al. 2014).

However, these below were the list of the responses given by the following programs.

Program and projects given reflect that several medical assistance were provided to the people in Haiti for their support.  Organization evaluations were also arranged for supporting the people affected by the earthquake.  In addition to this, the more than 100 different organizations, gave you the responses of $ 9 million as support to the Haiti government. Nonetheless, TERA, the ministry of defense and emergency nutrition network came across to develop a new chain for the betterment of the people affected by the earthquake in Haiti (Walton, & Ivers, 2011).

There were several efforts and programs developed to save the people affected by the people affected by the earthquake in Haiti. However, despite massive efforts it failed to achieve the proper outcomes from the undertaken programs. The main reason of the failure of the responses towards the support of the people affected by the earthquake arises due to unequal distribution of aid port-a-prince/ rural areas, safe/ unsafe areas of port-and-prince. There was also inequality of the aid. There were neither proper controls nor accountability mechanism for the associated organizations which were indulged in supporting the people affected by the earthquake in Haiti. Haiti should have prepared for this sort of disaster by being proactive for the negative outcomes. The sudden impact of earth resulted in high loss and the government of Haiti was not ready for these negative outcomes (Walton, & Ivers, 2011).

There are following recommendation which should have been undertaken by the Haiti government

• Proper recovery plan for the land distribution- Most the cases which came into the limelight was related to the inappropriate distribution of land. As more than 50% land was owned by the government yet it made only 2 pieces of land available in the first four months of the earthquake. It resulted in high inflation in the country and resulted to several negative outcomes in Haiti.
• Proper arrangement of the aid and camps- At the time of the earthquake and after earthquake situation, Haiti government failed to arrange proper aid and camps for the support of the people affected by the earthquake. There were very uneven standards in the different camps and not enough support was given to the affected people and other concerned persons.
• Mitigation of the coordination challenges- There should be proper strategic plans and long-term arrangement program for this type of disaster. The government of Haiti was not ready for the outcome of disaster. Neither, proper support was received from the UN logistics and other international bodies Haiti government should have maintained good relationships with other international bodies.
• Supervision over the money flow- The government of Haiti failed to keep the control over the flow of money. It failed to manage the inflow and outflow of money. As per the statics data, there is more than $ 9 billion amount went in the trash. There was no proper record of the money which was distributed in Haiti. Therefore, it could be inferred that Haiti government should have undertaken proper cash management program (Yates, & Paquette, 2011).

Conclusion 

After analyzing all the details and responses of the different organization, it is inferred that the condition of the people affected by the earthquake may be better if Haiti government were to be proactive. Haiti government should have prepared a proper long-term planning to provide proper support to the people affected by the earthquake.

References

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Lemoine, J. F., Boncy, J., Filler, S., Kachur, S. P., Fitter, D., & Chang, M. A. (2017). Haiti’s Commitment to Malaria Elimination: Progress in the Face of Challenges, 2010–2016. The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene, 97(4_Suppl), 43-48.

Liberatore, F., Ortuño, M. T., Tirado, G., Vitoriano, B., & Scaparra, M. P. (2014). A hierarchical compromise model for the joint optimization of recovery operations and distribution of emergency goods in Humanitarian Logistics. Computers & Operations Research, 42, 3-13.

Meier, P. (2015). Digital humanitarians: how big data is changing the face of humanitarian response. Crc Press.

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Qadir, J., Ali, A., ur Rasool, R., Zwitter, A., Sathiaseelan, A., & Crowcroft, J. (2016). Crisis analytics: big data-driven crisis response. Journal of International Humanitarian Action, 1(1), 12.

Savage, K., & Harvey, P. (Eds.). (2007). Remittances during crises: implications for humanitarian response. London: Humanitarian Policy Group, Overseas Development Institute.

Meier, P. (2015). Digital humanitarians: how big data is changing the face of humanitarian response. Crc Press.

Shelton, T., Poorthuis, A., Graham, M., & Zook, M. (2014). Mapping the data shadows of Hurricane Sandy: Uncovering the sociospatial dimensions of ‘big data’. Geoforum, 52, 167-179.

Soden, R., & Palen, L. (2014). From crowdsourced mapping to community mapping: The post-earthquake work of OpenStreetMap Haiti. In COOP 2014-Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, 27-30 May 2014, Nice (France) (pp. 311-326). Springer, Cham.

Walton, D. A., & Ivers, L. C. (2011). Responding to cholera in post-earthquake Haiti. New England Journal of Medicine, 364(1), 3-5.

Yates, D., & Paquette, S. (2011). Emergency knowledge management and social media technologies: A case study of the 2010 Haitian earthquake. International journal of information management, 31(1), 6-13.

Yates, D., & Paquette, S. (2011). Emergency knowledge management and social media technologies: A case study of the 2010 Haitian earthquake. International journal of information management, 31(1), 6-13.