Anthropology of NGOs: How Activist Humanitarian Aid Agendas Corrupted Social Sciences in the Caribbean
The obscurantism of political and economic agendas has always pervaded discourse on Caribbean family patterns, but anthropology had a stronger materialist orientation in the early and mid-1900s, one that lent itself to rigorous analysis of causation. By the 1970s and 1980s, hope was fading. A fog of research agendas, convoluted analyses, ideational and cultural causalRead More
Gender in Haiti: Review of the Literature
This is a much expanded version of two shorter blogs, ‘A Short Note about Gender in Haiti‘ and ‘More on Gender in Haiti.’ It sums up the radical misunderstanding that seemingly all NGOs and journalists as well as many scholars have presented of gender in Haiti before and after the earthquake.
Vulnerability Targeting in Haiti Report (WFP & CNSA 2015)
This study was commissioned by CNSA with the financial and logistic support of WFP and FAO. The objective was to examine the processes that NGO and governmental agencies employ to select beneficiaries of social assistance programs in rural Haiti. The task responds to needs associated with current humanitarian aid and development programs such as: EdeRead More
Children of Haiti: The Haitian Restavek and Child Slavery
The cry ‘child slavery’ grabbed world attention in 1998 when Haitian-born Jean-Robert Cadet published his shocking autobiography, From Haitian Slave Child to Middle-Class American, in which he recounted his life as a restavek, the Haitian Creole word for child domestic servant. As the Cadet Foundation website tells potential donors, “As a restavek he lost hisRead More
Microlending in Haiti
Microlending can be understood as the favorite and most promising current NGO activity in Haiti. It fits into the new investment-production-return ideology that donors most appreciate and in which, we are often told, Haitian farmers are eager participants. But there are aspects of the industry that are disturbing and ring of past failure.
History of NGOs and Disaster in Haiti
If there’s a milestone year when NGOs began arriving in Haiti that year is 1954, when Hurricane Hazel struck the island. Hazel would go on record as the most destructive storm in Western history. Haiti got the worst of it. Hazel stalled over the country for three days, pounded the mountains and plains with overRead More
Earthquake in Haiti: Questionable Death Toll
Originally publish May 30th 2011 on Open Salon Death Count This is a response to a report that I wrote for USAID regarding the Haiti earthquake death toll. I don’t know if I am even free to discuss the report because it’s not official yet. However, what I can do is discuss the validity of theRead More
Haiti Earthquake Media Exaggerations: Violence, Murder & Mayhem
This is a chapter from a book that I am wrote, the Great Haiti Humanitarian Aid Swindle (2017). I originally published as it is here on Open Salon in 2011. I think it’s important because it summarizes the role that the mainstream media played inciting panic over insecurity after the earthquake. Anyone interested inRead More
Anthropology of NGOs Part II: History of Accountability in Haiti NGO Sector
This is the second part of a three part series about accountability in the NGO sector. In Part I, I examined NGO accountability globally. In this article I trace the history of NGO accountability in Haiti. In Part III, I provide recommended actions to increase accountability among NGOs in Haiti and make them more effective.Read More
Anthropology of NGOs Part I: History of NGOs and Accountability
This is the first part of a three part series about accountability in the NGO sector. Here I examine NGO accountability globally. In Part II, I trace the history of NGO accountability in Haiti. And in Part III, I provide recommended actions to increase accountability among NGOs in Haiti and make them more effective.
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