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

Earthquake in Haiti: Flawed Understandings and Clarifying the Death Toll Estimate

This blog is meant to clarify what we might call “flawed” understanding of a USAID spokesman regarding the BARR survey methodology and how the earth quake death toll was arrived at. As part of the US government’s effort to discredit a survey that it commissioned and for which it reviewed and approved the methodology, theRead More

Earthquake in Haiti: Explanation for Why USAID Estimated the Death Toll

Here’s the explanation for the death count and why it was done. This is in no way meant to contradict the US Government’s statement on the issue. It is a simple clarification of what they have acknowledged. I would not post this if they did not first acknowledge that the report was in fact commissionedRead More

Earthquake in Haiti: Reply to Schuller (long version) Death Toll and Camp Population Estimates

December 29, 2011–Professor Mark Schuller’s Smoke and Mirrors in Haiti* opens a window into the twisted truths, exaggerations and self-fulfilling prophecies that still bubble forth from post-earthquake Haiti, mostly from NGOs, UN organizations, and activists like Schuller himself. Putting aside what strike me as an almost personal attack—accusing me of leaking the report and of activelyRead More

OCHA Clusters in Haiti: Bureaucratic Path to Extinction

It is one month after the earthquake and I am sitting in the restaurant of a chic colonial era hotel using the wireless. There are two other men nearby. They are seated several tables apart having a loud cross-restaurant conversation about their respective attempts to help Haiti. They are a special kind of missionary/aid workerRead More

Gender in Haiti: Short Note on Misrepresentation of Gender in Haiti

Beverly Bell, author of the acclaimed book, Walking on Fire (2001), and one of the most vigilant contributors to the gender struggle in Haiti, illustrates how many feminist activist-scholars have tended to obfuscate gender issues in Haiti when she writes, “Haitian women place at the absolute bottom in female-male life expectancy differential, incidence of teenRead More

Travesties in Haiti