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: 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

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

Gender in Haiti: More on Gender in Haiti

This is a longer version of the blog “short note on gender in Haiti.” I’ve expanded it in part because I don’t think the other blog was fair to Beverly Bell. It appeared that I was singling her out and she is by no means the first or only writer-scholar to project a Western partriarchicalRead More

Explaining 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.

Methods: A Brief Critique of a Very Useful Technique: the EMMA

A Brief Critique of a Very Useful Technique: the EMMA (Emergency Market Map Analysis) An Emergency Market Map Analysis (EMMA) is a decision making strategy that early responders use in the wake of disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes. First developed by Lili Mohiddin and Mike Albu (2008) for Oxfam, the EMMA strategy involves gathering dataRead More

Big Lies about Little People: The War Between UNICEF and the Orphanages, Battleground Haiti

Following the January 2010 Haiti earthquake there were a lot of exaggerations, truth-twisting and outright lies. But perhaps none exceeded those that came from the mouths of child protection workers and orphanage owners. With UNICEF and Save the Children leading the way, orphanages fanning the flames, and the press publishing almost anything anyone said–no matterRead More

Haitian-Dominican Border Misunderstandings

The Haitian-Dominican border is a widely misunderstood place. Here I want to share some insights in hopes that they will contribute to a better understanding of the area. But before I get started, I want qualify myself as not just another anthropologist whining about Dominican-Haitian relations. Over the past 25 years I’ve spent 9 yearsRead More

Dominican Republic: History of Border and Re-Haitianization

This post is similar to another of my border posts but begins with a more useful summary of the history of the border and examines the re-haitianization of the Dominican side of the border in greater depth, including articulation of both Haitian and Dominican migration and subsistence strategies, and provides some good data. I shouldRead More

Gender in Haiti Report (CARE International 2012)

The quantitative Gender Survey described in this document was conducted under the auspices of Socio-Dig, a Haiti-based research firm. The survey was part of larger evaluation and exploration of gender in Leogane and Carrefour, two communes (counties) near to Port-au-Prince that were among those most heavily impacted by the January 12th 2010 earthquake. Following theRead More

Surveys in Haiti