Haiti Case Study - The Department of Global Health and Social ...

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HAITI AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE AND BEYOND
41. While the earthquake was itself an unparalleled humanitarian disaster, its catastrophic
implications for almost all leading organizations in Haiti transformed it into to a statethreatening
mega-disaster. The institutions—the government, the UN, the aid agencies and
the NGOs—that would ordinarily manage a crisis were themselves incapacitated by it.
42. The Government of Haiti (GoH) lost people, infrastructure, assets and administrative
information. The presidential palace, the legislative building and 28 of 29 ministry buildings
collapsed. 38 Among the destroyed capabilities were some critical to disaster response
including the National Disaster Risk Management System (NDRMS) and the Emergency
Operations Centre of the Direction de la Protection Civile (DPC), although the latter
immediately regrouped and became operational within hours, despite their lack of
communications and office space. 39
43. The earthquake also compromised the mandated international security force, the UN
stabilization mission, MINUSTAH. Among MINUSTAH's 171 fatalities from the earthquake
were MINUSTAH’s Head of Mission and Special Representative of the Secretary General
Hédi Annabi, his deputy Luiz Carlos da Costa, the Acting Police Commissioner Douglas
Coates. It destroyed MINUSTAH’s headquarters and many office buildings. In the early
days of the response, MINUSTAH focused on rescuing its staff and recovering its operational
resources 40 .
44. Many UN bodies, NGOs, bilateral government agencies and IOs, which the fragile state
of Haiti had previously relied upon to help the state function, found themselves in a similar
position to the Haitian government and MINUSTAH. For example, according to UN Office for
the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs' (OCHA) After Action Review, the “centre of gravity”
for the UN response shifted to the Department of Peacekeeping offices in New York, which
was able to stand up faster but was much farther from the centre of activity and need. 41 As
one participant stated, “We were in no position to help anyone—we couldn’t even help
ourselves!” 42
45. The devastation wrought by the earthquake on the already fragile state of Haiti, as
summarized by principal system in the following table, compounded the impact of the cholera
epidemic that was to strike ten months later.
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