5 Year Anniversary: Haiti Response

Looking back 5 years ago to the 2010 Haitian earthquake, we as a humanitarian community need to reflect upon the outcomes, both negative and positive, of the response efforts post-quake. The outcomes need to be examined to better assess and improve our own systems of response, and to refine our understandings of what communities need in order to recover from and thrive after disasters such as these.

A few of the key issues to consider include:

• How locating technology can be improved to find survivors in rubble.
• What were the negative effects of foreign aerospace management during the crisis?
• Review of after-action reports for various stakeholders and key players, such as the US Military Report, UNICEF Humanitarian Report on Haiti, and Harvard Review of OCHA Response to name a few examples.

We encourage our wider community to evaluate what new insights can be gleaned, strategies implemented, and technology fine-tuned to better aid survivors and support infrastructure in a crisis. Most importantly, we must determine how we can better listen to local community input from the affected populations, as they know far better than we what they need in these scenarios.