Haiti earthquake
Aid organisations, governments and the United Nations have been accused of failing Haiti by competing for publicity instead of getting on with the job of disaster relief.
By Bruno Waterfield
The Telegraph 22 Jan 2010
The Lancet medical journal accused the different groups of putting self-interest, a scramble for camera opportunities and rivalry before getting post-earthquake disaster relief properly organised.
"International organisations, national governments and non-governmental organisations are rightly mobilising, but also jostling for position, each claiming that they are doing the best for earthquake survivors," the journal said in an editorial.
"Some agencies even claim that they are 'spearheading' the relief effort. In fact, as we only too clearly see, the situation in Haiti is chaotic, devastating, and anything but co-ordinated."
The respected journal, which has been publishing since 1823, did not name any individual offenders but called for more scrutiny of an of the aid sector.
"Large aid agencies can be obsessed with raising money through their own appeal efforts," said the journal. "Media coverage as an end in itself is too often an aim of their activities. Marketing and branding have too high a profile."
But Brendan Gormley, the chief executive of the Disasters Emergency Committee, hit back saying there had been co-operation.
"Rather than "jostling" for position, 13 major UK aid agencies have come together under our banner," he said. "The media are essential to our efforts and our analysis shows that televised appeals have driven fund-raising for the Haiti Earthquake Appeal."
Elisabeth Byrs, a spokesman for the UN Organisation for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, also rejected the criticism.
"I think no one failed on this and the UN, the humanitarian community in general, and the Haitian people did their best to save as many lives as possible," she said.
The Lancet criticism came as the UN switched its focus from search and rescue operations to humanitarian aid for homeless refugees.
Yesterday "exhausted" aid workers started to leave the country ten days after the earthquake hit. Search teams increasingly began pulling bodies rather than survivors from the wreckage of Haiti's cities and towns.
Aid workers will now step up moves to rehouse 500,000 homeless Haitians living rough in and around the destroyed capital of Port-au-Prince to prevent a looming refugee crisis or a second disaster caused by disease and hunger.
Tens of thousands of Haitians have gathered at the capital's harbour, which partially reopened on Friday, hoping to flee the earthquake's aftermath and continuing aftershocks by sea.
US Coast Guard officials said that, while there were currently no signs of a mass migration, a refugee crisis was to be expected, with Haiti's northern coast a likely point of departure.
"Everything points to it, but it's not happening now," said Lieutenant Commander Mike Pierno of the US Coast Guard.
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