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Hundreds of thousands of Haitians are attempting to leave the capital, Port au Prince, devastated by last week’s earthquake. Aid officials have started to put up tent cities on the outskirts for up to 400,000 people, to try to halt the spread of disease in the makeshift settlements that have sprung up. The aid effort in Haiti has been frustratingly slow by some accounts. The World’s Matthew Bell looks into how aid agencies might do better.
- BBC coverage
- The Guardian: aid agencies accused of ‘jostling for position’
- In pictures: Haiti receives aid and treatment
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MARCO WERMAN: Speeding up the flow of aid to earthquake survivors is a top priority now in Haiti. As we’ve heard for days now, there are countless obstacles in the way of aid workers but some say the aid groups themselves are contributing to the delays because they’re too busy competing with each other. The World’s Matthew Bell has been looking into that.
MATTHEW BELL: The correspondent in a recent CNN report from Haiti, went back and forth between two emergency facilities, one run by Israelis and one by Americans. And she covered the story in a way that would have worked well on ESPN. It was all about competition as she spoke to some American medical staff.
SPEAKER: So the Israelis have set up a field hospital. Have the Americans? Has the American government set up a field hospital?
SPEAKER #2: Currently not yet. The Israelis came from the other side of the world. It’s a frustrating thing that I really can’t explain.
SPEAKER #3: Yeah, it’s something that makes you almost embarrassed to be an American.
SPEAKER: The situation is beyond desperate at this point.
BELL: The showdown element might make for better TV, but it also highlights the way humanitarian aid groups respond to a disaster like the one in Haiti right now. Rhona MacDonald is an editor with the British medical journal, The Lancet.
RHONA MacDONALD: Sometimes what we imagine aid agencies would all work together for the greater good, but unfortunately, on the ground that doesn’t always happen. It’s about what each charity can do so they’re working, some of the time, in competition rather than collaboration and because of that, then they’re not most effective and so they’re not saving as many lives as they could.
BELL: McDonald helped write an editorial in The Lancet today that knocks large aid groups for being so obsessed with raising money and telling their own story, that they sometimes let things like media interviews and public relations get in the way of delivering aid.
MacDONALD: I think aid agencies have done as best they can under terribly difficult circumstances so I don’t want to spotlight any particular agency but again, the main point is they can do so much more when they work collaboratively and on the ground, they don’t often work collaboratively.
BELL: Part of this is about economics. Aid groups live off of donations. They compete against each other for some of the same pots of money. The way each group responds to Haiti in its hour of need, will make for an important element in future appeals for support. But United Nations spokeswoman, Stephanie Bunker, says The Lancet goes too far when it says the aid industry is guilty of losing its humanitarian focus.
STEPHANIE BUNKER: I really do not think that the agencies and the NGO’s are seeking media coverage as an end in and of itself.
BELL: Bunker also disputes the contention that aid groups in Haiti are failing to coordinate their activities and work collaboratively.
BUNKER: This article actually is throwing a whole lot of babies out with the bath water. The United Nations, in our humanitarian work, we work with non-governmental organizations and I will tell you right here and right now that if we didn’t have them to work with, there wouldn’t be, you know, any kind of a humanitarian aid operation to scale. They’re that important.
BELL: Aid groups are not above criticism, says Peter Bell of Harvard University. But in his experience, as a former president of the aid group, CARE, humanitarian agencies have been pretty good at staying on task and working together under difficult circumstances and he recalls something that happened in Haiti several years ago in the wake of tropical storm Jean.
PETER BELL: We had the largest warehouse in Haiti and we had colleagues from World Vision and Catholic Relief Services, working right alongside us where people were clambering for food and young men waiting with pistols and rifles in the background, wanting to push their way to the front of the line and actually it was a very well coordinated and cooperative effort, under pressure.
BELL: From outside Haiti, Bell says the aid effort does look chaotic and unorganized but he said that might have more to do with the extent of the damage and the numbers of dead and injured people, then with any tendency toward competition among aid groups. For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.
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Loved your excellent introduction of the African musician. My Ipod collects world music, and he will be an welcome addition.
You made one non-trivial mistake, however. I have been following Bonnie Raitt, since the time I paid 25 cents for one of her concerts. She was alone and still nervous in her between-song patter. She is not a country singer; she is a blues singer par excellence.
i would like to donate money for the haiti earthquake