Domestic and Sexual Violence in Haiti: Insufficient Remedies, Inadequate Response

By Josh Doherty, Visiting Focus Blogger Like many countries across the world, Haiti suffers from an epidemic of domestic and sexual violence. Although some efforts have been undertaken to reduce vulnerabilities within the IDP camps, and a number of initiatives have been proposed for the country as a whole, intimate partner violence continues to affect…

Responsibility and Accountability: The Haitian Epidemic and the United Nations

By Adam Houston, Jerry Stenquist, Beatrice Lindstrom, Katharina Rall, and Alok Pokharel, Visiting Focus Bloggers  This piece is the second in a series on the cholera epidemic sweeping Haiti. This perspective was written by staff and legal fellows at the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH). The Haitian cholera epidemic is the most serious of…

Cholera: The Epidemic Power of Vibrio cholerae

By Jeremy Akers, Danny Mays, Marc Siegel, MD, Visiting Focus Bloggers  This is the first in a series of posts on cholera and its impact on Haiti. The first post is a discussion of the disease itself, and serves as an examination of medical and epidemiological factors that enabled cholera to be carried by Nepalese…

Audits as Usual?

By Scott Freeman, Visiting Scholar A GAO report on the activities of USAID Haiti was released last week, and those who are engaged in the topics of aid in Haiti are undoubtedly already aware of the report and for many, the report is not surprising. Commissioned through requests made by the House Foreign Affairs Committee,…

On the Role of History and Social Science in Policy

By Kiran Jayaram, Visiting Focus Blogger  Five days after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, I smuggled myself onto a bus chartered by the Dominican government, and for the next two weeks, I assisted the relief efforts in Haiti by working with the Cruz Roja Dominicana (CRD).  Indeed, the Dominican government and non-state actors in the Dominican…

The Invisible Walls of Aid

By Scott Freeman, Visiting Scholar In order to prepare students for the aid industry, graduate and undergraduate institutions have designed degrees and concentrations in international development. Focusing on thinking critically about policy and procedure, students are ostensibly prepared so that previous errors will not be repeated again. But once one is ‘in’ the industry, is…

Images and “Saving”

By Scott Freeman, Visiting Scholar As an anthropologist, and one that focuses on Haiti, it is imperative to think and reflect on representation: how we represent those we work with, and to what end. These representations are not some sort of post-modern exercise in self absorption (though in academia, anything can become an exercise of self…

The Two Faces of the UN

By Scott Freeman, Visiting Scholar  “All those Haitians who suffered such abuses have a right to see justice is done.”                                                                      …

Haiti Advocacy Working Group Recent Events: Dialogues between Haitian Institutions and US Aid Groups

By Scott Freeman, Visiting Scholar This past week, the Haiti Advocacy Working Group put together a gathering of representatives from Haitian NGOs, development aid workers, and a few members of Haitian and American governments. While I wasn’t able to attend the entire three day event, I was able to attend the panel on agriculture in…

UNDP’s Questionable Claims of Progress

By Scott Freeman, Visiting Scholar Heraldo Muñoz, the Chilean Assistant Secretary-General and Assistant Administrator Director of the Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, UNDP, recently published an article in Foreign Policy regarding the ‘real’ recovery of Haiti. It was seemingly a response to recent books on the topic of reconstruction and development (for example, here) and New…