(2010-03) Neglect in the Encampments: Haiti's Second-Wave Humanitarian Disaster

Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) • 2010 • 41 pages

Summary — An early assessment by the Lawyers' Earthquake Response Network of conditions in Haiti's displacement camps in the weeks after the January 2010 earthquake, documenting neglect of displaced families' basic needs and rights.

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Key Findings

The report documented conditions in six displacement camps in and around Port-au-Prince weeks after the January 12, 2010 earthquake, based on a survey of 90 randomly selected families. The follow-up reports in the series state that it found aid distribution totally lacking, incomplete, or seemingly arbitrary, and that residents lacked adequate access to shelter, water, food, sanitation, and medical care. It was presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on March 23, 2010 and became the baseline for the series' later surveys of the same families.

Full Description

This report, produced under the Lawyers' Earthquake Response Network with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and partners, documents conditions in Haiti's internally displaced persons camps in the weeks following the January 12, 2010 earthquake. According to the follow-up studies in the same series, it was based on a February 2010 survey of 90 families selected at random from six camps in and around Port-au-Prince and concluded that the distribution of aid was totally lacking, incomplete, or seemingly arbitrary, framing the neglect of camp residents as a second-wave humanitarian disaster. The report was presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C. on March 23, 2010, and served as the baseline for the later follow-up reports We've Been Forgotten (September 2010) and One Year After the Earthquake (January 2011), which tracked the same families' access to food, water, sanitation, shelter, and protection over time. The available extracted text of this PDF is limited to the letterhead, so this description relies on the record and on the follow-up reports in the series.

Topics

Geography

Time Coverage

2010 — 2010

Keywords

IDP camps, earthquake, humanitarian disaster, displacement, aid distribution, human rights, Port-au-Prince, Lawyers' Earthquake Response Network, IACHR, camp conditions

Entities

Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, Lawyers' Earthquake Response Network, Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

Notes

IJDH/LERN camp-conditions report, first round of the survey series; scanned PDF, text pending OCR; ayitistats wave B