(2011-01) One Year After the Earthquake: Haitians Still Living in Crisis

Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) • 2011 • 8 pages

Summary — A December 2010 follow-up survey of displaced families in six camps, by IJDH, BAI, and LAMP for Haiti, finds persistent hunger, scarce aid and work, and inadequate cholera prevention one year after the earthquake.

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Key Findings

One year after the earthquake, camp residents still faced widespread hunger: 71 percent of families had at least one member go a day without eating and 53 percent had a child do so, results nearly identical to July 2010. Aid was sparse, with 61 percent of families never receiving food from aid agencies and 50 percent receiving no drinking water from them. Work was scarce: only 44 percent of families had any income, averaging $1.30 per day for an average family of eight, and 60 percent lived on less than $1 a day. Despite the cholera outbreak confirmed in October 2010, 50 percent of respondents had received no cholera prevention assistance.

Full Description

This report presents results from a December 2010 survey, the third round of a longitudinal study of families displaced by the January 12, 2010 earthquake, conducted by the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, and the LAMP for Haiti Foundation. Of the 90 families first surveyed in February 2010 in six IDP camps in and around Port-au-Prince, 37 could be reached, mostly by telephone. One year after the earthquake, over one million internally displaced persons still lived in camps lacking basic infrastructure. The survey found widespread hunger, with 71 percent of families having a member go a day without eating in the prior week, limited access to safe drinking water, and sparse aid: only 8 percent of families received all or most of their drinking water from aid agencies. Sixty percent of families were living on less than one dollar a day. Following the October 2010 cholera outbreak, half of respondents had received no cholera prevention assistance, not even education. The report calls for long-term investment in camp infrastructure and a corrected, faster response to the epidemic.

Topics

Geography

Time Coverage

2010 — 2011

Keywords

earthquake anniversary, IDP camps, cholera, food insecurity, humanitarian aid, drinking water, reconstruction, longitudinal survey, evictions, Port-au-Prince, poverty

Entities

Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, LAMP for Haiti Foundation, United Nations, Pan American Health Organization, Bill Clinton, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, MSPP, Oxfam

Notes

IJDH/BAI/LAMP for Haiti longitudinal camp survey, third round; ayitistats wave B