Communication Practices in Disaster Risk Management: Haiti Study Report 2018
- The 2018 study is the first national study focused on communication practices for disaster risk management in Haiti.
- It combines an online survey, a field survey and focus groups, with explicit attention to gender, disability and human-security concerns.
- Radio, word of mouth and SMS are the top field-survey information sources for disaster risk management, while internet users prefer Facebook/WhatsApp visuals, WhatsApp messages and SMS.
- Vulnerable rural communities and people with disabilities have more limited access to communication sources, even though they are often strongly exposed to natural hazards.
- Only a minority of field respondents reported receiving or participating in civil-protection communication activities, indicating gaps in outreach coverage.
- Recommendations emphasize radio, SMS, community channels, civil-protection brigadiers, Creole-language messages, short written formats, illustrated videos and adapted tools for women, children, older people and people with disabilities.
Early warning only works if the warning arrives and is acted on, and this is the study that tests both halves for Haiti: which channels, sources and activities civil protection actually uses, how far they reach, and what the population under study knows and does about disaster risk. It reaches the corpus as one of the annexes attached to the human security study entry on UNDP's page, but it is a separate report with its own commissioning and method.
How to cite
Direction de la Protection Civile (DPC); United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Communication Practices in Disaster Risk Management: Haiti Study Report 2018, https://www.undp.org/fr/haiti/publications/etude-sur-les-insecurites-humaines-liees-aux-catastrophes-naturelles-dans-5-departements-sud-grandanse-nord-nordest-et-nord-ouest