Genetically Modified Organizations? Understanding & Supporting Civil Society in Urban Haiti

The article answers media and aid-agency images that treated Port-au-Prince as a place without law or institutions. Schuller draws on social mapping of four neighborhoods in 2009, a survey of a random sample of 108 camps for internally displaced people in 2010, and in 2011 a survey of 800 households and interviews with 80 residents in eight camps. He describes camp committees as "genetically modified" organizations: hybrids of Haitian solidarity groups and the structures created by NGO aid.

He reports that residents often knew little about their committee, and that camps managed by NGOs scored lower than other camps on several governance indicators. He argues that informal solidarity groups and formal grassroots groups were often pushed aside in favor of structures that exist mainly to serve NGOs, and that aid after the earthquake had unintended consequences as a result. He concludes that donors, the government and NGOs need to distinguish grassroots groups from "Astroturf" and to support the ones that work.