Journal of International Peace Operations
Volume 6, Number 1 – July/August 2010

Rebuilding Haiti will be an uphill task.

IN managing post-disaster reconstruction, a complex series of decisions need to be made almost immediately by all those involved. Despite this pressure, one must remember that these decisions will have long-term impacts on those affected by the disaster. Ideally, reconstruction policy would have been defined by government before the disaster, but there are few countries where this is the case. Therefore, defining and deliberating over the reconstruction policy will generally occur in the precious time after the disaster.

The Communities Group International (TCGI) was contracted by the World Bank, beginning in 2008, to prepare a handbook on post-disaster housing reconstruction. The World Bank intended the handbook to assist government policy makers and government and donor project managers engaged in large-scale post-disaster reconstruction programs make decisions about how to reconstruct housing and communities after natural disasters.[1] This article describes the key findings and recommendations from the handbook, and proposes what a reconstruction project in one town in Haiti that conforms to the best practices identified in the handbook might look like.

International experience — and the case studies in the reconstruction handbook — clearly demonstrate that reconstruction policy defined by government should encompass five key areas: the Institutional Strategy, the Financial Strategy, the Community Participation Approach, the Reconstruction Approach and Risk Management. At the same time, it also shows that local communities can and usually want to be put in charge of many of the operational practicalities of the reconstruction process. This combination of “top-down policy” and “bottom-up operations” has repeatedly been shown to be the most effective and efficient way to manage reconstruction.

Journal of International Peace Operations
Volume 5, Number 6- May/June 2010

Compliments of the chef

IN the weeks after a devastating earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, the World Food Programme (WFP) has reached nearly 4 million people across the shattered earthquake zone with much-needed food assistance. Within 24 hours of the earthquake, WFP was distributing food, as the agency already had food and staff in country for a long standing operation. WFP was rushing out emergency rations- high energy biscuits and ready-to-eat meals in the first days of the crisis, even as survivors were still being dug out from the battered infrastructure and the country was suffering intense aftershocks. Reaching out to the most vulnerable in hospitals and orphanages, WFP staff worked tirelessly to provide life saving assistance, even though 70 percent of WFP staff lost their homes and were sleeping in tents in the WFP compound.

WFP Executive Director, Josette Sheeran described it as one of the most complex operations, if not the most complex operation WFP had ever faced. The needs were quite vast, and the supply chain of food getting in was a nightmare. Haiti’s infrastructure was not that strong to start with, but what they had was completely largely obliterated and broken.