The reconstruction of Haiti under investigation
After Haiti’s devastating earthquake over two years ago, several of the country’s reconstruction projects are not making the progress they should. Haiti’s first Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJH) investigates why
Launched in December 2011, FIJH has so far published seven investigative reports on the aid money assigned to the reconstruction following the country’s 2010 earthquake, many of which have been published in both national and international media.
Made up of print, radio and multimedia reports, the stories cover everything from bad management of money and resources to lacking coordination among aid organisations.
One story covers how millions of US dollars spent by international organisations to empty more than 11,000 portable toilets, has now dried up, ‘leaving a half-million internally displaced people with no place to “go” – literally’.
A lack of coordination and bad management
Another investigative report exposes that while promises have been made and money has been allocated to build 10,000 homes, only a few dozen have actually been built.
In the mountains above Léogâne, a town where 80-90% of all buildings were damaged as a result of the earthquake, housing problems continue to be rampant.According to one investigation, almost half of the emergency shelters distributed by a British aid organisation, remain uninhabited six months after they were built.
The report uncovers a complete lack of coordination among the aid organisations setting up the temporary housing, with many of them duplicating their efforts. According to the investigation, local officials were the first to recognise the dire situation:
– Victims complain that people who don’t need shelters got shelters, while others who were more vulnerable and more in need, didn’t get anything,” notes Laurore Joseph Jorés, a member of the Cormiers Communal Section Administrative Council, in the investigation.
The Fund for Investigative Journalism in Haiti (FIJH) was launched in December 2011, supported by International Media Support (IMS) together with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). It seeks to instill a culture of quality investigative reporting amongst Haiti’s journalists and to ‘help jumpstart a public demand for accountability’.
FIJH was set up to support journalists who might otherwise not have the financial means, resources or skills to conduct investigative reporting. An integral part of a free and just society is an independent press that strives to provide accurate, balanced and meaningful information. It is vital to create a corps of investigative journalists who have the capacity to report on society in a way that holds government officials, aid agencies and others accountable, especially in the reconstruction period following the January 12, 2010, earthquake.
A second round of investigations is slated for this spring. Click here for more information about the Fund for Investigative Journalism in Haiti.
