Is Haiti Dangerous for Aid Workers?

This is inspired by a conversation I had a few days ago with my friend Daniel Zier about things to consider before actually going to Haiti. He brought up relevant concerns about danger.

Daniel and many others are concerned that Haiti is a dangerous place to be right now. The question we debated is whether the media has overstated possible dangers to aid workers or in Port-au-Prince. We’ve both heard that recovery aid has been slow—Damon Winter on the New York Times Lens blog says in an interview with James Estrin:

I’m just amazed at the lack of relief that we’re seeing here. Every day, we go out with the intention of finding some kind of relief program happening here. And we just don’t find it. I’ve seen one U.N.-sponsored food distribution food line and that’s pretty much the only thing I encountered, beyond a local police officer who owned a water truck and who was distributing water to these really, really desperate people.

But as Estrin points out, can you really call some people fighting over meager supplies looting? Natalie Hopkinson at The Root argues that the media, in this case, the New York Times, is too quick to interpret images of black survivors who are possibly foraging for food both in Haiti and New Orleans during Katrina as looters.

And there’s a sense that looting, violence or other security issues could be part of the reason aid isn’t getting disseminated across Port-au-Prince quickly or efficiently. Daniel says the videos that he’s seen on CNN and online look like “Hell on Earth” (I haven’t watched any video coverage, have just been reading articles). He saw it reported on Rachel Maddow’s show that neighborhoods have set up roadblocks of corpses. We both heard that two aid workers from the Dominican Republic were shot. And Lt. General Ken Keen of the U.S. Southern Command has said that “incidents of violence” are hindering aid workers and “fear of looters and robbers has been one of the factors slowing the delivery of aid.”

This seems to me like a justification for the military to come to Haiti and act like, well, the military. Implementing and enforcing curfews, controlling citizens through force and threats of violence and generally dehumanizing the already terrified population. Creating an illusion of a state of chaos in part because the military functions more efficiently and effectively when it has permission to use force and is free from restrictions of peacetime civility. It is the military, after all—but, of course, I’m not there, I can’t confirm or deny reports of violence and this is my paranoid mistrust of troop activity in general, I admit.

I would have imagined the collapsed port and single airport runway are bigger impediments to aid workers, especially since others, including Paul Farmer of Partners in Health and Michael Appleton, another photographer for the Times Lens blog, both denied rumors of widespread violence or looting—

Appleton compared it to the 2004 coup in today’s post, saying:

“It feels much safer than 2004, when there were people with knives and guns everywhere. There is much more suffering now, but people are together — in groups of hundreds — still sleeping in the street, still singing prayers.”

This leaves me no more or less convinced that Haiti is dangerous for aid workers right now. I can imagine that distributing food, water and medical supplies to desperate people can get chaotic, but isn’t that always the case in disaster response? Aren’t these organizations trained to diffuse situations and address need peacefully and efficiently?

My sense is the true danger in Haiti is to Haitians approaching a week post-earthquake without adequate help.

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