Does humanitarian coordination exclude local actors and weaken their capacity?

14/03/2012

Many reasons have been given to justify the exclusion of local actors from the humanitarian response in Haiti, such as the weakness of local institutions, human losses caused by the earthquake, the Presidential election, the cholera crisis and the partisan nature of Haitian organisations. The idea here is not to deny the importance of these factors, but there is a danger that, by concentrating on these, other essential issues are being overlooked which could explain why Haitians were marginalized during the emergency phase and why there have been difficulties in making the transition to reconstruction.