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Introduction
Haiti was struck by a magnitude 7 earthquake on 12 January 2010. Haiti is an island in the Caribbean Sea that sits on the boundary of two of the earth’s plates, which are sliding past one another. In Ja nuary 2010 these plates got stuck and when they jolted apart set off an enormous earthquake. 3,500,000 people were affected, 220,000 died, 1.5 million became homeless and many buildings such as hospitals and schools were destroyed.
Research question
Millions of pounds were raised to provide aid to Haiti, but how effective has that aid been?
Source 1
I used the internet to search for websites related to this topic. There was a lot of information on the Haiti earthquake so I had to refine my search to look for factual information on aid. The Disaster Emergency Committee’s website was useful and I also obtained statistics from the United Nations Human
Development Report website to see how well -off Haiti was before the earthquake.
Findings
Emergency aid was effective in dealing with the immediate problems of lack of housing and water supplies etc. The Disaster Emergency Committee gave aid to 1.8 million people, 890,000 had access to safe toilets, 720,000 were given clean water, 187,000 were given medica l consultations and over
100,000 were given emergency shelter. Without this aid many more people may have died.
However Diagram 2 shows that a year later there are still people who do not have proper housing or adequate living conditions. The government and the aid agencies have been criticised for not working well together. Aid money is still in the bank and not being used effectively. Some people feel that Haiti is becoming too dependent on aid.
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Source 2
A more recent article from the Guardian newspaper allowed me to see how people are doing in Haiti now. This was quite difficult to read but I highlighted the key points that I wanted to use.
Findings
Diagram 1 shows that Haiti, even before the earthquake, was one of the poorest countries in the world, 145th of 169 countries in the UN Human
Development Index. The life expectancy in 2010 was 61.7 years compared to
79.8 in the UK and the Gross National Income was $949 compared to $35,087 in the UK. This meant that Haiti could not recover from such a big disaster by itself. Aid was essential.
Conclusion
In conclusion I have found that although aid was effective in the short term it has not been effective in the long term. Haiti was such a poor country before the earthquake and has not managed to recove r despite the aid.
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