Archie@ActionAid

It is three weeks since the devastating earthquake hit Haiti and the Government of Haiti estimates that nearly 200,000 people have died, 250,000 people have been injured and a further 500,000 people have lost their homes.

This is the first emergency ActionAid has been engaged in where our own staff have been directly affected. One of our staff members lost his wife and children whilst others either lost close family members or had to rescue their loved ones from the rubble. Many of our staff members homes were destroyed and even those who didn’t lose their homes are living in tents due to damage to their homes or as a safety measure due to recurring aftershocks.

The ActionAid team undertook initial assessments within 48 hours after the earthquake on our Port au Prince development area. Those assessments indicated that the communities of Mariani, where we had been engaged in long term development work were hugely affected and there were 9,000 people living in nine camps. We have now distributed food and essential supplies to these people and we will be aiming to reach a further 11,000 people in the next week.

In addition to responding to these immediate needs we are working to ensure that poor people in Haiti are involved in decision making processes in all activities that are being designed to help them. We are working with our partner organisations in the camps to create local committees (that ensure that the most vulnerable will also benefit), prevent violence against women, organize local distributions, and ultimately empower these displaced people to claim their human rights in the disaster response.

In addition to our work in Haiti ActionAid has been closely monitoring the international community’s response to the disaster. It was particularly gratifying when the IMF bowed to pressure from activists and the media and converted their $100 million emergency loan into a grant, removing all conditionalities that are attached to emergency loans.

Thank you to all of our friends and supporters who have been contributing to our emergency response appeal for Haiti. We thank you for your generosity and for enabling ActionAid to work with the people of Haiti to find solutions to this human tragedy.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the world radical lately. What does being radical really mean?

Let me put this in some context.

I recently attended the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) Annual Council Meeting in Canberra with approximately 130 colleagues from across the Australian NGO movement.

A highlight of the meeting was the robust discussions on a Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA) to poverty eradication and development which led to frank conversations on power relations and inequality.

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