When Academics Become Humanitarians: A Post-Disaster Programme by the State University of Haiti: Summary Report

The UCLP has two primary objectives: to improve the way stakeholders in urban crises engage with each other to form new partnerships and make better decisions; and to improve disaster preparedness and response in urban areas by developing, testing, and disseminating new approaches to the formation of these relationships and systems. The project has addressed these objectives by exploring four related themes: the role of actors who are not part of the formal national or international humanitarian system; accountability to affected populations (AAP); urban systems; and coordinating urban disaster preparedness.

This paper contributes to the first of these themes. By exploring the evolving role of the State University of Haiti (UEH) in responding to disasters since 2004, she draws much needed attention to a category of actor that the humanitarian system generally neglects. The paper raises interesting questions about the strengths and weaknesses of actors such as UEH who are outside the formal humanitarian system; in some cases their ‘informal’ status is their strength, as they are not viewed with suspicion by affected populations. There may be disadvantages, however, as they often lack the resources they need to be effective, and have weak monitoring and evaluation systems, if any.