Haiti since the 2010 earthquake: A review of 11 years following the money

By Jake Johnston, Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR), August 24, 2021

After a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti’s southern peninsula on August 14, many are looking back at the devastating 2010 quake and examining lessons learned. For more than 10 years, our Haiti blog has tracked aid flows to Haiti as well as the long-term political fallout from the quake. The following is a partial review of that work.

Haiti, by the Numbers
- Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, Year 9, Year 10.

In April 2010, CEPR put out an issue brief looking at what it would have cost to source initial post-quake food aid from Haiti as opposed to importing from abroad. In subsequent years, the Haiti blog explored the long standing barriers to reforming food aid and the harm to local agriculture.
One cannot separate foreign assistance from politics. CEPR produced multiple publications on the 2010/2011 electoral process and the intervention of international actors that overturned the results.
- Haiti’s Fatally Flawed Election (report)
- The Organization of American States in Haiti: Election Monitoring or Political Intervention? (report)
- Haiti: From Original Sin to Electoral Intervention (interview with OAS whistleblower Ricardo Seitenfus)
- Head of OAS Electoral Mission in Haiti: International Community Tried to Remove Préval on Election Day
- Clinton Emails Reveal “Behind the Doors Actions” of Private Sector and US Embassy in Haiti Elections
- Clinton E-Mails Point to US Intervention in 2010 Haiti Elections

The single largest recipient of post-quake US funding was a for-profit contractor located in Washington, DC. In the fall of 2011, the blog produced a three-part series examining the rise of these private contractors in the aid world and their efforts to resist common sense reforms.
In the fall of 2010, United Nations troops introduced cholera into Haiti. The organizations refused to ever properly take responsibility.
Where did the money go? CEPR released a report in 2013 analyzing the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by USAID in the first two-plus years after the earthquake.
By the quake’s three-year anniversary, the official number of displaced persons had been reduced from 1.5 million to 360,000. But the large decrease in the official figures masked a burgeoning disaster.
- Haiti’s Increasingly Hidden Displacement Disaster
- IOM Reports Big Drop in IDP Population after Removing 3 Areas from “Official” Camp List
This article from 2014 explores the failures of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission and efforts by donors to provide new housing in the aftermath of the quake.
- Outsourcing Haiti: How Disaster Relief Became a Disaster of its Own

USAID’s flagship housing program became marred by cost overruns and faulty construction, resulting in the suspension of two contractors.
For many years, the Haiti blog raised questions over the spending of the American Red Cross in Haiti, noting that the ARC’s annual progress reports often seemed to raise more questions than they answered.
Cholera was far from the only scandal connected with the thousands of UN troops in Haiti. There was also an epidemic of sexual assault and abuse.

After the earthquake, the first contracts awarded by USAID were through the Office of Transition Initiatives, an overtly political arm of USAID. The program was run by Chemonics International.
The Haiti blog provided in-depth coverage of the 2015/2016 electoral process. Massive protests against fraud forced the results of the 2015 presidential election to be thrown out, against the desires of international donors.
In the fall of 2016, Hurricane Matthew devastated Haiti’s southern peninsula and delayed the rerun electoral process. In the storm’s aftermath, donors replicated many of the same mistakes from the 2010 earthquake.
- Elections on Hold in Haiti After Hurricane Matthew
- OCHA’s Flash Appeal for Haiti: Reinforcing Failed Aid Modalities
- Five part series in the run-up to the 2016 election. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.
In February 2017, Jovenel Moïse was inaugurated as president. The Haiti blog later traveled to his banana farm in rural Haiti, finding the land mostly fallow — and hundreds of displaced families who had long worked the land.
In the fall of 2017, there was a massacre at a school in the Grand Ravine neighborhood. It occurred during a UN-backed police raid of the neighborhood.
- UN Confirms It Helped Plan a Deadly Police Raid in Grand Ravine
In the summer of 2018, a nationwide protest movement focused on corruption took root.
In February 2019, Haitian police arrested a group of American mercenaries outside the country’s Central Bank. The Haiti blog produced this longform investigation into the case.
- Our Boss Will Call Your Boss
In January 2020 the terms of most of parliament expired, leaving President Moïse to rule by decree. He received strong backing from the international community despite the erosion of democratic norms.
The Haiti blog broke news on arms trafficking in Haiti, including the alleged involvement of the president’s head of security, who is now in jail following the assassination.
- State Department Awarded Contract to Politically Connected Security Firm
- EXCLUSIVE: Head of Haiti’s Palace Guard Subject of US Law Enforcement Investigation into Arms Trafficking

Jake Johnston is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

Posted August 25, 2021