Red Cross raises over $500 million, reportedly only builds six homes in Haiti

theGRIO REPORT - Despite raising over $500 million after the devastating earthquake that ravaged the island nation of Haiti in 2010, a new expose by ProPublica revealed this week that the Red Cross built a mere six permanent homes, while over 130,000 residents remained in slums...

Richard Scott Brookshire III

Jun 4, 2015

Despite raising over $500 million after the devastating earthquake that ravaged the island nation of Haiti in 2010, a new report by ProPublica reveals that the Red Cross built a mere six permanent homes to house those affected.

To date, nearly 130,000 residents still remain in slums without access to clean water, electricity, and basic sanitation due to misuse of funds.

The Red Cross points to systemic failures in logistics and contracting to explain its difficulties in carrying out a mission to revitalize the neighborhood of Campeche in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince.

“Like many humanitarian organizations responding in Haiti, the American Red Cross met complications in relation to government coordination delays, disputes over land ownership, delays at Haitian customs, challenges finding qualified staff who were in short supply and high demand, and the cholera outbreak, among other challenges.”

The ProPublica report illustrates how the Red Cross repeatedly failed on the ground in Haiti, citing confidential memos, emails from concerned top officials, and accounts of a dozen frustrated and disappointed whistle blowers seeking to expose how the charity repeatedly broke promises, squandered donations, and made dubious claims regarding successes all while maintaining its undeserved reputation as the charity of choice for Americans seeking to donate funds to Haiti.

This isn’t the first time concerns about donations that poured into Haiti after the 2010 earthquake has sparked criticism and outrage. A 2013 Guardian report found that 94% of humanitarian funding in Haiti went to donors’ own civilian and military entities, UN agencies, and international NGOs who divied out nearly 36% of all donations to private contractors with little to no transparency about how funds were being spent and next to no method of accountability.

NGO corruption in Haiti is so wide spread that it inspired a documentary, Fatal Assistance that sought to expose and examine how international aid agencies systematically failed Haiti after the catastrophic earthquake.