Is the Humanitarian Failure in Haiti a System Failure?

Abstract

It has become common sense in humanitarian circles to refer to the emergency responses to the 2010 Haiti earthquake and subsequent cholera outbreak as a failure. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) began doing so publicly in a December 2010 article published in The Guardian. In this regard, Jean-Marc Biquet’s article – ‘Haiti: Between Emergency and Reconstruction. An Inadequate Response‘ – reflects a long list of publications that describe and analyse the international system’s shortcomings in res...