As the first World Humanitarian Summit convenes on May in Istanbul, Jacqueline Plaisir, Deputy Director of ATD Fourth World, summarizes what is at stake and speaks about her experiences with people living in extreme poverty who faced the earthquake in Haiti, civil war in the Central African Republic, and other emergencies.
ATD Fourth World is not a humanitarian relief provider. Why be heard on this subject? In any humanitarian crisis, people and communities in extreme poverty are heavily impacted. They generally live in the least accessible and most dangerous places β in lowlands that flood easily, on steep hillsides, on precipices that are eroding.
Our commitment to reaching the most marginalized people has shaped our understanding of their lives. For 60 years now, ATD has been on the front-lines of the emergency of extreme poverty. It was founded in an emergency housing camp for a thousand homeless people who had only four sources of water. In recent years, our teams have stood by families living in extreme poverty during disasters like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the earthquake in Port-au-Prince, armed conflict in Central Africa, and the relocation, eviction, or displacement of communities in the Philippines, Madagascar, and Mauritius.
Their voices should be heard by anyone seeking to improve the effectiveness of humanitarian intervention, which is the goal of the summit. For years now, policies have targeted only the most easily accessible areas. This meant that all relief organizations avoided these zones entirely.
When the earthquake took place, the no-go zone where we were living received zero distributions of aid. We were close enough to see airplanes flying in with clean water and food β but the 25, people in this zone went hungry. Intervention that does not build long-term answers jeopardizes the future. In Haiti, the decision to make all health care free for six months was made in a vacuum. The same NGOs tend to hire staff for contracts of only three-to-six months. Such rapid turnover creates an impossible learning curve.
