HAP component of the Quality and Accountability deployment to Haiti wraps up this week
After an initial 3 week assessment mission to Haiti in February / March, a 6 month Q&A deployment was commenced in March that retained two to three HAP staff throughout. HAP has this week reached the end of our planned in-country presence aiming to raise the profile and practice of accountability in the humanitarian response to earthquake affected communities. Both deployments were conducted in collaboration between HAP and Sphere resource people, and the Sphere component will continue a short while longer.
The end of our presence does not mean that HAP will end its engagement in Haiti. Plans being formulated include a mission focusing on the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA), and a follow up visit in a few months’ time to assess impact and further support needs.
Two HAP Geneva staff, Jamie Munn and Greg Gleed, returned this week from Port-au-Prince after conducting an after-action review and extensive consultations with affected communities. Findings from both of these projects will be available shortly on our website, along with a post deployment report and an article highlighting the findings of camp committee assessments across 4 camps, the result of a project conducted in collaboration with IOM. The full report from the community consultations will be published in HAP’s 2010 annual report.
As we bring this phase of our work to a close, HAP would like to thank:
• The ACT Alliance, DANIDA, ECHO, World Vision and Tearfund for their generous financial support to this endeavour;
• The DRSS project of RedR and Bioforce for hosting the team;
• World Vision for making a senior staff member available to work on the team for 4 months;
• The Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains for supporting the work of the team, in particular through the secondment of a staff member during the latter months;
• Erik Johnson of DCA and John Damerell of Sphere for their collaboration in co-managing the overall quality and accountability project with us;
• The Sphere resource consultants who have collaborated with the HAP team since February;
• All the national and international humanitarian non-government, inter-government and UN organizations who participated in the deployment and contributed to its success through their commitment and hard work in improving accountability to Haitians affected by the earthquake, HAP members and non-members alike, and, last but not least;
• The staff who worked above and beyond the call of duty to ensure the success of the deployment, balancing the high demand on them for services, support and advice, in particular: Troels Sorensen, Elie Gasagara, Emily Rogers, Lies Dewallef and Coleen Heemskerk.
For further information on HAP’s work in Haiti, or on our work generally in new and escalating emergency settings, visit the "HAP in Haiti" section of our website or contact Barb Wigley at bwigley@hapinternational.org
