Broken Bodies, Souls, and Ecology: Policy and Practice Gaps of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake Recovery

Background and Purpose

The occurrence of natural and human-made disasters and the crises that follow them is steadily increasing around the globe.  Myriad strategies have been developed to predict, prevent, respond to, and recover from disasters.  Emergency response has become the key modus operandi in post-disaster contexts.  Proponents of this model argue that in crisis situations, taking immediate action is more vital than discussing disaster and recovery.  This is why the narratives in post-disaster contexts have been insufficiently studied, especially from a social work perspective.  This research focuses on invisible narratives of disaster recovery that frame interventions, using the Haiti earthquake as example. 

Methods

The research examines the narratives of the 2010 Haiti earthquake disaster recovery in policy documents and non-governmental organizational documents.  Thirteen different documents (consisting of nearly 580 pages of text in total) produced between January, 2010 and January, 2012 by USAID, Haitian Government, Red Cross, and Oxfam were obtained online, uploaded into NVivo 10 qualitative analysis software, and coded thematically guided by the principles of grounded theory and interpretive policy analysis.  

Results

Data analysis reveals four policy and practice gaps of the Haiti earthquake disaster recovery – psychosocial, disability-related, spiritual, and concerned with environmental preservation – that are either insufficiently developed as targets of recovery action or are entirely silenced.  The general orientation in the analyzed documents is that fixing and improving physical environment prevails over healing broken bodies, souls, and ecological environment. 

The narratives of recovery across documents failed to account for people who will suffer long-term disabilities.  For example, the analyzed documents that prioritize disaster-resistant construction do not prioritize accessibility of physical environment for individuals with disabilities.  The invisibility of trauma and psychosocial recovery might be a function of the commonly promoted “from tragedy to opportunity” mantra that permeated the documents. This mantra was rife with normalizing and imposing assumptions that there is only one proper way to recover.  None of the documents discussed disaster recovery in spiritual and religious terms, thus rhetorically excluding local religious organizations and spiritual leaders from a broader recovery action.  Lastly, there was limited discussion around preserving environment; modernization and development agendas appeared as a mantra for advancing progress, building resilience, and eradicating vulnerabilities. 

Conclusions and Implications

The findings point to the need to re-think and re-design currently prevalent narratives of and approaches to disaster recovery to amplify and center the needs of the most vulnerable: people with disabilities, psychologically traumatized disaster survivors, and continuously abused environment.  Given the revealed policy and practice gaps, the involvement of social work practitioners and scholars in such a re-design is warranted.  From the social work perspective, a focus on human-nature relationships and preservation of environment is imperative, given that nature has a tremendous impact on human health and well-being.  Social work practitioners and scholars must actively advocate for the needs of survivors with disabilities, as well as for diverse ways of making sense of disasters, survival, and subsequent healing, and especially affirm the role of faith and spirituality in reaching post-traumatic recovery.