The Red Cross raised half a billion dollars for Haiti, but built just six homes, according to a damning new report and investigation by ProPublica and NPR.
The charity says it has provided homes to over 130,000 people after the 2010 earthquake, but an investigation by ProPublica and NPR found it has only built six permanent homes in Haiti, the Western hemisphere’s poorest country.
Despite a multimillion-dollar project to transform Campeche, a neighborhood in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince, the Red Cross was unable to build a single home there. Residents still live in rusty sheet metal shacks, without access to drinkable water, electricity or basic sanitation.
“What the Red Cross told us is that they are coming here to change Campeche. Totally change it,” said Jean Jean Flaubert, head of a community group, to ProPublica. “Now I do not understand the change that they are talking about. I think the Red Cross is working for themselves.”
Many relief organizations faced problems with the government of Haiti, but the Red Cross’ problems were worse.
They funneled money to foreign groups that couldn’t speak French or Creole and mismanaged the money, according to the report. The other groups took a cut of the donations, leading to overhead and management costs.
In another case, the Red Cross’ own costs ate up a third of the project’s budget.
“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 Red Cross told ProPublica in a statement.
But unlike most of the humanitarian organizations that responded in Haiti, the Red Cross kept soliciting money even after they had enough for the earthquake relief, raising far more than other charities.
The donations helped the Red Cross erase a $100 million deficit, NPR reports. The charity has also received criticisms for its handling of donations for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
The Red Cross claims to have helped with projects in Haiti like the repair of 4,000 homes, giving temporary shelters to several thousand families, giving $44 million for food donations after the earthquake, and funds for the construction of a hospital.
The charity group claims to have helped “more than 4.5 million” individual Haitians “get back on their feet,” according to materials reviewed by ProPublica.
Haiti’s prime minister at the time of the disaster, Jean-Max Bellerive, said of the Red Cross’ claim: “No, no. It’s not possible.”
Haiti’s entire population is around 10 million.
