To engage or not to engage Haiti’s urban armed groups? Safe access in disaster-stricken and conflict-affected cities

Abstract

International agencies responding to humanitarian crises in cities are increasingly faced with urban armed groups controlling neighbourhoods where the most vulnerable sections of society are located. In such settings, it is not clear how to deliver aid to those who need it the most without further strengthening predatory armed actors. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Haiti, this article contributes to the emerging debate on the engagement of non-state armed groups in the context of disaster-stricken and conflict-affected cities, by presenting new empirical evidence on how humanitarian and development actors negotiate safe access in Port-au-Prince's gang-ruled neighbourhoods in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. While some major development agencies have struggled to minimize the unintended-yet potentially harmful-consequences of their activities for beneficiaries, the approach of the Brazilian NGO Viva Rio offers important lessons for more effective humanitarian response to urban crises in comparable contexts.

Negotiating humanitarian space with criminal armed groups in urban Latin America

“…While these platforms are typically composed of local representatives from different sectors, such as business, education, health, and religion, many organisations have also included gang leaders to ensure safe access to the territory under their control. In this respect, it has been noted that that it is important to empower other community leaders who are part of the platform to avoid gang leaders assuming a leadership role (Schuberth, 2017b).…”

“…While a number of studies have since discussed the matter of how international agencies operating in cities should respond to the challenge posed by CAGs (Wennmann, 2014;Schuberth, 2017a;Bradley, 2020), a few case studies have provided empirical evidence on how international humanitarian and development actors have engaged CAGs in practice, from Mogadishu (Somalia) (Grünewald, 2012) to Port-au-Prince (Schuberth, 2017b). Savage and Muggah (2012, p. 8), for instance, list four different entry points that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) can utilise to engage in violenceplagued cities across Latin America:…”

Providing basic services under siege: preliminary insights from interim councils and medical providers in besieged urban areas of Syria

“… 9. Carpenter, S, R Slater and R Mallett (2012), “Social protection and basic services in fragile and conflict-affected situations: a global review of the evidence”, Working Paper 8, Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium; also Schuberth, Moritz (2017), “To engage or not to engage Haiti’s urban armed groups? Safe access in disaster-stricken and conflict-affected cities”, Environment and Urbanization Vol 29, No 2, pages 425–442. …”