Insecurity and Humanitarian Aid in Haiti: An Impossible Dialogue? Analysis of Humanitarian Organisations’ Security Policies in Metropolitan Port-au-Prince

Security in Haiti is among the most controversial issues within and between different international organizations. Perceptions of insecurity vary a great deal from one actor to another, and notably between humanitarian organizations and development NGOs. The study presented in this report analyses the views that are held about violence and crime in metropolitan Port-au-Prince, and the validity of the security measures put in place to deal with insecurity or the feeling of insecurity. The objective of this report is therefore not to contribute to the consolidation of humanitarian organisations’ security policies, nor to transmit the security-based ideology which has accompanied these policies since the middle of the 1990s. On the contrary, the aim of this study is to provide humanitarian organizations who want to revise their security approach in Haiti with information that could help them in this endeavour. In order to do this, it is necessary to broaden and deepen the debate about the security of humanitarians beyond technocratic “risk management” approaches which depoliticize the phenomenon of insecurity and the feeling of insecurity.