Reconstructing Haiti

We'll examine why – after three years and $15.3 billion – Haiti is still in crisis after the deadliest earthquake ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.

On 12 January 2010 the deadliest earthquake ever recorded in the western hemisphere hit Haiti, claiming between 230,000 and 300,000 lives. As aid organisations flooded the country there was an unprecedented outpouring from the international community, and $15.3 billion was pledged for relief and reconstruction.

We will be joined by a panel of experts from the humanitarian aid community and reporters who covered the earthquake and the subsequent reconstruction efforts, to examine why – after three years and $15.3 billion – the country is still in crisis.

In a recent development, cholera victims in Haiti are threatening to sue the UN, accusing them of negligently allowing peacekeeping soldiers to pollute Haiti’s water with cholera. We will be asking how the situation went so wrong and have the lessons been learned.

The panel:

Jonathan Katz is a writer and reporter, he is author of The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster. He has written for the AP for six years, stationed in Haiti for nearly three and a half years and was the only American reporter in the country when the earthquake hit on 12 January 2010. He is the 2010 recipient of the Medill Medal of Courage in Journalism and the 2012 winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for this book.

Additional panelists to be confirmed.

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