The tragic earth­quake in Haiti has shown us the immense forces of nature to which mankind is exposed. The inter­na­tional com­mu­nity reacted swiftly and com­pre­hen­sively to this cri­sis. I was—and still am—particularly impressed by the response of the peo­ple of Haiti and its sol­i­dar­ity with the vic­tims of the dis­as­ter. Most Haitians suf­fered from this tragedy in one way or another. They deplore fam­ily mem­bers who were killed or hurt, lost jobs or liveli­hoods, or had their houses and prop­er­ties destroyed or dam­aged. And yet the peo­ple showed an amaz­ing gen­eros­ity with those who were even more affected than them­selves. A large num­ber of the dis­placed have found refuge with and have been given sup­port by host fam­i­lies and host com­mu­ni­ties within and out­side of Port-au-Prince.

Today, seven weeks after the dis­as­ter struck, the emer­gency phase, which focused on life sav­ing activ­i­ties, has come to a close. Even if human­i­tar­ian needs remain sig­nif­i­cant and require the on-going atten­tion of the human­i­tar­ian actors, in par­tic­u­lar in terms of shel­ter and san­i­ta­tion, our focus must now shift toward the recov­ery and rebuild­ing of Haiti. The inter­nally dis­placed per­sons in Haiti must be pro­vided with the means to rebuild their exis­tence and to resume their life. They must be able to find a durable solu­tion to their dis­place­ment. The road toward durable solu­tions is long and ardu­ous.  The full com­mit­ment of the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity is needed to sup­port and facil­i­tate the tasks of the national and local author­i­ties in Haiti, which have the pri­mary respon­si­bil­ity to cre­ate con­di­tions con­ducive to durable solutions.

Find­ing durable solu­tions for inter­nally dis­placed per­sons is never easy. It is a grad­ual and long term process, dur­ing which human rights, human­i­tar­ian, devel­op­ment and recon­struc­tion chal­lenges need to be addressed. It also requires the close coor­di­na­tion and co-operation of national and local author­i­ties, human­i­tar­ian and devel­op­ment actors. I have seen sit­u­a­tions where the dis­placed con­tinue to live in run­down camps or col­lec­tive shel­ters years after a nat­ural dis­as­ter has struck because the polit­i­cal will or the capac­ity to rein­te­grate them into soci­ety is lack­ing. I have vis­ited places where the dis­placed were not able to return to their homes because of unre­solved prop­erty dis­putes. I have met with dis­placed per­sons, whose ini­tial hope after a dis­as­ter has given way to frus­tra­tion about unmet expec­ta­tions and des­per­a­tion about the lack of per­spec­tive due to lack of access to liveli­hoods. And I have come across far too many dis­placed per­sons who were not able to fully enjoy their human rights and faced dis­crim­i­na­tion and mar­gin­al­iza­tion and yet offi­cials called the recov­ery process a success.

Together with human­i­tar­ian and devel­op­ment actors I devel­oped a Frame­work for Durable Solu­tions, which gives guid­ance for a rights-based approach to durable solu­tions to the dis­place­ment of per­sons who were forced to flee or leave their homes but remained within their own coun­try. The Frame­work iden­ti­fies key ele­ments and good prac­tices regard­ing the process that should be fol­lowed and sets bench­marks against which the achieve­ment of durable solu­tions can be mea­sured. Based on the expe­ri­ences from many coun­tries affected by inter­nal dis­place­ment, the Frame­work stresses that more than return and recon­struc­tion of houses is needed to make solu­tions durable: Rather, durable solu­tions are only achieved once all rights affected by the dis­place­ment are restored and affected per­sons no longer have displacement-specific needs, i.e. needs they would not have had they not been dis­placed. The Frame­work was endorsed by the Inter-Agency Stand­ing Com­mit­tee and forms an annex to my annual report to the Human Rights Coun­cil.[1] Let me briefly illus­trate how the Frame­work and its ele­ments can be of use in Haiti in prepar­ing for and imple­ment­ing recov­ery mea­sures that lead to durable solutions.

• Informed choice on whether or not to return

The Frame­work clearly states that durable solu­tions can be achieved through sus­tain­able inte­gra­tion at the place of ori­gin (return), at the loca­tion where affected per­sons were dis­placed to (local inte­gra­tion), or at a loca­tion in another part of the coun­try (set­tle­ment else­where in the coun­try). It stresses the right of inter­nally dis­placed per­sons to choose between these solu­tions on the basis of suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion as well as the right to be con­sulted on and par­tic­i­pate in the plan­ning of durable solu­tions. In the con­text of Haiti, this means that early recov­ery and recov­ery pro­grams should not only respect these rights but build on them. Thus, recov­ery pro­grams should not only be designed for the areas which have suf­fered destruc­tion in order to pro­mote return of the dis­placed, but also for host com­mu­ni­ties in order to allow for local inte­gra­tion of those among the dis­placed who opt for this solution.

• Long term safety and security

IDPs must enjoy phys­i­cal safety and secu­rity. In the case of Haiti this means that Dis­as­ter Risk Reduc­tion measures—to reduce seis­mic risks as well as flood­ing and mud­slide risks linked to envi­ron­men­tal degradation—have to be an inte­gral part of the recon­struc­tion process. The focus should be on help­ing IDPs who want to return to build back bet­ter, so that their houses and pub­lic infra­struc­ture can with­stand future seis­mic or mete­o­ro­log­i­cal dis­as­ters. Relo­ca­tions to other parts of the coun­try should only be con­sid­ered as a last resort, and to the extent that safe return or local inte­gra­tion at the loca­tion they fled to is impos­si­ble, because these loca­tions would remain unsafe and life threat­en­ing even if rea­son­able dis­as­ter risk reduc­tion mea­sures are taken. Relo­ca­tions with­out the con­sent of those affected have to be based on a law, planned on the basis of an expert assess­ment and con­ducted with due infor­ma­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion of the affected per­sons in a non-discriminatory man­ner tak­ing spe­cial mea­sures to pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble and are only per­mis­si­ble if they are the only pos­si­bil­ity to pro­tect peo­ple against a real risk of seri­ous harm to life and limb.

Finally, the duty of the gov­ern­ment to pro­tect its pop­u­la­tion, includ­ing the dis­placed, requires strength­en­ing the police and legal struc­tures as part of the recov­ery efforts in order to be able to pro­vide secu­rity and access to legal pro­tec­tion mechanisms.

• Enjoy­ment of an ade­quate stan­dard of liv­ing with­out discrimination

IDPs in Haiti must have ade­quate access to essen­tial food and potable water, basic shel­ter and hous­ing, essen­tial med­ical ser­vices, san­i­ta­tion and at least pri­mary school edu­ca­tion not only dur­ing dis­place­ment but also in the areas where they can find a durable solu­tion for them. In this con­text, it is essen­tial for donors to fund pro­grams to sup­port small scale farm­ers and restore food security.

• Access to liveli­hoods and employment

Secur­ing liveli­hoods and employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in the long run will be a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge in the recov­ery process given the wide­spread poverty and the lack of employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties before the earth­quake. In the short term, the cash for work pro­grams run by UNDP and many other orga­ni­za­tions are an impor­tant oppor­tu­nity for Haiti’s dis­placed to take their life into their own hands and to avoid an aid depen­dency syn­drome. The enor­mous needs for recon­struc­tion also offer employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, which could be linked with appro­pri­ate train­ing pro­grams. More think­ing has to go into involv­ing women into such pro­grams and cre­ate liveli­hood oppor­tu­ni­ties for per­sons with disabilities

• Effec­tive and acces­si­ble mech­a­nism to restore hous­ing, land and property

Haiti doesn’t have a reli­able prop­erty reg­is­ter and many doc­u­ments were destroyed in the earth­quake. It has to be ensured that IDPs who want to return can regain phys­i­cal pos­ses­sion of the hous­ing and land they left behind. At the same time, an effec­tive mech­a­nism to set­tle prop­erty dis­putes should be cre­ated as reg­u­lar courts my not be in a posi­tion to han­dle a great num­ber of cases, and alter­na­tive proofs of prop­erty and own­er­ship in the absence of for­mal titles should be admitted.

• Access to per­sonal doc­u­men­ta­tion with­out discrimination

Many peo­ple lost their per­sonal doc­u­men­ta­tion, which causes a num­ber of very prac­ti­cal prob­lems, e.g. inter­na­tional money trans­fers can­not be picked up with­out an ID card. An expe­di­ent pro­ce­dure to issue per­sonal doc­u­men­ta­tion needs to be set up, which will also be impor­tant for the next elec­tions. The absence of death cer­tifi­cates could also raise ques­tions regard­ing pen­sion or inher­i­tances, which have to be care­fully analyzed.

The list of tasks is long and over­whelm­ing. What is urgently needed is a well-planned recov­ery strat­egy, a ROADMAP to rebuild the lives of Haiti’s IDPs that uses a human rights-based approach. It will be impor­tant to ensure a par­tic­i­pa­tion of the IDPs in the plan­ning and the man­age­ment of early recov­ery, recov­ery and devel­op­ment strate­gies and I encour­age inten­sive con­sul­ta­tion with the per­sons affected and dis­placed both in and out­side of Port-au Prince in the prepa­ra­tion of the Post Dis­as­ter Needs Assess­ment. In order to make the solu­tions truly durable it will also be impor­tant that IDPs can make a vol­un­tary and informed choice on where to rebuild their lives, whether their for­mer place of res­i­dence or at another loca­tion in Haiti.

I am con­fi­dent that the Post Dis­as­ter Needs Assess­ment will give answers to many of these ques­tions and will pro­vide a solid basis for the devel­op­ment of a strat­egy for durable solu­tions. The respect of the human rights of those affected by the dis­as­ter must be an inte­gral part of this strat­egy. I also call upon all actors remain fully engaged in this process. The vic­tims of the earth­quake deserve no less than that.