Humanitarian Assistance

The Guiding Principles obligate governments to provide humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons in accordance with the principles of humanity and impartiality and without discrimination. They state that international humanitarian organizations and other appropriate actors have the right to offer assistance and that consent to do so shall not be withheld—especially when authorities are unable or unwilling to provide the needed assistance themselves. They also mandate that international humanitarian organizations offering assistance are obligated to protect the human rights of IDPs. These principles were not always honored in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

 

Politics in Aid Allocation

To understand the role that partisan politics played in the allocation of humanitarian assistance, consider the aid allotted through Community Development Block Grants, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development program that funds affordable housing and infrastructure.

The first package of rebuilding legislation approved by the 109th Congress capped Democrat-led Louisiana’s portion of the block grants at 54 percent of the total appropriation, even though Louisiana suffered 77 percent of all housing damage from the 2005 storms—four times that suffered in Republican-led Mississippi.¹⁶⁶ Mississippi also received 70 percent of the funds from FEMA’s Alternative Housing Pilot Program designed to help storm-displaced Gulf residents.¹⁶⁷ In addition, Mississippi and Louisiana received $100 million each for K-12 students affected by the storms, despite the fact that 69 percent were Louisiana residents.¹⁶⁸

The Republican White House denied any favoritism, but much of the power in allocating Katrina recovery funds initially fell to a Republican Congress—and, more specifically, to a Senate committee chaired by Senator Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican.¹⁶⁹ Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, who resigned over his botched handling of the initial response, has also charged that politics played a role in the federal government’s disaster response: “Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking we had to federalize Louisiana because she’s a white, female Democratic governor and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,” he said in a speech at Metropolitan College of New York in January 2007.¹⁷⁰

Allowing partisan politics to interfere with aid allocation contravenes Guiding Principle 24, which states that humanitarian assistance “shall be carried out in accordance with the principles of humanity and impartiality and without discrimination.” If the U.S. government is to fully honor the guiding principles, it must take steps to ensure that need rather than politics determines allocation of humanitarian assistance to IDPs.

 

Private Contracting Abuses

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. government turned to private contractors to provide humanitarian relief and recovery services worth billions of dollars. Since then, government auditors and overseers, media outlets, and independent watchdog organizations have documented numerous problems with waste, fraud and abuse in these contracts—problems that suggest the assistance was not always carried out “in accordance with the principles of humanity and impartiality,” as the Guiding Principles mandate. They also indicate that public funds allocated for humanitarian assistance were at times diverted to private interests for political reasons, which contradicts the Guiding Principles.

One of the reasons there was a delay of as many as six days in evacuating people from the inhumane conditions inside the New Orleans Superdome after Katrina was due to serious mismanagement on the part of the federal contractor hired to do the job. In 2002, Landstar of Jacksonville, Fla.—a company with close ties to the Bush family and the national Republican Party—won a five-year, $289 million contract from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to shuttle people and relief supplies during national emergencies. Federal auditors found that Landstar waited until 18 hours after Katrina struck to order 300 buses for the evacuation and placed the order with a subcontractor who in turn relied on yet another subcontractor. But the botched effort still cost U.S. taxpayers $137 million, not including a $32 million overcharge by Landstar that government auditors later discovered and forced the company to repay. Despite those egregious problems, however, DOT in April 2006 presented a plaque to Landstar’s president and CEO honoring his company’s service to Gulf Coast residents.¹⁷¹

In another instance of the government granting Katrina-related contracts to politically connected companies, The Shaw Group of Louisiana won the contract to cover storm-damaged homes with tarps as part of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers’ “blue roof” program—even though it charged three times as much as a competitor had quoted for the same work.¹⁷² Shaw also had close ties to the Bush Administration: Its executive vice president had served under President Bush as deputy assistant secretary for security affairs at the Department of Energy and as an a senior consultant to a presidential commission, and its lobbyist was the Bush Administration’s former FEMA director.¹⁷³

The problems with post-Katrina contracting were widespread. An August 2006 report released by the minority staff of the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform identified 19 Katrina contracts collectively worth $8.75 billion that were marred by waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement due to a lack of government oversight.¹⁷⁴ It also found that as of June 30, 2006, about $10.1 billion in contracts valued at $500,000 or more had been awarded to private companies for Gulf Coast recovery and reconstruction work—but only 30 percent of these contracts were awarded with full and open competition.

Another report by the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity found that Katrina contracts worth $2.4 billion were cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts that offered profit guarantees and provided no incentive for companies to control expenses.¹⁷⁵ These findings suggest there were systemic problems involving diversion of humanitarian assistance for political reasons.

 

Rejection of Aid from Foreign Governments

While IDPs faced difficulties accessing needed medical care after Katrina, the U.S. government rejected other countries’ donations of medical assistance. The State Department declined offers of medical teams and/or supplies from at least 41 nations, from Albania to Vietnam.¹⁷⁶

In some instances, the aid offers were rejected because of rigid adherence to bureaucratic regulations. For example, the United States rejected numerous offers by other countries to send doctors because of concerns over medical licensing requirements. A State Department e-mail responding to an offer of medical aid from Argentina said, “. . . [W]ord here is that doctors of any kind are in the ‘forget about it’ category. Human assistance of any kind is not on our priorities list. . . . It’s all about goods, not people, at this point.”¹⁷⁷

But at the same time, the United States also turned down offers of medical supplies. The rejected materials included insulin and antibiotics from the Bahamas, 36,000 pairs of sterile gloves from Finland, pharmaceuticals from Germany, first aid kits from Norway, and vaccines from the United Kingdom.¹⁷⁸

This rejection of needed medical care contradicts Guiding Principle 25, which states that consent to international humanitarian aid “shall not be arbitrarily withheld, particularly when authorities concerned are unable or unwilling to provide the required humanitarian assistance.”

 

The Red Cross and Human Rights

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, numerous problems came to light with the humanitarian assistance provided by the American Red Cross—problems that in some cases appear to have breached the Guiding Principles.

A congressionally chartered organization tasked under U.S. law with providing humanitarian relief following disasters,¹⁷⁹ the American Red Cross was the largest recipient of charitable donations following Katrina.¹⁸⁰ However, the organization faced numerous accusations of impropriety among its volunteers. These charges included improper diversion of millions of dollars’ worth of relief supplies away from storm victims for private gain and failure to follow procedures in tracking and distributing supplies.¹⁸¹ Not only did these actions violate the Red Cross’s own rules, but they contradicted the Guiding Principles’ strictures against diversion of aid.¹⁸²

There were other problems with the Red Cross’s provision of humanitarian assistance that appear to contravene the Guiding Principles. For example, there were reports in Mississippi of Latinos being ordered to leave Red Cross shelters under the mistaken assumption that they were newly arrived immigrant workers rather than IDPs,¹⁸³ treatment that fails to uphold the guarantees of nondiscrimination outlined in the Guiding Principles. There were also reports of some Red Cross shelters excluding those with psychiatric disabilities¹⁸⁴ despite the Guiding Principles requirement of nondiscrimination on the basis of disability.

In southern Louisiana, officials with the indigenous United Houma Nation have reported that the Red Cross completely bypassed serving the displaced in their area immediately after the storm, and later provided inadequate relief and support.¹⁸⁵ That’s another instance of apparent discrimination in provision of humanitarian aid, as well as a failure to honor the Guiding Principles’ protections for indigenous populations.

In response to the charges, the Red Cross conducted an internal investigation that found it had taken inadequate measures to protect against financial fraud and diversion of aid.¹⁸⁶ Also, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee commissioned a report from Government Accountability Office auditors that documented a lack of trained staff in the affected states and a lack of coordination between the Red Cross and FEMA that interfered with the provision of needed aid.¹⁸⁷ And officials with the international Red Cross who assisted their American counterparts during the disaster also documented disconnects between the needs of IDPs and supplies the organization had arranged, the absence of a plan to guide distribution of supplies, and a lack of inventory control, with one British Red Cross official writing that “the basic needs of beneficiaries are not being met.”¹⁸⁸

In May 2007, the U.S. government enacted a new law overhauling the organization’s governance designed to avoid the problems that occurred after Katrina.¹⁸⁹ The Red Cross also launched a post-storm effort to recruit more volunteers who are racial and ethnic minorities.¹⁹⁰ But it remains to be seen whether the changes that have been made to date will be adequate to protect against future human rights abuses during a disaster of Katrina’s scope.

 

SIDEBAR

Immigrants Turned Away

On September 28, 2005, officers with the Harrison County sheriff’s department and U.S. marshals arrived at the American Red Cross shelter in Long Beach, Mississippi. They blocked the shelter’s parking lots and exits and demanded identification from about 60 shelter residents—all of those who looked Latino.

The officers then told the Latino residents to leave the shelter within 48 hours or face deportation. Most complied out of fear of further prosecution.

This story of apparent human rights abuses committed against immigrants in the wake of Katrina was recounted by Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance (MIRA), in testimony provided to the congressional Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina. Although the Guiding Principles hold that humanitarian assistance is to be provided to everyone in need in the wake of a disaster regardless of national origin or legal status, this did not always happen after Katrina.

A similar incident took place on October 5, 2005 in D’Iberville, Mississippi, according to Chandler: “All Latino residents of the two Red Cross shelters, about 30 in total, were rounded up and ordered to leave within 48 hours,” he testified. “According to information provided to MIRA by local directors of the two shelters, the Latino residents were expelled pursuant to a directive issued by the national [American Red Cross] that all contract workers were to be evicted from the shelters within 48 hours, as only victims of the hurricane qualified for ARC assistance. Local officials made insufficient efforts to determine which of its Latino residents were contract workers and which ones were victims of Hurricane Katrina. Rather, all Latinos in their shelters were assumed to be contract workers who had been dumped at the shelters by labor contractors as a means of obtaining free housing.”

Though MIRA negotiated extensions to the departure deadlines, all of the Latino residents—including some who were actual victims of Katrina and at least one who had been injured in the storm—ended up fleeing the shelter before the deadline.