Main difference this time they are invited

Haitians need first aid providers of care, medicines, drinking water, food... They first saw television crews who arrived first to see that assistance sent or announced hadn't always arrived there where expected it on-site. Necessarily light and agile, these teams could be in place as soon as the aftermath of the earthquake. Not the doctors, hospitals or food, with some exceptions. Images have certainly contributed to trigger feelings of generosity in donor countries, but almost nothing brought to immediate to Haitians. Initially, the rescuers of the Haitians were Haitians themselves with only their arms and their bare hands. Heavy international emergency humanitarian machinery has developed several days before you begin to enter into the spotlight in dribs and drabs.

However, the major associations and organizations have all the importance of logistics, i.e. of an organization and ways to quickly get a help. In professional terms, talking about "to optimize the management of flows. The humanitarian logisticians have become the key characters and the logistics of humanitarian science taught in specialized schools, such as Bioforce in France. Humanitarian logistics chains are inspired by the other logistics: depersonalisation of the procurement and transportation, security, traceability, possible the capillary distribution to the "last mile"...

Each organisation, taken individually, is generally very powerful. But all arriving at the same place at the same time is low or poorly coordinated, except partially at national or European levels. In fact, each country or association wants to be the first to plant its flag, or to show the logo of his rescuers to the cameras of the world. Hence the rustlings of susceptibility in bottlenecks, as at the airport in Port - au-Prince, where a French plane had to turn back. Because one of the differences of this catastrophe with the tsunami, humanly same scale, is the concentration of theatre of tragedy: thousands of kilometres of coastline in a case for hundreds of door closer to the victims; one airport in the other.

The major disasters trigger a kind of Olympism of humanitarian relief, giving the most visible a walk on the podium. It is the reverse of the Medal of a surmédiatisation. Each defines its priorities (water, medicines, teams dog, physicians and equipment, food...) that it considers more priority than those of its competitors. However, in this case, only overall efficiency the fastest and the most appropriate account. The all-for-self is a second disaster.

To counteract this risk, Haitian President René Préval, did not much choice. He turned to his close and powerful neighbour, the United States. They took their responsibilities as Coordinator... and some de facto power on the ground. To do this, President Obama has initiated the most powerful machine logistics available to it, his army. Americans entrent in Port - au-Prince in a situation comparable to those where they were entrés in Baghdad: a large city in part destroyed, littered with corpses, without security, where all vital networks (water, electricity, communications...) have been destroyed and where everything is to rebuild. Main difference this time, they are invited. Without an alternative, this solution is the least bad. But do not forget that an army was not initially a humanitarian vocation and that the history of the United States in the area of the Caribbean left only memories.

The chaos of this country probably foreshadows other humanitarian disasters: major metropolises swept by natural elements or conflicts. The world's population rapidly urbanizing and magnifying properties megacities are fragile and dependent on supplies of water, electricity, food, communications and transport infrastructure...

The Haitian lesson would be to propose that the International Conference suggested by President Sarkozy to his American counterpart not only raise funds but that it is studying a better global coordination of the humanitarian logistics of emergency. This is not to cause humanitarian logistics competence, but to use their expertise together to ask how to do better. Without creating an additional gas plant, the objective might be to create a kind of tower control, thinking with experts of the sector, to coordinate the coordinators, organize the organizers, planners, planning in advance thinking networks. This kind of "humanitarian alert", under the auspices of Nations for example, light, reactive and experienced, to which a State in difficulty could use, identify the most urgent needs, set priorities, mobilize NGOs, State agencies or military the most capable and close to the ground. In short, it would add a dose of logistics intelligence in aid to save more lives.