Nonprofit Newswire | Has Haiti been Shortchanged? Concern About Disaster Aid

July 20, 2010; Source: Huffington Post | This opinion piece by Kerry Kennedy on Huffington Post expresses concern about the lack of transparency in international aid. This is a long standing concern of human rights advocates who claim that local people should have some control over how that money gets spent and all of us should have more assurances that it, indeed, gets spent for its intended purposes. Kennedy uses Haiti as an example, saying that only 10 percent of the $5.5 billion pledged by the international community after the earthquake made it to Haiti’s shores despite its needs being immediate and complex. Kennedy says the lack of accountability is unacceptable from a human rights standpoint.—Ruth McCambridge