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Abstract

The 2010 earthquake that hit Haiti provoked a humanitarian emergency of a magnitude that the international community had rarely faced in the past. Due to the sheer number of deaths, injured and displaced, it has been – and continue in many aspects to be – a tragedy of unprecedented magnitude for the Haitian people. Five years later, with the end of the emergency and the shift to the development phase, the needs of the displaced have not disappeared and their situation enters a different momentum with the search for durable solutions. This paper endeavours to examine to what extent durable solutions have been achieved for the displaced persons of Haiti, specifically in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince. The paper first focuses on clarifying the conceptual framework and analyses how this framework has been understood in the Haitian context. The paper further examines key interventions undertaken to achieve durable solutions for the displaced population and the obstacles face in this context. The paper concludes that the situation in Haiti qualifies as a protracted displacement crisis as the analysis shows that the process for finding durable solutions for the persons displaced by the earthquake is stalled. A number of recommendations are therefore made to try to bend the curve and promote the adoption of specific measures to support the realization of durable solutions for the displaced persons in Haiti. While these recommendations are specific to the Haitian context, they could inform the response to other displacement crisis as well.

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