On January 12th, 2010, an unprecedented earthquake off Haiti’s shores shook its overcrowded capital, Port-au-Prince. In an instant 250,000 people were killed and 1.2 million were left homeless.

Thousands of NGOs from all over the world, joined by various international experts arrived for critical relief efforts and to help the country with its numerous needs (housing, rubble removal, sanitation, health care, etc.) The international community promised Haiti its unreserved assistance to rebuild the country: $5 billion over the first 18 months and a total $11 billion over 5 years.

March 2012. Two years after the earthquake, as hundreds of thousands of people are still living in tents, the IHRC is as good as dead; only $.2.4 billion (of the $11 billion pledged) has been disbursed and about 16% of it has been received; and less than 2% of that total was provided to the struggling Haitian government. The international reconstruction process comes to its final dead-end.

How did it all happen? How did the whole world assisting Haiti – NGO’s, UN, World Bank, USA, European Union, etc., so eager to help this small country of 10 million, an hour and a half from Miami, go so wrong?

Explicitly radical, the film questions the management of a complex post-catastrophic situation. Among the main leaders and partners of this colossal humanitarian enterprise figure all international agencies, most of the world’s NGOs, former President Bill Clinton, philanthropists, adventurers, and the inevitable Hollywood celebrities. The unstoppable Aid Machine will take over the Haitian institutions, the President, his government, and the entire Haitian civil society, cutting short all local initiatives.

Fatal Assistance gives a definitive blow to the rarely criticized practice of international aid and offers what appears to be the only solution: to end current “aid” policy and practices immediately and to redefine the role and management of international aid.