The 16/6 Project — Port-au-Prince's Post-Earthquake Neighbourhood Return Programme

The January 2010 earthquake displaced roughly 1.5 million people into camps across Port-au-Prince, leaving the Government of Haiti and international partners to plan a return of displaced households to their home neighbourhoods.

The 16 Neighbourhoods / 6 Camps (16/6) project, launched in August 2011 by the Government of Haiti, four UN agencies (UNDP, ILO, IOM, UNOPS) and the World Bank-administered Haiti Reconstruction Fund, targeted the voluntary, safe return of displaced households from six IDP camps to sixteen structurally-assessed home neighbourhoods in Port-au-Prince, Delmas and Pétion-Ville.

The UNOPS-implemented component repaired homes to risk-mitigation standards, built new housing, generated paid local work reserved largely for residents of the affected neighbourhoods, and trained construction workers jointly with the ILO, while the World Bank-administered fund financed the wider camp-closure and return effort.

The UNOPS component alone repaired more than 1,200 homes against a target of 750 new houses, generated over 15,000 days of paid local work with 95% of the workforce hired locally, and trained more than 150 construction workers; the World Bank's design targeted the return of 5,239 households, about 30,000 people, from the six camps, which were subsequently closed.

The project required repeated restructuring past its original 2013 completion target, reflecting the delays typical of complex multi-agency post-disaster reconstruction, and no long-term evaluation of housing durability or resident income effects was located, leaving the programme's lasting impact only partially documented.