The earthquake that thumped the Haitian coast in January 2010, wiping off entire suburbs of Port au Prince and other cities, left 222,570 casualties with an estimated 80,000 corpses still missing. One and a half million people were displaced and the majority is still living in 1000 improvised camps, in tents or self-made shelters. The national and international relief effort has been hampered by logistical, co-ordination and leadership challenges. In January 2010, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) was asked to lead the cluster co-ordinating humanitarian agencies involved in the management of the camps and to provide various forms of assistance, including psychosocial, to the populations living in them. The IOM psychosocial response plan has since focused on community mobilisation and participation, and has used the arts and social theatre widely as tools. Placing the value of participation and prevention, and ultimately of democratisation over solely reactive social responses to natural disasters has been a learning experience from IOM's Haitian programme.