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$9.9 Billion Promised for Haiti
FrontLines - April 2010
By Angela Rucker
A coalition of more than 150
countries, NGOs, and Haitian
diaspora groups said they will
contribute $5.3 billion to help
rebuild earthquake-damaged
Haiti over the next 18 months.
The money pledged at a
donors’ conference at the
United Nations March 31 is a
down payment, with the groups
promising to up the sum to as
much as $9.9 billion over the
next three years. The aid
announcement comes just over
two months after a 7.0-magnitude
earthquake reduced much
of the capital city Port-au-
Prince to rubble, killed an estimated
230,000 people, injured
another 300,000, and left a million
more homeless.
Since January, the United
States has provided $1 billion
in emergency aid to the country.
At the U.N. conference, Secretary
of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton announced another
$1.15 billion for reconstruction,
which still must be approved by Congress.
The conference, Towards a
New Future in Haiti, was
“hugely successful in demonstrating
the tremendous outpouring
of support for Haiti and
focusing attention on what is
the most devastating natural
disaster in the Western Hemisphere,”
said Paul E. Weisenfeld,
who is the coordinator of
the USAID Haiti Task Team.
The job will be daunting.
Estimates are it will take many
billions of dollars more and
several years to carry out an
ambitious reconstruction effort
that Haitian and other government
officials say will build the
country back better and avoid
the traps of many unsuccessful
development efforts in past
years.
USAID’s Haiti Task Team
includes representatives from
the Departments of Agriculture,
Defense, Health and Human
Services, Homeland Security,
and State; the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention;
and the United Nations.
The Interim Haiti Recovery
Commission—co-chaired by
Haiti President René Préval and
former U.S. President Bill Clinton,
who is serving as U.N. Special
Envoy to Haiti—will oversee
the next 18 months of reconstruction
on behalf of the Haitian government.
Preval presented a
53-page action plan detailing his
vision for a future Haiti and said
the country will be out front in
the rebuilding—addressing persistent
concerns that the United
States, the United Nations, and
others would lead those efforts.
“The leaders of Haiti must
take responsibility for their
country’s reconstruction,” Hillary
Clinton told the conference.
“And we in the global community
must also do things differently.
It will be tempting to fall
back on old habits—to work
around the government rather
than to work with them as partners,
or to fund a scattered array
of well-meaning projects rather
than making the deeper, long-term
investments that Haiti
needs now.”
Weisenfeld said the key areas
where USAID and others will
focus their reconstruction
efforts—and dollars—are health
care, economic growth and agriculture,
infrastructure, and government
functions.
“It’s going to be key for us to
find ways to tap into the energy
and technical expertise of the
diaspora to make this reconstruction
successful,” he said, noting
Haitians living in the United
States were well represented at
the donor’s conference as was
the NGO community.
USAID and other organizations
are transitioning from the
emergency response to recovery
efforts in Haiti. Currently, aid
includes food, health care,
water, sanitation, and other
basic needs. A top priority now
is helping Haitians prepare for
the rainy season, which could
renew misery for the thousands
of people living in tents that are
too flimsy to withstand strong
wind, rain, and flooding.
★
FrontLines is published
by the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs
U.S. Agency for International Development
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