UN mourns 101 staffers killed in Haiti earthquake (Roundup)

Mar 9, 2010, 18:28 GMT

New York - The United Nations mourned on Tuesday 101 of its own personnel who were killed by the devastating earthquake in Haiti in January.

'Today, we commemorate the single greatest loss the UN has suffered in its history,' UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a ceremony at UN headquarters in New York to pay tribute to UN military, civilians and police officers who belonged to the UN mission and died in the magnitude-7 quake that struck Port-au-Prince on January 12.

'We knew them, very personally,' Ban said in the emotional-laden event attended by nearly all top UN ranking officials and personnel. 'We knew their smiles, their songs, their dreams.'

'To those we have lost, let us say: we will never forget you. We will carry on your work,' he said.

A minute of silence was held for the dead. Their photographs were shown on a giant screen and their names were read. The dead in Port- au-Prince included the head of the UN mission Hedi Annabi of Tunisia and his deputy Luis Carlos da Costa of Brazil.

The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti had 7,000 military, civilians and police before the quake. UN agencies like the UN Children's Fund and the UN Development Programme were also operating there.

The UN Security Council decided after the quake to send an additional 3,500 military and police to meet new conditions, including security, and assist in the relief efforts to the 3 million Haitians affected by the quake.

More than 220,000 people died in the quake, the Haitian government says.

Edmund Mullet, the acting UN special envoy for Haiti, who attended the memorial ceremony in New York, told reporters that the UN and the Haitian government have decided that relief operations will continue for the rest of the year in parallel with recovery and reconstruction efforts in destroyed areas in Port-au-Prince.

Mullet said most activities by both the UN mission and the Haitian government have returned to normalcy eight weeks after the earthquake. He said UN troops and police having resumed their mandate of providing safety, security and delivering relief supplies.

The Haitian government has decided to 'decentralize and deconcentrate' Port-au-Prince in the post-quake reconstruction, Mullet said. More than 600,000 Haitians have left the capital to stay with friends and family since the earthquake.

'If we don't want those people to return to Port-au-Prince, then we have to provide assistance and opportunities in the provinces,' Mullet said. 'If we don't do that, people will move back to Port-au- Prince.'

'The government is very keen in taking advantage of the opportunity to decentralize and deconcentrate the capital, and this is related to the creation of job opportunities, industrial parks all over the country and not only in Port-au-Prince,' he said.

The government has selected five pieces of lands in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince on which it hoped to build camps for Haitians who have lost their homes to the quake. Mullet said there are now 900 tent cities, big and small, scattered in the capital and those camps may be moved to the five new sites.

Mullet admitted insecurity was rampant in the tent cities and regrouping them would allow the government and the UN to provide better safety and security. Port-au-Prince had requested at least 200,000 tents and has so far received 120,000 to house the refugees before the hurricane season starts in June. Haiti is already being hit by heavy rain.

He said the international team that has been conducting a needs assessment for the post-quake reconstruction of Haiti is scheduled to meet in Santo Domingo next week and to present the assessment to the donor conference in New York on March 31. The team is composed of officials from the UN, World Bank, banks in Latin America and the European Union to draw up plans to rebuild the Caribbean nation, the poorest in the Western hemisphere.