PREVIEW: UN calls for "building back better" in post-quake Haiti

By JT Nguyen dpa Mar 29, 2010, 19:56 GMT

New York - A United Nations donor conference plans to seek 3.9 billion dollars in less than two years to jump-start the massive reconstruction of Haiti and transform it into a new and modern nation.

Haiti would rise from the destruction caused by the January 12 earthquake in 10 years, requiring 11.5 billion dollars from the international community, the UN said in an ambitious plan that calls for building anew with earthquake-resistant technology and architecture.

Both UN and Haitian officials have shunned the idea of restoring, but instead are focused on building a new Port-au-Prince, the capital. The earthquake killed more than 220,000 people and knocked down nearly all key government buildings, the presidential palace, hundreds of schools and the few existing hospitals.

UN officials are not only confident that they would get the vast amount of funding but also that the Haitian leadership will lead the reconstruction. It took an earthquake for the international community to realize that Haitian leaders should be in the driver's seat, which was not the case in the past.

Donors and banking institutions have given or pledged only 49 per cent of a UN flash appeal for 1.4 billion dollars in humanitarian assistance to Haiti launched in February.

'That is our challenge in New York - not to rebuild but to 'build back better,' to create a new Haiti,' UN Secretary General Ban Ki- moon wrote in the Washington Post.

On Wednesday, Ban and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will open a one-day donor conference at UN headquarters in New York to raise the 3.9 billion dollars required for the reconstruction and recovery of Haiti.

The conference is aptly called 'Towards a New Future in Haiti.'

Haiti's President Rene Preval and high-level delegations from the European Union, Canada, Brazil, France, Spain and the World Bank will have important roles in the conference as major donors. More than 100 countries will send representatives to the first such conference since the earthquake.

Preval will present his government's assessment of the needs for building Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere. The UN, EU and World Bank had made a post-disaster needs assessment, which will be discussed on Wednesday.

Ban, who visited Port-au-Prince for the second time in March, said Preval has called for 'something modern and more suited to Haiti's ambitions for itself as a self-reliant developing nation with genuine hope for a fresh start and prosperous future.'

'As we move from emergency aid to longer-term reconstruction, let us recognize that we cannot accept business as usual,' Ban said. 'What we envision today is nothing less than a wholesale national renewal.'

Ban said Haiti's leaders are 'committing to a new social contract with their people.' It would mean good governance, sound economic and social policies that would combat extreme poverty and the deeply rooted gap between rich and poor.

The UN said an Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission plans to spend the 3.9 billion dollars in specific projects and programmes during the next 18 months.

The long-term reconstruction will cost a total of 11.5 billion dollars, including the initial 3.9 billion dollars. The funds will go to social sectors like water and sanitation, health, education and food security. Others projects will go to building the infrastructure like housing and transportation, production sectors like agriculture, industry, trade and finance, and the environment and disaster management.

The EU's foreign policy director, Catherine Ashton, who will attend the donor conference, announced in Brussels last week that the bloc plans to provide 1 billion euros (1.35 billion dollars) over the next three years to Haiti. The EU has been the largest donor of aid to Haiti, a fact not always recognized by the UN.

The magnitude-7 quake inflicted an estimated 7 billion dollars in damage and losses, equivalent to more than 120 per cent of Haiti's Gross Domestic Product in 2009, the UN said.

The quake directly affected 1.5 million people in the Port-au- Prince region, with 1.3 million of them still living in tent and tarpaulin cities. More than 500,000 Haitians have fled the capital to find shelter with families or friends elsewhere, the UN Development Programme said.

The UN has raised the spectre of floods as the rainy season has hit Haiti to be followed in June by the hurricane season. It has warned of an increase in crime and rape in crowded temporary shelters in Port-au-Prince.