Mr Ban Ki-moon has called on the international community to give a "generous and unconditional" support to rebuild the country, devastated, on January 12, by an earthquake which caused 300,000 persons to die as claimed Haitian President Rene Preval.
The Donors' International Conference « Towards a New Future for Haiti » has raised, today, at the UN Headquarters in New York, a $ 9.9 billion aid for immediate and long term relief to reconstruct the country.
Mr RENÉ PRÉVAL recalled that the last two times he has found himself at this platform, during the last two sessions of the General Assembly, it was already bearing witness of his compatriots' suffering due to a succession of hurricanes, cyclones and floods. We are again gathered to witness the earthquake that killed 300 000 people in Haiti, injured thousands and damage 120% of gross domestic product, he said. The Haitian people are not insensitive to the vast movement of solidarity and compassion that the world immediately showed after the disaster. If this momentum we are seeing since January 12 does not vanish, but rather extends and deepens, the idea of global human community is likely to happen one day, "said Haitian President.
This earthquake has taught us that the generosity of the nations must be disciplined, particularly through the establishment of a humanitarian task force placed under the United Nations auspices, of the "Red Helmets", whose role would be to coordinate the relief to various disasters. The attention, the solidarity and the mobilization of the diaspora have shown that being a Haitian resident abroad is mere administrative fiction. "So let us dream of a new planet forging its destiny in a new project of humanity," declared René Préval.
