I want to thank the people of the United States for their extraordinary generosity in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake that has devastated Haiti. The magnitude of the loss of life and destruction is hard to fathom; the human toll is impossible to comprehend; the impact on Haitian life is heart-breaking and makes disaster relief all the more challenging.
With the miraculous help of governments and nongovernmental organizations, many victims of the earthquake have been rescued and treated. As long as one more life can be saved, we will persist in our efforts to reach anyone still trapped alive.
At the same time, we are focusing increasingly on relief for the injured and displaced. More medical facilities, supplies, and personnel are needed to ensure the proper treatment and safety of survivors, who continue to face grave threats from lack of medical care and appropriate housing. We are working hard to speed up relief and coordinate with the many governmental, intergovernmental, and private agencies involved. Our one-runway airport in Port-au-Prince was built to handle at most 40 flights a day. With U.S. assistance, we have increased that capacity to 140 flights a day, but we still have a backlog of 1400 relief flights.
We are developing plans to move as many as 400,000 people to tent cities outside of Port-au-Prince, while doing everything possible to restore a sense of normalcy in the capital and other devastated areas. We're taking steps to restore electricity, provide potable water, distribute medical supplies, and provide more and more temporary shelter. Several banks and transfer facilities have re-opened. Telephone communications are being re-established, roads cleared, and 20 additional health care facilities are now functioning.
With virtually no government buildings left standing, and the grounds of some others, including my own Office, turned into temporary refuge for the internally displaced, responding to this extraordinary calamity has been a herculean task. Despite the devastation, the Haitian people are resilient. Haiti has been knocked down but not out. We will rebuild, and we will be stronger for it. We are already creating plans to put Haitians to work in the relief and rebuilding processes.
With the staggering extent of the physical damage done by this earthquake, it's hard to conceive that its total damage is even broader, but an additional tragic reality is that it occurred just as Haiti had succeeded in convincing the world community that our nation was in the midst of creating a stable democratic society with a business-friendly environment. Over the past three years, world banking institutions recognized our progress and relieved our indebtedness. Private companies had begun to build factories and advance new industries. Hotels had expanded capacity. Now, Haiti must restart that effort as well.
Last week, I attended a meeting of a dozen nations in Montreal to prepare for an aid-pledging conference to be held in New York in March. The meeting was very encouraging. While we don't yet know the total cost of reconstruction, we are very appreciative of the immediate help that has been provided by so many nations, including the United States and our neighbors in the Caribbean.
The rebuilding process in all of its dimensions will be a lengthy ordeal, requiring sustained support, and we ask all of our donors and investors to take a long view: international agencies, nations, businesses, and countless individual friends. That said, we will report regularly on our progress. Donors will see the impact of their support. We expect to be held accountable - not only by our supporters but by our citizens and by the memories of so many lost loved ones.
For individual Americans, we ask that you continue giving regularly to whatever charity serving Haiti that you choose. We also look forward to a time in the not-too-distant future when we can again promote tourism broadly and welcome you as visitors, so that you can witness first-hand the hospitality and beauty of our country. A major focus of our rebuilding will be providing jobs for the people of Haiti, and tourism will be an important component of that effort.
Businesses interested in investing in Haiti, and taking advantage of preferential trade agreements with the United States, should not be deterred by the earthquake. Rebuilding our nation is now a global cause, and there can be no more meaningful investment.
And Haitians living abroad, we need your help. We hope that you will consider returning to help with the rebuilding. We need your skills, your knowledge and your experience to build government capacity and develop fair economic and social structures.
The earthquake that has destroyed so much has also brought much-needed attention and goodwill to our nation. In honor of all those who have died in this monumental tragedy, we vow to create a new Haiti that is stronger and more vibrant than ever before. Soon, the reporters and photographers will leave, and television and newspapers will turn to other stories. We hope that, like us, you will keep your eyes on the prize and stay the course. We will still need your help.
Haiti needs help at this moment. However, in oder for the help to be effective, there needs to be a central authority whose role is to integrate the disparate services provided by each NGO so as to prevent duplication of efforts, and promote, cooperation, accountability. For example, all NGOs providing medical care should come under the Health Ministry.
A national registry(i.e. a database) of all the NGOs operating in the country along with the type of services being provided, qualifications to provide such services, areas of coverage, target population, etc. is badly needed.
Every NGO should be required to obtain an annual permit/license from the Haitian authority in order to operate in the country. Failure to do so will lead to their immediate expulsion.
Failure to gain control of the NGOs will continue to erode the role of the Haitian state and convince the Haitian people that Haiti would be better off under some form of tutelage.
Land management and disaster planning must be a strong component of any rebuilding effort.
This is very a very important step in the long process of reclaiming the Haitian people's right to self determination.
For too long, they have permitted international thinkers with no interest on the welfare of the Haitian people to apply the worst version of capitalism to the country:
Privatization of the country's infrastructure making it enable to provide first-responders to the devastating earthquake
Privatization of the educational system which is making it difficult to reopen schools in the aftermath of the earthquake, and resulting in a large uneducated and undereducated population before the earthquake
Privatization of the healthcare system causing major lost of life and creating large number of amputees in the aftermath of the earthquake
No Regulations of the educational system, labor market, banking, NGOs, health care system, etc. and no building codes
Let us use the opportunity provided by this earthquake to do what was almost impossible to do in the past:
Brake away once and for all from this unsustainable model of development.
Privatization of the country's infrastructure making it enable to provide first-responders to the devastating earthquake
with this one:
Privatization of the country's infrastructure making it unable to provide first-responders to the devastating earthquake
Replace the last sentence:
Brake away once and for all from this unsustainable model of development
with
Break away once and for all from this unsustainable model of economic development
Overhead is often an euphemism for corruption committed by these entities.
But for the prime minister to wax poetic and positive, while seeking to prosecute a bunch of goodie-two-shoes Baptists who are more stupid than criminal, while at the same time ignoring the Restavik child slaves being abused by his own people, leaves his credibility in shambles.
Methinks perhaps he's just wanting to get his hands on control of all those millions.
Hopefully the world NGOs and Govts are smarter than that (not that they've proven it).
The rule of law must be equally applied to everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, and religion.
Did all those medical people who went to help get "legal papers" to practice medicine in that country?
If Haitian Prime Minister Bellerive was so conserned - why didn't he help these 30+ children get food, medical aid, shelter, and protection from thugs? He should have been driving the bus to safety.
His insinuation that the Americans were trying to do anything but save lives is absurd and a genuine representation of the leadership that has resulted in the Haiti that the world knows....a 3rd world ghetto, governed by fools and criminals.
I am absolutely appalled that the US government ( listen up President Obama ) has allowed the imprisonment of these American Citizens - WITHOUT CHARGES - for this long.
They HAD SIGNED DOCUMENTS authorizing the children's transport at a time when nearly every governmnet building was a pile of rubble.
Prime Minister Bellerive lied when he said they didn't.
Are they currently sheltered, fed...who knows?
What about next month?....My guess is Prime Minister Bellerive's concern for those children will dry up as soon as the donations do.
What a shame.
Did every injured Haitian transported to the US on the medical flights have a passport...a visa...NO....well, so much for Haiti's governmnet getting all their documents in order.
Just like the pirates in Somalia....give Bellerive a payment and the Americans will be freed.
What proof do you have that the sick children evacuated to US hospitals did not have necessary legal papers with them?
No one should take advantage of these children's parents emotional state of mind in the aftermath of the earthquake to encourage them to give up their children.
If you want to help, learn about Haiti's history of colonial and neo-colonial exploitation by the Western powers and worked tirelessly to change US foreign policy and IMF, IDB, World Bank fiscal policies that prevent Haiti government from taking care of the basic needs of its citizenry.
Haiti most important needs is justice not charity so that all its children can flourish.
To place 33 children on a bus and attempt to cross international borders without papers is not goodwill it is criminal. The State Department cannot simply bring these people home, they must face the Justice of that country. I understand their church is Southern Baptist, their International missions department has considerable experience operating overseas, perhaps they should sought their guidance. Since it is clear they refused to accept advice from anyone, blaming others including the Haitians, obviously misses the point.
NOBODY in Hait9 or around the world (people in power) cares about the poor people
of Haiti.
Nobody got on the "donation band wagon" until the RICH PEOPLE of Haiti became homeless.
Why didn't all you people care about the 100's of thousands of starving and homeless Haitian
people before the earthquake.
The answer is that you still don't care about the poor people.
You are just using the poor to get people to donate, "for the poor people"
You only intend to help the RICH PEOPLE get back on their feet.
And time will prove this out.
The poor might get a new cardboard box for their family to live in.
The fact is that after the quake the poor that had to dig through garbage to feed their
family now can dig through the rich people's rubble and are actually finding more food.
Heck, they even have better clothes, maybe a new watch, or get lucky and find a wallet.
Just ask the poor people of New Orleans how much they have gotten rebuilt for them.
The rich of New Orleans have gotten a lot
In this day and age we first have to get rid of the ones who threw Haiti into poverty in the first place.
Haiti WAS prosperous. And the parasites decided they made more profit letting it go to ruin. As long as those parasites are in power and not in jail ANY prosperity will live only as long as they do not make more profit destroying it.
And a few rich Haitians who raped their own country?
(Not unlike US politicians and bankers but on a smaller scale?)
What I criticise is not America or Haiti or German. it is always just a few criminal parasites that destroy it for the rest of us. nationality does not play into it.
1) a strong & capable nationalist /patriotic government which motto ought to be: "HAITIANS FOR HATI & HAITI FOR THE HAITIANS" [not just a UN/US/France spineless puppet 'governatorate'. Her leaders needs to be heroic and way above average able to connect with the people. " A People not living in harmony with its Land is at war against itself; it's a dying people." As I always say.
2) a sound environmental strategy and protection programme that reminds/legislate/enforce the sacredness of trees & environment. -[an ancestral value they forgot along the way by adopting western their values/religion and not tapping into historical/cultural/spiritual reservoir for daily living.] The land is your mother. She will sustain, feed, give you respect & dignity nuture even heal you if you respect, love, appreciate her sacredness, protect the soil, the waters, seas, the fauna & flora. If you abuse, destroy and poison her, she may want to vomit you out. Remember the model the earlier inhabitants of the land the good-natured Noble and peace-loving 'Arawaks'.