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UN
Secretary General Visits Haiti on Sunday
United Nations, March 13, (RHC).-
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will make a one-day
visit to Haiti on Sunday, his second to the
Caribbean country since the January earthquake.
While in the capital, Port-au-Prince, Ban Ki-moon
will meet with President René Préval and Prime
Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, as well as with the
leadership of the UN Stabilization Mission in
Haiti (MINUSTAH) and UN agencies working on the
ground.
According to UN sources, the Secretary General
will also visit a camp housing some of the
estimated 1.2 million people displaced by the
7.0-magnitude quake.
Meanwhile, the Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has announced that
the $1.44 billion revised humanitarian appeal
for Haiti is only 49 percent funded.
Two months after the earthquake, the
humanitarian work is picking up speed, OCHA
noted, with more than 4.3 million people having
received food assistance, 1.2 million people
receiving daily water distributions, and more
than 300,000 children and adults vaccinated
against a range of infectious diseases,
including measles, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus
and whooping cough.
Despite the progress made, emergency shelter and
sanitation remain the main priorities ahead of
the rainy season. Emergency shelter materials
have been distributed to more than 650,000
people who comprise about 56 percent of those
left homeless by the quake.
Preparations are now starting on two sites
identified by the Haitian government for the
relocation of internally displaced persons (IDPs)
from high-risk settlement sites. The first site
for relocation was just inaugurated.
Planning for longer-term shelter has brought on
a new challenge. According to the UN Environment
Program (UNEP), Haiti is deforested and the
necessary timber to create transitional shelter
for up to 500,000 people for two years will have
to be imported with support from the
international community.
Private Firms and
Mercenaries Look to Haiti for Huge Profits
Miami.- A trade group representing private
security contractors wrapped up a conference in
Miami earlier this week, discussing
reconstruction in the earthquake-battered nation
of Haiti.
The conference was organized by the Association
of the Stability Operations Industry, also known
as IPOA, representing some 60 mercenary
companies working in logistics and security,
many of them active in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Co-organizer and IPOA president Doug Brooks said
private contractors can offer aid groups and
government agencies a myriad services - from
translation to police training to running supply
lines.
Critics say private contractors have run loose
in far-flung crisis zones. They point to not
only to their 'help' in the occupation of Iraq
and Afghanistan, but also in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
The two-day conference in Miami was held just
two weeks before a large Haiti summit of
international donors at the United Nations
headquarters in New York.
Security/mercenary companies such as Blackwater,
now renamed Xe, which has come under fire for
its work in Iraq, were not present at the event.
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