Annan urges international community to stay for long haul in Haiti

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed today to the international community to keep its focus on helping the people of Haiti.

“We should put the people of Haiti at the centre of everything we try to do and try and help them build a better future,” he told journalists as he entered UN Headquarters.

“And as I have indicated before, I hope this time the international community will go in for the long haul and not a quick turn-around,” he stressed. “We need to work with them to stabilize the country and sustain the effort. It may take years and I hope we will have the patience to do it.”

Meanwhile, UN staff members in Haiti returned to their offices yesterday to resume work, especially on the UN Flash Appeal for humanitarian aid to Haiti, which is to be presented to donor countries as soon as possible.

The UN is trying to make a rapid assessment of stock in its storehouses to see what humanitarian supplies remain after the widespread recent looting.

Over the weekend, as chaos mounted, UN staff members worked from their homes or hotels.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has issued its own emergency appeal for $7.6 million to provide relief for children and women caught up by the collapse of civil authority.

UNICEF, which has 11 international staff and 17 national staff in Haiti, said a humanitarian flight would arrive in Port-au-Prince tomorrow from Copenhagen, Denmark, carrying health and educational kits.

Even before the crisis, the situation for Haitian children was among the worst in the world, according to the agency. More than one in 10 Haitian children die before the age of five. More than 200,000 have lost one or both parents to AIDS, and up to 6.7 per cent of young women are living with HIV/AIDS. Maternal mortality is also among the highest in the world.

“We have to keep children alive now by vaccinating them and providing clean water,” said UNICEF chief Carol Bellamy. “But we're also looking six months ahead, and to a range of solutions that are going to be needed to get Haitian children back to school, and to ensure that children and mothers have basic life-saving medical care.”