15389: Craig-UN launches plan to address emergency needs (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig <dgcraig@att.net>


Haiti: UN launches plan to address emergency needs
Source: UN Country Team
Date: 04/22/2003

(New York: 22 April 2003) - In Port-au-Prince today, The United Nations
Country Team for Haiti appealed for $84 million to address the emergency
needs of the poorest of Haiti's 8.3 million people over the next
eighteen months.  The "Integrated Emergency Response Programme (IERP):
Targeting Vulnerable Communities and Populations in Haiti" will address
urgent needs for food security, improved water and sanitation, access to
health and education, and mitigation of natural disasters.

Through the Programme, the UN seeks to mobilize the international
community to respond to an extremely serious humanitarian situation in
Haiti, a crisis that threatens to get worse.  The Programme seeks to
address the needs of the most vulnerable of Haiti's population by
meeting immediate humanitarian needs in the short-term and improving
food security in the long-term.

The Integrated Emergency Response Programme has three overlapping phases
covering periods of six, twelve, and eighteen months.  The first phase
is made up of emergency interventions aimed at preventing loss of life
and alleviating suffering.  The most vulnerable populations---including
families who have taken children orphaned by HIV/AIDS, will receive food
aid, essential medicines and water through programs of six months'
duration.  The IERP seeks $14.4 million dollars for these projects.

The Programme's Second Phase aims at enabling farmers to resume
production and improving access to basic services over a twelve-month
period. Programs under this phase, for which roughly $22 million is
sought, include providing farmers with agricultural inputs and
livestock. Other programmes seek to upgrade health capital, improve the
schooling rate increase access to clean drinking water, immunize against
communicable diseases and rehabilitate roads.

The third phase, reconstruction and consolidation, includes projects
designed to reduce food insecurity by diversifying opportunities for
economic growth and development over a period of eighteen months.
Interventions in this phase include projects to reduce vulnerability to
natural disasters, as well as projects for education, governance, and
security.  The United Nations Country Team requires $47.5 million to
carry out this phase of the IERP.

According to the United Nations Development Program, 56 per cent of
Haiti's population is suffering from malnutrition.  Only 46 per cent of
the population has access to clean drinking water and 42 percent of its
population lives beneath the poverty line. Haiti is the poorest country
in the Western Hemisphere.


http://www.unfoundation.org/unwire/current.asp