Haiti: UN calls for record €1bn aid effort

The United Nations launched a record-breaking appeal for nearly €1 billion to help Haitians hit by the devastating earthquake.

It is the world body's largest appeal yet for a natural disaster.

Covering needs in 2010, it is more than double the UN's initial request on January 15 for €412 million to help quake victims for six months.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his special envoy for Haiti, former US president Bill Clinton, launched the appeal at a meeting with diplomats from many of the 191 other UN member states.

"Before last month's disaster we had a plan for Haiti's long-term development and reconstruction," Mr Ban said.

"Our challenge today is to reformulate that plan to help Haitians build back better." With the rainy season approaching, he said, the top priority was to provide shelter, sanitation and humanitarian assistance.

Mr Clinton said the appeal was important to begin long-term rebuilding, but the world must first help millions of Haitians living day by day and facing many health and environmental problems.

"We have to move them from living day-to-day to where people are living month-to-month," he said. That, he said, meant building some shelters that could withstand hurricanes, beefing up cash-for-work programmes to get young people who are reviving gangs into jobs, and reopening schools.

Donors had already pledged €494 million, said Stephanie Bunker, spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

That means £563 million was still needed, she said.

Mr Clinton told potential donors "it is very important not to have courtesy commitments". "If you can't give what you wish you could pledge less and give it - and do it sooner rather than later," he said, promising that all donations would be tracked on a website in a transparent way.

According to the UN, the size of the revised appeal - covering about 30 per cent of Haiti's population - reflects the scale of the catastrophe caused by the quake that killed more than 200,000 people.

More than 1.2 million Haitians need emergency shelter and urgent sanitation facilities, at least two million need food, and some 500,000 people who fled the capital Port-au-Prince and other badly affected cities also needed help, the UN said.

The new appeal also seeks funds to revive agriculture, provide emergency telecommunications, manage camps for the displaced, improve nutrition and start early recovery programmes including cash-for-work.

Although emergency humanitarian relief efforts will have to continue for many months, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said: "We have to be engaged in Haiti for the long haul, for life-saving relief as well as reconstruction.

"We need a shelter surge and a sanitation surge to go along with the food surge that happened over the last couple of weeks."

Haiti's UN ambassador Leo Merores echoed the urgent need for shelter with the approaching rainy season.

The largest UN appeal for a natural disaster before Haiti was the 2005 request for €1bn for the Asian tsunami that struck a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean rim and left 230,000 people dead.