Senior European Union officials will tell the March 31 2010 donors’ conference on Haiti that the EU will support a long-term plan that opens the way for lasting and inclusive growth and development in Haiti "in the context of a joint EU approach linking relief to rehabilitation and development".
 
This, in turn, must be underpinned by a commitment to joint programming to enhance aid effectiveness and promote an effective division of labour.
 
The international donors’ conference "Towards a New Future for Haiti" is being prepared by the UN and US in co-operation with the government of Haiti, and with the support of Brazil, Canada, the EU, France, and Spain.
 
The conference is intended is to mobilise international support for the development needs of Haiti to begin to lay the foundation for country's long-term recovery after the devastating January 12 2010 earthquake.
 
At the international donors’ conference, the EU will be represented by foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response Kristalina Georgieva and Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs.
 
Before the donors’ conference, Georgieva and US former president and UN Special Envoy to Haiti Bill Clinton will co-chair an NGO conference on how better to organise international aid for Haiti.
 
The EU position for the donors’ conference was decided at a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers on March 22.
 
Among the decisions was the idea of an "EU House" in Haiti, where EU development capabilities could be co-located, to enhance EU co-ordination on the ground and support joint programming and to assist EU donors not present in Haiti.
 
The foreign ministers underlined that it was the government of Haiti that should have the leadership in donor co-ordination, sector co-ordination, and management of the overall reconstruction agenda and the importance of democratic governance.
 
The EU ministers also emphasised the need to ensure adequate coordination with the UN, as well as with the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, key bilateral donors, and other stakeholders including regional actors, "in particular through an overarching country-led governance mechanism which also offers a forum for policy dialogue, donor co-ordination and consultation with Haitian civil society".
 
The bloc welcomed proposals for implementation such as a multi-donor trust fund to ensure support for long-term development priorities and ensure better coherence.
 
"Linked to its joint programming exercise, the EU will define its participation in different implementation bodies, based on an assessment of their effectiveness," the EU foreign ministers said.
 
Speaking ahead of an NGO conference held in preparation for the donors’ conference, Piebalgs said that the reconstruction of Haiti must be a joint effort by all actors at all levels.
 
"It won't be solely solved by aid coming from the official authorities and the international institutions; the role of NGOs which bring their resources and expertise is also instrumental," Piebalgs said, adding that the NGO conference would make it possible to align the initiatives of NGOs with the Haitian government's strategy.
 
According to a European Commission document summing up the situation in Haiti, as of March 22 distribution of shelter and sanitation solutions remained the highest priority.
 
Emergency shelter would be 100 per cent covered by April/May, according to the European Commission summary.
 
The most serious concern at the moment was finding new sites for transitional shelters for the 200 000 displaced people currently at sites at risk of flooding once the rainy season starts.
 
Humanitarian assistance should also focus on securing the most precarious of the existing sites in anticipation of the upcoming rainy and hurricanes season, the document said.
 
Rubble removal was increasingly urgent, to make space for settlements.
 
Sanitation in camps is a major concern; the number of latrines needed being estimated at 55 000.
 
Summing up the main challenges for international assistance for Haiti, the document said that there was a lack of government capacity to co-ordinate.
 
Some critical relief lifeline roads needed urgent repairs requiring the use of heavy equipment and engineering capacity.
 
There was a need to develop "cash for work" labour-intensive emergency activities, such as removal of rubble, for Haitians to restore their livelihoods.
 
Agricultural recovery needed to be addressed before the main planting season, in March, the document said.
 
Before the earthquake, there were about 380 000 orphans in Haiti. The number of unaccompanied or orphaned children (including children with only one parent) is now estimated to be one million.
 
EU humanitarian assistance, including planned pledges, amount to a total of more than 320 million euro, coming from 18 EU member states and the European Commission. The Commission's own emergency relief package is worth more than 120 million euro.
 
On March 22, former US president Clinton and former US president George Bush visited Haiti as part of their effort to raise aid and investment to help Haitians recover from January's earthquake, the Voice of America reported.
 
This was Clinton and Bush’s first joint visit to Haiti. They met president René Preval at the badly damaged presidential palace in the capital, Port-au-Prince. 
 
Bush and Clinton were appointed by US president Barack Obama to lead fundraising campaigns and oversee long-term reconstruction and relief efforts in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country. 
 
The non-profit Clinton Bush Haiti Fund has raised millions of dollars for relief efforts.
 
Separately, the Inter-American Development Bank Monday said it had agreed to erase $479 million of Haiti's debt.
 
From Port-au-Prince, VOA reported on March 22 that Haitian officials said that less food aid and more jobs were needed to get the economy running again.
 
Some major organisations are scaling back donation efforts after April 1.  But many Haitians are still in urgent need of food, the report said.
 
On March 16, The head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) called for some of the $20 billion pledged in 2009 by the world’s biggest economies to help farmers in poor countries buffeted by the global recession to be directed towards Haiti as it recovers the earthquake.
 
Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the FAO, was quoted by the UN News Service as saying that a rural development programme in Haiti would be a deserving candidate for some of the funds which the leaders of the G8 group of economies pledged to provide at a summit in Italy in July 2009.
 
"It is not a question of creating new organisations or institutions," Diouf said.