A United Nations’ donor conference in New York on March 31 2010 was expected to see pledges of billions of dollars to help Haiti emerge from the aftermath of the devastating January 12 earthquake, while European aid commissioner Kristalina Georgieva has said that it is not money on its own that matters, but the good that it will do.
 
Georgieva made the comment in a blog shortly before the donors’ conference.
 
More than 100 countries are to be represented at the New York conference, at which Haiti’s government was expected to request close to $4 billion to fund the first instalment of its reconstruction plan, the BBC said.
 
The amount is only a third of what is needed to fully rebuild the country after the quake, which killed more than 200 000 and left a million homeless.
 
Among the country's top priorities are the estimated 600 000 people who fled the capital, Port-au-Prince, for the countryside. Many took refuge with friends and family. But, the Voice of America reported from the Haitian capital, the extra mouths to feed are straining their hosts' resources and pushing more people into hunger.
 
In her blog, Georgieva said that estimates of how much money "a better future will cost" were said by Haiti’s government to add up to $11.5 billion, while some economists put the needs higher, at $14 billion.
 
"It is difficult to know what the exact figure is going to be, but it is clear that for many years to come Haiti is going to need a huge financial support," Georgiev said.
 
"But money on its own is not what matters – it is the good it will do."
 
She said that at an NGO conference ahead of the UN donors’ gathering, participants’ principal interest was in "what this money is going to be spent for and who is going to keep track of it".
 
Citizens of the European Union shared this concern, she said.
 
At the conference, the EU will commit 1.3 billion euro for the next three years, the first phase in at least a decade-long project. 
 
"I personally think it will take much longer than 10 years to deal with the devastation of decades of bad development and an earthquake that wiped out the equivalent of 120 per cent of Haiti’s GDP," Georgieva said.
 
"The European taxpayer is very generous, but wants good value for money. This is why I think Europe should not only be the world champion of generosity, but also of effectiveness. When we, Europeans, stand up to be counted, we want the count to be in results," she said.
 
At the conference, the EU will be represented by foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, development commissioner Andris Piebalgs and by Georgieva.
 
The European Commission said that the EU delegation would emphasise the need for a long-term strategy over the next 10 years to complete the Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) projects to rebuild the country which, it is estimated, will cost about 10 billion euro.
 
The EC said that European citizens and civil society organisations had shown their solidarity and overwhelming support for Haiti by jointly mobilising more than 600 million euro to support relief and rebuilding.
 
According to a report by the Voice of America, all across Haiti, families that struggled before the earthquake to feed themselves now find themselves with hungry guests.
 
Charles Edie, chief of agriculture for the Artibonite department, said that the people who had left Port-au-Prince "brought nothing with them but their appetites".
 
About 60 000 people arrived in Artibonite after the earthquake, swelling the population by 20 per cent within days. At first, food aid helped some families ease the burden. But Edie said that stage was coming to an end. 
 
"The second step is to try to create work so that people who left Port-au-Prince have money so they can survive," he said.
 
Experts say the newly arrived workers actually could be a boon to rural Haiti. Putting them to work improving food production could help reduce Haiti's food shortages. 
 
Creating rural jobs is on everyone's to-do list, from the government to the UN to aid groups.
 
Meanwhile, on March 30, the UN News Service said that Haiti’s human capital will play a crucial role in the country’s recovery, through food-for-work projects to stimulate the agricultural sector, as part of a new plan unveiled by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).
 
"Working in concert with donors and the Haitian Government, WFP is seeking to procure food locally and is also pre-positioning food, trucks and other supplies before the start of the hurricane season for the strategy, which is kicking off as the agency’s emergency response phase is winding down," the report said.
 
School pupils will be fed a daily, nutritious meal under the new scheme, while pregnant and nursing women, malnourished children under the age of five, orphans and hospital patients will also receive food supplies, according to the report.