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By: JONATHAN M. KATZ (AP) –
2 days ago
PORT-AU-PRINCE,
Haiti — Former U.S. President Bill Clinton
officially inaugurated the commission overseeing
Haiti's post-earthquake reconstruction on
Thursday, pledging to accelerate and organize a
process that has raised less than 1 percent of the
money promised by international donors.
The Interim Haiti
Reconstruction Commission aims to oversee every
rebuilding dollar that comes to Haiti through next
year. The hope is that it will ensure transparency
and encourage investment, helping transform a
dysfunctional, cripplingly poor country crushed by
the Jan. 12 earthquake into a self-sustaining
nation with a prosperous middle class.
"The prime
minister and I have made a commitment to the
people of Haiti and the people of the world to
make this process both transparent and
accountable," Clinton told reporters before
the meeting.
Outside the
cracked, upscale hotel where it met in a
convention room, a better future seems a long way
off. More than five months after Port-au-Prince
shook, collapsed buildings line the streets and
families live under leaky tarps at risk from
floods, hunger and disease. Rebuilding has been
hampered by organizational problems, government
disfunction and the scale of the disaster itself.
Long-term money has
also been slow to arrive. Some $3 billion has been
committed for humanitarian aid such as immediate
post-disaster rescue, medical care, emergency
shelter and food, according to the United Nations.
But despite
international pledges of some $5.3 billion over
two years at the United Nations donors' conference
for Haiti in March, only a fraction has actually
been delivered — just $40 million from Brazil.
Though other pledges are expected to be delivered
soon, much of that to be held in a Multi-Donor
Trust Fund administered by the World Bank,
Haitians are growing restless.
Enter the
commission. The 26-member body was empowered under
an 18-month emergency declaration by Parliament
passed shortly before most members' terms expired
and the body essentially dissolved last month.
Half its voting
members are Haitian officials, the rest
representatives of each donor pledging at least
$100 million or $200 million of debt relief: the
United States, Canada, Brazil, Spain, France,
Norway, Venezuela, Japan, European Union,
Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank.
President Rene Preval has a veto.
The concept is that
the commission will oversee the spending of every
donation above $500,000 to Haiti. Organizations
will present their projects to the fund, needing
its approval to get government and other support
to move forward. The process will be tracked on
the commission's website.
On Thursday,
Clinton and Bellerive announced the commission's
first approved spending projects:
_ $45 million from
Brazil and Norway in direct funds for the Haitian
government, closing a quarter of its estimated
$170 million budget shortfall.
_ $1 million from
the Clinton Foundation for buildings that can be
used as storm shelters in the quake-ravaged towns
of Leogane and Jacmel, which are often in the path
of Atlantic hurricanes.
_ A $20 million
fund to provide loans to small- and medium-sized
Haitian businesses, provided by Mexican
communications magnate Carlos Slim and Canadian
mining investor Frank Guistra.
Copyright © 2010
The Associated Press.
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