Red Cross to launch second appeal for Haiti relief effort

Friday, April 9, 2004

GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP): The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) plans to launch a second appeal for relief funds in Haiti where it will remain until the troubled country stabilises, officials said on Thursday.

"At present the situation can be described as a bad normality," said Simon Pluess, a ICRC worker who has just returned from a seven-week mission to the violence-wracked Caribbean nation.

"The political, economic and social system is fragile and the population is vulnerable," he told a news conference at the ICRC's headquarters in Geneva.

Some 40 percent of the people in Haiti do not have access to primary health care while about 60 percent have no access to clean water, he said.

The ICRC has reduced its foreign staff in the country from 27 at the height of the crisis to 24 following the resignation and flight into exile of former Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide on February 27, said Cecile Cros, the agency's deputy head of operations for Latin America.

And the level "will go down further," she told reporters.

At the same time, the ICRC remained committed to helping the country back on its feet, said Pluess.

"We will be present in Haiti until the consequences of the past violence are no longer there, then our mandate will stop," he said.

The organisation had been prepared for a worst case scenario in the build up to Aristide's departure, equipping hospitals with medical experts and equipment to respond to a massive influx of wounded people.

This "never actually took place, yes there were wounded there was work to be done but it was not overwhelming which is a good thing," said Pluess, adding that at present it was impossible to give an accurate estimate about the number of people who were killed in the uprising.

At the start of March, the ICRC launched a 4.6 million Swiss franc (3.0 million euro, 3.6 million dollar) appeal for a four-month mission to Haiti.

"This budget will be spent by June, may be more than spent," said Cros.

"Considering the situation is not yet solved there will be another appeal by June with a smaller budget after the necessary adjustment of our activities, which we are currently doing," she explained, declining to reveal how much money would be requested the second time around.

The ICRC was concentrating on building up Haiti's medical capacity and its ability to respond to another emergency if violence flared again, said Pluess.

Officials from the agency were also ensuring that the international rights of people being arrested by a nascent police force were being respected.

A situation report on Haiti published on Thursday by the United Nations said although the country had become more stable major concerns remained about a lack of security, access to food and health as well as water and sanitation.

"Some cities and areas of the capital have no access to electricity and potable water, which creates sanitary problems," it said.

In addition, a sudden increase in inflation, the deepening economic crisis and worsening unemployment were exacerbating the crisis, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned.

Meanwhile, international troops still have a long way to go to secure strife-torn Haiti and face a serious challenge from criminals, Canadian Defense Minister David Pratt said during a visit to Port-au-Prince Thursday.

"The multinational interim force has certainly made an impact here in terms of the security of the citizen," Pratt said during a conference call with Canadian reporters.

"Having said that, it would seem to me that there is still a pretty significant amount of work to do on the security side."

Pratt said multinational troops sent to restore order after former president Jean Bertrand Aristide resigned and left the country February 29 needed to track down and apprehend "criminal elements that still exist within the society here."

Canada has provided 450 troops for the 3,500 strong UN-authorized international security force.

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