By Stephen Kaufman
Washington — United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed former U.S. President Bill Clinton to lead the international coordination for Haiti earthquake relief, with responsibilities ranging from continuing emergency response efforts to focusing on long-term reconstruction needs, as well as coordinating a new U.N. funding appeal.
In agreeing to accept the expanded leadership role, Clinton, who has served as the U.N. special envoy to Haiti since May 2009, will be “coordinating on my behalf,” the secretary-general told reporters in New York February 3.
“In particular, he will provide strategic guidance in our work for Haiti’s early recovery and long-term reconstruction, with a special emphasis on mobilizing international support and donor funding,” Ban said.
Clinton has been asked to launch a revised U.N. flash appeal on February 17 that will raise funds for Haiti’s long-term reconstruction effort. The first funding appeal, launched in January for $575 million, has received 82 percent of its requested funding, according to press reports. Clinton is also being asked to help prepare for a March donor’s conference for Haiti that will be held in New York.
“Needless to say, he has hit the ground running,” Ban said. “He will be in Haiti on Friday.”
In a February 4 statement released by the Clinton Foundation, the former U.S. president said that while relief efforts in Haiti have been increasing to meet the country’s “staggering needs,” “the long road to recovery has just begun.”
On February 5, “I will return to Port-au-Prince for the second time since the disaster to unload supplies and talk to Haitian officials to ensure assistance continues to be effective, coordinated and sustained in the weeks and months to come,” Clinton said.
Clinton previously traveled to Haiti on January 18 for meetings with Haitian and U.N. officials and to deliver water, food, medical supplies, solar flash lights, portable radios and generators provided by private and corporate donors, according to the statement.
Clinton has followed Haiti for more than three decades, ever since he and his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, visited there for the first time in the 1970s.
“I think I understand what its shortcomings have been, but I’ve always believed most of its problems were not as some people suggested: cultural, mystical. I think they were subject to misgovernment,” he told the Miami Herald in a May 2009 interview. “They were either oppressed or neglected, and they never had the benefit of consistently being rewarded for effort in education, in agriculture, in industry and in any area. And, therefore, they were forced to become incredible … social entrepreneurs and to make the most of daily life.”
Since the January 12 earthquake, Clinton has been leading relief efforts through his foundation’s Haiti Earthquake Fund to provide immediate financial assistance to nongovernmental organizations working in Haiti. President Obama has also asked him and former President George W. Bush to raise funds and coordinate relief aid through the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, similar to Clinton’s efforts with former President George H.W. Bush after the Pacific tsunami in 2004.
In an interview with the television channel CNBC aired February 2, Clinton expressed his respect for the Haitian people, saying they often have “either been ignored or abused or patronized.”
“I don’t want people to say I’m doing this because I feel good and these poor people need my help,” he said. “They do right now … but you have got to understand, these are smart, innovative people who have survived against odds that most of us couldn’t live in on a daily basis for a long time.”
