The UN's development agency added its voice today to calls to write off Haiti's $1 billion foreign debt in response to this month's devastating earthquake.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) applauded calls by the International Monetary Fund for an international funding effort along the lines of the US Marshall Plan that helped rebuild Europe after the second World War.
"UNCTAD believes this task should begin by immediate and total cancellation of Haiti's existing debt obligations," it said in a policy brief.
UNCTAD said a study of the effect of 21 natural disasters on low-income countries between 1980 and 2008 had shown they added 24 percentage points to a country's ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP) in the three subsequent years.
"Shocks on such a scale can lead to a vicious cycle of economic distress, more external borrowing, burdensome debt servicing, and insufficient investment to mitigate future shocks," it said.
Haiti lost 60 per cent of its GDP in the disaster, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said earlier this week, referring to the economy's concentration in the capital Port-au-Prince close to the January 12th earthquake's epicentre.
Irish aid agency Concern appealed to the Irish Government to make its voice heard in support of cancelling Haiti’s “now unsustainable debt burden”.
In a presentation to the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee, Concern called on the Government to vote at the IMF for the cancellation of all debt for Haiti.
Chief executive Tom Arnold said: “As well as immediate emergency support, Haiti needs the international community to assist in the sustainable redevelopment of the country; for this Haiti must begin debt-free.”
Meanwhile schools in areas of Haiti unaffected by the devastating earthquake will reopen next week and officials are looking at ways to get all students back to class, the Education Ministry has said.
Haitian education officials and aid groups will begin a fast assessment of public and private schools in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and other cities in the areas hit hardest by the earthquake or that received many quake refugees.
The earthquake is estimated to have killed some 200,000 people and devastated the impoverished country. Aid groups and education officials estimate that 1.8 million children and 5,000 to 8,000 schools were affected by the quake.
Haiti lacked an effective education system even before the disaster. Only about 53 per cent of its nine million people are able to read and write.
Government officials and aid groups said they hoped that recovery would provide an opportunity to establish a harmonised education system for the country, with a single curriculum for both private and public institutions, under the lead of the Education Ministry.
Reuters