The European Union plans to send a military mission to Haiti to provide shelter for earthquake victims and pledged another €90 million of humanitarian aid to the country today.
"Shelter is the most burning need," EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement at an EU summit in Brussels, adding that the aim was to deploy the military mission before the March rainy season in Haiti.
She did not say how many EU troops would be involved, but said Haiti's government and the United Nations had requested the military mission.
An EU statement said the bloc was allocating another 90 million euros from its emergency reserve to help provide shelter for people who lost their homes in the earthquake and to assist food distribution and healthcare.
"We should avoid at all costs a second-wave humanitarian disaster in Haiti. With the approaching rainy and hurricane season, giving people a roof over their heads is a key priority," said EU aid commissioner Kristalina Georgieva.
"It needs to be a roof that can withstand the Caribbean storms," she said. "The experience of 2008, when the country was hammered by four tropical storms in succession, is very much in our minds."
Last month, EU institutions and member states offered more than €400 million in emergency and longer-term aid to Haiti and the bloc deployed paramilitary police to help protect the relief effort.
In the immediate aftermath of the disaster some EU members compared the European response unfavourably to that of the United States, which quickly deployed tens of thousands of troops and vast food and aid supplies.
Reuters