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Coordinating aid for Haiti

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It has been more than two weeks since the deadly earthquake struck Haiti and aid distribution has often been marked by poor coordination, vast gaps in coverage, and long lines of desperately needy people. Marco Werman speaks with Stephanie Bunker of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs about the range of countries now contributing to the relief effort in Haiti.

• BBC coverage
• UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

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MARCO WERMAN: The fundraising efforts we just heard about in Ghana and Zambia are examples of private giving to help with relief in Haiti.  Then there’s the aid sent by governments around the world. There, too, the aid is coming from a variety of countries, some big and rich, others small and poor.  Stephanie Bunker is the spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.  Stephanie, your office keeps track of aid going to Haiti and we should add to any number of other places in need of humanitarian assistance.  Rank for us the top countries in terms of aid for Haiti since the earthquake.

STEPHANIE BUNKER: The top donor is the United States, followed by Canada.  Saudi Arabia is in third place now.  Spain, the U.K., France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Australia and so forth.

MARCO WERMAN: Now you mentioned Saudi Arabia as the third largest donor.  What have they offered to Haiti?

STEPHANIE BUNKER: Interestingly, this donation just came through and it’s $50,000,000.00 in cash that they are giving to the United Nations for something called the Emergency Relief and Response Fund in Haiti that can be immediately channeled in case there is some urgent need.

MARCO WERMAN: Is that typical for Saudi Arabia?  Have you seen them pop up before as a major donor for these kind of catastrophic situations?

STEPHANIE BUNKER: They’ve actually got a pretty good track record.  And if you recall, during the global food crisis they came up with, I think the single largest donation ever to the World Food Program.  I forget what it was, I think it was in the $700,000,000.00 maybe?  It was a massive contribution.

MARCO WERMAN: That was a couple of years ago when there just a bottoming out of wheat.

STEPHANIE BUNKER: Yes.

MARCO WERMAN: What about countries with fast growing economies like China, India and Brazil?  I didn’t hear them mentioned in the top six or seven.

STEPHANIE BUNKER: They’re not in the top six or seven, but Brazil has been very generous.  In financial terms alone Brazil has given $550,000,000.00 but that doesn’t necessarily reflect all that Brazil has done.  A lot of countries also provide in-kind aid and they don’t put a dollar cost to it and they provide a lot of emergency services; surgeons, search and rescue teams, and so on, that are very expensive, but they don’t necessarily indicate the cost of that.

MARCO WERMAN: If you look over the list of countries that are pledging small amounts, it’s striking how many poor countries are there.  I see Sierra Leone, Liberia, what are some of the poorest countries that have contributed and what are they bringing to the table?

STEPHANIE BUNKER: We were looking into this just yesterday.  We looked at the World Bank’s low income country category and we found out that the countries from that list include Ghana, which is contributing $3,000,000.00, the Democratic Republic of Congo is chipping in $2,500,000.00 as a pledge at least, and Sierra Leone which is giving $100,000.00.

MARCO WERMAN: Is the amount of aid that governments have pledged to Haiti unprecedented?

STEPHANIE BUNKER: It’s not unprecedented.  We saw a huge outpouring also for the tsunami, but it’s certainly extremely unusual.  It’s unusual in terms of its size and it’s unusual in terms of the scope of countries that are actually contributing in one way or the other.  I think it’s really very significant when you have a country like Cambodia contributing financially to a country like Haiti so far away.

MARCO WERMAN: Stephanie Bunker is the spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.  Stephanie thanks for taking a few minutes today to speak with us.

STEPHANIE BUNKER: Thank you.

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