Davos, January 29: Former US president Bill Clinton called for more help for earthquake-ravaged Haiti on Thursday, telling world leaders and business experts at the World Economic Forum that the impoverished Caribbean nation is determined to escape its troubled past.
“This is an opportunity to re-imagine the future for the Haitian people, to build what they want to become, not rebuild what they used to be,” Clinton, a UN special envoy to Haiti, told this influential gathering of business and political leaders at the Swiss resort of Davos.
Citing a litany of woes – a lack of food, water, even trucks to distribute what aid has arrived – he called for “cash more than anything else”. But if anyone had some pickup trucks, Clinton said he could use those too.
“I need 100 yesterday,” Clinton said.
The forum is appealing to its wealthy corporate members to pitch in aid but even more importantly, invest for the long term in Haiti.
Elsewhere at the forum, the leaders of South Africa and South Korea urged governments and business leaders to work on keeping the effects of the global financial crisis at bay. But it was Haiti’s hopes for rebuilding help that earned top billing.
Clinton said in the aftermath of the January 12 quake, Haiti’s economy could emerge stronger than it was previously, citing Rwanda’s economic improvement after its genocide.
-PTI