UN General Assembly
2008

Most of those States are incapable of starting any short- or medium-term recovery programme on their own because of their limited resources. Compare their plight with that of some developed countries where regions have been similarly devastated by hurricanes, earthquakes and mudslides. Those regions have been declared disaster areas and national resources have been mobilized to build and rebuild in record time, in some instances better than before. Let us compare the cases of two small countries: Haiti, in the Caribbean, less than four hours away from where we are meeting in the commercial capital of the world, and Georgia, on the Black Sea coast. Soon after the Georgia crisis, the United States Administration announced a $1 billion reconstruction package for Georgia, pledging that $500 million of that package was to be delivered by December of this year. That is commendable indeed; but what of Haiti? That Caribbean country just south of the Florida keys is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. It is virtually a ward of the United Nations and the