UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday urged world nations to foster a “wholesale national renewal” of Haiti as the nation emerges from a devastating earthquake.
“As we move from emergency aid to longer-term reconstruction, let us recognize that we cannot accept business as usual,” Ban wrote in the Washington Post. “What we envision today is nothing less than a wholesale national renewal.”
World leaders will gather tomorrow at UN headquarters in New York for a donors conference that will examine Haiti’s needs. Participants will consider a plan, under which an Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission would channel nearly US$4 billion into specific reconstruction projects and programs during the next 18 months, Ban said.
PHOTO: AFP
Over the next 10 years, Haiti’s reconstruction needs will total an estimated US$11.5 billion, the UN secretary-general said.
“Clearly, this assistance must be well spent and well-coordinated,” Ban said. “It must provide for continuing emergency relief: food, sanitation and, most urgently at this moment, shelter.”
More than two months after the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti, the country is still in a state of mourning.
On Sunday, hundreds of voodoo practitioners chanted, prayed and pounded drums to honor earthquake victims in a public ceremony in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
The white-clad voodooists, many with black sashes around their arms, walked from a downtown plaza to the shoreline, where they asked for the spirits of the dead to be cleansed in the ocean and sent on their way to reincarnation.
“Without us, there is no Haiti,” voodoo priest Jean-Claude Bazil said, adding that his religion was the country’s true path. “We have to pull ourselves together to save Haiti.”
The Jan. 12 earthquake, which killed an estimated 230,000 people, roused tensions among Haiti’s religions as some of the outpouring of aid has been funneled through Christian groups. A ceremony last month was disrupted by angry crowds that threw rocks at voodoo practitioners.
Organizers of Sunday’s memorial promoted the event with radio advertisements in an effort to increase acceptance of voodoo, which was sanctioned as an official religion in 2003 by the government.
Haitian National Police kept a close watch from pickup trucks, but there was no violence.
“Voodoo is not a secret society,” said Max Beauvoir, the voodoo priest who presided over the UN park ceremony.
Still, the crowd was nowhere near the size of those that turned out for Christian memorials during three days of official mourning last month.
Voodoo, a blend of Christian tenets and African religions fused by slaves, is practiced across the country. Many Haitians consider themselves followers of both voodoo and Christianity.
Voodooists believe in one god, a pantheon of spirits and reincarnation. Voodoo leaders say that although they do not believe in evil spirits, some followers pray for the spirits to do evil.
One voodoo priest, Augustine Saint-Clou, said they were praying for all the quake victims although he does not believe other religions have shown the same consideration for voodooists.
“This is the real religion for all Haitians,” he said.
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