
The U.N. and its partner aid agencies are urging the international community to keep the financial support for Haiti flowing in, noting that fund distribution in the country is delayed.
Only USD907 million is on hand out of the USD1.5 billion target by U.N. agencies, Reuters reports, citing an advance copy of a report on the aid appeal’s progress.
The report noted that the limited response to the U.N.’s appeal could strain the operation capacities of humanitarian agencies working in Haiti.
A similar concern regarding the speed of donors’ response in providing the promised aid to Haiti haunts the USD10 billion worth of reconstruction funds pledged during a conference in New York last March.
Donors said they would release USD2.5 billion of these resources in 2010. However, as Devex reported, only 10 percent of this amount has been released as of June 30.
Meanwhile, aid organizations working on the ground in Haiti were criticized for their lack of transparency. Citing a report by the Disaster Accountability Project, Andrew Revkin of the New York Times’ “Dot Earth” blog shares that several organizations who rushed to raise money for Haiti “haven’t always been in a rush to say how the money was spent.”
Revkin says the report found that out of 197 organizations that solicited money for Haiti, only six published regular reports detailing how they spent the funds.