Ashton and Georgieva to visit Haiti

Foreign policy chief and commissioner for humanitarian aid to see damage caused by earthquake.

Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, will travel to Haiti tomorrow (2 March) to see first-hand the damage caused by an earthquake that struck on 12 January, killing more than 220,000 people.

Ashton, who had been criticised by MEPs and foreign ministers for not travelling to Haiti in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, will join Kristalina Georgieva, the European commissioner for humanitarian aid, who travelled to Haiti yesterday (28 February). “It’s now the right moment for me to go,” Ashton said, adding that the country’s airspace was no longer clogged with relief flights.

Ashton repeated her earlier call for a “Marshall plan” for Haiti, a reference to an American plan for the economic reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War. The long-term reconstruction of Haiti will be discussed at a conference in New York at the end of the month.

The most pressing needs are shelter and sanitation as the rainy season approaches. Of the roughly one million homeless people in Haiti, experts from the European Commission believe around 100,000 are in urgent need of shelter. The rest have found refuge with relatives or in homes that are still partially habitable.

Ashton told reporters in Brussels today that Georgieva was ready to travel to Chile – which was hit by an earthquake on Saturday – if necessary.