With the one-year mark since the devastating earthquake in Haiti, UN Secretary -general Ban Ki-moon on Friday said the road ahead to rebuild the Caribbean country will be "long and hard" as international aid has "not come as quickly as needed."
"We must be realistic," Ban told reporters here at his first press conference in 2011. "The road ahead will be long and hard."
Emphasizing that reconstruction has been slow, he said that "international aid and investment has not come as quickly as needed. "
With the cholera epidemic showing no "sign of abating," the latest figures show that roughly 180,000 people have been infected, with more than 3,500 people dead, Ban said.
"As we continue to help Haiti to rebuild, we must not only fulfill essential needs in areas such as clean water and sanitation, health
care and jobs; we must also prioritize improvements in security and the rule of law," he said.
But "we are making progress," he said, highlighting the fact that the number of people living in camps is half of what it was at the
peak of the emergency.
The UN has also been providing clean water to approximately 1 million people every day, and food to 2 million people each month,Ban noted.
Looking at the "extremely delicate" political situation, the challenge for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti ( MINUSTAH) during this testing passage is mainly to maintain security, and to help a new, legitimate government that "enjoys the support of the population get on its feet and fulfill its responsibilities to the Haitian people," Ban said.
The earthquake left more than 220,000 dead, 300,000 injured and about 2.3 million people, nearly a quarter of the country's population, displaced.