"Council of Europe member states should work together to create an organisational chain ready to intervene immediately in any major natural catastrophe,” said Luigi Vitali (Italy, EPP/CD), opening this morning’s current affairs debate on “What can Europe do for Haiti?” following the tragic earthquake there. States should co-ordinate the fair distribution of aid so that “it reaches those who most need it”, he said, avoiding a situation recently witnessed in Haiti where earthquake survivors were fighting each other over the aid available.
Tiny Kox (UEL, Netherlands) stressed that his group felt it was also essential to develop “an action plan to rebuild the social and political infrastructure of Haiti” which was already one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere and had now just lost 60 per cent of its GDP, in addition to over 150,000 lives lost and hundreds of thousands of people left currently homeless.
Mailis Reps (Estonia, ALDE) drew attention instead to the almost one million children either orphaned or separated from their parents in refugee camps. She cautioned against the idea of “easier adoptions”, noting that already children are going missing in Haiti. She suggested simple methods of immediately improving the quality of children’s lives, such as creating playgrounds.
