Haiti

The international community gave its blessing on Monday to Haiti's presidential run-off and urged Haitians to calmly wait for the first results due next week to ensure a credible, transparent outcome.

Voicing deep concern at acts of violence marring the campaign for Sunday’s elections in Haiti, some of them fatal, the United Nations today called on all candidates, especially those in the presidential run-off, to avoid threats, intimidation and harassment.

The 3,500-strong United Nations police force in Haiti is planning to reinforce its support of national police for the presidential run-off election on 20 March.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti is conducting a two-pronged campaign to combat crime and violence, tracking down gangs while providing job training for youths in the impoverished country’s two largest cities.

Days after Haitians watched an exiled dictator come home, a former president issued a statement on Wednesday that fueled rumors that he, too, was angling to return.

On the one-year anniversary of the earthquake which devastated Haiti, the United Nations today remembered the disaster’s victims in memorial events in Port-au-Prince, New York and elsewhere around the world.

The report of the United Nations in Haiti 2010 launched today summarizes the efforts undertaken by the United Nations system and its partners, in support to the Haitian people and their government, to answer the multiple humanitarian crises, to accompany the electoral calendar and to advance on the road to recovery.

… Under pressure from various scientific and news reports pointing to MINUSTAH Nepalese troops as being the most likely source of the epidemic, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on January 6th named four top medical experts to an independent panel to investigate the cause of the epidemic in Haiti. The outcome of this investigation will be key to the future of MINUSTAH.

UN relief agencies on Friday defended their role in the much criticised aid effort after Haiti's devastating earthquake nearly a year ago, saying they had faced "apocalyptic" scenes.