Thank you.
I'm joining you today, coming in from Port-au-Prince, where I've been based with UNICEF since about 10 days after the earthquake.
It's an honour to be here today, not only because I'm representing UNICEF but also because I'm a Canadian citizen. This is my first time presenting in front of a committee like this, so this is not actually a prepared statement but rather talking points. They are still accurate and sincere.
I wanted to speak a little bit about the earthquake relief and how we're repositioning in Haiti, not just for recovery but also for historic change for children.
I also wanted to speak briefly about the cholera response and what it's telling us about where the needs in Haiti really are.
First, let me congratulate the Canadian government for being the first public sector donor to release funds against the flash appeal, and in particular to release funds against UNICEF's appeal in 2010.
CIDA became the primary or the first-place donor in the public sector for our program and the third-largest contributor to the program overall. Over $14.2 million was released for the earthquake recovery efforts, and UNICEF allocated this substantial contribution to the areas of education, nutrition, water, and sanitation.
Meanwhile, the Canadian people were also generous and showed their solidarity with children in Haiti by fundraising and mobilizing an additional $14 million over the last year and a half. So not only is the government strong behind Haiti, but we also have a strong show of solidarity from civil society.
What I'd like to say is that the speed with which the first pledge was confirmed, its rapid transfer, and the flexibility of its manner enabled us to respond to the urgent, changing needs on the ground in the way that we needed to. So thank you once again for the consistent and appropriate assistance as a good humanitarian donor.
I'm sure that you've heard today about some of the major victories achieved in 2010. There was an immediate lifesaving response with UNICEF's work in the WASH Cluster. As a Cluster coordinator, we were able to work with partners to extend an emergency water-trekking operation that ensured safe water for over 1.2 million persons in the immediate aftermath. UNICEF's financial assistance, also through CIDA, helped to cover the needs of about 680,000 people. Some 11,300 latrines were constructed to fill the emergency sanitation needs in the immediate aftermath.
At the same time, the nutrition situation was stabilized. Malnutrition will often affect children, who are the most vulnerable in a crisis. Over 11,200 children were treated within a network of 159 different treatment programs and 28 stabilization centres for children who experienced complications when they became malnourished. UNICEF supported these partners with financial assistance and supply assistance.
Also, we had over 107 baby-friendly tents and corners, which are actually a preventative intervention to help mothers understand how to properly feed their infants and their children and how to breastfeed. This is a good and innovative example of how you can have a preventative intervention in the middle of a lifesaving emergency response.
The area of child protection received a lot of media attention and scrutiny from abroad. UNICEF focused on working with a variety of community-based organizations to create child-friendly spaces within the displacement camps. Over 445 were established in 2010, and every day they reached over 120,000 children with recreation and psychosocial support. It is particularly interesting that the majority of our partners are national partners. They are civil society organizations and faith-based organizations that will continue to provide this kind of support even after displacement ends, because they will carry these protective services back to their communities.
Also in child protection, UNICEF worked closely with Save the Children and with a variety of other partners to roll out a system of family tracing and reunification. In the early days, this was extremely effective in registering children. Family tracing, however, has been a little bit more of a challenge. About 40% of the children who were registered were separated before the earthquake, which means that in some cases families don't want to be found. This continues to be a very challenging area, which I'll talk a little more about in a moment.
I'd also like to say that in 2010, over 720,000 children received support to go back to school immediately after the earthquake in April. This is a huge victory. It was accomplished in partnership with the ministry of education. A distribution of over 1,600 tents was made to about 225 different sites across the country in the earthquake-affected areas, and there was a distribution of school supplies, teaching and learning supplies, and a really strong support with partners to make sure that schools could reopen even if they were in a tent. These are quite large and substantive achievements, but they only represent a fraction of what was accomplished, particularly with CIDA funding.
As my colleagues here have mentioned, at exactly the same time that an emergency response was being conducted, there was an effort to look at capacity development, and particularly of the government as the overarching duty bearer for the protection of child rights. UNICEF, as a member of the United Nations family, is of course concerned about the issues that were discussed earlier in terms of rule of law and good governance and citizen participation. So from the start, UNICEF focused on trying to restore the operational capacity of the ministries that deliver social services and also the technical capacity.
I'll explain a few of these examples so you can understand that there is concrete evidence of change. In one case, for the nutrition division, which is a part of the Ministry of Public Health, while the centres to look at therapeutic feeding and to address severe, acute malnutrition were being expanded, at the same time UNICEF was working on training a large cadre of health officials to be able to identify malnutrition and also to be able to raise its profile in the delivery of health services.
At this point, UNICEF is funding the ministry to recruit six nutrition specialists at the central level and a group of 10 nutrition specialists, one for each department of Haiti, who will implement programs to improve surveillance on malnutrition and also treatments through the health system.
In child protection, while we focused on child friendly spaces, at the same time UNICEF was looking at things such as legislative reform. We had a victory for advocacy. In March the government signed the Hague Convention on International Adoptions, which is a basic step in enabling a protective framework for children within the country.
At the same time, UNICEF worked to improve the regulatory capacity of the ministry of social affairs by developing a database of residential care facilities, which house and host separated children, but we also enabled them to conduct assessments and to begin the process of accreditation and achievement of minimum standards for children in these centres. This is a great victory because it is coming from a country in which we were unable to identify and confirm the locations of these facilities. Now they are mapped, they're assessed, and they're on their way to being better managed.
Most significantly, I wanted to speak about education. At the moment, I would like you to know there is an unprecedented momentum for education. With the election of President Martelly and now with the confirmation of a prime minister, we have a unique moment to be able to capitalize on the momentum around education. The rentrée scolaire has just been completed, and UNICEF has supported the president's initiatives to reach children out of school by distributing school supplies to about 750,000 children throughout the country.
UNICEF will also be targeting some of its construction efforts for schools, not only in areas affected by the earthquake but also in some of the 150 different communities throughout the country that have no access to public education infrastructure.
You might have heard that UNICEF has a very extensive construction program. We've completed 160 semi-permanent schools; 40 are in the works to be completed by the end of the year. In the next year, we will focus not just on recovery but on equity, on ensuring that children in the most remote areas and the most vulnerable can have access to a safe learning space.
I also want to briefly mention the cholera epidemic. Unfortunately, about 450,000 cases have been recorded, and there have been about 6,300 deaths. Incidence rates are not even throughout the country. We're now seeing small, localized outbreaks throughout the country.
This is telling us that the needs are not necessarily within the earthquake-affected areas. Although those who are most vulnerable are still very much in need, and some of them are in camps, there are children without access to social services in the most remote rural areas. The stark gaps they have in accessing basic water, sanitation, and health care are proving to not just be a danger to their individual achievement of rights, but to the stability and public health of the country. Therefore, we're interested in seeing support for the decentralization of social services and generally for the government in the most rural areas.
Thank you very much.