Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum, Switzerland: Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, your excellencies, I will all welcome you to this very special, very important, crucial session on Haiti. All of us in this room remain deeply saddened by the scale and scope that has ravaged Haiti, the scope of the destruction. Disasters of this magnitude serve as a harsh reminder of how fragile life can sometimes be, but it is also during these moments that we are reminded of the common humanity which we all share. We decided to convene this Special Session immediately following the earthquake as the scale and scope became really clear of the devastation. In speaking with President Clinton, he and I immediately agreed that a joint effort of the Clinton Global Initiative, the World Economic Forum, together with the United Nations should be a powerful partnership to effect meaningful change. Let me be clear. We are not here to try and to coordinate and to address issues related to the short-term disaster relief and recovery. There are many agencies already doing great work and here I know many of you have already generously contributed to that end. I would also like to mention that many of those who have done such great work at a very short notice and have engaged personally in a very deep way into the help for Haiti are sitting here in this room. And I would single out particularly the former Prime Minister of Haiti, Michle Pierre-Louis, who has come all the way from Haiti just to be here today together with us. Please lets particularly recognize the work and the presence not only of her, but of all those NGOs, people in the room who have done fantastic work. I would like to introduce someone who has become a real friend of the World Economic Forum and whom we owe a lot, William Jefferson Clinton, the President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. And I will not forget, never forget your visit here on the occasion of our 30th anniversary, Mr President, in a very difficult situation when you joined us and when you made such a great speech. And since that time you have been with us I think every single year and we are so glad to welcome you back and particularly at this very special occasion. I think what people appreciate most is your sense of passion and the deep sense of humanity which you show always as an individual. Its not so much your former work as the President which impresses everybody, but its in addition you as a human being which is such a great characteristic of yours. Bill, you have a relationship with the country that dates back several decades. Even you have honeymoon in Haiti and since that time I know that you had to spend a lot of your attention, of your time in your presidency but also afterwards through the Clinton Initiative, giving special attention to Haiti. Your knowledge of the country, its people and its challenges has also been the reason why, in May last year, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon appointed you as the UNs Special Envoy for Haiti. Despite all your tremendous engagement with Haiti, I know from our conversations that nothing could prepare you for the degree of devastation that you have witnessed personally during your recent visit in Haiti. We are now all looking forward to your address, but its more than just an address. I think what we want to do is assist you in your efforts and we all have an obligation, being global citizens exercising global citizenship, to help Haiti and such and in such a way to show the world that we are really committed to improving the state of the world. Mr President. William J. Clinton, Founder, William J. Clinton Foundation; President of the United States (1993-2001); UN Special Envoy to Haiti: Thank you very much and good morning. I want to begin by thanking Klaus Schwab and the whole World Economic Forum for making the opportunity for all of us to gather here today. And let me say briefly what were going to do. I will try to tell you where we are and what I want you to do and then we will have remarks and a conversation from the others who are here, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Brazil, Foreign Minister Amorim. I just want to say to all of you who do not know this: the United Nations Security Force MINUSTAH has been commanded by a Brazilian general. The Brazilians have led an enormous increased involvement from South and Central America and the Caribbean, Haitis neighbours and they have done so superbly. While a number of people in MINUSTAH were killed in the earthquake, they basically have held things together, President Obama and the Secretary of State and our AID people have worked with the American military and they signed an agreement with the Brazilian leader of MINUSTAH so that we, the United States, have tried to provide extra logistic and distribution support in Haiti. But I just want to say, sir, on behalf of the whole world, I think Brazil has been magnificent in this and we are very grateful to you and to your country and your leaders. Denis OBrien is the Chairman of the Digicel group. He lives in Ireland except when there is an earthquake in Haiti. Weve been friends for many years. He told me not long after I met him that the young Haitians who sold his telephone cards on the street were the best entrepreneurs hed ever met and he has worked tirelessly to help rebuild the Haitian economy. He has now agreed to basically coordinate the business people that we have recruited through the Clinton Global Initiative over the last two years and has made well in excess of $100 million in commitments to invest in Haiti and hes also done everything he could through getting his own cell phone service up again and a number of other things to help Haiti. We thank him for being here today. Helen Clark is the Director of the United Nations Development Programme, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, who went to a lot of trouble to come here. And Robert Greenhill many of you know, the COO here is the former President of the Canadian International Development Agency. I too want to thank former Prime Minister Pierre-Louis for being here. She did a lot of work and when she left office she asked me to keep working and shes been a real inspiration to all of us whos ever had anything to do. She came all the way from Haiti to be here today, so if you have questions about that you might want to talk to her. And I thank all the others whove already sent emergency aid and long-term commitments, including I want to mention particularly George Soros, who has reaffirmed his commitment to make a very substantial private sector investment in Haiti. Now let me just be very brief here. I want to say a few words about where we are and then I want to turn it over to the people here and then maybe give opportunities for you to talk now or with everybody here as soon as we break up. The World Economic Forum has agreed, Klaus has, to work with us in partnership to work between now and the Clinton Global Initiative in September and then for the next couple of years to increase private sector involvement in Haiti. There will be outside here a Haiti desk and Robert will explain how it will operate in a minute. We want you to think about this. If you want more information, we want you to go there, well get you the information, but there will be a place where you can go between now and the end of this session of the World Economic Forum either to tell us what youre interest in is and ask for us to follow up with you or to tell us what you are doing now and what youre prepared to do. So, where are we? The bad news is that somewhere around 150,000 people have lost their lives, at least 200,000 others have been injured, many of them have had limbs amputated and have neither received wheelchairs nor prostheses and there are hundreds of thousands of people who need temporary but extended housing and even more who need to get food and water every day. The United Nations, the United Nations Security Force, as I said, has been working well. I think the Americans have done a good job. The government of Haiti has asked the United States to manage the flow at the airport while there are 800 to 1,000 planes that are trying to land there. You should know that on the day before the earthquake only 10 or 12 planes landed at the Port-au-Prince airport; now they land more than 100 every day on basically what is a big one-lane airport, one runway airport. They are managing it well. There are serious unmet food and water needs and part of it is just the distributional system does not exist. The government of Haiti was devastated by the earthquake. The United Nations suffered its worst loss of life on a single day in the history of the UN. But the airport has become the de facto operations centre of this relief effort and the Haitian governments building out some offices there so everybody can be in one place and work on a daily basis. The immediate needs, think about it like this: right in the aftermath of the earthquake you had all these people walking the streets not knowing how many of their loved ones were living or dead, with only what they had on their back, with no food, no water, able to get no sleep, no light anywhere at night, so for days and days the Haitian people were stumbling over bodies living and dead. And I dont mind the international media showing people and unrest at the food distribution centres and all of that, because it spurs us all to do better. But I think you need to know, in my opinion, given what they went through the people of this country behaved magnificently in the aftermath of the most unimaginable tragedy. So I think that things are better now, but there are serious problems with getting enough food, medicine and shelter. What do we need? We need safe, sanitary shelter. The camps are being developed and both are important. Right now, every piece of green space in the larger Port-au-Prince area and west is occupied by somebody sleeping at night without organized sanitary conditions. Theres a move on that. We need more food and water distributed. We are attempting to set up even today a better system of monitoring all the hospitals and clinics in the area. There are basically eight traditional hospitals and a number of field hospitals and clinics and offshore hospital units that have been set up that do daily monitoring on what are the medical needs, so that we can either fly it in or distribute whats already there at the airport in a more effective way. We have to then get temporary schools open and get the kids back into school, the teachers before they leave to do something else and the government itself has no revenues to restore basic services; everything was taken away. I told somebody I spent last weekend on toilets and trucks and I say that not to make you laugh, but to remind you of what they are up against now. Right now, we need to figure out how to get through the week. I want the people of Haiti not to have to worry about whether they can eat today, whether they can get water today, whether their kids are going to be hungry today. I want them to at least to be able to know from one week to the next that they have a place to sleep, that its safe, that its sanitary, that theres some lighted conditions at night, all of that. And I can tell you the thing we need most now is instead of 15 distribution centres for that food we need 100 or 200 and the only practical way to do it is trucks. And we have money. Denis and I both, we were talking about it, we the former President Bush and I were asked by President Obama to raise some money. Weve raised some money in our fund. I raised some money for a UN fund. Wed like to have a good deal, but we can buy these trucks. We need to get them a distribution network down there to get this food and medicine out. People dont have the cabs are destroyed, they dont have a way to get around. It is simply not enough, even if we had all the food and water we needed every single day, to distribute it at 15 sites. So if theres anybody here who knows where I can get some not big trucks, not semis, pickup trucks or slightly bigger, I need a hundred yesterday. They do. So, I will say again if you want to help, unless you are in contact with a medical facility and you are sending specific medical facilities or unless you have access to medical teams, right now we need cash more than anything else, because we got enough cooks in the kitchen and not enough coordination and distribution. Weve got to get people through a week to week basis where they can think about at least that and not having to worry about getting through the day. Now, having said that, the United Nations is committed to setting up work for cash programmes to begin the cleanup. We can involve a lot of Haitians in that and a lot of insofar as they can, the Haitians are returning to normal life. There are large numbers of NGOs there. Haiti has about 10,000 operating NGOs, the largest number per capita in the world with the possible exception of India. And virtually all of them have been heroic in this crisis and good on a more consistent basis. The UN is the agencies like the World Food Programme, UNICEF, a lot of other people have been working hard in spite of the fact that our leadership was crushed there. Heres what I want you to think about. Before all this happened, I was asked to be the UN Coordinator in a very different time. Haiti lost 15% of its GDP in 2008 because of four hurricanes. Michle Pierre-Louis was then the Prime Minister and the Haitian government had a commitment to modernize the country and the UN said the UN Secretary General said, We want you to go in there and help them by making sure that the donor nations and international organizations honour their commitment and we get more private investment. And I said that I would do it, but only if I were helping the Haitians to implement their own plan, that our goal this time should not be helping the country, but helping the country to stand on its own, to determine its own destiny, to be sustainable in a different and fundamentally positive way. So they did that. The Haitians took Dr Paul Colliers economic report, they made amendments to it, they had their own plan and we were doing well: the donors were beginning to distribute the aid. We had a foreign investment conference in Port-au-Prince where there were more people from the neighbourhood Latin America, Central America and the Caribbean than from Europe, Canada, the US and Asia combined. The first time in my lifetime that all the neighbours have been committed like that to the future. As I said, Denis OBrien will tell you in a moment we had a group that we had recruited over the last year or so through the CGI to invest $100 million there. I tried to mobilize the Haitian diaspora and meanwhile the Haitian government, the Parliament gave dual citizenship to the Haitian diaspora which has, for those of you who understand Haiti, enormous potential positive implications for the development of the country. And the NGO community was beginning to work together for the first time to try to harmonize and intensify their efforts. We had people interested in building up the agriculture sector, the tourism sector, the potential for the development of call centres, all kinds of things. Then the earthquake happened. Heres what I want to say to you. This is horrible for the people of Haiti. Theyre virtually in shock now and a lot of them are frustrated that theyre not getting the aid fast enough. But I still believe they have the same chance to escape their past and to build a better tomorrow that they had before the earthquake if we can manage this crisis and then develop both a plan for what happens in Port-au-Prince and west and a structure that will have the confidence of donors and accountability that will both empower and increase the capacity of the Haitian government and involve Haitian citizens and all the rest of us in the long-term reconstruction. And I am working on that. We did it in Indonesia, in Aceh after the tsunami. We had a system that mobilized and coordinated what the government could do. We had total transparency, total accountability and a regular set of progress reports that made a big difference. I also believe that a country can rise from the ashes in a very short time. My model for that is Rwanda and Dr Paul Farmer, whos my deputy at the UN and has worked in Haiti for 25 years, his foundation and mine went to Rwanda and it essentially helped rebuild the entire health care system in three years. Four years after the genocide in 1998, Rwandas per capita income was still $268. Ten years later, it was $1100; it had nearly quadrupled and a lot of you were probably part of that. Dont tell me they cant do this. This is an opportunity to re-imagine the future, for the Haitian people to build the country that they want to become instead of to rebuild what they used to be. We have to get through the emergency, we have to get it organized and we have to have the right structure and the right support. I invite you to be a part of that. And I can tell you this and then I will turn it over to the other panellists here. After we had that investment conference in Port-au-Prince, we did what we always do: we went out and said, How did you like it, what did you like, what did you not like, how do you feel? Heres the most important thing those of you who are on the outside of this need to know: 97% of the people who came to the investment conference agreed with Denis OBrien. They said they were surprised by the positive opportunities available there for them. I want them to become you. So Ill turn it over to the panel and ask all of you to visit the Haiti desk and if you know that youre prepared to do something, sign up and let us know. I assure you we will organize it for you and be back in touch. Thank you very much. And I think well just go down the line now. Denis, would you like to speak next? Denis OBrien, Executive Chairman, Digicel, Ireland: Well, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, there is a better day for Haiti and its tomorrow and I think there is a huge case for foreign direct investment in Haiti. Weve invested about $370 million over the last four years. Its a terrific place to do business, believe it or not. The government policies are very favourably disposed towards foreign direct investors. But more importantly, Haiti has a very young population and, you know, we have 900 staff, theyre a hugely talented people. Theyre very committed, theyre very hard-working and, you know, there are 10 million consumers in the marketplace and certainly its my view that over the next five years, the Presidents given an example of what happened in Rwanda, that can be replicated in Haiti with a proper reconstruction plan and a development plan. By way of example, just to give you an example of how committed people are, I met a man the other day. He came back to work. He lost five of his family and he still showed up for work. So, you know, I think Haitian workers, Haitian staff, Haitian managers and most of our business is now run by Haitian managers are, you know, some of the best people in the world. And, you know, you probably will ask yourselves this morning where are the opportunities for me and my business? And, first of all, theres opportunities in tourism, particularly in the northern part around Cape Haitian, theres some wonderful beaches, already the cruise liners are coming in there. Theres hotel groups like Choice Hotels, Best Western are coming in there and investing money. But also in the area of light manufacturing, particularly in textiles and apparel, because there is a thing called the HOPE II Agreement, which allows manufacturers of these goods to have very favourable tariff treatments in the United States and I know the President has been involved in pushing that. Theres also opportunities for food production. In food production, a Taiwanese group are putting 16 million into rice production. But also for people who are in the rebuilding, reconstruction, construction business, property development, I think theres an enormous opportunity for those people to come in now and make very solid investments. Also, in infrastructure, electricity generation as well. And, you know, we, in the space of four or five years since we been there weve never had any problem with our business. Weve never had any difficulties with the government. And thats why I actually think that this market is at the doorstep of the wealthiest consumer market in the United States and most of us in this room have investments all over the world, but theyre generally pretty boring, if you like, you know, because theyre all, you know, theyre doing theyre making money, creating jobs in other countries and that, but Haiti is not boring. Its challenging, but its also a way where you can actually strengthen your management team by actually sending them there and blood them in this new market. And Id have to say, you know, Haiti is wide open for business and for those of you who are looking for a low-cost manufacturing location right close to the US, please go and register today at the Haiti desk or get in touch with the Clinton Global Initiative, because within the CGI we are really trying to push investment. I will personally go and make a presentation to you, even though Im not the foreign direct investment agency for Haiti. But, you know, I just cant strongly, you know, urge you enough to actually do something. And, you know, do it for the right reasons. Not just do it for altruistic reasons, but to do it for economic reasons, because Haiti is a great country and tomorrow its going to be even a better country. Thank you. Clinton: Thank you. Let me just say, first of all, we were going to have a meeting of all the people who had already made these business commitments in Haiti, then the earthquake intervened. Denis told them all to come to South Florida and meet anyway and they all re-upped. And I cant thank you enough, but youre right, Haiti is not boring, but neither is it hopeless and I thank you for your commitment. I should also tell you that I have met with 50-plus NGO and philanthropic leaders, all of whom reaffirmed their commitment. The people who have been down there are hooked and they believed in what we can do together, so I thank you very, very much. Now Id like to ask the Foreign Minister from Brazil to speak a little bit about his perspective on this, his country, where he thinks we are, where were going. And then I would like to ask Helen Clark to speak and then maybe you could talk a little about what our partnerships going to be like going forward. Mr Foreign Minister. Celso Amorim, Foreign Minister, Brazil: Thank you, thank you, Mr President. Well, Im really very honoured and also touched and moved to be here today, because I just came from Haiti about four days ago. I was there last Saturday and I could see with my own eyes some of the things that are mentioned here. I mean in spite of all the horror, the disaster, the tragedy, people are living. The markets are reviving, even the street markets and certainly its not boring. And actually, what I would say, just as an aside, I didnt think to say that, but even in the aspect of art, painting and music, thats also an area which can bring money and which can be used. And I remember that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, if I may quote, when he was busy reviving the American economy, he also paid attention to the artists, because thats also part an important part of the self-esteem of the country. I was reading yesterday or the day before yesterday in the Herald Tribune an article which speaks about a cathedral where you had these, I dont know, the stained glass window with bible figures, but they are black bible figures. So this is part of the national pride also that has to be recovered. Well, as President Clinton already said, Brazil is very committed in terms of the security forces. We lost 18 soldiers and officers now and we also lost what we consider the Brazilian Mother Theresa, who worked with children there and also the Vice the Deputy of the UN mission of the civilian mission. But that didnt detract our attention. On the contrary, we are even more committed now. I dont want to belabour and to extend myself on what we have been doing and what we are doing, because I dont think this is the time to make any kind of propaganda publicity, but I think this is a moment of solidarity, actually. I was very moved to see in the list of donors countries like Botswana, countries like Chad, countries like Gabon, not to speak of Latin America, the Caribbean and not to speak of the richer countries. So its a moment in which the world has to show solidarity and I think I want to also to complement Klaus Schwab for promoting this. There are a lot of experiences in Haiti going on, some by NGOs, some by government, some in trilateral cooperation, that have to do with some sort of economic activity, but its rather small-scale things like the cash for work, which is now very important, crucial at this moment. But I also want to take on what President Clinton said, thinking in the medium and long-term, because the medium and long-term are around the corner. After all, we have to deal with them as we deal with the emergency. And in this respect, I think there are four questions that have to be addressed and the private sector is fundamental for that. I just mention these four; there are others. But: jobs, energy, environment and food security. And jobs for young people. One of the main preoccupations of President Bellerive with whom I have just talked was the outflow of young people, because these are the people who can reconstruct Haiti. So its important that there is investment and that the investment comes quickly, so that people see that there are prospects. And in the area of jobs, not to mention other areas, but just to take one, like garments and the HOPE II, for instance, us, Brazil, we were discussing with the United States how you could facilitate the rules of origin so that it would make easier for people to invest, actually had, I believe, 11 businessmen from Brazil in the mission that was coordinated by President Clinton. And I think its essential to do that and for the first time I saw the Brazilian textile industry saying that they were prepared to give reciprocity if there were so people if the American companies investing there and if the HOPE II gives easier rules of origin, we would also do the same. So this is one thing. In the area of food security rice is essential. Maybe its not so attractive, I dont know, from the point of view of entrepreneurs, but its an area in which we have to do something, because one of the worst one of the causes of the last political crisis in Haiti before that was precisely the food. In energy, Brazil has enormous experience in biofuels, but this can be done not just to help Haiti but to make money. In the beginning it can be dehydrate biofuels coming from Brazil or somewhere else, going to the US market. In the future, it can use sugar cane planted in Haiti itself. And finally, if I could mention environment. Haiti is a devastated land from the point of view of environment. I don't want to go into the causes, but thats the fact. So we would need a massive programme, financed maybe by the World Bank, the IDA, I dont know, but with also private sector interested in replanting trees in Haiti, because otherwise the country will continue to suffer from floods. Floods dont come only because it rains. It comes because the environment is not adequately prepared to absorb those rains. So I would say that. And if I could just finalize, since I always came to this Forum only to speak about trade and WTO and so on. This is the time to show the WTO is not only about profit and greed. This is the time for all the countries to offer all the countries all developed countries and all developing countries that can do so to offer duty-free quota-free to all Haitian products which facilitated rules of origin. That is what would really make a difference. Clinton: Thank you. Thank you very much. Let me try to clarify for those of you that arent involved in Haiti. You all saw the pictures on international television not just of the human misery but all the channels repeatedly showed a map, showed you a map of the island of Hispaniola, Haiti and where the earthquake was most severe, essentially in Port-au-Prince and west. I do want to emphasize something that both the previous speakers said, but I want you to be clear, those of you who are interested in this. Seventy percent of the landmass of the country and about 60-plus percent of the people were not directly damaged by the earthquake. The economic plan which was developed by the government then headed by Prime Minister Pierre-Louis and now headed by Prime Minister Bellerive includes commitments for this whole country. It is more important than ever, in my opinion, while were trying to rebuild Port-au-Prince and west and help people put their lives back together to try to, if anything, to accelerate the impact of the economic plan and its implementation in the rest of the country. I want to make a defence of the Royal Caribbean Lines. They were criticised for continuing to dock their ships in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake at Labadee, near Cape Haitien. I think thats wrong. They brought in money that the Haitians desperately needed. They kept people working who needed jobs. You didnt want us to shut the whole rest of the country down while the capital was broken and bleeding and burying their dead. It would have been a terrible mistake. But lets just take tourism. There were 800,000 tourists in Haiti last year, 500,000 brought in by the Royal Caribbean Line and they didnt spend the night because the facilities werent there because theres not an airport at Cape Haitien. I hope we can accelerate the construction of the airport. I know personally two investors who are going to open resorts there. Theyll put thousands of people to work. A lot of people have left the Port-au-Prince area, gone back to their home villages. They need to make a living. The other people there do. I just want to emphasize that. We have agricultural products, environmental projects, tourism projects, all kinds of opportunities in the rest of Haiti and doing something there will be a direct benefit to the area hit by the hurricane as we begin the rebuilding. And I want to thank all the people whove kept economic activity going in the rest of the country during this moment. So, now let me otherwise I dont have strong feelings about this issue. I'm aghast that anybody would criticise the people who are trying to keep the rest of Haiti together in this moment. I want to call on our UNDP Director Helen Clark now to talk a little about what the UN system has done and I would like to say again Im a volunteer there, but I am profoundly moved by how dedicated they all are to doing their mission in the wake of an unimaginable tragedy for the UN system as well. So, please. Helen E. Clark, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), New Zealand: Thank you, President Clinton, distinguished fellow panellists, ladies and gentlemen. I think out of all the contributions so far theres a common message coming and that is that out of this terrible catastrophe can come a time of renewal if we put together unique partnerships that make that possible and everyone can play a part in those partnerships. There has been an extraordinary outpouring of goodwill and commitment for Haiti from the governmental level, from the level of the ordinary citizens across our societies, from the private sector, from the foundations, from the non-governmental organizations. The key thing is to keep that momentum going. Right now, the humanitarian relief phase is still very much there. Were moving in to early recovery with cash for jobs, but beyond that theres the huge agenda that others have talked about and theres no doubt in my mind that the kind of private sector initiative which President Clinton and the World Economic Forum have in mind and which I understand Robert will talk about can be incredibly important. As President Clinton said, there was an economic recovery plan driven by the government of Haiti in place before this catastrophe. That plan must not stop. That plan must be accelerated. There are large parts of Haiti which were not directly physically impacted where, as President Clinton said, the work can go on now. So, Ive come today representing the Secretary General to be extraordinarily supportive of the initiative that President Clinton and the World Economic Forum are putting to you and to say that the role of the private sector, the role of the foundations, the role of the NGOs, this is just so important, alongside the role that governments can play and alongside the role of the development banks and the multilateral institutions. Its about unique partnerships where everybody plays a role in supporting Haiti at this hour of need to build back better and to actually renew. Thank you. Clinton: Thank you. Robert, why dont you just explain what we propose to do now? We obviously dont have weve already run over time, we dont have time to explore a lot of the specific questions you might have, but we have tried to set up a system to do that. So would Robert Greenhill, Managing Director and Chief Business Officer, World Economic Forum, Canada: Well, thank you, President Clinton. And as the President mentioned, I was involved in Haiti as the President of Canadas International Development Agency and Im very proud of the leadership role of Canada, together with Brazil and the United States and others on this issue. Well, what were calling for now goes beyond that. Were calling for a global partnership and were actually calling upon people to go beyond engaging beyond giving, to engaging. To actually, after the TV cameras have gone, to continue with the hard work of creating work, sustainable work through sustainable jobs for Haitians. And we actually think the power of the international business community could be a major force behind that. So how do we hope to do that? Well, as President Clinton mentioned, well be working under the Haitian leadership with a Haitian economic development plan. What well be doing, together with the Clinton Foundation, is well be working in collaboration gathering together those business leaders here who are interested in engaging and actually committing to procuring, potentially looking at investing, partnering to help build Haitian jobs and Haitian businesses. Weve already contacted a number of you over the last seven days and weve had dozens of you already sign up to look at what those opportunities might be. Id invite you all who are interested now to go to the Haiti desk to receive more information, but also well be reaching out to each and every one of you in the week following the Forum electronically to continue to encourage you to engage. And just in closing, the theme of this years Davos is Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild and were saying we should rethink how we engage in these challenging situations. We should redesign how we work together and were going to be a model of that and together we can rebuild Haiti. Thank you very much. Clinton: Thank you. Well, let me just let me close by saying this. There are a group of people that are meeting in Haiti everyday now, including architects and urban planners, trying to imagine the future. If you think its hopeless, I urge you to go to New Orleans and look at the Lower 9th Ward where where everybody said it was over and we could never build affordable hurricane-resistant housing and we now have some of the greenest housing anywhere in the world thats more affordable than what was there before. Yes, we need plans to rebuild Port-au-Prince. Yes, we need plans to do the rest. Yes, we need a structure that guarantees transparency and accountability and all that, but let me just tell you what the bottom line is here. Haiti is the only successful country every established as the result of a slave revolt. For that, they were punished by either being ignored or abused. The United States did not recognize them for nearly 60 years and when finally we did we were in with the rest of the crowd of European powers saying that they had to pay enormous reparations for wining their freedom. Then for 20 years early in this century, starting during World War I, the marines occupied Haiti but did nothing to empower the people to change the fundamental structure of society, to build the kind of self-determination that you have to, so when we left things went to hell again. Then I dont see how anybody could have been surprised when there were Haitian leaders who abused their people the way that Haiti had been abused by outsiders; the same way some children who are abused grow up to be child abusers. Then they started trying to get their democracy back 20 years ago and I tried to give it to them, but a lot of us on the outside havent really known how to help. So Haiti has also been hurt a little bit by all of us who feel self-righteous that were doing good to help them. They wish to be empowered to chart their own course in the future and they need to be helped through this hideous natural disaster to get there. But I will say again theyve got the best chance theyve ever had in my lifetime to escape that past and we have the best chance weve ever had, those of us who are outsiders, to be a part of it as partners. Not, you know, just trying to help people so we feel good, but to empower people who are as gifted and hard-working and creative under unbelievably adverse circumstances than any people Ive ever seen. As Denis said, this will not be boring for you, but Ill guarantee you youll feel better if you do it and, in all probability, youll be successful. And after this is over you might want to talk not just to the people here but to Michle Pierre-Louis, who has come all the way from Port-au-Prince, she had to go to the Dominican Republic and then to fly out of there because of the clogging of the airport, and to George Soros who has been all over the world investing in very difficult places and promoting freedom through enterprise and investment. Im very grateful to him and there are others here who are involved in Haiti. So I thank them. I thank you. The Haiti desk is there. If you have any interest in this, even if you dont know the answers to some of your questions, for goodness sake sign up while Davos is going on. I promise you our office will follow up. Thank you very much.
