Human Rights Basis for Rebuilding Haiti, says Archbishop Tomasi
(28 Jan 10 - RV)The United Human Rights Council is meeting to discuss the Human Rights
aspects of the recovery efforts after the January 12th earthquake in Haiti.
Permanent
Representative of the Holy See to the United Nations in Geneva Archbishop Silvano
Tomasi today addressed the special session.
In his address, Archbishop
Tomasi said the Church also has been hard and painfully hit by the death of many of
its members in the earthquake. This includes the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince and
many religious, priests and seminarians.
A great number of social and pastoral
workers, several of them foreigners, have died under the rubble of a collapsed city
while serving together the Haitian people.
The Archbishop also pointed out
that schools, hospitals and clinics run by the Church have also been destroyed.
Archbishop
Tomasi says an emergency such as this shows more clearly the need and value of respecting
human rights. He said in the case of Haiti, the right to life, to food, water, health,
development, an adequate life expectancy, the right to decent work, among others,
were already largely absent.
He emphasized the recent tragedy is a call to
the solidarity of the international community to respond immediately to these requirements
of the Haitian people and to place these human rights at the base of a healthy plan
of reconstruction.
However, he stressed the well-meaning and generous international
assistance provided to Haiti, in a practical application of the principle of subsidiarity,
first of all should offer the Haitian people the capacity to rebuild their needed
infrastructures and to assume their political and social responsibility.
Archbishop
Tomasi concluded by saying the Church will continue to actively collaborate in rebuilding
the country, by promoting the most basic human rights and by contributing to the health
and educational advancement of the Haitian people in their just aspiration to a life
of freedom and dignity.