£6.5bn pledged for quake-hit Haiti

United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon announced that nearly 50 donors had pledged the cash "for the next three years and beyond", demonstrating the international community had come

together "dramatically and in solidarity with the Haitian people" to help them recover from the quake.

Haiti had appealed for 2.5bn for the next two years.

The UN chief said the 6.5bn included pledges of 3.5bn from governments and international partners for the first 24 months of reconstruction.

"We have made a good start," Mr Ban said at the end of the day-long donors conference. "We need now to deliver."

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who co-chaired the conference, called the pledges "an impressive sum by any standard".

She said last night: "To put this effort in perspective, after the 2005 (Indian Ocean) tsunami, more than 80 countries provided immediate humanitarian assistance and more than 20 countries pledged assistance for reconstruction.

"As of today, more than 140 countries have provided humanitarian assistance to Haiti and nearly 50 countries have made pledges of support for Haiti's rebuilding."

Haiti's President Rene Preval thanked donors, saying: "This is a heartfelt effort that demonstrates Haiti is not on its own."

The January 12 earthquake destroyed the government and commercial centre of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. Government-estimated death tolls – which rose without explanation ahead of the conference – range from 217,000 to 300,000 people.

Most of the estimated 1.3 million people left homeless are still sheltering on broken streets, hillsides and riverbeds.

Some officials praised the conference as a milestone for both Haiti and international aid efforts.

"I hope what it will do is give confidence to people in Haiti that the international community has not lost interest, they are absolutely there with them, that there is a plan for the future," UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said.

But others were sceptical that the aid pledges would be fulfilled. A spokesman for aid group Oxfam, Philippe Mathieu, said that after 1998's Hurricane Mitch struck Central America, less than a third of the 5.9bn promised materialised.

"Soon these pledges will need to turn into concrete progress on the ground. This cannot be a VIP pageant of half promises," he said.

In the first minutes of the conference, Mrs Clinton announced America's pledge of 760m over the next two years and the European Union foreign affairs chief, Catherine Ashton, announced the EU's pledge, equivalent to more than 1bn.

That totalled more than two-thirds of the 2.5bn Haiti was seeking.

Aid pledges came from all over the world. Oil-rich Qatar gave 13.1m, the Gambia promised 660,000 and China 990,000.

Independence document found

A US university graduate student has found what historians think is the only surviving printed copy of Haiti's Declaration of Independence.

North Carolina's Duke University said 26-year-old history student Julia Gaffield found the yellowing document while combing through papers in the National Archives in London.

Haiti issued the declaration on January 1, 1804.