Reporters Without Borders and the Canadian media group Quebecor are in the process of installing an emergency centre of operations for Haitian journalists in the Port-au-Prince neighbourhood of Canapé-Vert. Located on Cheriez Street, the centre will have communications equipment provided by Quebecor. A second equipment convoy is due to arrive today from the Dominican Republic.

The centre's priority aim is to provide journalists who have not been able to work since the earthquake with essential means of communication. It is also intended to facilitate contact between media representatives and to provide government officials, politicians and NGOs with a a way to communicate with the Haitian media.

The Canapé-Vert centre also aims to provide a service to international news media seeking to understand Haitian reality, and could eventually produce and disseminate news and information in its own right by, for example, employing journalists with Haitian print media whose distribution has been suspended as a result of the earthquake.

Up to 20 journalists will be able to work in the centre at any one time. It also has a news conference room that can hold 40 people and a terrace that can hold 60 people. It will have broadband Internet, telephone lines, an audio and video conference system, a satellite TV link and printers, as well as facilities for journalists in distress.

The centre is meant to relay Haitian journalists' requests to the international community and to help evaluate the reconstruction needs of Haitian news media and the assistance needs of individual journalists and their families.

To be able to continue operating in the medium term, the centre will need technical and financial assistance from other NGOs, international bodies and foreign media. We would like to draw this need to the particular attention of the governments of the five countries with especially close links with Haiti: Canada, France, Brazil, Mexico and the United States, as well the spanish presidency of the EU.

We reiterate our appeal for donations and technical assistance. Help us to help Haitian journalists.

It is impossible to locate survivors, organise relief and distribute aid without reliable news and information being relayed by functioning news media. The major relief operation being mounted by the international community in Haiti requires a similar effort on the part of the international media, which have a vital role to play.

But the Haitian press has been devastated by the earthquake.

Reporters Without Borders therefore intends to set up a centre of operations for Haitian journalists in Port-au-Prince in order to enable them to cover the situation and thereby assist the process of providing assistance to the population.

Due to be operational by the start of next week, the centre will be equipped with laptops, mobile phones and generators provided by the leading Canadian media group Quebecor, Reporters Without Borders' partner in this initiative.

The president of the Canadian section of Reporters Without Borders, François Bugingo, will travel tomorrow to Port-au-Prince to evaluate short- and long-term needs. The Canadian embassy in Haiti has offered to house the emergency centre within its compound.

The creation of this centre of operations will be followed by reconstruction assistance – again in partnership with Quebecor – for Haiti's media, which are virtually all currently unable to function. This will be one of the targets of the donations raised by the appeal already issued by Reporters Without Borders.

The press freedom organisation hopes to get news media in countries that are providing significant amounts of aid to Haiti, such as Canada, Brazil, the United States and France, to become financial and logistic sponsors of Haitian media that need rebuilding.