CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti, Nov 17 (Reuters) - The U.N. appealed to donors on Wednesday to release $1 billion in funds for Haiti as a study showed almost half its children are malnourished and one in 10 Haitians will have HIV/AIDS by 2015.

The joint report by the United Nations and the Haitian government found that 55 percent of Haitians live on less than $1 a day, the country has not experienced economic growth in 25 years and 40 percent of homes struggle to find enough food.

In a grim array of statistics on the poorest country in the Americas, the report said 42 percent of children under 5 years old are malnourished, while malnutrition and diarrhea kill 28 percent and 20 percent respectively of children under 5. HIV/AIDS affected 6.31 percent of the population in 2002. By 2015, the virus will affect 10.5 percent of Haitians, it said.

"The alarm bells go off with this report," Haiti's interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue said in the northern port city of Cap-Haitien, where the study was released.

The U.N. coordinator in Haiti, Adama Guindo, said the report was completed before devastating floods in September killed up to 3,000 people in the northwestern city of Gonaives and other northern areas.

"When that is all factored in, it becomes all the more evident that Haiti cannot make it on its own and that we must ask for an immediate disbursement of the more than $1 billion promised last July in Washington," Guindo said.

International donors pledged $1.3 billion in July to help the Caribbean country emerge from persistent instability and recover from a monthlong armed revolt that led to the ouster of ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Feb. 29.

So far, little of that money has been released.

In the meantime, up to 200 people have been killed in political violence in the last 10 weeks, straining the resources of a Brazilian-led peacekeeping force.

Latortue said that with or without international funds, the government would carry out promises to build decent roads to provincial towns where the rebels still hold sway.

"Thanks to a good financial management, the government could open 26 building sites, financed almost exclusively by public revenue," he said.

But without international funds, dire poverty and other social indicators are getting worse, the U.N. report said.

If recent trends continue, a quarter of Haiti's 8 million people will be shackled by extreme poverty in 2015, it said.

Erosion threatens 25 percent of Haiti's territory. Forested areas sank to just 4 percent of the territory in 2000 from 9 percent in 1987, and almost 96 percent of Haitians depend on coal for energy, meaning the remaining forests are at risk.