Highlights of press conference by Jan Egeland, USG for Humanitarian Affairs

Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said he would like to touch today upon three important humanitarian issues. One was the issue of humanitarian reform proposals which were now taking shape. The second was the very bad developments the world was now seeing in Darfur, yet again. The third was the issue of natural disasters and climate change.
The humanitarian reform efforts were part of the wider reform, Mr. Egeland said, adding that he was pleased to say that they were not seeing many of the same controversies seen in other areas of United Nations reform. Over the last two years since he had accepted his post, he had been seeing a growing consensus in the north, south, east and west that more effective humanitarian action was important for all. Progress was being made in three areas. First of all, by the beginning of next year, there would be a humanitarian response fund for emergencies. This fund would hopefully become as big as $ 500 million in the end. In addition to the $ 50 million which existed in the old fund, the United Nations had initial pledges for $ 170 million. So there was still some way to go before the goal was reached. Such a fund was needed because the world was routinely late in responding to large emergencies, like it was late in responding to the situation in Darfur, like in Niger, and like the locust invasions in Africa. With this fund, the United Nations could listen to early warnings from its members in the field and respond earlier with initial funding. As he spoke, the world was late in responding to the warning of eminent starvation in Malawi unless a big programme was starting. The United Nations had less than one third of what it needed for Malawi. If the humanitarian response fund already existed, the United Nations could have jumpstarted operations in Malawi.

Mr. Egeland said that in the second area, the United Nations was making progress in filling the gaps within its own response system as humanitarian partners. It was now assigning UN agencies and other humanitarian partners to take the lead in the response to water and sanitation needs, shelter needs, protection needs. By next year, there would be a more predictable system so that it knew who would lead the efforts within the humanitarian community, thereby also saving lives more effectively. Thirdly, the United Nations was preparing a more ambitious humanitarian coordination programme in the field to better select, train, educate, service, empower and hold accountable the humanitarian coordinators in the field. However, they would also need to become more aggressive as humanitarians in demanding action by others where the root causes were very remote from being humanitarian. The root causes for humanitarian crises were usually political, security, economic or climate related. Darfur was such an example.

Moving on to the second issue he wished to touch on, Mr. Egeland said Darfur was a continued crisis in spite of very effective humanitarian work. He wished to pay tribute to 11,000 courageous colleagues in Darfur who were keeping alive millions of people by providing daily distributions of food, medicine, shelter materials, creating schools and providing other services. Of late, the world was seeing that humanitarian work was "plaster on a wound". Now, at the end of September, the level of violence had been escalating again sharply. He warned that if the violence continued to escalate and if it continued to be so dangerous to unarmed humanitarian work, they might not be able to sustain their operations for 2.5 million people requiring life saving assistance in Darfur. Against all odds including insecurity, rains, fuel shortages and other problems, the United Nations reached more than 2.5 million people with life saving assistance in August. Some 47,500 tons of food had been delivered. In the last few days, humanitarian colleagues had been harassed, attacked, robbed or abducted. This could not continue.

"My question is, is this a repeat of the so-called safe areas of Bosnia again. We keep people alive, we give them food, we give them medicine, schools, but we do not protect them, or protect our own, unarmed staff. Then, the massacres happen", Mr. Egeland said. "We need to have the same kind of pressure on the parties as we had last summer when world leaders really, really put their thumb and their pressure on the Government of Khartoum". Mr. Egeland said he no longer felt the same kind of pressure. There were now meetings in Abuja, but most of their attention seemed to be in attacking each other and attacking civilians in Darfur. Civilians were being killed and raped every day across Darfur with impunity. Truck drivers were now refusing to deliver humanitarian assistance in many areas, threatening the humanitarian operations and the lives of tens of thousands of displaced persons.

Mr. Egeland said that on the third issue, the world was still behind developments, not only on the political front, but also concerning climate change and its consequences for natural disasters.

"Climate change is a reality. I think that maybe some still try not to open their eyes. But there are triple the number of climate-related natural disasters over the last few years, compared to the sixties and the seventies," Mr. Egeland said. "Hundreds of millions of people have been affected in the last couple of years, their livelihoods, their lives being devastated by natural disasters".

This year, hurricanes Katrina and Rita had hammered the Gulf coast of the United States. The seas were warmer and the temperature was warmer, glaciers were melting, and this was causing more extreme weather and there was no doubt about it. "We have to do our utmost to halt climate change, but at the same time, we have to do much more to prepare our populations for more extreme weather and for more natural hazards", Mr. Egeland said. Hurricane Katrina had shown very graphically that no nation on earth was adequately prepared. The United States had the biggest assets in the world, yet it was not adequately prepared to meet that kind of a hurricane, nor were European, Asian and Latin American countries. It was obvious that the poorest countries in Africa and elsewhere were even worse prepared. The Hyogo Framework of Action (2005-2015) that was agreed upon in Kobe last January had to be taken more seriously. There had been some progress. Fewer people were now dying of natural disasters than a few decades ago, but more people were displaced and more lost their livelihoods.

In response to a question on whether the situation in Darfur could become so dangerous that the United Nations would consider withdrawing from Darfur, Mr. Egeland said the United Nations wanted to stay in Darfur as long as it could to help people in dire straits against all odds. A lot had been achieved already in Darfur. It had 11,000 people on the ground and it had received an enormously generous food contribution from the United States and a lot of cash from the European Union and others. "As we speak, we have had to suspend action in many areas, tens of thousands of people will not get any assistance today because it is too dangerous, and it could grow".

Asked if he thought that the rebels and the Janjaweed still shared the blame for the trouble in Darfur, or if it had shifted more to the rebels and the bandits, Mr. Egeland said that he hoped that all the parties involved in the conflict would behave responsibly, and would stop being utterly irresponsible and cruel as they were being today. They were all to blame, and the longer the conflict went on, the more incidents of banditry would take place.

A journalist asked if the answer for Darfur was for the international community to reinforce its military presence in the area. In response, Mr. Egeland said the humanitarian presence had to be maintained, and the African Union or some other force had to come with three times the strength there was today. Now, the force was in excess of 5,000 persons, which was more than there was last year, but it was still incredibly behind what it should be. Also, there was a need for a political agreement in Abuja. This was a man-made conflict, and the men in Abuja could end it.

In response to a question on the situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and which humanitarian agencies had been asked to leave the country by the end of the year, Mr. Egeland said unfortunately, the Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea had informed the United Nations that humanitarian operations had to end by the end of the year. The Government had maintained that the OCHA office and some non-governmental organizations had to be closed. UN agencies had been invited to say in the country with their development programmes. The Red Cross had also been invited to stay with development-related programmes. The United Nations was very concerned with the stance, and he had told the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in New York last week that this position could lead to massive renewed suffering among children and vulnerable groups in the country. Together with Government agencies, the United Nations had been able to decrease dramatically the massive malnutrition in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, but more than 5 million people were still being fed by international programmes and millions received medicine through multilateral programmes and it would be tragic if it all ended so abruptly by the end of the year.

"We hope in our talks to be able to agree on many programmes continuing because they also have a development component, and also hope that we can have a phased scaling down of our operations rather than an abrupt closure at the end of the year. My meeting with the Deputy Foreign Minister led me to believe that there is room for us to agree on how to phase down operations, but we still do not have such agreement", Mr. Egeland said.

Asked who the attackers in Darfur now were, and who should be in charge of the new humanitarian response fund, Mr. Egeland said the recent attacks in Darfur were sometimes attributed to rebels or guerrilla forces, others to a splinter group of the SLA, elsewhere it was the Janjaweed, in other places it was Government forces, and there were also ethnic militias and armed bandits now involved. All in all, it was a very chaotic situation. The world had a false impression that it was going reasonable well now in Darfur, and attention had wondered elsewhere. But it was not going well in Darfur in terms of violence. As for the fund, it would be administered by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. He would have the opportunity, on behalf of the Secretary-General to assign money very quickly, but it would be audited.

In response to another question on the situation in Niger, Mr. Egeland said there were today 400 theraputic feeding centres in Niger, reaching around 100,000 children. There had only been 33 such centres when they had last met in July. These were very important, because in Niger it was really a problem of child mortality more than anything else. More than 1 million people were also being fed, and this figure would increase. There would be harvesting very soon and the United Nations did not want to undermine the market mechanisms. The whole hope was for Niger to become as self sufficient as possible. The United Nations only had 52 per cent of the required funding, which was $ 42 million of the $ 81 million requested. More money was needed for Niger. A lessons learned exercise was also necessary.

A journalist asked if there was any truth in claims by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea that some countries like the United States were trying to politicize the humanitarian aid. In response, Mr. Egeland said there was a highly, politically charged atmosphere in the international discussions on many issues regarding the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The United Nations humanitarian assistance to that country was very a-political and had been going on for 10 years and it was extremely effective.

In response to another question, Mr. Egeland said the United Nations was in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to help the people, the five to six million children and elderly and other vulnerable persons that received assistance. The United Nations was not helping any Government, it was helping the people.

Answering a question, Mr. Egeland said all money received by the UN went to buy food as close as possible to the operations because it was cheaper and it got there quicker and it stimulated regional production. However many countries had schemes whereby they bought surplus food in their own countries and they transported it as food aid. This could end up being more expensive, but it had other political considerations. In the end, this food aid was free.

In conclusion, Mr. Egeland noted that northern Uganda remained an intolerable emergency which was not being dealt with as should be.