RÉSUMÉ DE LA CONFÉRENCE DE PRESSE DU COORDONNATEUR DES SECOURS D'URGENCE DE L'ONU SUR LES RAZ DE MARÉE EN ASIE DU SUD ET LES AUTRES APPELS HUMANITAIRES (en anglais)

Jan Egeland, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, briefed journalists as part of the regular briefing by the Information Service about the appeals for the tsunami relief efforts as well as for the start of the launch of the 2005 Consolidated Appeals. He was joined by Ambassador Walter Fust, the Director of the Swiss Federal Department for Development and Cooperation.

Mr. Egeland said there were two major events taking place today at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. There was a ministerial-level pledging conference for the victims of the appeal for the unprecedented catastrophe of a tsunami hitting Asia and parts of Africa. There was also an equally important event which was the launch in Geneva of the start of the 2005 humanitarian appeals. This was if anything an even more important appeal as the UN here would be launching programmes for life-saving assistance for more than 20 million persons in disaster stricken areas around the world. 2005 had started better than any other year in terms of public and private human generosity with many billions of dollars worth of assistance for the 5 million tsunami stricken persons. 2004 had been a mixed year in terms of generosity for the most vulnerable. In some areas, the UN did not even have one third of the sum needed to save lives by vaccinating and feeding children and sheltering the displaced and refugees.

Mr. Egeland said that the world needed to agree that it was as terrible to starve in Darfur, Sudan as it was to starve on the beaches of tsunami stricken nations. If it was agreed that a human life was worth the same, then there should be the same generosity to all in need. The world had never been richer. Therefore it should be possible to feed those 20 million people in desperate need of assistance. He hoped that 2005 would become the first year to have a fully funded humanitarian appeal and that was the reason for the meeting today.

Mr. Egeland said the United Nations was appealing to donors, public and private, north and south and east and west, to not only fully fund its appeal, but also to provide predictability that aid would be coming. The world had basically the same 10 big donors today as there were 20 years ago, even though there were many new economies. The response to the tsunami disaster was heartening because the UN was registering many new donors coming up with substantial figures. He hoped that would continue for the other appeals for 2005. In conclusion, he said there was no better investment than humanitarian relief. United Nations agencies had been unable to save the lives of women and babies last year because there was no money to fund reproductive health care. Also sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS, could not be stopped. Survivors of gender-based violence could not be cared for as necessary. Also many internally displaced persons and refugees could not be cared for.

Ambassador Walter Fust, the Director of the Swiss Federal Department for Development and Cooperation, said that the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs should be thanked for providing a better needs assessment, better prioritised aid and better coordination among the humanitarian agencies. Speakers at the opening of the meeting this morning had heard about the importance of disaster prevention. At the Kobe meeting, this issue would be coming up. Also, it had been noted at the meeting that gender-based violence had not so far adequately been addressed in the needs assessment process. From the Swiss point of view, his country made absolutely clear that transparency and accountability had to be concentrated upon, and that this money coming in for the tsunami victims was new money and not funds being taken from other disasters. Another issue of utmost concern was how to move from immediate disaster response to rehabilitation and longer-term aid, and also how to transform war-torn economies into peace economies.

In a question on how to ensure that pledges by Governments were transformed into funds, Mr. Egeland said that especially during dramatic natural disasters, there was a disproportion between generous pledges and actual money delivered to the victims. Already available on www.reliefweb.int was a record of all the pledges made so far to the UN tsunami appeal and also to other humanitarian appeals. The UN wanted to be held accountable as agencies working on the ground, and it wanted the donors to be held accountable for the promises made. The UN depended on the press to be the watchdogs for this.

In a follow-up question on Price Waterhouse participating in auditing what happened to the money that was delivered, and whether that might encourage donors to give more, Mr. Egeland said today the UN had a good system in terms of accountability. But it was not enough as a public system in terms of tracking every cent. He hoped the tsunami funds would see the beginning of an even more refined tracking system of world funding to all humanitarian assistance. He also hoped that it would spur more pledging and more realization of pledges. It was very important to get the money early on and that it be spent early on as hunger and money did not wait.

In response to another question on the forgotten crises and some of the problems encountered by donors, Mr. Egeland said that sometimes, the UN was too modest in what it was asking for because what it had received before was so little, and then it received even less, which was a vicious circle. For example, there was a huge problem in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The UN asked for too little money to respond to it, and it got only half of that. The UN had asked for $ 162 million for the Democratic Republic of the Congo where one thousand persons died daily, and it only got $ 110 million. Lack of political attention and lack of media attention could be blamed for why the world was not responding properly to these crises, and "also maybe lack of agency and leadership in the UN". Also, he noted that some countries were "more popular" than others. While it had been easy to cover the appeals for Kosovo, Iraq and the tsunami, it had been a nightmare to cover most appeals for the Central African region, and for western, eastern and southern Africa.