CONFÉRENCE DE PRESSE DU COORDONNATEUR DES SECOURS D'URGENCE À L'OCCASION DE L'APPEL HUMANITAIRE POUR 2008 (en anglais)

John Holmes, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, introduced the Humanitarian Appeal 2008, which was launched this morning in Geneva. “What we are looking for in this appeal for 2008 is some $3.8 billion, designed to give help to 25 million people in 24 countries,” said Mr. Holmes. Mr. Holmes was joined by Dr. Robert Glasser, Secretary-General of CARE International, and Akoi Bazzie, a former refugee in Liberia who is now working on refugee issues himself in the United Kingdom.

The appeal, which represents a collective effort by 188 different agencies and NGOs working on the ground, includes nine consolidated appeals for individual countries. They include the Central African Republic, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the occupied Palestinian territory, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe. In addition there is one regional appeal, for West Africa, which covers 16 countries.

This is a slightly smaller number of individual country appeals than last year. “I think this is helpful because it shows that the countries we are appealing for are not necessarily just bottomless pits for humanitarian funding, but they can move out of the need for humanitarian funding,” said Mr. Holmes, citing as specific examples the cases of Burundi, Liberia and the Republic of Congo, which have moved on to ‘recovery and development status’ and do not have the same need for humanitarian assistance.

“There is a broad range of extremely effective humanitarian work being done on the basis of the funds provided by these appeals,” said Mr. Holmes, citing a few examples from the current year. “In 2007, funds from this consolidated appeals process have provided safe water and sanitation to over 450,000 people in Somalia. It has helped to care for 240,000 refugees from Darfur in the particularly harsh environment of Eastern Chad. It has provided emergency job creation and cash assistance to 130,000 families in the occupied Palestinian territory; delivered food to no less than 2.2 million people in Zimbabwe; and also helped to provide temporary shelter and basic household items to almost 200,000 people in the Central African Republic.”

The Humanitarian Appeal 2008 does not account for the full amount of the funds required for the year, said Mr. Holmes. Two or three additional appeals were expected to be launched in the coming weeks and months. They would probably include Timor Leste, Sri Lanka, and Iraq. Nor does the consolidated appeal include the so-called ‘flash appeals’, which arise from individual natural disasters. “This year we issued 15 flash appeals, which is five more than in any previous year for natural disasters. We really see a very clear relationship between climate change and that number of appeals. Fourteen of the natural disasters are extreme weather related.”

Commenting on the size of the appeal for 2008, Mr. Holmes said: “3.8 billion is a lot of money and may seem to be a significant burden on the donors but in fact, compared to the amounts of money available in the world, it’s a very small proportion indeed. For every $100 of the rich countries’ gross national product, it is just a few cents for humanitarian aid.”

“The donors have, in fact, been very generous. This year’s appeal was 66% funded, which is a higher proportion than in previous years but we hope that it goes up further. We even have the ambition of having these humanitarian appeals fully funded so that all the desperate needs of people who are suffering can be met.”

Donors are also to be congratulated on improving the timeliness of donations, according to Mr. Holmes. “Four years ago, for example, donors only committed 19% of their available funding by the end of the first quarter of the year, whereas this year they committed 51% - more than half of the funding – in the first quarter. That makes an enormous difference in the way agencies and NGOs can plan with certainty for their humanitarian activities and actually can make a difference to people on the ground in a much more timely and effective way.”

Asked to comment on the how the Humanitarian Appeal addressed some of the current major humanitarian crises, Mr. Holmes said: “The situation in Sudan and Darfur is gradually deteriorating from a humanitarian point of view, which is why we are requesting even more funds for Darfur in 2008 than in 2007.” The 2008 appeal requests $825 million for Darfur, as opposed to $700 million in 2007. “Clearly the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is deteriorating, in Gaza in particular. As the economic blockade of Gaza tightens, the humanitarian needs go up. More of the population are entirely dependent on humanitarian assistance to survive and that is why we are also requesting more for the occupied Palestinian territory.”

As far as Iraq was concerned, Mr. Holmes said that until now, a number of separate appeals had been launched by individual agencies, including UNHCR, WHO, UNICEF, to address particular aspects of the Iraqi refugee crisis. “We are now trying to consolidate those appeals into a single appeal and that will take a bit more time.” A consolidated appeal for Iraq was expected to be introduced in late January or early February 2008.