Posted on 12/18/2005 5:44:22 PM PST by BenLurkin
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- A year of disasters around the world sparked an unprecedented outpouring of aid, but richer nations still are not giving enough money to tackle lingering humanitarian crises, the U.N. humanitarian chief said.
Jan Egeland said, for example, that as many people die in Congo every eight months as in last year's Indian Ocean tsunami.
He also criticized political leaders for failing to take action to end the wars that create humanitarian crises or invest in disaster prevention to mitigate the impact of earthquakes, hurricanes and floods.
The work of U.N. and other relief workers in conflict-wracked eastern Congo, in the Darfur region of western Sudan, and in northern Uganda has become "an alibi for lack of political and security action," Egeland said.
"We are a plaster on a wound which is not healed," he lamented, "because there's no political action to put an end to the wars, and there's too little also invested in preventing natural disasters."
In a wide-ranging interview Friday, Egeland looked back on the response to the tsunami, devastating hurricanes and monsoons, drought and near famine in Africa, and the recent South Asian earthquake.
"This has been really a year of disasters, a year of suffering, but it's also been a year of compassion and solidarity like probably no other year," he said. "The tsunami was world record in concrete solid compassion. We've never been as generous - ever - as a world. We feared it would take away from other emergencies, and we can now safely say it did not."
After the Dec. 26, 2004, tidal wave swept across the Indian Ocean devastating coastal communities in 12 countries, Egeland urged the world to help those who had lost everything, saying many of the richest countries were "far too stingy" in helping the poorest.
Buy AP Photo Reprints
Egeland did not use the word "stingy" again, but he said he still was dissatisfied with the response to helping the world's less fortunate.
"We have given more than in any other year. Are we giving enough? No," he said.
If the world's richest countries continue to keep up to 99.8 percent of their gross national product for themselves, "they have a big potential for giving more to the poorest of the poor," Egeland said.
He did not name any countries but according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, none of the world's richest countries donated even 1 percent of GNP and the United States was lowest at 0.14 percent.
On Nov. 30, the United Nations appealed for a record $4.7 billion for major humanitarian crises in 2006, with over half earmarked for Sudan and Congo.
The appeal, which covers 31 million people mainly in Africa and Southeast Asia, is worth the equivalent of 48 hours of worldwide military spending or the cost of two cups of coffee for the planet's 1 billion richest people, the U.N. said.
"North American pets get more investment per month than we have money for all our humanitarian operations in the world," Egeland said.
He said the world did "exactly the right thing in the tsunami," with governments, corporations and individuals pledging about $12 billion, which should be enough to help rebuild devastated areas.
"We should have a similar kind of response to emergencies elsewhere," he said.
At the time of the tsunami, Egeland said, he tried to point out that "an equal amount of compassion" was needed in Congo.
According to a survey by experts, "in the Congo, we lose a thousand lives per day to neglect," he said. "That's 365,000 lives per year. This is a tsunami every eight or nine months."
The tsunami killed at least 216,000 people and left more than a million homeless.
Similarly, Egeland said, he could not generate enough donor interest to prevent a food crisis in Niger this summer.
He said it was also "a shame" that the U.N. still has not received $250 million of the $550 million it appealed for to provide emergency aid to the 3.5 million people left homeless in the latest natural disaster - the Oct. 8 South Asia earthquake. It killed 87,000 people mainly in Pakistan.
"I am afraid for a massive loss of life in the Himalayas in northern Pakistan where we're still in an emergency phase, and where still hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake as a very harsh winter is descending on the people," Egeland said.
Egeland expressed hope that former President Bush, the new U.N. envoy for quake relief, will help generate the emergency aid needed.
The U.N. General Assembly on Thursday approved a $500 million fund that will enable the U.N. to respond quickly to humanitarian emergencies that do not immediately generate donations.
"We have to be equally good in Malawi and Niger and in Ivory Coast in Africa as we were in the tsunami, northern Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan," he said.
He said he was also optimistic that 2006 will be an even better year for the world's poor and often forgotten millions because the powerful Group of Eight - the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia - and the European Union, the world's biggest donor group, set new and higher goals for aid.
If the billions of dollars they promised come through in the next few years, Egeland said "I think we will then see an end to much of the starvation among children, children without school, children without health care."
It is the most corrupt organization on the planet.
Screw off, Jan.
Let Bill Gates,Melissa Gates, and Bono give the aid---I've had it with the generosity of this country and they end up hating us anyway.
greedyb@stards@UN. con
The Darkness drains the Light...Right!
Capsule version:
"GIVE ME A DOLLAR!"
Then tell China and Japan to pony up and leave the largest debtor nation in the history of the planet alone.
This socialist mouthpiece needs to sit down and shut up.
United States: $950 million
Australia: $820 million
Germany $660 million
Japan: $500 million
Canada: $365 million
And that's not all the countries that offered significant assistance by any means.
More bloviating from Jan the communist!!
Heh-heh!
In all good conscience I can not allow myself to impose my cultural norms on any other culture. The lesson of multiculturalism is that all cultures are equal and to impose my cultural ideas of wealth and comfort on others would truly make me an ugly American.
North American pets also bite their benefactors FAR less than the UN. . . .
Again with that 'miserly' 0.14 percent lie. It completely ignores private donations plus the vast amount of "in-kind" military aid, such as steaming entire carrier battle groups and squadrons of aircraft to where help is needed, and deploying troops for months on end to collect supplies and get them to the affected areas.
The best prophylactic against disaster is prosperity. With that, nations can afford the infrastructure to mitigate the effects of natural disasters. With democracy, rule of law, and enforceable contracts (plus the dropping of trade barriers in developed countries), most of these nations that now have to beg for help from rich countries could be rich enough to help themselves.
Racist Coffee Annan, white folks are sick and tired of supporting the rest of the world!
...perhaps Jon could ask the UN to turn over the millions his fellow workers stole from needy people
Doogle
And also how much the US contribution can be to getting other nations aid to where its needed. I've been looking at photos recently of Australian troops in Pakistan provided medical attention for some of the earthquake injured. In several of those photos, US helicopters are moving the Australian troops. But this type of thing doesn't seem to get noticed either.
Let 'em give more!
Did he say anything about governments in Africa seizing land from farmers and giving it to dilettantes?Didn't think so. His opinion about benefiting people in distress isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
Somebody should send this moron on a one-way guilt trip and tell him to leave us alone. Lieburrals will suck the world dry if given the opportunity.
the Oct. 8 South Asia earthquake. It killed 87,000 people mainly in Pakistan.
It's an Islamic country. Let Jan tell them that they're not donating enough. If Saudi and Iran were to invest in life instead of death, wonders would occur in the world.
Cash baby - it's the only thing that matters.
The first step to lasting change in these countries is to wipe out their corrupt and useless governments, but the international community remains silent on this obvious solution.
My vote is for Norway to donate 100% of its oil revenues to humanitarian aid.
Since much of it seems to stop in the pockets of the leadership I don't know why anything should go through them.
Screw aid!
Let the people of the poor countries get off their dead asses and make something of themselves or starve!
Seize all but two million dollars (US) of the net worth
of the 100,000 richest democRATS/Marxists of this world
and the problem's solved.
We have to give more to certain areas so they can continue to mismanage and steal funds, remain illiterate, engage in deplorable behavior, and perpetuate a society of miscreants.
They could stop fighting all by themselves. And how do they expect to prevent natural disasters like tsunamis and massive earthquakes? I'd like to see them try to stop the stuff. If I had any reason to believe that the supplies sent to relief work would actually get to where it's supposed to go to rather than filling the purses of corrupt dictators, I'd think about it.
And they can start by making fewer babies they cannot feed and educate.
Foreign aid? Foreign aid is the bane, not the salvation, of the world's poor nations. These (supposedly) well-intentioned handouts represent one of the main obstacles preventing Africa and other underdeveloped regions from getting their blighted acts together. US, UN, and NGO cash allows places like Zimbabwe, the Palestinian Authority, and North Korea to bumble on for decades without coming to terms with their demons.
Socialism, in the form of individual welfare or national "aid," teaches its victims that prosperity is something that comes from above. It indoctrinates people (and peoples) into the lie that they can't solve their own problems. People deserve more than mere existence. They deserve to live. Life is never gained without a struggle and often people must be desperate, cold, and hungry before they will muster the courage to do what's needed to build the foundations of prosperity.
We do no one a favor by enriching corrupt UN bureaucrats and crooked African despots.
When Jesus ordered his followers to teach men to fish instead of giving fish away willy-nilly he knew exactly what he was doing. The poison of socialism destroys everything it touches root, branch, and twig. Cut off the supply of this drug and the addicts of the world will start to crawl out of the pit of despair that the left has fashioned for them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.