Introduction
I am pleased to introduce Humanitarian Report 1997, produced by the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA) to reflect the main developments and trends in the area of emergency and disaster assistance in the five years since the establishment of the Department.
The Report describes how the basic mechanisms of humanitarian coordination have evolved since the United Nations Secretary-General, in response to General Assembly resolution 46/182, appointed an Emergency Relief Coordinator and established the Department of Humanitarian Affairs in March 1992. The Report also details the international response in 1996 and the first quarter of 1997, to major humanitarian emergencies notably those in the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa, Afghanistan, the Sudan, Iraq, Angola, and Liberia as well as to major natural disasters.1 In the final section, the Report analyses several of the continuing challenges which confront the international humanitarian community: containing and reducing the human and material damage and costs of natural, technological and environmental disasters; confronting the humanitarian consequences of anti-personnel landmines; meeting the special needs of internally-displaced persons; and moving beyond humanitarian relief to support the longer-term goals of sustainable political, economic and social development.
These past five years have demonstrated the timeliness of the General Assembly's call for increased coordination and closer cooperation among the international humanitarian organizations. The primary role of the Emergency Relief Coordinator, together with the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, has been to develop a coherent approach to the delivery of humanitarian assistance which reflects a shared analysis of a given crisis. Such a coordinated approach must encourage interactions among the United Nations' humanitarian agencies, Member States, other intergovernmental organizations, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and international and local non-governmental organizations, both in the field and at headquarters. It must combine the humanitarian community's assessments of the needs in a given crisis, mobilize the necessary resources, and pool information so as to ensure early, timely and effective response. As the Emergency Relief Coordinator, I share the perspectives of the humanitarian community with the Secretary-General, the intergovernmental organs of the United Nations, and governments and citizens around the world; and communicate to the humanitarian community the actions and policies of the Secretary-General and the inter-governmental organs that pertain to emergency relief.
Over the past five years, the international community has supported large-scale humanitarian operations in countries devastated by political turmoil, internal conflicts and major disasters. Aid workers from many agencies and organizations have followed the imperative to help victims according to the established principles of impartial humanitarian action. Millions of the most vulnerable and needy have been given food, shelter and medical care. Tens of thousands of lost children have been reunited with their families. Millions of refugees have been returned to their original homes or resettled in new communities. Many war-torn economies and societies are being repaired and confidence is being built among long hostile neighbours.
Disasters and emergencies have complex origins and rarely have a purely humanitarian solution. Emergency assistance cannot be a substitute for political action to address the root causes of the crisis. If a society does not provide its people with basic security in their home communities, does not secure fundamental human rights, does not protect ethnic minorities, does not ensure at least some prospect of sustainable political, economic and social development, and does not provide a disaster-resistant environment, then there is the potential for a disaster or Emergency with serious humanitarian consequences.
How to tailor humanitarian action to the conditions prevailing in today's conflict zones, so that it strengthens and not weakens the capacities of the local communities and is supportive of longer-term development, is a continuing challenge. When people are forcibly uprooted and expelled from their homes, when the aim of warfare is to inflict maximum pain, when groups of people are attacked solely because of their ethnic, religious or national character, where civilians are directly targeted and where the work of relief agencies is deliberately obstructed, protection requirements are different from what is needed in more traditional humanitarian assistance operations. There is a growing recognition that security, first and foremost, concerns the well-being of people and is not of lesser value than the security of States. Increasingly, the concept of sovereignty is being linked to the ability of States to respect and safeguard the security of their citizens.
Just as humanitarian action must be tailored to the political and security situation in zones of conflict, effective humanitarian action must also serve the objective of longer-term, sustainable development. Effective emergency response requires that the seeds of development be planted at the same time that relief needs are addressed, since it is in the volatile conditions of an emergency or the aftermath of a major disaster that community-building and accountability can be initiated or renewed. These building blocks of recovery must go hand in hand with simultaneous attention to a wide range of economic, social and political issues: restoring social services, infrastructure and food production systems; economic revival and job creation; demobilization and reintegration of combatants; the development of a functioning legal system; and the encouragement of constitutional development and human rights. These elements of recovery cannot await what some might term "appropriate" conditions for long-term development; they constitute the bridge between relief and development. Concern about these issues must infuse the humanitarian response from the outset of the crisis and well on into the recovery period.
The challenge for us in the face of this situation is to strengthen humanitarian coordination and enhance the international community's ability and will to forge comprehensive solutions to humanitarian problems. Such solutions would incorporate the political, security, social and economic elements without which humanitarian aid alone can accomplish little of lasting value. I would wish to pay a tribute to my predecessors as Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Eliasson, now State Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sweden, and Peter Hansen, now Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, for the hard work they undertook to identify such comprehensive solutions.
In carrying out our tasks, we have been able to count upon the steadfast work of thousands of dedicated humanitarian workers from many nations. I sincerely thank them and convey to them our deepest appreciation for their efforts, often at great danger to themselves, to meet the needs of victims throughout the world.
Yasushi AKASHI
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs
Note:
1 Factual material in this report concentrates on the period 1 January 1996 to the end of March/mid-April 1997.