Highlights of briefing by UN Emergency Relief Coordinator on the international task force for disaster prevention

Jan Egeland, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, briefed journalists on three current challenges for the humanitarian community, namely the humanitarian situations in the Darfur region of Sudan, in northern Uganda and in Iraq. In Darfur, the violence and insecurity continued to escalate. In Uganda, dramatic progress had been made in the peace process but it was a struggle to keep the momentum going. In Iraq, deteriorating conditions of the civilian population were of serious concern. Mr. Egeland was accompanied by Kasidis Rochanakorn, Director of the Geneva office of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"The nightmare we are seeing in Darfur is continuing," said Mr. Egeland. "The problems that we have now seen escalating through this year are not going away. For the 14,000 humanitarian workers, who are doing an absolutely heroic effort to keep the lifeline there for 3 million people, our colleagues are being increasingly harassed... and we've also lost more colleagues this summer than in any other period since the emergency started in Darfur." Mr. Egeland recalled that when the violence had begun, the militias had consisted of men on horses or camels armed with AK47 automatic rifles. Now the militia groups were more mobile, equipped with pickup trucks, machine guns and even RPGs - rocket-propelled grenades. "They are much better armed, they are more brutal than ever and their potential to do bad is bigger than ever," said Mr. Egeland. There were also many more groups involved in the fighting as a result of a very worrying disintegration of the guerilla forces. Inter-Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) fighting - between those who had signed the Darfur peace agreement in Abuja and those who had not - had intensified as of late.

Mr. Egeland said that reports from the province of Jerada indicated the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) there had grown from 80,000 earlier this year to 130,000. "This is probably the biggest concentration of internally displaced anywhere in the world at the moment. As a consequence of the fighting in recent days, most of the relief workers had to flee. It was simply too dangerous. We evacuated 80 people from the non-governmental organizations and the UN agencies there, meaning that the main lifeline for 130,000 people disappeared overnight."

In nearby Muhajaria - which Mr. Egeland had visited in 2005 and been impressed with the security and provided by the African Union there - severe internal rebel clashed put another 50,000 IDPs in a totally intolerable situation. Some 170,000 of the IDPs there were now basically at the mercy of various armed groups that were raping, pillaging and attacking civilians. In spite of the growing insecurity and fighting, "a Herculean effort" by the World Food Programme had enabled humanitarian relief to be provided to 150,000 people who had not been reachable over the last few months. The number of people that humanitarian workers had no access to was now down from 450,000 in July to around 250,000. But it was worrying that 140,000 people had now gone without food aid for four consecutive months.

"What we need is a wider global diplomatic effort," said Mr. Egeland. "It is not enough that some Western powers try to push for a UN force. This global UN force - which we need, to provide security and safety for the civilian population and for humanitarian work - should be pushed by Asian governments, by African governments, by Arab governments, by Islamic countries. Everybody should be concerned over the dramatic increase in abuse of the civilian population, in the rape of women that we can document of late," and of the massacres documented by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in recent weeks.

Asked by a journalist to assess the outcome of the recent session of Human Rights Council on the issue of Darfur, Mr. Egeland said "I think that is a very bad signal. There are few cases that are so clear-cut as Darfur in terms of women and children being abused, attacked, raped by armed men. And if there is one thing that the Human Rights Council should do it is to come to the defense of the defenseless. I think it's a shame really that there was no strong statement on Darfur... Of course, there are many other cases as well and it is important that there is a balance in how such a Council views the world. It is important that it pronounces itself of injustices in... all parts of the world, whether it is North, South, East or West."

Turning to the peace process in northern Uganda, just south of Sudan, Mr. Egeland said that dramatic progress had been made but that it was a struggle to keep the momentum going. "I coined it the world's most neglected emergency when I visited in 2003," Mr. Egeland recalled. "Indeed it was remarkable that the world had not noticed that some 15,000 children had been kidnapped in northern Uganda at the time. Since then, we have built up a more effective humanitarian programme but we have also built up more pressure on the parties to reach an agreement." Mr. Egeland said that progress was being made in talks that were ongoing in Juba in southern Sudan, mediated by the South Sudanese Government. Nevertheless, it was "an extremely fragile process". Some of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) groups that had gathered in assembly points in southern Sudan, in accordance with a cessation of hostilities agreement, had left in recent days because of nearby movements of the Ugandan army.

There was also concern that adequate services had not been provided at the assembly points. OHCA was trying to change that and had launched the Juba Initiative Fund through which a number of donors would channel funding to the mediation effort, to teams monitoring the cessation of hostilities, and to humanitarian assistance for the civilian communities where the LRA was assembling.

"The next weeks will be absolutely crucial for whether or not we can bring to an end one of our generation's worst wars," said Mr. Egeland. "In few other places on Earth has so much suffering been inflicted on a civilian population. Eighty percent of the Acholi people were displaced in northern Uganda. I'm hopeful that we can now see an end to it all but then we have to be creative, we have to courageous, we have to be flexible in assisting this African-led peace process."

Turning to Iraq, Mr. Egeland expressed concern over the deteriorating conditions of the civilian population in the last seven to eight months. Sectarian violence and military operations had resulted in the displacement of 315,000 people during this period. A turning point had been the bombing of the Shia shrine in the northern city of Samarra in February 2006. Since then, an average of some 9,000 had been displaced every week. "Perhaps even worse is the fact that 100 people are killed every day," as a result of sectarian violence, at the hands of armed militias and death squads. "That means that the [monthly] average of the last few months has been more than 3,000 people killed from blunt, brutal violence. These are police and their recruits, these are judges, these are lawyers, these are journalists, and there are increasingly women. And the latter group is particularly targeted for so-called honour crimes...Revenge killings seem now to be totally out of control," said Mr. Egeland.

In addition, there were now approximately 1.2 to 1.5 million Iraqis sheltered in neighbouring States, said Mr. Egeland. There had been a steady acceleration of this trend in the past two years. Each day, some 2,000 Iraqis were crossing into Syria alone. One consequence was a very considerable 'brain drain', with some estimates showing that some universities and hospitals in Baghdad had lost up to 80% of their professional staff. A third or more of Iraqi professionals had also left the country.

"We are concerned over the fragility of social services being delivered to the internally displaced and other groups," said Mr. Egeland. Prior to February 2006, there had been some 1.2 million IDPs in Iraq, with many of them having been displaced since the time that Saddam Hussein had been in power. In the last six to eight months, the number of IDPs had grown to 1.5 million.

"Our appeal goes to everybody who can influence the violence, who can curb the violence. Religious leaders, ethnic leaders, cultural leaders, have to see that this has spiraled totally out of control. Sunnis being pressured out of Shi'a areas, Shi'as out of Sunni areas. Exchanges of people in the tens of thousands are happening. That means that those who remain as minorities in areas with such 'ethnic engineering', as some call it, become increasingly vulnerable. And you have then an accelerating trend of mass movement of people. It has to stop and all of those who can influence it must do their utmost to stop it."

Mr. Egeland emphasized that the United Nations had important programmes ongoing in Iraq but that many of the humanitarian organizations active in the country had now spent the money they had received through the appeals of 2003. There was a need for more money, either from donors - who had made enormous pledges for Iraq that had been unspent because it had not been possible to carry out the development work foreseen - or from government budget surpluses. "We need money to run our programmes in the future that are absolutely vital," said Mr. Egeland, "whether it's water and sanitation programmes, it's health projects or it's food distribution to internally displaced and others." It was not possible to specify at this time the amount required as all of the UN agencies and NGOs were currently reassessing their needs.

Asked to comment on the situations in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, Mr. Egeland said: "I would really commend the Lebanese Government, public institutions and civil society for a remarkably effective effort to rebuild their country." Unexploded ordnance, for example, had been a much bigger problem than originally foreseen, numbering in the hundreds of thousands in part due to the Israel's excessive use of cluster bombs at the end of the war. "In the Palestinian areas, we are particularly concerned by the situation in Gaza, which is by all accounts a ticking time bomb. Social conditions are deteriorating steadily... You cannot have 1.5 million people feeling that they live in a cage like they do in Gaza, of which half are youth and children... Access into Gaza is erratic or non-existent." Mr. Egeland said that he had therefore proposed a new scheme of cooperation between the international community and Israel whereby a third party would help to monitor the border to ensure greater predictability in the access to Gaza and for exports from Gaza. Israel was currently studying the proposals.

In response to a question on the likely effect of North Korea's nuclear test on humanitarian aid to the country, Mr. Egeland said: "We are very concerned for the civilian population in North Korea that has suffered so much over such a long period of time." He recalled that in 2005, the North Korean Government had asked OCHA and a number of other NGOs and humanitarian organizations to leave. Only development-oriented organizations had been allowed to remain. Fortunately, a reduced presence of the World Food Programme had been allowed to continue. "That food programme and the medicine distribution programmes of the Red Cross and the UN are of vital, life saving importance for large vulnerable groups in North Korea. And I take it for granted that as one discusses sanctions against North Korea that all humanitarian assistance would be unaffected and that, indeed, humanitarian assistance would be funded because it is not the leaders who will starve or freeze this winter. It is the most vulnerable, including in hospitals and other institutions." This would be the message that OCHA would convey if invited to comment on the humanitarian consequences of any sanctions considered by the Security Council, as it normally was invited to do.