HIGHLIGHTS OF PRESS CONFERENCE BY UN UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS AT THE GLOBAL LAUNCH OF 2010 HUMANITARIAN APPEAL

John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, speaking at a press conference at the Palais des Nations, said he was launching with the donors the 2010 Consolidated Humanitarian Appeal. The Appeal for next year would respond to the needs of 48 million people across 25 countries whose lives had been wrecked by conflict and natural disasters and who needed international assistance. The 2010 Appeal, totalling $ 7.1 billion altogether, covered 12 of the world’s most severe, prolonged humanitarian crises. The idea of the Appeal was not just to list a sum of money, but to present a strategic, concerted action plan for each of these crises to make sure that they could deliver the aid needed in the most effective and efficient way. The point of the launch of the Appeal was to ask donors to ensure collectively that the efforts that they planned together received the funding they needed to save lives and restore dignity. Some 380 aid organizations around the world had been involved in putting together these appeals, these strategic plans and the funding requests, among them very many non-governmental organizations.

Mr. Holmes said at the end of 2009, many governments were still grappling with the consequences of the economic and financial crises on a global basis, and the fiscal consequences of the large-scale financial bailouts and economic stimulus packages they had had to put together. 2009 had been not a bad year for humanitarian contributions despite that global economic crisis, probably because many budgets were set before the financial crisis exploded little over a year ago. Most government donations had remained fairly constant, although private humanitarian donations had declined significantly in 2009. Obviously, they were concerned that these aid budgets would be even more under pressure in 2010, because of the budget consequences of the financial stimulus packages. The most important message that he wanted to get across to the donors and to journalists was that it was vital that humanitarian assistance be insulated from the budget pressures. If not, the price would be paid by the people who had been affected by these conflicts and these natural disasters, and they would be paying the price for a recession which was certainly not of their making. To put the figure they were asking for, $ 7.1 billion, into perspective, the amount they were looking for was less than one percent of the amount spent on financial bailouts and economic stimulus packages in 2009.

The size of the 2010 appeal was similar to that of 2009, Mr. Holmes said. This reflected that although humanitarian needs may not have expanded greatly in the last year, they had certainly not declined. They also had to bear in mind the effects of the economic and financial crises on people, because obviously when there was an economic downturn, this affected livelihoods, reduced remittances and other forms of investments, and that took its own toll. 2009 had been a relatively mild year in terms of major natural disasters, but they could by no means guarantee that 2010 would be the same.

Mr. Holmes said the appeals covered crises in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, the occupied Palestinian territory, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, the West Africa region, Yemen and Zimbabwe. Mentioning them in alphabetical order, the Emergency Relief Coordinator said Afghanistan was actually the second largest appeal for 2010, some $ 871 million. This was because they were trying to reach some 7 million people suffering the effects of food insecurity, as well as of course the consequences of the conflict. Afghanistan was a hugely challenging environment for them to work in, and the scale and urgency of the humanitarian needs was the reason why they were appealing for so many resources this year. In the Central African Republic, although they were getting more humanitarian aid in thanks to the generosity of donors, they still faced huge challenges. There were refugee movements across the borders of the Central African Republic to Chad and to Darfur. They had banditry and low level insurgencies, and therefore there was still significant displacement. That meant that the appeal for the Central African Republic for $ 113 million was necessarily slightly higher than the 2009 figure. They were trying to help 1.6 million persons in the Central African Republic.

Mr. Holmes said in Chad, they were facing an enormous problem in the east, with a combination of a very large refugee population mainly from Darfur, and of course internally displaced persons from the internal conflicts. They were looking to help 1.2 million people in camps in Chad in 2010, which would amount to around $ 450 million. They hoped that the worst of the displacement on the internal front may be over and that they would be able, over the course of 2010, to shift to resettlement, but there was little immediate prospect for the refugees from Darfur being able to go home. The humanitarian needs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were extremely well known and had not declined. Military operations there, whatever their merits, had the defect of causing extra humanitarian need in terms of displacement. The needs were still very great and they were asking this year for $ 828 million. That figure was actually 13 per cent lower than 2009 because they were trying to target that aid better.

Kenya suffered from multiple problems, Mr. Holmes said, problems of the drought affecting the Horn of Africa, which meant there were 4.5 million people in need of emergency food assistance. They also needed to deal with some of the continuing consequences of the post-electoral violence. They had also faced some major problems because of Somali refugees still crossing into Kenya, into the Dadaab camp in particular, and the population of refugees there was now around 400,000, and this posed problems from a humanitarian point of view. The appeal for Kenya was for $ 508 million. In the occupied Palestinian territory, the constraints on access for basic goods into Gaza and the difficulties of access for people continued to pose huge problems. Real recovery and reconstruction following the Israeli military operation at the beginning of 2009 had been more or less impossible because of these constraints, and that meant that the needs in the occupied Palestinian territory remained very significant. They were asking this year for $ 664 million, which was significantly less than 2009, but nevertheless a major appeal.

Somalia, particularly south and central Somalia, continued to depend on large scale assistance unfortunately, Mr. Holmes said. Security remained a huge problem, compounded by the drought. It was not easy to deliver aid to Somalia, but they were still asking for $ 689 million for Somalia this year. Sudan remained the single biggest humanitarian crisis they faced, combining Darfur, the east and of course southern Sudan. The appeal for 2010 was of a similar size of the 2009 appeal of
$ 1.8 billion, combining both pure humanitarian needs and early recover requirements. Darfur itself had not changed much in significant ways, but this year they faced and next year they would face again increasing humanitarian needs in southern Sudan because of the combination of poor rains and therefore poor harvests, high food prices, tribal conflicts and continuing attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army. Some 4.3 million people needed support in various ways in Sudan.

Mr. Holmes said in Uganda, the news was relatively good by and large. Most of the internally displaced people who were displaced by the Lord’s Resistance Army had gone home or were going home, but there were still residual requirements in the resettlement process of a humanitarian kind. There was also a parallel crisis in the Karamoja region in the north east of Uganda where the drought had compounded the problems of underdevelopment, meaning that they still needed to reach nearly 4 million in 2010, needing $ 197 million. West Africa was a regional appeal, as in previous years, and they were experimenting with a new method to make sure they could identify needs across that very large region, where the needs tended to be related to combinations of factors rather than individual triggers. They were trying to target the people better and that meant that they still had a very significant emergency there in various parts of the region.

The appeal for Yemen was a new appeal in 2010. They had a flash appeal towards the end of this year because of the conflict that flared up in mid 2009 between the Government and Al Houti rebels in the north. The humanitarian response plan for 2010 was looking for $ 177 million to help 1.4 million people who were affected by displacement in this region and food insecurity. Finally, in Zimbabwe, the appeal this year was half as large as the appeal for 2009 because there had been a reasonably good harvest there that had reduced the number of those who faced food insecurity. On the other hand, continuing humanitarian needs were significant, and there was still a major requirement to support people in overcoming the effects of the long-running crisis to re-build their resilience.

Mr. Holmes said the 12 crises he had mentioned were not the only crises that would be covered by appeals for next year. There would be appeals for Iraq, both for internal needs in Iraq and for refugees on Iraq’s borders; Pakistan and Sri Lanka were other countries with significant continuing needs for which humanitarian action plans were still being finalized. He suspected there would be two or three others as well. So these 12 appeals were not the entirety of the needs that would be there for next year. There was also Ethiopia with major food security needs, which did not figure in this particular plan.

2009 had been a record breaking year for the amount of money they had been appealing for, Mr. Holmes said, but it was also a record breaking year for the amount of funds they had managed to collect for the consolidated appeals. The total committed funding at the end of November amounted to $ 6.3 billion, the most they had ever had in dollar terms, and it was around 64 per cent of what they appealed for in 2009, which was a relatively good percentage of the coverage at this point of the year. What they needed to do now was to ensure that the similar sized appeal for 2010 met with at least as good a donor response.

A journalist asked for a figure for the Consolidated Appeal 2010 in addition to the other countries that he had mentioned. Mr. Holmes said the discussions were still continuing within the agencies and non-governmental organizations about what the figures for those countries should be, and what they should cover, and the discussions with the Governments were also continuing. He did not want to put a figure for Iraq, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and possibly Nepal, but it would be well over
$ 1 billion certainly, quite a significant additional amount.

Asked if there had been analysis on the amount of humanitarian funding that had been spent in 2009, and if it was known how much was wasted through inefficiency or corruption in some of the recipient countries or by implementing partners in the field, Mr. Holmes said no such analysis or figure was available. Obviously there were aware of the risks of diversion or corruption, although when it came to humanitarian assistance, because it went very directly from the organizations planning the projects to the beneficiaries, the risks for corruption were somewhat less than they might be if the money was passing through more hands or different hands. Any diversion was very visible, because the aid was not received by people very visibly on the ground and people died when they did not eat. It was much more visible and obvious than in other spheres. He was not aware of any major diversions or major corruption in 2009 when it came to humanitarian assistance and they were reasonably confident that they had a good grip on that.