SECRETARY-GENERAL LAUNCHES YEAR 2000 CONSOLIDATED INTER-AGENCY APPEALS IN GENEVA

Press Release
SG/SM/7231

SECRETARY-GENERAL LAUNCHES YEAR 2000 CONSOLIDATED INTER-AGENCY APPEALS IN GENEVA

Following is the statement of Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the launch of the year 2000 Consolidated Emergency Appeals in Geneva on 23 November:

It is an honour to be with you today to launch the Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeals for the year 2000. We are making these appeals on behalf of people who need urgent humanitarian assistance and protection. On behalf of people who themselves have never heard of consolidated appeals, but whose survival could depend on your response.

Our hope is to send a signal of hope to more than 34 million souls.

These are also the last Consolidated Appeals we shall launch in the twentieth century. It is a century that has seen the very best and worst of human behaviour. It has seen humanitarian principles take form and take hold, and it has seen them egregiously violated and ignored. Its history will be written in blood as much as in the ink of our United Nations Charter.

As this century draws to a close, crises -- whether caused by the wrath of man or nature -- remain difficult to predict. This time last year, we could not have foreseen the full scale of humanitarian crisis the international community would have to cope with in Kosovo, in East Timor, in Turkey (where I have just come from) -- or indeed the North Caucasus. Today, as we struggle to catch up and provide the assistance needed in those places, crises are lingering, emerging, resuming or intensifying in many other places across the globe.

Failure in the duty to help the victims of these crises will take away the hope of millions of people; the hope that something called the international community will uphold the basic dignity of humankind. That means we have a duty to look carefully at the needs of all victims -- wherever and whoever they may be -- and judge them by the same humanitarian standard.

If we believe in the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, then we cannot grade the needs of the neediest

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according to time and place; on the news one month, and gone the next; close enough to our doorstep to matter, or out of sight and therefore out of mind. The crying of a hungry child is real, whether or not we hear it on our nightly television news.

The people for whom we are appealing today are suffering as a result of conflict. Their suffering has been prolonged by the failure of combatants to settle their disputes and, in some cases, by the hesitation of the international community to intervene.

And it has often been compounded by inattention and neglect. Members of the media, to whom globalization has given a voice stronger than ever, will have heard this before. But I will say it again: by covering stories in Burundi, in Afghanistan and in Tajikistan, you can give voice to innocent victims and put their plight on the international agenda.

If this century of crises has taught us anything, it is that we cannot look at emergency relief in a vacuum. That to bring lasting hope to countries in crisis, the critical emergency and life-sustaining assistance we provide must also be supportive of longer-term rehabilitation and reconstruction.

The Consolidated Appeals process does precisely that. It is a strategic tool that allows us to examine and identify the deeper and longer-term needs which crises so often exposes. It does not depend on any one person's leadership, however inspired, but on coordination by an excellent team, working 365 days a year. We are indeed fortunate to have Carolyn McAskie at the head of that team during Sergio Vieira de Mello's absence.

The process can help us to understand and to begin to remedy things which have failed. It also provides us with a framework within which we can work with national partners and neighbouring countries, not only to make optimal use of donors' resources for humanitarian assistance, but also to begin the task of helping to rebuild local capacities and communities.

The $2.4 billion we are asking you for today is a large figure. But it is far less than what the world spends on military purposes in a single day.

The number of people whose safety and survival have been secured this year by quick international reaction to humanitarian crises in Kosovo and East Timor is testament to what can be accomplished if we work together. I trust that this will also apply to Sierra Leone where, during my visit in August, thousands of internally displaced persons expressed the hope that they would be able to count on the same degree of international support as their Balkan brothers and sisters. Yet, the consolidated inter-agency appeal for Sierra Leone for 1999 has

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so far received only some 40 per cent of the amount. We must do better.

We can also help to reduce the human suffering of innocent civilians fleeing the conflict in Chechnya if we act now. Last week I sent Mrs. Ogata to the Russian Federation as my Special Envoy to convey my concerns to the authorities over what is happening in Chechnya and to discuss modalities for implementing the United Nations humanitarian response. As an immediate follow-up to her visit, an emergency flash appeal for the Northern Caucasus is being launched today. I would also want to thank Prime Minister Putin for the cooperation and support he gave to Mrs. Ogata during her visit.

Many of you have commented favourably on the improvements in the Consolidated Appeals process. Response so far in 1999 has been much better than at this time in 1998. But funding levels remain uneven. The level for South-eastern Europe is now more than 77 per cent, but that for Africa is less than 67 per cent. Even within Africa, there is a great disparity. Some 90 per cent of funds requested for Sudan have been provided. But the Democratic Republic of the Congo has received only 18 per cent.

These figures do not support the simplistic charges that Africa as a whole is being ignored or neglected compared to the rest of the world. But it is true that shortfalls in funding are felt there more acutely than anywhere else. The scale of the needs and the vulnerability of those affected in Africa are greater than those almost anywhere in the world. Lack of response to an appeal for Africa is a virtually certain prescription for more deaths.

So I ask you, instead, to meet the appeals we are launching today as a prescription for life. As the only moral response to the hope, dignity and determination demonstrated by so many people in the midst of unimaginable deprivation.

I ask this for the young Kosovar mother I visited in a field hospital who was shot in the leg as she fled with her newborn baby, and who is now back in her home town raising a healthy family. For the Tutsi woman and the Hutu woman who both lost their families in ethnic massacres, and are now running an inter-ethnic orphanage together. For the Sierra Leonean boy soldier who did not know what age he turned on his last birthday, only the number of children he had killed -- but who has now been reunited with his parents and is learning how to read and count.

For the millions of souls who have been through the nightmare and need our help to dare to dream again -- I ask you today to send a signal of hope.

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