HEADQUARTERS PRESS BRIEFING BY DEPUTY EMERGENCY RELIEF COORDINATOR

A Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal for $2.5 billion to sustain more than

33 million people -- many suffering from war and conflict -- will be launched by Secretary-General Kofi Annan at 11 a.m. on Monday 26 November at Headquarters, it was announced at a press briefing this afternoon.

The theme for the appeal is "Addressing the Vulnerable", Carolyn McAskie, Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, told the correspondents.  The President of the Security Council, M. Patricia Durrant (Jamaica), and the Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund, Thoraya Obaid, would be present at the function, Ms. McAskie said.

Similar appeals would be made on Tuesday, 27 November at separate centres: in Washington, by Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP); in London, by Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF); in Brussels, by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers; in Oslo, by Francis Deng, Representative of the Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons; in Tokyo, by the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Kenzo Oshima; and in Geneva, by Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Ms. McAskie said the international community needed to be reminded that there were other emergencies, even though the needs in Afghanistan were "tremendous”.  A strong message by the media that there were other crises still ongoing, in Angola, Ethiopia, the Great Lakes region, West Africa, Congo and Somalia, for example, would help the United Nations meet the needs of the people of those countries.

Many of the appeals were consistently underfunded, however, she said.  Last year, the appeal was for a total of $2.7 billion, but only a little over

50 per cent of the amount had been collected.  The situation varied from country to country, she said.  About 70 per cent of the funding requirements for Sierra Leone had been achieved.  Other parts of West Africa, feeling the spillover of the Sierra Leone conflict, such as Guinea and Liberia, had been woefully underfunded.  The fund-raising for that subregion had collected only 25 per cent of the amount targeted.  A total of 40 to 45 per cent was raised for Ethiopia and Angola.

Funding was being sought for agricultural projects in West Africa and for reintegration and repatriation of refugees.  Elsewhere, in Somalia, for example, the United Nations was trying not only to save lives, but to help the Transitional Government there to establish itself and support its requirements. The needs in Somalia were really enormous, Ms. McAskie said.  One in four children died before the age of five; 45 women died every day at childbirth; and that diseases like malaria, measles, tuberculosis and cholera took a very high toll.

In Ethiopia, an appeal had been launched to help the country deal with the drought and with the effects of the war with Eritrea, and so far 40 per cent of the amount appealed for had been collected.

Angola was in a state of chronic emergency, she continued, and between

40 to 45 per cent of the appeal had been collected.  There were over 4 million internally displaced persons.  It was estimated that there were probably nearly half a million people who could not be reached.  Angola was a very dangerous place to move around, she said.  It was impossible to reach anywhere by road outside the capital.  People depended on fund-raising for heavy transportation costs to deliver assistance to the various provincial capitals.  In fact, about 50 per cent of humanitarian aid was transported by air in Angola because of the logistic and security problems.

In the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, about 60 per cent of requirements had been collected.  There was an ongoing chronic emergency due to the country’s economic collapse.  The people had suffered enormously from drought and from severe cold.  One hundred per cent of the population of

23 million had limited access to basic health, water, sanitation and education.  Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General of the WHO was currently visiting there.  It had been a slow process getting a United Nations presence in the DPRK -- in over three-quarters of the political districts of the country.  UNICEF, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the WFP were the biggest players there.

In an update on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, Ms. McAskie said a convoy of 1,000 metric tonnes of wheat had left Peshawar today for Kabul.  United Nations offices in the Afghan capital seemed to be in good condition.  There had been very little looting, although she understood that there had been serious looting of UN premises in Mazar-e-Sharif and in Jalalabad.  The United Nations premises in Kabul seemed to be reasonably intact, and UN personnel would soon be posted there.  The assessment of her office was that some 80 to 90 per cent of the local staff of about 700 were back on the job -- a significant number, she said.  The United Nations was working with Northern Alliance personnel in Kabul, and it was hoped that access would be gained to some vulnerable areas of the country.

She said a 30-day operational plan had been devised and agreed upon with the various agencies.  It would help in the handling both of the humanitarian and security conditions.  She said security remained a major consideration, particularly in the South and Southeast of the country.  The top priority would be to increase supplies to the North and Northwest, she said.  She also said there was still no satisfactory flow of relief supplies from Uzbekistan, as a bridge linking the two countries had still not been opened.  There was however an additional corridor open across from the Tajikistan border.  It was a river crossing which allowed the shipment of supplies to the Northeast.  She said the airstrip in Kabul was not yet usable and its restoration would be a major priority.

She told a questioner that the agencies were making efforts to improve their capabilities so as to address the suffering of the people.  Food aid would be supplied to the urban areas.  They were very concerned about the breakdown in agriculture following the war and drought.  If the security situation stabilized over the next few weeks, there would still be the need to supply humanitarian assistance in parallel with development aid for 12 to 18 months.  The health situation had severely deteriorated.  UNICEF had constantly published information

about the malnutrition of children.  "What we have in Afghanistan is not the starvation or degradation we have seen in Africa, which were more

chronic," she said.  There were statistics about children dying from infectious diseases or diarrhoea in Afghanistan.

One of the things they had found encouraging was that the new Northern Alliance authorities had issued decrees encouraging women to go back to work.  She recalled that 40 per cent of teachers were women in the past, and it would help if they could be encouraged to return to teaching.  Then clinics could be started which would also help, she said.

She added that one of the stories that would come out of Afghanistan was the courage of the local civil society organizations, which had been trying to ensure that assistance was delivered and that people lived "some kind of normal life". 

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