Britain has offered 100 million pound (ca. 1 milliard DKR) to launch a new billion-dollar global emergency fund to ease the suffering of people caught up in humanitarian disasters on the scale of Darfur, reports the World Bank press review Wednesday.
– This is about making sure the international system works as effectively as possible. Right now, as I have seen for myself in Darfur, things are slipping through the net, the UK international development secretary, Hilary Benn said.
Benn called for the establishment of a new global humanitarian fund of 1 billion US dollar (5,6 mia. DKR) a year, which would be administered by the UN, working in co-ordination with donor countries and relief agencies in the field. It would provide advance funds for instant deployment in emergencies, rather than waiting for the results of appeals to donor countries.
The ministers initiative is likely to be the first in a series to be unveiled as Britain prepares to take over the presidency of the G8, the group of eight leading industrialized countries, next month.
Benn defended the United Nations role when asked whether the UN could be trusted to administer a fund on such a scale in the light of the oil-for-food scandal, in which Saddam Hussein skimmed off billions from the UN-run scheme. He added that his proposal was being made in the context of UN reform proposals, backed by Kofi Annan, to improve the world bodys efficiency in the new millennium.
It is yet unclear whether other big donor countries will be as willing as Britain to commit funds to the new initiative. Benn said that he had discussed the plan with Jan Egeland, the UN commissioner for humanitarian affairs, and he was “very supportive.”
Claire Godfrey, Oxfam’s humanitarian policy adviser, meanwhile said that “new quick access funds will not solve the core problem that donors are still not providing sufficient aid. The UN emergencies appeal in the first half of this year was less than one quarter funded, even worse than previous years.”
Richard Mawer, head of emergency policy for the UK charity Save the Children, noted the organization “welcome the front-loading of funding for emergency responses but have concerns that the additional hurdle posed by going through the UN will slow down the release of funds to aid agencies.”
Other reforms that Britain would push during its year-long presidency of the group of eight rich nations starting in January included appointing experts to spot potential hot spots and develop plans to intervene accordingly.
International response to crises varied dramatically, with the UNs appeal for Chechnya (Tjetjenien) in 2003 producing 40 dollar per person helped while in the same year the appeal for Mozambique produced just 40 cents per person of support.
Benn said UN agencies were too bureaucratic, slow to respond, overlapped too much and lacked clear leadership.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
