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DEVELOPMENT: Disaster Aid a (Losing) Race Against Time

Julia Spurzem

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 17 2005 (IPS) - The United Nations is moving forward with plans to create a new rapid-response fund for humanitarian disasters, even if it fails to reach its pledge target of 500 million dollars.

“We will go ahead. We cannot wait,” Stephanie Bunker, spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told IPS.

Called the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), it will allow the U.N. to send aid to the victims of natural disasters and other emergencies within a matter of days, rather than the weeks it often takes now.

The new CERF will replace the existing fund established in 1991. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan notes that this fund and other U.N. instruments, like the “flash appeal” or the Consolidated Appeal Process, “stood the test of time well”. But “it is now necessary to upgrade the tools that were developed in the 1990s so they can work more effectively in the humanitarian environment of 2005.”

On Monday, the General Assembly debated ways to improve the humanitarian fund, with many governments voicing support for an upgrade of the existing system.

The CERF should become operational early next year. However, only seven nations – Britain, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland and Luxembourg – have pledged money to the fund so far, at a total of 187 million dollars.

In a report released Wednesday, the international aid agency Oxfam accused governments of failing to support the new fund. According to Oxfam, a billion dollars is needed to ensure that the U.N. can respond adequately and quickly to humanitarian emergencies, like the recent earthquake in Pakistan.

Oxfam named the United States, Belgium, Italy, France, Canada, and Australia as rich countries that have not yet made pledges.

“The need for this fund is more obvious than ever. Millions of people are in desperate need in Pakistan but the U.N. has received only a quarter of the funds needed,” said Oxfam’s Policy Advisor Greg Puley.

The Oct. 8 earthquake killed more than 73,000 people and destroyed the homes of some three million others. The United Nations warns that thousands of survivors could die in the coming weeks, as winter arrives. Relief workers report that snow is already falling in some of the higher camps.

At Monday’s debate, General Assembly President Jan Eliasson said the current 50-million-dollar revolving fund was insufficient, and the increase would help the United Nations respond quickly to sudden and underfunded crises.

“The complexity of today’s crises and the growing magnitude of disasters require that humanitarian assistance remains one of the highest priorities of the work of the United Nations,” he said.

He noted that the death toll from October’s earthquake was still rising, “and thousands of people are in danger of freezing to death as winter sets in”.

An especially destructive hurricane season has also left thousands homeless in the Caribbean, Central America and the United States, and nearly 35 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are hungry and need food as a result of “a lethal combination of conflict and drought”.

According to Stephanie Bunker of OCHA, the speed of funding for emergencies varies tremendously. “The tsunami funding was very fast, (but) the Pakistan funding is surprisingly not going that rapidly,” she said.

Several factors influence how fast pledges are made, with press attention playing a major role. “The tsunami was globally covered in the media and it dominated the media for a very long time,” Bunker said. “It was very visual, it involved places that a lot of people know about and had visited.”

Caroline Green of Oxfam notes that, “Under the current system, governments can literally take months to commit funds, and people suffering in an earthquake or food crisis or struggling after a tsunami has wiped out their village need help instantly.”

“This could be the difference between life and death,” she told IPS. “The fund will obviously not fix all the problems in the humanitarian system but it is a vital first step that should have been set up years ago.” “We want the General Assembly to pass the resolution supporting the global emergency fund but unless countries pledge money into the pot, it will sit empty and ineffective,” Greene said.

Oxfam has calculated how much each government should contribute to the upgraded CERF, according to the size of their economy, in order to reach the target of one billion dollars. According to this formula, the United States should give 400 million dollars, France should give 64 million dollars and Germany should pledge 86 million.

The total of one billion dollars, according to Oxfam, amounts to less than one dollar per year for each person in the world’s wealthiest countries.

Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, speaking on behalf of the European Union, supported the fund and expressed hope that it will become operational in early 2006.

United States representative Sichan Siv said that Washington generally supported the idea of a rapidly available source of funding and wants to see how a U.N. fund would operate. It also hopes for a broadened donor base, additional voluntary resources, stronger early warning systems, and improved U.N. agency coordination.

The General Assembly ultimately drafted three resolutions, concerning the recent South Asian earthquake, the Indian Ocean tsunami and the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The draft resolution to upgrade the CERF is still in the works.