Examination of Witnesses (Questions 70
- 79)
WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 1998
Mr Will Day and Mr David Bryer, Mr Robert Smith,
Director, Ms Marie Staunton, and Ms R Boycott.
Chairman
70. I think we should restart. I understand that
Mr Will Day of the Disasters Emergency Committee and also Mr Robert
Smith of UNICEF have got opening statements. Before you begin
can I say thank you very much for coming today to give evidence.
I am sorry we have fallen behind time but I think you were with
us during questions so perhaps that informs the answers you will
be able to give us. For the benefit of the shorthand people and
us could you introduce your team and then give us a statement.
Perhaps you would like to start, Mr Will Day?
(Mr Day) I am Will Day, Chief Executive
of Care International but I am here as a member of the Executive
Committee of the Disasters Emergency Committee. I am joined by
David Bryer of Oxfam whose organisation is also a member of the
DEC.
71. Thank you. Mr Smith?
(Mr Smith) I am Robert Smith, Executive
Director of the United Kingdom Committee for UNICEF and this is
Marie Staunton, Deputy Executive Director for Programmes.
72. We have Ms Rosie Boycott with us who has been
reporting for The Express.
(Ms Boycott) Yes, I am the Editor of
The Express and we have been running an appeal on behalf of the
famine.
73. You are very welcome. Thank you for coming. We
have read your most interesting series of articles. Mr Will Day,
perhaps you would like to start us off.
(Mr Day) Mr Bryer will do so on behalf
of the DEC.
(Mr Bryer) I will be very brief because
I realise time is short. First can I say we very much welcome
the opportunity to appear before the Committee. From the development
agencies we very much value the work of this Committee. It makes
a huge difference to us and we have looked with a lot of interest
at what you have been doing. For us this is a really exciting
thing that this Committee now exists. We are very aware that the
debate on Sudan has tended to emphasise the difference between
the Secretary of State and the agencies and I would like to put
on record on behalf of the DEC how much we value the energy and
commitment of the Secretary of State and what she has brought
to this role of running the new Development Department. In South
Sudan there are certainly two or three points on which we do have
disagreements, but what I would also like to say is on the whole,
as indeed on most other issues, there is an enormous area of agreement
and much of that came out in what she just said. The things on
which we very much agree are certainly that Sudan needs peace.
We share the Secretary of State's concern about the media's focus
on disaster coverage. That of course came out of the conference
where some of this debate started. Concentration on disaster rather
than good news is an issue which the media and the NGOs have been
talking about. That conference was set up for that very purpose.
It may be an issue which you in the Committee would like to look
at in the future. It is an important one about how people's perceptions
of the developing world really are formed. We also—I think
this is perhaps the most important point—very much welcome
the changed importance in the British Government's view of Sudan.
We as agencies have been lobbying for many many years on the importance
of Sudan, the need to take this war seriously and to do all that
can be done to stop it and that has been falling on deaf ears
for a very long time. I think it is exciting that now we see these
new diplomatic moves with the British Government taking the lead
with IGAD, and now with the American government, in Nairobi and
so on. That is something we very much welcome. We also welcome
the very generous contributions from the UN appeal. It is good
to see the United Kingdom Government as the third largest donor.
The other thing I think I would very much agree with what Clare
said is that at least out of this debate we have been having over
the last month or so has come real attention on to Sudan. That
is very very important after all these years of neglect. I think
it is clear how necessary that is when you think of what the normal
situation is in Sudan. We are talking at the moment about an extra
disaster but that is in a country which over the years has suffered
terribly from war and from poverty. Just four statistics. In the
decade ending 1995 in a population of 27 million, eight million
were without access to health services, 10.5 million to safe water,
20 million to sanitation and 129,000 children died each year before
the age of five. If that happened in Britain we would think that
was a major disaster. That was the norm in Sudan before what has
happened in the last year. So we are very happy to answer anything
we can to help understand the situation and also the situation
of us as NGOs.
74. Thank you very much indeed. Mr Robert Smith?
(Mr Smith) Thank you very much, Chairman.
I would like initially to agree and associate ourselves with everything
that David Bryer has said, above all with the belief that we share
that what the people and above all the children of Sudan need
is peace. We welcome the work of the Secretary of State to try
to find a political solution to conflict in a country where UNICEF
has actually been working since 1948, 50 years. Let me add four
short points regarding UNICEF and the UK Committee for UNICEF
which I think and hope will be helpful in the questions and discussions
to come which identify special characteristics of UNICEF and I
apologise if some members of the Committee are already very familiar
with them. One, UNICEF is unique in the United Nations system
in having brought together from its earliest days in the 1940s
a mix of voluntary support from governments and from ordinary
people. We are responsible for mobilising political and public
support on behalf of children. So that I think affects the way
in which we work with the public and with Parliament. Two, the
mix finds its expression in industrialised countries through its
national committees for UNICEF—37 of them like the one that
Marie Staunton and I represent here in the United Kingdom. As
Committees for UNICEF we are independent and accountable to our
own Boards of Trustees and to our own donors here in the United
Kingdom as well as to UNICEF itself internationally for the money
we raise and the education work we do. It is quite a daunting
set of accountabilities we have. Marie and I therefore, that is
what I wanted to stress, speak on behalf of the United Kingdom
Committee for UNICEF rather than for UNICEF as a global organisation.
Three, UNICEF and its committees are a voice and a channel for
support for children in all circumstances, peace and war. The
special needs of children are so often overlooked and lost in
the broader picture concerned with the politics and economics
in Sudan as elsewhere. We do have a special role to say on behalf
of children, "Remember me". UNICEF's new Head of Emergencies,
Neil Kastberg (?) will be going to Sudan in the next week or two
and would I am sure be very happy to give a briefing to Members
who wish to have a further update after his return which I think
will help to maintain that focus and that concern on the needs
of children. Fourthly, it is out of its responsibility for the
whole child that UNICEF's work is primarily with the long-term
development needs of children in 161 countries. We are present
before, during and after virtually every disaster or emergency
wherever it occurs. Right now, for example, we are working in
23 zones of conflict in different parts of the world, so we are
ideally placed to get that continuum between long-term work and
emergency activities, health, education, nutrition and clean water
in the very teeth of war. It is action in these areas that has
often brought about cessations of hostilities, such as the Secretary
of State mentioned in her presentation. Those days of tranquillity,
corridors of peace, zones of tranquillity for the sake of children
are things that UNICEF has had a great deal of experience in helping
negotiate and that is one thing that I think we would very much
hope that we could offer assistance to if this step can be taken
vis-à-vis Sudan as well.
75. Thank you. Rosie Boycott, would you like to add
anything at this stage?
(Ms Boycott) I would like to add that
we became involved after sending writers out and after me and
other people on the staff being exposed to committees and the
famine in Sudan and just that helpless feeling of wanting to do
something about this. We launched an appeal which raised an enormous
amount of money. We came in behind UNICEF because we wanted to
make this children to children. I feel very strongly that it is
not wrong to raise money in this respect, that we are responsible
on a wider level for people in the wider world, not just our country.
Readers responded magnificently. They did not show any signs of
compassion fatigue and other things that we were then later accused
of by the Secretary of State.
Chairman: We have prepared a series of questions
to try and cover the ground, but we shall have additional ones
as we go along. Perhaps I could ask Mr Rowe to start us off.
Mr Rowe
76. Perhaps you could tell us what the current situation
in Southern Sudan is both in terms of fighting and the need for
humanitarian assistance, and would you like to give us a forecast
of the need, as you see it, in the coming months?
(Ms Staunton) It has been said several
times that Sudan is a complex emergency and I think the fastest
way to explain it is with a map and so here is one that I prepared
earlier! All the pink areas are those under the control of the
government of Sudan. This is a very rough map. If that is the
border of Southern Sudan here, that area there is government controlled.
In addition to that you have all the pink places and several more
which are garrison towns, which are also government controlled.
All those are served in relation to the relief operation from
Khartoum and that is called the Northern sector of OLS. The rest
of the area which is not coloured pink, one or two towns but largely
rule areas, is in the control of the rebel areas, the SPLA and
that is what is called OLS Southern sector. What is the position
about transport in the Northern sector? There is a road in the
Northern sector. You can get from Khartoum as far as Wau through
a road which is really quite dangerous, which has militia on it,
which is not safe to travel on.
Could you just tell us where the oil comes from?
(Ms Staunton) There is some oil up around
the Numa Mountains which is in the middle here.
77. Is this where Chevron and other big companies
are?
(Ms Staunton) Yes, although at the moment
Sudan is an oil importer rather than exporter. In relation to
transport, it is also possible to get a barge—-
Chairman
78. The shorthand writers are trying to take a transcript
of our proceedings. Perhaps when you are explaining to us you
would not rely too heavily on your map but make certain you mention
places so that they can put them down and therefore we can follow
it in the transcript and on our maps later.
(Ms Staunton) Certainly. I do have a
note of what I am saying which might help the shorthand writers
later. So here there is also a barge which goes down to Juba,
you can get a road to Malakal and then a barge goes there which
WFP use for food and immunisation programmes. There is also the
railway line which has been referred to which runs from Khartoum
to Wau. It is at the moment used for military purposes only. When
the railway line runs, and it runs at a walking pace, it is accompanied
by militia who then clear and raid on either side of the railway
line. Many of the allegations of human rights abuses relate to
that. As I am sure the Committee knows, malnutrition has its own
vocabulary, so when I talk about malnourishment I mean people
who are 80 per cent weight for height; when I talk about severely
malnourished I mean children who are 70 per cent weight for height,
which means that they are well into the danger zone; and 60 per
cent weight for height is where life chances are very much threatened,
particularly in a country like Sudan where there are not the medical
facilities. In terms of access, therefore, to the government held
areas in Bahr El Ghazal, we think we have access to about 25 per
cent of people in the government held areas. We think the numbers
are roughly about 300,000. There has recently been fighting around
here. There have been raids by militia and we cannot presently
get into Aweil where we know there are 9,000 people who are malnourished.
All during May there were about 200 people a day going to Wau
largely because they had been displaced by the fighting but also
because their crops had not worked and that has now gone up to
between 500 and 1,000 a day. So in Wau at the moment we are looking
at about 20,000 people and by the end of the month it is looking
like there are going to be 40,000 people in Wau. Of those, the
malnutrition rate of the under fives in Wau is 40 per cent, four
out of every ten children need immediately urgent supplementary
feeding. In Upper Nile there is fighting between two factions
on the same side. We have access to about 60 per cent of the people
there. We think there are about 600,000 people at risk and the
malnutrition rate is about 26 per cent. In certain areas, for
example Panthou, it is higher, it is 55 per cent of children coming
in from the area. There has been rain in this area. In Northern
Bahr El Ghazal there has not been rain. In Eastern Equatoria,
which is around Juba and Torit, we have access to about 33 per
cent of the people there. That is about 550,000 children and a
malnutrition rate of somewhere around 28 per cent just in those
government areas there. In terms of supplies, therefore, and UNICEF
is concerned about supplies for children in particular, we have
in the Northern sector vaccines for about two months and thanks
to the British government we have got Unimix, which is a special
food for malnourished children, until September. In Wau, for example,
as well as malnourishment, diarrhoea, malaria and TB are also
problems. In the southern sector which is largely served from
Lokichokio in Kenya, as has been explained, planes are used. There
is a road up from Yei up to Wau which has been used from time
to time but not really in the rainy season and in the southern
sector the number of planes usually flown, is one Hercules and
two Buffalos and you have heard from the Secretary of State that
has been scaled up now massively.
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