Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 119)
WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 1998
Mr Will Day and Mr David Bryer, Mr Robert Smith,
Director, Ms Marie Staunton, and Ms R Boycott.
Mr Grant
100. I am a bit confused about it. Am I to understand
from the NGOs that part of their money is given to them by donors
and they have to raise the rest from charitable sources or do
the donors account for the whole of the spending and the whole
of the budget?
(Mr Bryer) For the non-government organisations
in Britain the vast proportion of money is raised from the general
public. It varies from agency to agency, but it would be around
the 70/80/90 per cent mark, which is in contrast to the continental
NGOs where a much larger percentage comes from government. Traditionally
the British government has been a fairly high funder of emergency
work done by NGOs, but nonetheless the majority of the money is
still from the public, not from government.
101. When the Secretary of State made her comments
in relation to the appeal for starving children and so on, would
that have affected your ability to collect the majority of the
money that you need for your budgets?
(Mr Bryer) It is difficult to say what
a particular statement's difference may have made, but what one
should say is the British public has been its usual extremely
generous self to the Sudan appeal and it has raised £8 million
and it is still rising. There is a very strong feeling that people
show solidarity with the needs of people through giving. I think
that is a very strong tradition in this country. What it does
not mean is that they are not at the same time trying to apply
pressure on government or whatever else. I do not think these
things are contradictory in any way.
102. You would make a good politician!
(Mr Bryer) I am very serious about that.
103. You are trying to be as fair to the Secretary
of State as possible. I think this is important because there
is a big debate going on on this issue. To me it seems that comments
such as you should not do this or you should not give or whatever
are unhelpful and I am trying to get some verification from them
for that position.
(Mr Bryer) I think the roles of the
NGOs and the roles of government in situations like this are complementary.
The reality is that the NGOs and the UN are working in a whole
range of emergencies around the world alongside our longer-term
development work. At the moment Oxfam are working in some 35 to
40 places which would be broadly emergency work. We will be working
in some 80 countries in longer-term work. The role of government
is enormously important in providing the political force that
is necessary to try and ease these situations and obviously in
Sudan the thing one looks for most is the political will to pressurise
the parties into a ceasefire and finally to peace, a reduction
in arms, all those sorts of things. The funding question I think
can happily be a complementarity between the two, but I do not
see that it needs to be a purely governmental thing.
Chairman: You have confused me because I have
heard £25 million; I have now heard £8 million.
(Mr Bryer) £8 million from the
DEC appeal in Britain.
104. And £25 million from the government?
(Mr Bryer) We are talking about two
different things. There is a UN appeal to which the British government
has given £25 million. That is an international appeal by
the United Nations coordinated across the UN agencies, so it includes
UNICEF, the World Food Programme and so on. In Britain the agencies,
in order to carry forward their work on the ground in Sudan, have
raised an appeal through this committee, which 15 agencies form
and of whom 12 are taking part, for their programmes in Sudan.
That has raised £8 million at the moment. That is a local
British initiative.
105. Has the British government given you any?
(Mr Bryer) It has given money to some
of the NGOs within the DEC out of the money it has put forward
for Sudan.
106. We have not got 25 plus eight then?
(Mr Bryer) From Britain to Sudan we
have got at least 25 plus eight and we have actually got more
than that because the agencies are also putting in a lot of money
which is not out of that appeal because we are already working
in Sudan and funding it out of our own money.
107. The point is that if you said some of it came
from the £25 million it looks as if we are double counting.
What you are saying is we are getting 25 plus eight, is that right?
(Mr Bryer) A couple of million off the
£25 million mark. Something like that has gone to non-government
organisations out of what the Secretary of State has made available
for Sudan.
Mrs Kingham
108. I want to go back to this issue about the responsibility
of aid agencies and NGOs. I would like to address this to both
the Disasters Emergency Committee, UNICEF and Ms Boycott. Ms Boycott,
you mentioned about responsibility. I think your appeal was very
welcome. It was excellent to see The Express doing such
good work. What I do note, though, is that the media (and I have
worked in NGOs trying to promote these things into the media)
only tend to turn up when you have got pictures of starving children
and dying people and there is a disaster and it is usually a little
bit late and not that much in terms of the overall impact it has,
frankly. Of course, people want to give in support. What is your
long-term view of how your paper is going to be approaching the
situation in Sudan? You have done appeals, but will you also commit
to giving as much publicity to Sudan and the war and the causes
of the poverty so that rather than just solving our conscience
in the short-term we see that we are not ending up having famine
after famine and then the media only coming in on the back of
it to do a quick appeal?
(Ms Boycott) I wholly agree with you
about how the media moves around and it is as though when the
media cools off the war stops and the famine stops and we can
all go off and forget about it. We do have a commitment to stay
with it. I think anyone who has read Rosalyn Jones' coverage in
The Express will have seen that we have looked very carefully
at the question of long-term political stability. We have looked
at the good projects that are going on within the nightmare of
the Sudan where people are being rehabilitated both for paralysis
or loss of limbs or whatever ghastly situation they are in and
we are going to stay with it. We are sending more people out and
we are looking at it. I know more than anybody that you do not
want to be endlessly pushing pictures of famine. We talked to
UNICEF. We were told how grave it was. Money was needed from people.
I very much go along with the point that it makes you feel good
to give money. You feel powerless when you see those images and
you think about what you can do and to do something does help.
No, nobody wants to be seeing those images any longer than necessary.
What we do want to be seeing is development, education and things
coming through. We will stay with it.
109. It is good to hear that. Perhaps I could ask
a follow-up to UNICEF and the DEC. What do you see your responsibility
as being? You have hit the nail on the head there, Ms Boycott,
by saying that people feel good in giving. It is also good for
aid agencies in a sense to get more money through the doors when
there is a disaster. I am not in any way implying that the only
reason you go ahead with an appeal is to get the money in because
I know you would not. However, how much priority do you give within
your own organisations into making sure there is an equal balance
between doing emotive advertising for disasters and emergencies
but also doing political lobbying and public education in terms
of the funding you are spending?
(Mr Bryer) Shall I kick off for the
DEC? First of all on advertising, there has been a lot of discussion
on what is appropriate advertising for charities in raising funds.
In the 1980s there was an agreement begun by the old Freedom from
Hunger campaign which came together and urged us to look at these
issues and there was agreement amongst us on what was most appropriate.
More recently and more as an absolute agreement something like
150 agencies around the world have signed a code of conduct which
was prepared by NGOs and the Red Cross and the code of conduct
is about how you work in emergencies. The tenth section of that
is about the use of images in advertisements. That is something
that we would observe very carefully and something which if we
did not the other signatories which include governments (because
governments also signed for this or at least have given their
approval to this) could raise it. So I think the advertising issue
is one that people take very seriously. Secondly, I think the
question of political lobbying has to go absolutely hand in hand.
The sadness in Sudan in recent years is the complete failure of
political lobbying. I can remember a meeting with Boutros-Ghali
in 1992 where he said: "Here am I, an Egyptian who has an
enormous interest in the Sudan, and I cannot get any government
to take a serious interest in the Sudanese situation." This
was at another point where it looked as though we were going over
the edge in Sudan in 1992 and certainly the view of European governments
at that time was that this was a very far away place. I think
that political lobbying has to take place otherwise it would be
futile to keep the work going on the ground. We have not been
in the Sudan quite as long as UNICEF but Oxfam has been there
since 1973 in South Sudan and I think one has to keep these two
things going alongside each other. Can I say one other thing on
this question of how the public sees the developing world. It
is a great worry to all the agencies and in fact two recent conferences
which the Secretary of State mentioned have been about this—that
is the declining coverage (particularly by television and radio
but also by the broadsheet press to a lesser degree) on the developing
world on international affairs as a whole other than news coverage
and news coverage as a whole centring on the disaster rather than
good news. That is something of great worry to us because it gives
a very distorted picture of the world.
(Ms Staunton) From UNICEF's point of
view the reason we were following the Sudan very closely is that
we had just launched this year a Children in Conflict campaign
with a Parliamentary agenda about protecting children in situations
exactly like Sudan. The reason we were so close, the reason we
actually sent our first mission there in March to look at landmine
awareness was in the context of actually trying to get some legislative
change, humanitarian policy change, diplomatic activity around
children in conflict. For the people who did donate we gave them
a follow-up which was not just about Sudan but actually about
the whole question of malnutrition. You see malnutrition in Sudan
in very graphic terms but there is widespread malnutrition of
one in three children in some countries and what that means.
110. Did you have anything in there to say what you
can do to press governments or this is how you take some political
action rather than just an information thing? Was there an interaction
thing there in order for people to get involved in the process
of stopping it?
(Ms Staunton) In relation to Children
in Conflict we have a little leaflet which suggests to people
what they can do.
111. In the disaster follow-up?
(Ms Staunton) I will have to look at
it. I cannot remember what we said.
(Mr Smith) Not in that particular issue
but the landmines issue is one we have worked with with a whole
group of UK agencies.
Chairman
112. The question of the Sudan is not just children
in conflict. In Sudan in any event even if there were no conflict
you would have children malnourished. They certainly were when
the Foreign Affairs Select Committee visited in 1984-5. Around
Khartoum there were many displaced persons. So it is not just
conflict.
(Mr Smith) There is a regular UNICEF
programme still being maintained for Sudan. It is a five-year
programme, $19 million over five years and $26 million supplementary
funding is needed, alongside which or as part of which OLS features.
Chairman: Of course there a draft appeal there
now. Jenny Tonge?
Dr Tonge
113. I can remember way back in the 1980s the lone
voice in the wilderness saying there is going to be a famine in
the Horn of Africa and nobody took any notice of it until Ethiopia
came on our screens and Bob Geldof got going. It seems to me this
is a very similar situation. I want to ask you the same question
I asked Clare Short and her civil servants. When did you warn
that this was going to happen? When did DFID get those messages?
Why were we not given earlier warning? Why was the world not in
there preventing this situation instead of letting it happen?
(Ms Staunton) I think that is a nub question.
In October/November these warnings were happening. They were in
the monthly situation report from OLS. I accept what DFID said
that they did not actually get those until they got the draft
appeal in December so there is certainly a lesson there.
114. We are always hearing what good communication
there is between the Department and the NGOs. We have got the
best media in the world. Why was your newspaper not screaming
about the famine in the Sudan last October?
(Ms Boycott) Because we did not know
about it is the simple answer.
(Mr Day) Can I say that also the situation
this year—-every year Sudan, particularly in the south,
faces chronic problems. It was complicated significantly this
year because in January one of the rebel leaders changed sides.
That event could not have been predicted and 120,000 people upped
sticks and moved in with another 120,000 people and the people
on the receiving end of that were starving to begin with. We had
an instant crisis effectively which emerged in one of the most
inaccessible parts of southern Sudan. What was emerging in the
autumn was the annual early warning assessment of the situation
in Southern Sudan which says Southern Sudan looks as though it
is going to have another bad year. What it was not doing was ringing
the big famine bell effectively. It was saying this is our assessment
of the crops, yields, needs. It was the complication early in
this year when the war took a significant change for the worse.
As a result the government of Sudan closed down the access that
Operation Lifeline Sudan (under which many of us operate) had
to some of the worst affected areas and the result, as they say,
is history. We were unable to get to those parts that were worst
affected. Some organisations, some NGOs were able to reach round
the edge of the worst affected areas but the situation deteriorated
over February and March as I hope some of the submissions you
will have received will have outlined and the key to being able
to support it was the ability to get sufficient resources into
where they were needed and that has been a key—-
115. I still find it very difficult to understand
with all the sophisticated techniques and means of communications
we have got in the western world at the moment that we do not
have a better early warning system. We can forecast weather, we
can forecast drought, we can forecast all these sorts of things
and we cannot say, "Look, there is going to be a big famine,
we think we do not know but we think—it is going to be much
worst than it has been for years." I feel very frustrated
that we do not get enough warning.
(Mr Day) There are some very sophisticated
early warning systems that have been developed over the years
which use indicators such as livestock prices and food prices
to come up with some form of early warning and the NGOs and United
Nations agencies collaborate closely and share that information
amongst themselves. It is on the basis of that type of information
that appeals are launched. It is on the basis of that type of
information often that appeals are not fully funded.
Dr Tonge: There have been countless examples.
Rwanda and the coffee crisis, was that an early warning?
Chairman: Your frustration is understandable
but Ann Clwyd's is even greater. Ann Clwyd?
Ann Clwyd
116. One of the frustrations of the people on the
ground in Nairobi, the OLS, as I picked it up last week, was they
said: "The warning was there. We predicted it in the autumn
of last year. Why didn't people listen?" They said to me:
"Don't your government read the briefs?" Obviously I
cannot answer for the Government. They felt that they had warned
them and the people had not taken any notice. Is that your assessment
of the situation?
(Ms Staunton) I would agree with what
Mr Day says. Certainly the people on the ground were warning at
the end of last year this was going to be as bad as 1993-94. So
it was already going to be serious. On top of that you had the
conflict and the dispersement so it then got even worse. On top
of which you had the stopping of flights, so it went right down.
I think one of the lessons that we have learned from this is that
while there is on-going communication in country it could be better
and needs to be more systemic in a situation like Sudan which
moves so very quickly. If you ask for the situation report next
week I will tell you something quite different from what I have
told you now. We need to do that weekly.
117. The other point that was made was that the press
were not involved early enough. There was some discussion in Nairobi
about when the press should be involved. It is quite clear with
media involvement the attention has been switched to Sudan. With
hindsight do you now think that it was a mistake not involving
the press earlier on?
(Mr Day) That is always a difficult
one because there are times when we are accused as a group of
crying wolf and we have no desire to do that. There is also the
issue—which is one of the reasons why the DEC initially
decided against holding an appeal—that before the profile
is raised you have to be in a position to do something about it.
There is a chicken and egg situation there. When the DEC first
considered whether to launch a national appeal, which is a significant
step to take because it galvanises broadcasters and newspaper
and radio across the country, the issue was would the income that
we knew would result from public generosity be used promptly,
efficiently and effectively in the situation of Southern Sudan
where the area most affected was Bahr El Ghazal and it was the
area to which we had the least access. There are problems about
flying kites as it might be perceived. On the other hand, there
is no question but that the public response is promoted, if that
is the right word, certainly people are enlightened and informed
by coverage from disaster zones such as that in Bahr El Ghazal
at the moment. It is a very difficult balance.
Ms Follett: As one who worked in this area
for many years and perhaps to explain to Jenny, it also depends
on the weather. If the rains come it will not be as bad as you
fear. So you are waiting for a whole lot of factors to come together
and it is very hard for an early warning system to work because
all of a sudden the rains will come, the crops will grow and things
will be alright. I think what Mr Day is saying is very accurate.
You have to know whether you have got the means to deliver it
on the ground because otherwise you have very dissatisfied and
angry people and an inquiry into the whole method of raising money.
Chairman
118. Does what Mrs Follett is suggesting explain
why it took the UN system three months to launch an appeal? Was
it four or five months? How many months?
(Ms Staunton) The appeal would be launched
every year in February and governments would normally be told
in November/December of what the draft appeal was.
119. So you treated this as a normal year, did you?
(Ms Staunton) There was a flash appeal
on 2 February which was just after there was the fighting round
Wau and the displacement. A small amount of the big appeal was
taken out and governments were asked immediately for £1.2
million. So the moment that happened it became very very critical
and there was a flash appeal which went to donor governments.
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