Examination of Witness (Questions 200
- 223)
THURSDAY 6 JULY 2000
MR POUL
NIELSON
200. Is there any hidden agenda in political
considerations?
(Mr Nielson) It is difficult to hide anything around
here. With or without its own willing participation this is an
extremely transparent organisation, so I do not think so, no.
Mr Worthington
201. Can I ask about two issues which have occurred
since you took over but no reasonable person could hold you responsible
for? That is Ethiopia and Mozambique. In Ethiopia they had the
most predicted famine that there could have been. Everyone said
it was coming and you had the problem of perceived enormous lengths
of delivery times between the commitment of money to put food
into Ethiopia. That was one aspect of it and the other was the
criticism about the depletion of food stores within Ethiopia,
that they had been put there for such an emergency but that they
had been used by yourselves and not re-filled for when the emergency
occurred in Ethiopia. What have you learned from that?
(Mr Nielson) I will take them one by one. I think
it is important also to ask the Government of Ethiopia what have
they learned from this and also to ask Oxfam and others what they
have learned from this. One thing they ought to learn is to read
the figures. There is still room for improvement on that one.
The strategic stock has never been empty. At the lowest point
it was at some 35,000 tonnes of wheat during this dramatic spring
period. We have delivered until now, this year, the donors in
general, 504,000 tonnes of wheat. We will this year all in all
reach a level of probably 900,000 tonnes. The level that was requested
by the Government of Ethiopia in their appeal was 850,000 or 825,000
tonnes, which was 25 per cent more than what it had been in recent
years. They will get more than that.
202. I was looking at this and there seemed
to be a commitment in particular of about 50,000 tonnes which
eventually turned up eight months later. Those are very slow delivery
times, are they not?
(Mr Nielson) Yes, but you have to realise that the
timing of who does what in the group of donors who co-ordinate
their activity as to filling in this strategic stock means that
there is a certain slot where we do this and others do something
else. The low activity at a given time can easily be misrepresented
as lack of doing what we are supposed to do. They were never empty.
It is very wrong to let Ethiopia off the hook as to their own
responsibility. We have tried, in accordance with the policy that
progressive European donors and the EU as such have tried to do,
to turn it more to food security, attacking the causes of the
problem and changing it, whereas the Government of Ethiopia and
the United States have continued a food aid, old-fashioned, just
"Come, give us the wheat" policy. They have become addicted
to simply seeing it as somebody else's responsibility to make
sure that we always have this 150,000 tonnes in the strategic
reserves or whatever it is. One problem is that the farmers in
Illinois have the right to vote, so this is a dangerous thing.
The thing is, we have tried for several years to influence and
change the policy in Ethiopia without much luck.
203. Let us stick with what we are responsible
for. We have not, in our comments and our debates, let the Government
of Ethiopia off the hook or anything like that, and I would be
always critical of the USA. But if you make a decision that X
thousand tonnes is to go to Ethiopia, when does it turn up? When
did it turn up?
(Mr Nielson) According to the plan it may take one
month or two months. We have a schedule for what we are doing
the next year. We are delivering 110,000 tonnes in January 2001
as our replenishment contribution to that strategic reserve according
to the plan.
204. Yes, but the point is that people were
starving.
(Mr Nielson) I forget the date and the hour when the
ship was arriving.
205. Sure, but people were starving in Ethiopia.
(Mr Nielson) So why did they not use the strategic
stock? Why did they not allow the trucks to go to those parts
of the country where people were starving?
206. At the same time there was the issue that
a commitment had been made many months before and it had not turned
up.
(Mr Nielson) No, I do not agree with you. It is a
wrong story.
Tess Kingham
207. I thought it was a replenishment as well,
was it not, that stocks had been used up and the agreement was
to replenish it?
(Mr Nielson) No, it was never empty. At the lowest
point this spring it was about 35,000 tonnes that was there.
Chairman
208. But it was not distributed.
(Mr Nielson) No. They kept it. In my view they kept
it as a strategic stock more in the military sense of the word.
They may have some young males who need wheat. Honestly, and they
have been playing this quite—
209. Quite cynically?
(Mr Nielson) I really have resisted, and I will gladly
send you a copy of the letters I sent to Oxfam and others, Bob
Geldof and others.[9]
The worst I have seen was in a newspaper in Denmark which is going
around from country to country, where an NGO from Euroaid that
we also used (but we have used Euroaid a little less this year
than in some previous years so they are very upset, but that is
another aspect of this) said, "It is our own fault if this
goes wrong, our own fault what is happening in Ethiopia".
We should also talk a little bit about ownership. I do not agree
with that criticism.
Mr Worthington
210. I was going to ask about Mozambique as
well, ECHO's response in Mozambique.
(Mr Nielson) Yes, I was there very early. I was there
not as soon as the camera crews were there but I had the opportunity
to tell them, "Please consider the fact that it is at least
10 times easier to deploy a camera crew who can always turn round
and say, `Where is the humanitarian aid?' than it is to organise
the big flow of medicine, food, water and all this", and
they play on that. The helicopters were the big problem and this
was a BBC event. This was not a CNN event. They had this one,
and the fight about who had Ethiopia was quite big. It was a draw
between different stations but Mozambique was a BBC event. The
discussion back in the UK was very much centred on the availability
of helicopters, and definitely there was some difficulty in it.
It was as if the only thing that counted was to be there with
helicopters.
211. But it was not.
(Mr Nielson) No. We were there. All the stuff that
was available when the International Red Cross and others were
able to give people what they needed as soon as they were in safe
small islands here and there was stuff that we had been part of
the funding of in a very rapid response. We as a funder, which
ECHO is, did quite well. Also it was under-communicated that the
UN organisations in Maputo actually were co-ordinating quite well.
Ann Clwyd
212. But they were not. We were there at the
time.
(Mr Nielson) I do not agree.
213. We were there at the time. We saw what
happened and I have to say there were extraordinary gaps in the
UN co-ordination. In fact, the team was sent away.
(Mr Nielson) When were you there?
214. The dates were February 24, 25 and 26.
We saw the briefing of NGOs, we saw the whole scene as it was
unfolding. What was extraordinary was that the UN team withdrew
from the area when all the weather forecasts were that it was
going to get worse.
(Mr Nielson) That was between the first and the second
wave. The case here on its own merit was a real bad one because
something happened that nobody can remember happening before.
It went over Madagascar and hit and so things combined in a way
that nobody expected. The perception of how serious a problem
it was only materialised gradually.
215. Except the weather forecasters, because
we were stuck in our hotel room—
(Mr Nielson) That is easy to say.
216. —were making the forecast day after
day after day and if they could make it there is something wrong—
(Mr Nielson) No, no. In any case none of the donors
is giving the UN organisations the economic and staff-wise muscle
to be present if it really gets as bad as it might. No-one is
doing it. One word here. The Commission is not allowed to do core-funding
that would enable the UN organisations to do things like that.
We are only allowed to do specific project linked funding and
we are even in a position where we have to ask for specific accounting,
reporting and auditing according to our rules, not their rules,
on everything. It is very inadequate and I am fighting, and this
is part of the policy, to get the green light from Member States
to do the same with the UN organisations as they themselves are
doing.
Mr Colman
217. Obviously you might want to respond to
the Report that the Committee made on this because obviously if
we did not give it to you to comment on you may wish to do so.
(Mr Nielson) Yes.
218. My point is a very quick one. I was very
pleased to hear your emphasis on trade being something which is
within your remit and that you are responsible not just for overseas
development systems, ODA, but also FDI and the new joint venture
and a two billion euros fund is a very good move in this direction.
Do you see a balance going forward in terms of dealing with poverty
alleviation coming much more through FDI and enabling and working
with multinationals and with the World Trade Organisation, and
obviously capacity building with developing countries so that
they can take part in those negotiations? Is this the major part
and ODA not the major part of your strategy over the next 10 years?
(Mr Nielson) No. There is nothing wrong with ODA except
that there is too little of it. This is one of the rare cases
where more of the same is an intelligent response.
219. And FDI?
(Mr Nielson) It is wrong to say "trade, not aid".
"Trade and aid" is the responsible way of moving forward.
What we are trying to do is to have a more sophisticated way of
looking at poverty alleviation. We want to identify the dynamic
elements in a given social context that can bring society forward.
We want to identify if you will relative winners in the villages
to make sure that there are dynamics and sustainability in what
we are doing. This is what takes place even if one does not plan
for it because when we gather the women and start talking about
small farming husbandry and growing vegetables, things like that,
some cash crop addition and so on, those who respond are of course
welcomed and embraced and given a role in the process of change
and progress. This is an illustration of the fact that it is a
mistake to say that the poorest of the poor are the only partners
in the field for us. This is the same with identifying business
opportunities, partnerships and what-have-you. We have had to
have a non-religious attitude to what is politically correct in
combating poverty. It is more frank and direct and we admit that
economic growth is part of the solution but with a social balance
as part of it. This is why our structural adjustment effort is
linked to doing what this enables them to do in the sectors of
health and education.
Chairman
220. We have a terrible problem because we are
supposed to leave now according to my timetable. I wanted to ask
you a number of other questions. What exactly is meant by "activity
based budgeting" and "activity based management"?
(Mr Nielson) This is classical reform language for
modern management outside public administration and inside well
functioning modern public management. This is the king of the
track part, Madam Schreier of the Budget Commission's tool for
creating more clarity and a balance between what we do and how
many resources we get. It is the internal allocation of resources
in the Commission that this is related to.
221. I will obviously have to do some reading.
(Mr Nielson) They are core activities. It is a way
of forcing the different baronies to say what they are doing.
222. We are going to have to leave you with
your baronies and wish you luck with tackling them. I would like
to thank you on behalf of the Committee very much indeed, all
of you, for being with us this afternoon. We hope this is the
beginning of a dialogue throughout the time you hold the position.
We would like to make certain that we help and support what is
a unique mutual objective.
(Mr Nielson) I count on the elite donors as being
my allies.
223. I am sure you will get together with Mrs
Clare Short many times.
(Mr Nielson) I also had a very good working relationship
with her predecessor, so it is a good relationship.
Chairman: Good. Thank you very much indeed.
9 See Evidence p. 46-8. Back
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