Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 188)
THURSDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2001
MR ROSS
MOUNTAIN, MR
IMRAN AKHTAR,
MS CATHERINE
BERTINI, MS
DANIELA OWEN,
MR KAMEL
MORJANE, MR
EKBER MENEMENCIOGLU,
MS CAROL
BELLAMY AND
MR NIGEL
FISHER
180. You did not have the resources until after
11th September?
(Mr Mountain) We were 45 per cent funded on the consolidated
appeal, which involved many of the NGOs as well before 11th September.
(Ms Bellamy) 45 per cent again means food, and it
needs to be, but the non-food—
(Mr Mountain) The point you make is that ironically
the events that have occurred there have obviously brought much
more attention to Afghanistan and allowed us to do a great deal
better. I am more than pleased to talk about the additional requirements
for resources now, because that is also extremely important. We
have learned, perhaps before, but very starkly in this case, there
are three stages of commitment. I want to say how much we have
appreciated the commitment of a range of donors, and very prominently
the United Kingdom. As we deal with the global donor situation
there are, first of all, pledges, then there is the second phase
called commitment. We have pledges out there of hundreds of millions
of dollars but until some government says, "We are giving
this to WFP", then it is out there. Then the third stage,
of course, is paying. The second stage is writing a letter and
the third stage is getting it into our accounts. These are three
separate stages we are discovering. I did mention DFID, I know
I can speak for colleagues here, we have been extraordinarily
appreciative of the very proactive, rapid response of DFID and
OCHA. You were the first government to respond, to get money out—
(Ms Bertini) To all of us.
(Mr Mountain)—on the table and to give us the
flexibility to deal with it. We have also benefited from personnel
support and we will be benefiting in the days ahead of modules
that will be supplied. We have managed in the co-ordination through
leadership shared between different agencies, of course by sector,
but also as our colleague was talking before about the Joint Logistics
Centre which is, in fact, an inter-agency effort, led very strongly
by the World Food Programme, again we have support from DFID on
that. We have a Humanitarian Information Centre, again we have
agreed to do that on a collective basis. OCHA, as it happens,
has taken the lead there and we have had personnel support also
from DFID. We are extremely appreciative of your Government's
very proactive and very supportive policy. They have just announced
or about to announce additional support to us, which I understand
was agreed yesterday.
(Ms Bertini) DFID was first, immediately. Not only
do they give money, they give a lot of support. They call round
to other donors, the Minister herself does this and says, "You
need to get involved here". They are creative and they are
very supportive.
(Ms Bellamy) I was going to say ditto to that. I did
not want to take away from what Ross was going to say, the next
phase is "we are going to need more money". I wanted
to point out in response to your question, were we ready. It has
been a consistently under-funded emergency, as we say. We actually
identified it, our national committee, their key winter programme
this year was going to focus on Afghanistan, that was before 11
September, and that was because it was such an under funded emergency
up to that point.
(Mr Fisher) Can I add my voice to the chorus, I think
one thing that is very new is the consistent international recognition
that the whole crisis now is a result of lack of peace and security
in Afghanistan and that the long term resolution of those problems
is part of a long term resolution of the international crisis.
It is very important, I think, that the international community
follows that rhetoric with investment, long-term investment and
not only in Afghanistan, it is required in Tajikistan, it is required
even in Balochistan and northwest frontier provinces. The crisis
is sub-regional, not only in Afghanistan. If you look at the issue
of education, the lack of good quality education is one of the
many root causes of this problem. Investment in education is a
long-term process, you do not see the benefits of it for a long
time. We all hope that the noise that is being made about the
importance of long-term commitment is followed by long-term resources.
Ann Clwyd
181. Why is it that the UN always has to go
in cap in hand? I have been in other humanitarian crisis, such
as Sudan, and there was an argument where your agencies said they
were short of money and the government here said you were not
short of money. Is it your expectation that money is going to
turn up and you have to make these noises about the need for money
to make it turn up. Lastly, how has the United States responded
to your appeal for funds?
(Ms Bertini) I speak for WFP only, the US is the major
donor to WFP worldwide. So far in this calender year they have
given WFP $1 billion of food and related costs. For the food we
had already in place they had given something like 65 per cent
of that, you saw all of those bags USA big wheat bags and for
this latest appeal they have given 17 per cent of the food and
42 per cent of the money for the special operations for all of
the transport. Yes, we always have to go with our hand out because
we are all voluntarily funded. UNICEF and WFP get no dues whatsoever
from the UN, nothing. Everything is raised. UNICEF raises a lot
of money from individuals, but most of our money come from governments,
we always have to have our hand out. Back to the comparison with
NGOs, I do not think the UN wrings its hands quite as often as,
perhaps, some of the NGOs who might even need to get more resources
from people writing cheques. I think we have to find a balance.
When we say we really need assistance we really do. As Carol said,
food is sometimes the first thing donors give. The United Kingdom
gives cash more often. The large donors, the US in particular,
gives food in large amounts. It is the cash follow-up that we
need. If WFP says we are desperate for food in a certain places
we are not kidding.
(Ms Bellamy) Emergencies do not start and stop very
quickly any more, maybe it is a substitute for the lack of political
will in some places. The extent and length of humanitarian assistance
in the states is longer than I think people expected in the past,
for example in Sudan. They go on longer these days. I think sometimes
we would be glad to have ourselves put out of work in some of
these places if there could be, with all due respect, the intervention
that perhaps the international community needs. We do come back,
we come back often, we recognise that, because it goes on and
on and on and on. We would like to see it shorter in some cases.
Hugh Bayley
182. I am just wondering, although in the short-term
there is a desperate need for the work you do, are humanitarian
operations actually putting off the resolving of political problems?
You have been in Afghanistan for a long, long time, does that
let local leaders off the hook and, if so, what should we do about
it?
(Mr Mountain) Perhaps one might turn that question
around, as I think Carol Bellamy was just saying, if more concerted
action had been taken at a political level by political actors
and those who are concerned with that then we would not need to
be going in there to pick up the pieces. That has been a problem.
You cannot build the future of any country with dead bodies. We
try and reach the vulnerable wherever they are, under whoever's
mandate, guidance, direction or manipulation, so that they stay
alive. We do not pretend that we are the political players there.
There are other parts of the UN, if you will, but there are also
other forces in the world that have the possibility to influence,
hopefully, the earliest possible conclusion of these conflicts.
Sudan is another situation we can talk about.
183. Getting back to the positives, you were
saying, all of your agencies were saying, within the next few
days you will be sending in missions to find out about the security
situation and see how quickly you can re-establish your expatriate
staff in the country. How long do you think—and I am asking
you to guess—that it will take to get people back in and
what difference will that make on the ground when you do get people
back in?
(Mr Mountain) I can have a quick shot at that, if
I may. One is we are back in Badakshan. We do expect, all going
well, by the weekend to be back in Kabul, Herat and Mazar. We
have no news on Jalalabad and Kandahar at this stage. What difference
will it make? We certainly hope that it will provide support to—the
word "heroic" is not misplaced here—our national
staff who have carried this extraordinary burden remarkably throughout
this period. We have about 700 UN national staff that have been
inside and, of course, there are a well over 1,000 non-governmental
national staff, plus those of the Red Cross, the Red Crescent
and the ICRC also. Many of them have done this at the potential
cost of their lives, continued these programmes and used radios,
and so on. We certainly hope to be able to provide them with support,
to be able to focus our programmes on the vulnerable, to pick
up more of the gaps and to see how we can increase our effectiveness.
(Ms Bellamy) You may recall, the Taliban issued an
edict prohibiting communications with staff now. All of our staff
found a way to communicate and sometimes it was actually even
in the government offices, with the government monitoring, but
nevertheless they were able to communicate, or they came across
the border to Peshawar or some other place. It is not that the
international staff are smarter or better or anything than the
local staff it is just sometimes the kind of pressures that local
staff can be under can really be lessened a little bit by having
international staff out there. I have to just also say, it is
extraordinary what the national staff have done, they have managed
to continue to keep things going, these are all of the national
staff, and really just should be recognised, and we certainly
do that.
(Ms Bertini) If I can be so bold as to suggest, if
there is any way that you can find to salute them.
Chairman: Absolutely. We will certainly
seek to ensure in what we say we pay tribute to those UN national
staff, without whom a lot would not have been possible to have
been achieved. Obviously they have shown great bravery during
this time, they were not to know how quickly the Taliban regime
was going to collapse, and they put themselves at great personal
risk.
Hugh Bayley: I do not want to go over
the ground we have already covered in terms of security but it
seems to me there is a fine judgment to be made between a greater
military presence which might compromise the independence of humanitarian
workers and a poor security situation and too little of a military
presence which might compromise your ability to deliver aid. International
law provides very clear responsibilities, although they are not
always followed, of course, on the treatment of military personnel.
Does there need to be a revision of international law to do more
to protect humanitarian workers in conflict situations?
Chairman
184. Whilst you are thinking of an answer to
that interesting question, Nigel Fisher I think you had something
you wanted to add?
(Mr Fisher) I wanted to say something about the international
work of NGOs, they are the especially important in the north of
the country, which is relatively clear, they are having with the
Governments of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to get
clearance and recognition so that they can move back in. In all
of those countries the UN is trying to provide an umbrella agreement
so that they can come in as UN partners. I would say that the
Governments are resisting. While we are working on this I would
say those governments who are influenced, very usefully remind
those governments that these people are important players and
they should facilitate our umbrella role and not resist it.
185. The NGOs have flagged that up to us.
(Mr Mountain) I am very grateful that you brought
this up because indeed in the United Nations the humanitarian
community, and very particularly the people working with the World
Food Programme have suffered very badly, and also UNHCR and on
occasions UNICEF. We have lost more civilian humanitarian staff
than the UN have lost peacekeepers. That is one concern. There
has been, mercifully, increased attention to the need to protect
humanitarian workers. We understand that in the International
Criminal Court that is being set up the whole concern about attacking
humanitarian workers is being seen as a violation of that code.
That is one aspect. We do believe that much more needs to be done
on that side. Catherine Bertini has been a major champion of this,
particularly in our system.
(Ms Bellamy) It is not only just the laws, more financing
for security has to be available. It remains underfunded in almost
everything.
Hugh Bayley
186. Who provides the security, the military
or other people?
(Ms Bertini) The UN has a security office, the normal
budget for that security office is half a million dollars. That
is it, that is what the secretariat, up until recently, has put
into security worldwide. Then each of us are expected to contribute
in the countries where we need special security. There is never
enough so we end up hiring our own security people on top of that
in order to do the protection. The Secretary General proposed
that the UN have quite an expanded security operation, including
not only security to help protect our staff, train our staff and
provide counselling for our staff but also one thing which does
not happen which is a follow up when something bad happens. There
was a UNICEF staff member and a WFP staff member who were shot
in the head and murdered in Burundi in 1999 and to this day nobody
has held Burundi accountable for these murders. It is not a system
set up where the country where the murder has taken place is held
responsible for whomever in the country did it. That was also
part of this overall operation, a proposal of the Secretary General's
that there be more diligence on this matter. In any case the ultimate
resolution was that the General Assembly said, "This is a
very good idea but it should be funded by the UN agencies not
by the General Assembly budget, except for a small amount of the
total". We all criticised that a lot because when is the
General Assembly start making priorities. Okay here is a budget,
the budget is tight—some people do not even pay all of the
time—here they are, here is the budget, what is your priority?
One of them does not happen to be security of staff.
Mr Robathan
187. I take your point entirely about security
provided by the UN and also the emphasis one might put on pursuit
of the people killed, but I do not understand Mr Mountain's point,
how would you change the law internationally? Surely if a UN worker
is killed in Kabul that is murder, just the same as if a person
walking down the street is killed in Kabul. There might be a difference
in emphasis from the UN's point of view?
(Mr Mountain) The point I was trying to make there
was that the International Criminal Court which is to look at
issues like genocide, and so on, I believe does have an article
in its mandate that stipulates that the assassination of humanitarian
workers also falls within the purview of the Court that will be
set up.
Mr Robathan: It would be pursued internationally
rather than just nationally.
Hugh Bayley
188. It is basically a court of second resort,
if the national jurisdiction deals with the matter that is fine,
but if it does not then—
(Mr Mountain) I would feel more comfortable with a
lawyer answering this question.
(Mr Morjane) I would like to inject two additional
ideas, one is it is certainly not written in the international
convention that we will give protection and security to our police
and to the military workers. Here I can use the Geneva Convention
for ICRC, this does not prevent the fact that ICRC people are
killed despite the fact they are supposed to be protected by their
own rule. That is for an obvious reason, we are not in countries
where you have a state, where you have authority, those that were
killed were not killed by the police. We do not know who they
were killed by. The four police from ICRC who were killed this
year in DRC up until now ICRC does not know because nobody will
tell them, the gunmen who are controlling the area, or rebel movement
which is there or some other people. Secondly, we have within
the humanitarian agencies—here not only the UN, because
it is different, especially as ICRC has the NGOs—two schools
of thought when it comes to your question concerning the role
of the military, including the peacekeepers. Peacekeepers can
certainly create an environment which will be certainly better
for us when it comes to our security, but you have agencies, you
have NGOs, in particular ICRC, who do not want to be protected
by the military because they think the fact that we have the military
with us makes our security even less than what it has been, because
they want to keep a certain level of neutrality, which is not
necessarily our case. We have some conditions for that. As I said,
peacekeepers can in many instances help indirectly to have better
conditions for our activities.
(Ms Bellamy) Securing transportation routes, de-mining,
some of those type of matters.
Chairman: You have been generous with
your time, our colleagues have other meetings they have to get
to. I understand you have a meeting at Number 10 very shortly.
I am grateful to you for the amount of time you have spent with
us this afternoon. Can I just make three very brief points, really
just as a request. There is always a danger in these sort of situations
when the television cameras and journalists disappear world attention
falls away. Each of you as agencies will have long term plans
for Afghanistan, I think it would help us help you if you can
let us have—I appreciate you have an enormous amount of
work on—some indication of what your long-term plans are
and then that enables us to ensure that within in the Parliamentary
framework we can ensure there is a lobby for those long term plans.[3]
Secondly, funding, we have had a quick canter through the mechanics
of the United Nations system this afternoon, if you can let us
have a note you can help us to help you on the mechanics of the
funding of each of your agencies.[4]
Actually if had not been for UNICEF, WFP and UNHCR we would have
been in a much greater crisis and it is sometimes ludicrous that
UNICEF is having to go around cap in hand to individuals around
the world rather than have real structured funds. Lastly, failing
states, we have had some discussion this afternoon about failing
states, Afghanistan was clearly in the state a failing state.
I think we certainly welcome your thoughts on how does one identify
a failing state?[5]
What other failing states are there? What other Afghan crises
are there around the world to which we are not paying sufficient
attention? Otherwise we just move to them with the television
cameras when there is a pretty hopeless situation and maybe we
ought to lobby the other potential failing states and what we
ought to do about them. I apologise to colleagues, because there
are ten of us and eight of you talking about a fascinating subject,
I think we could have gone on for a long time and I apologise
to colleagues if they did not have the opportunity of getting
everything asked and I apologise to you if on occasions there
have been comments you have wanted to make and there has not been
time. I think we have exchanged as much in headlines as possible
and that has been extremely helpful. If there is anything that
you feel that you would like to have said to us or you would like
us to have asked will you please let us have that in a note. As
you know, we are hoping we will be going to the region shortly.
We look forward to meeting representatives of your agencies in
the region and carry on and continue the discussions in the days
we will be in the region. Thank you very, much for all of the
time you have given us this afternoon.
3 Ev 104-6. Back
4
Ev 103, Ev 106 and Ev 108-112. Back
5
Ev 107-8. Back
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