Select Committee on International Development Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witness (Questions 211-219)

THURSDAY 20 MARCH 2003
COMMISSIONER POUL NIELSON

Chairman

211. Commissioner, thank you very much for giving us time on what we know is an extremely busy day, and thank you for moving the meeting forward. It enables us to get back to London before Brussels gets closed down, so we are also grateful for that. As you know, we are the development committee of the House of Commons. We are conducting an inquiry on trade and development aspects of Doha and we obviously have some questions we would like to ask you on that; but may we trespass on your good will by first asking you a bit about Iraq? Last week we published a report on the possible humanitarian consequences of conflict in Iraq, and I have to say that we are fairly pessimistic. We are concerned that insufficient attention has been given by the coalition to the humanitarian consequences of conflict in Iraq—a country where two-thirds of the people are already on food aid—considerable problems as the Oil for Food is suspended, and we are concerned about what happens to internally displaced people. We heard Chris Patten on the UK radio saying that those who break the china in the china shop have to pay to repair it. I think by that he was talking about the reconstruction costs in Iraq, rather than the humanitarian costs. It would be helpful to have your steer on what the Commission is doing or how you see the role of the European Union now in any humanitarian plan in Iraq. We would be very grateful for that.

(Commissioner Nielson) I am absolutely prepared to cover that. The first point, we—that is, the Commission, which is also the European Union but a more narrow and more purely humanitarian-defined aspect of whatever the EU is—have been present as a donor inside Iraq, carrying out complementary activities to the Oil for Food programme over all the years. The level of spending—quite classical stuff—on water, basic health, service activities, focussing on vulnerable groups, and again not overlapping with the Oil for Food programme—was at a level of €13 million annually, carried out through European humanitarian NGOs, and the Red Cross/Red Crescent organisation. A good, well-run activity. We have people still inside, by their own choice, in these organisations. So we have this as a starting point. In the regular programming for ECHO's work this year we have had €15 million for the continuation of this money, to be utilised from around June-July, which is the cycle of this programme. That existing programme, and the €15 million for the rest of this year and part of next year, is now being adapted to the needs on the ground. We are making two emergency decisions of €3 million each—one to cover Red Cross activities and the other, UNHCR and the Federation of Red Cross activities—to handle the first waves of refugees in the border regions. This is on the basis of available budget money. The general level of ECHO's budget is around €500 million a year. It has been reduced by Member States and Parliament by €50 million for this year and we were told that we could access the emergency reserve if something happened. The emergency reserve is €217 million this year. This is obviously what we have to do. We have been using that in the years of Afghanistan; for some Middle East and southern Africa food crises; in the Horn of Africa in some years, and in the Balkan period. So in a number of years we have been at the level of €700 or €800 million, as compared to the more or less stable €500 million for the regular ECHO budget. We are programming not in any way rigidly, because the western Saharan people are in camps and everybody forgets them. There are people in the Palestinian Territories and UNWRA; we are the main funder of support in Chechnya, without which the international society would not be there. Again, it is quite a feat to be able to do that. We do not want these other crises to be forgotten or neglected because of this. That is why this emergency reserve is necessary. It is a very cumbersome procedure to get that money released. It is a very solemn thing to access it. We need the consent of Member States and Parliament. When we look at these past years, the average time it took to get the money was 83 days. This reflects the fact that the Commission cannot just decide—quite contrary to the public image of this powerful institution. In this situation, of course, that is totally unacceptable. The normal way to do it would be for me, as responsible, to wait until we have the appeals coming in from UNHCR, Red Cross and all the others, and applications from the humanitarian NGOs, and then go to Member States and Parliament. By that, however, we would render the Commission irrelevant as a humanitarian provider in this case. There is one more reason why it is important that we are able to do some up-front mobilisation, and that is to preserve the role of the United Nations as the co-ordinator of humanitarian aid. It is extremely important, not only for this conflict but for future conflicts. It is a very basic principle. You may know that the United States has asked us to move our office of co-ordination in the region from Amman to Kuwait, where the Americans have set up this humanitarian assistance command which will be closely co-ordinated with the military. We have refused that very clearly, and argue that we need to give OCHA the overall co-ordinating role. You may also appreciate here that—funding big NGO humanitarian organisations who are working on the basis of people working with them voluntarily—for us not to stick to the clear principles of impartiality and neutrality, and not to insist on having this humanitarian space respected, would be a major mistake. All of this adds up to the need to have a situation where we must put the carriage in front of the horse and push it from there—in terms of not waiting to have established the normal application basis for attacking this emergency reserve. This is the internal drama during these hours. I announced something in the neighbourhood of €100 million of new, fresh money being needed. This is on top of the €21 million. We also have to find more money than we have in the budget for the Palestinian situation, and more money especially for Zimbabwe, and to some extent Angola—which are the two worst cases in the southern African crisis. Not to have enough money for an independent effort in Zimbabwe would also be very wrong. This is what I am trying to do. We have a relatively good picture of the contingency planning and the different scenarios which have been worked out during these weeks and months; the pre-positioning of stocks, tins, and all of this equipment, is being done. So coping with some sort of probable range of contingency is as organised as it can be—but anything can happen. We have no clue. There is a clear distinction between humanitarian aid and what might follow. No opening, no position at all concerning reconstruction. The history here is also that we were never doing development co-operation in Iraq. It was not a classical developing country. It also should not be very difficult for you to understand that the need for poverty focus has some consequences.

Mr Khabra

  212. The present situation is that major countries in the European Union have serious political differences with the objectives of the attack on Iraq. The US and the UK have taken a decision. Do you think that, with the difficulties in co-ordinating and co-operating after the war as far as the reconstruction programme and humanitarian aid is concerned, the EU will be able to sit with the United States, particularly to sort out all those differences of opinion, and work unitedly together to help the people there?
  (Commissioner Nielson) I have to divide my response into the two categories of humanitarian aid and all the rest. I insist on that distinction, because it is very real here. We have a clear difference in delivering humanitarian aid—which we do without any political interference or any political element in it. It is a very puritan operation that the Commission runs in this. We do not mix that up with reconstruction or politics or anything. This is where we serve the international community in a constructive way, by insisting on this. We have not yet had any discussion on reconstruction, therefore. We were never there as a development partner, and I do not have a clue as to whether we will get there in that capacity. We have not had any discussion about that.

  213. There is a question about oil in particular. Who will control the oil?
  (Commissioner Nielson) A very interesting question, but none of my business.

Mr Colman

  214. I was at the UN headquarters for humanitarian aid in Larnaca, Cyprus, last weekend. You did not mention them. Are you working with them, with DaSilva, Kennedy and all the people there? They said they had very good relations with you.
  (Commissioner Nielson) Yes, that is the link.

Hugh Bayley

  215. I understand the politics of why you cannot consider reconstruction, because it might be seen as encouraging military action. However, would you concede that much of the need for reconstruction in Iraq comes as a result of 12 years of sanctions? Do you imagine that there will be a debate about that when the hostilities are over?
  (Commissioner Nielson) So far, our analysis has identified this very real need of what I like to call "classical humanitarian assistance", partly as a function of the sanctions—like we have to reach that conclusion concerning the objective need for the Palestinians, given their sanctions, if you like to call it that. That is where we are, therefore, and the rest has not been considered. In fact, it is very simple.

John Barrett

  216. Is it going to be simple or possible to have this clear distinction between reconstruction and humanitarian aid, when you have issues like clean drinking water? As part of the reconstruction of the country, are you not going to deliver these very basic humanitarian needs of the people? Whereas in theory it might be fine, will it not be the case, as in Afghanistan, that aid agencies find that they cannot divide humanitarian aid and reconstruction, because eventually they delivered the same thing?
  (Commissioner Nielson) Yes, but the technicality of this is also different in a conflict and afterwards. In a conflict, securing safe drinking water has to do with chemical pellets that you put into a jerrycan to purify the water, or very small mobile systems set up in refugee camps, and so on. What we have been doing so far is to provide water for vulnerable groups of people who do not have access the way things are, even now. We are not running water supply systems as such now, even if we have been there for some years. We are focussing on groups that are especially vulnerable. It is not a very great perspective—absolutely; but none of this was supposed to be a long-term thing. The reality of your question exists of course, especially in a postwar, post-conflict situation, because then you have to make calculations of the sustainability of what you do and, in a way, the payback of continuing on a very ad hoc basis. That is not yet something to be decided on. We will always face this phasing-out, so-called "exit strategy"—which is a euphemism, because normally the humanitarian providers simply get out of there at a certain stage, whether or not they have a strategy. In recent years we have managed this handing-over better. It has been quite good in Kosovo and in East Timor. It is also working nicely, even with all the problems in Afghanistan. However, these are cases where there is a normal presence is defined for a development partner, also in our capacity, afterwards. Whether that will be the case here after the conflict, we have no answer to.

Mr Walter

  217. The humanitarian situation in Iraq is not something that starts tomorrow. The conflict situation has been going on for many years. Sixty per cent of the population are totally dependent on food aid under Oil for Food—which is an expensive programme. In global terms, we are talking of $10 million a year and $250 million a month simply on food. How do you see that being paid for? Do you see an immediate call on future oil revenues as the payment mechanism or do you see the international community, in the short run, having actually to write out the cheques for it?
  (Commissioner Nielson) We do not have an international community. Some of us are trying to create one. Any politician with some experience would say that the oil is there and it is better used for this than anything else, but I do not know who will be controlling that oil.

Tony Worthington

  218. Thank you very much for the decision you took on not moving to Kuwait. That was crucial. It now has to go to the Security Council and I think that the right decision has to be made: that, both on the humanitarian and on the reconstruction front, it is a UN mandate with the UN in control. Do you have any knowledge or views about the Security Council, if it is going to meet on this, on what views are going into it and whether you think it is too optimistic to get that out of it?
  (Commissioner Nielson) I do not know. The normal thing to expect would be the family of UN organisations, with good co-operation with the ICRC and IFRC for Iraq, recognising the special role of a number of these professional, established NGOs—where there is some division of labour established as to who normally does what—and that this will be expressed in their consolidated appeal, managed by OCHA. This is where the UN system, operationally, has delivered its response. To have that taken up in the Security Council in any other way than the Security Council recognising this appeal and recommending UN member states to deliver into it—I would be surprised if anything other than that is the scenario. The risk of politicising—given the story so far in the Security Council in this conflict—would be dangerous for the UN in keeping its role as a neutral provider of all of this. I would therefore think it a mistake if they pushed this into the politics of the situation, because they have enough friends out there wanting to help them do their job as normally defined. That is how I would hope it would end. In fact, that is what I am banking on in our process here.

Chairman

  219. We undertook an inquiry on Afghanistan. We have done one on humanitarian relief and one on reconstruction in Afghanistan. A number of us went to Kabul a little while ago, and one of our main concerns was would there be international donor fatigue in Afghanistan before the task was done. A lot of the money from Tokyo was clearly on humanitarian relief rather than reconstruction. I understand that the monitoring committee on Afghanistan was meeting in Brussels earlier this week. I wondered what your impressions were on that. There is a great danger that the international community forgets these crises and moves on to the next one, leaving the others languishing somewhere.
  (Commissioner Nielson) Yes, that is a very real risk. The thing to say here is that, for humanitarian aid, our money is not slow. Our money is as fast as any other donor's money. Even for Hurricane Mitch reconstruction, this was mixed up with the humanitarian aid and the big infrastructure work following afterwards. It is now almost finished, but with a totally different pace for the two things. It was very annoying that it was mixed up. So for the humanitarian aspect we are not slow. The totality of it in Afghanistan covers the whole thing, and it is €55 million this year for humanitarian aid and €73 million last year. That is on top of the €200 million. We have just finalised our decisions for 2003-04, and this adds up to €400 million. We have pledged €200 million a year and we stick to that exactly. We are also almost spending it, year by year. Our money might be slow money, but it is honest money. It does happen. That is a very big difference from many other donors. There is a high degree of stamina in what we do. Also, I think that, considering the ongoing discussion we have had, for very good reasons, about the performance of the EDF system, this is after all the case. So far as Afghanistan is concerned, it is generally considered that, in terms of performance and getting it done, it is a very good case. The big problem is still security and these, what I call, "centrifugal forces" with the warlords and the opium production. In Iraq we have Oil for Food. Unfortunately, it looks as if in Afghanistan we have opium for food. In this world, unfortunately, some Western societies are more addicted to oil than to opium.


 
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