You have been the head of OCHA for two and a half months now. What is your view of OCHA and the role it should play in humanitarian affairs? 

OCHA should be the most flexible, service-minded and proactive fire brigade for humanitarian concerns, helping to make the UN as a system more efficient and effective in meeting humanitarian needs. We are not the ones to be operational - we will never deliver food nor medical supplies - but we should support humanitarian partners within the UN system, as well as outside. As I also serve as emergency relief coordinator, it is important for me that OCHA serves to coordinate between the UN and NGOs, who play an increasingly important role in providing humanitarian assistance.

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Subject: IRIN Interview With OCHA Chief Jan Egeland


IRIN Interview With OCHA Chief Jan Egeland


    
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UN Integrated Regional Information Networks 

INTERVIEW
November 12, 2003 
Posted to the web November 12, 2003 

Nairobi 

On 2 September 2003, Jan Egeland of Norway began work as UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, succeeding Kenzo Oshima. 

Egeland has 25 years of experience in humanitarian affairs, human rights and peace efforts with the UN, the Norwegian government, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, as well as with NGOs and academic institutions. 

Egeland is currently visiting the Great Lakes region of Africa. From Friday until Monday, he visited Uganda, while from Wednesday until Saturday he is visiting Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and the troubled eastern regions of that country. 

IRIN spoke with Egeland while he was in Nairobi on Tuesday, during which he talked about his vision of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), his recent visit to northern Uganda and his upcoming visit to the DRC, as well as his hopes for donor support of peace and humanitarian relief efforts in the Great Lakes region. 

You have been the head of OCHA for two and a half months now. What is your view of OCHA and the role it should play in humanitarian affairs? 

OCHA should be the most flexible, service-minded and proactive fire brigade for humanitarian concerns, helping to make the UN as a system more efficient and effective in meeting humanitarian needs. We are not the ones to be operational - we will never deliver food nor medical supplies - but we should support humanitarian partners within the UN system, as well as outside. As I also serve as emergency relief coordinator, it is important for me that OCHA serves to coordinate between the UN and NGOs, who play an increasingly important role in providing humanitarian assistance.

You visited northern Uganda from Friday until Monday. What is your assessment of the situation there? 

The reason that I wanted to go to Uganda is that I knew that the situation was bad - worse than any other forgotten and neglected crisis in the world at the moment. But I was shocked at the testimonies of the many children I met who could tell of the most grotesque cruelty against them: children abducted and forced to be child soldiers or sex slaves, forced to attack their own villages, their own families. And to see the tens of thousands of children forced to become internally displaced, or "night commuters", as they are called, walking every night for hours to sleep safely on the grounds around hospitals and other community centres in the towns because they are afraid to be abducted or killed. This is a moral outrage, and it cannot and should not continue. The world must invest more political, diplomatic and financial capital to make it end.

You pledged to lend OCHA's efforts to get northern Uganda on to the international agenda. What would this intervention involve? 

We will do a number of things. While I say that the world as well as Uganda has not done enough for the civilian population caught in the crossfire in northern Uganda, I also admit that the UN should do more, and we will do more. UN agencies are scaling up their operations. Presently, it is only the very effective, efficient and courageous work of the World Food Programme, which is virtually the only major UN and humanitarian agency in the whole of northern Uganda, and it has averted starvation, kept people alive.

So, OCHA will increase its presence in northern Uganda from one office, to three to five offices in the next months. We will thereby help coordinate more efficient and effective action by humanitarian organizations - NGO and UN - and we will try to work closely with donors and others to influence the government to provide more effective security for our aid workers and our humanitarian convoys, because we do not even have access to most of the victims in northern Uganda today.

Humanitarian access in northern Uganda has been a matter of particular concern. How might this be improved in light of increased rebel activity? 

I think we need to do a number of things. We need to have the government provide more effective protection. And we need to be able, directly or indirectly, to tell the rebels that they must change their behaviour. This is not a normal guerrilla war between rebels and a government. This is a war on, and with, and against children. So, hopefully, we can somehow use those who can influence - whether they be governments or community leaders or organizations or religious leaders - to influence the rebels to not attack those who help their own people.

Do you believe the political will exists in Uganda to bring an end to the conflict? 

I was told as much by the vice-president of the country, by the deputy prime minister, and a number of ministers, and I have no reason to doubt their word that they will do more to help stop the conflict, stop the fighting, stop the atrocities - and not only by military means, which have proven themselves to be ineffective and even, to some degree, counter-productive over the last two or three years.

I am sure that it will be getting due attention at the highest levels, and not only from my visit. I think all world leaders are now more seized with the matter than before. And I am sure that beyond the political leaders of Uganda, with whom the UN has spoken, and also President [Yoweri] Museveni, who has had contact with the UN, I am sure that major capitals in North America, Europe and Africa will send a very clear message to the parties that this situation cannot continue as it is.

Do you think that the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) can be positively engaged in a process that could bring the conflict to a peaceful and permanent conclusion? If LRA leader Joseph Kony is unwilling to negotiate, what then? 

There have been a number of initiatives in recent years and they have not borne fruition, for a variety of reasons, and certainly it is not within my mandate to suggest or initiate new political initiatives. However, through our humanitarian staff, we will try to reach out on humanitarian issues, such as humanitarian access, security for humanitarian operations and convoys, protection of civilian populations, and demobilization and reintegration of child soldiers. And it remains to be seen which channels we can use to send these messages to the LRA. We are already in full contact with the government. But as for the LRA, it is more difficult. However, we have been speaking to community leaders and others who have regular contact with them.

You travel to the DRC on Wednesday. What is the focus of your mission there? 

As much as Uganda may be the biggest forgotten and neglected humanitarian crisis in the world, eastern DRC is the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world, with 3.5 million people displaced. There, we have the reverse situation, where we are now getting increased access to the civilian population, and this means that we have great opportunities to finally provide humanitarian relief, which has been denied for so long. And I would want to see how we can best use these new opportunities to reach out as effectively and as efficiently as we can to those who have suffered for so long.

In recent months, OCHA has been increasing its presence in the DRC. How has that effort been progressing? 

OCHA should be like the fire brigade of the UN system, trying to come out very early to help launch efforts of operational agencies. We've done that in a number of other places, such as Angola, where we set up a number of offices all over the country when we gained access there. We are doing something of the same in eastern Congo. We now have several offices, and they are doing a good job in helping the humanitarian community to get access and to coordinate humanitarian operations. And we are, as a UN system and as a humanitarian family of organizations, reaching out to more people than ever in that region.

You met with Ambassador Fall, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative for the Great Lakes region. Can you tell us anything about his efforts to organize a Great Lakes regional peace conference, and how OCHA might contribute to it? 

The SRSG, Ibrahima Fall, gave a full overview of his efforts to undertake a successful regional consultation among heads of states of the region for a new pact to secure a better future for the whole region. And he confirmed that OCHA has been asked by the UN system, under his leadership, to coordinate and be the leader on the discussion of social and humanitarian issues, which is to be one of four main areas of discussion. We are now looking at how we can, in the best possible way, help that process to bear fruit, as there is a great need for better cooperation and coordination of humanitarian efforts in the region, and also a need for the countries and regional actors to provide better conditions for humanitarian work.

With the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) due to be launched next week, are you optimistic that donors will provide the funds necessary for humanitarian actors to meet what are fairly daunting needs? 

Yes, the needs are daunting. We are launching a CAP for about 25 countries, the majority of which are in Africa. For some of the countries we will ask for less money, for some we will ask for more money. It has been the best prepared and coordinated CAP process ever, and more humanitarian organizations now participate in the CAP than ever before. I am optimistic that donors will provide the necessary funds, although our experience in the central Africa region, for example, has been mixed. I do believe, however, that donors understand that this is the region with the biggest humanitarian trauma of our time, with the greatest humanitarian needs in the world. And I think that it is important that they see that we are now asking for money to support very effective and efficient humanitarian work that could save a lot of lives and prevent a great deal of suffering.

I am worried about one thing: that there has been a lot of money already pledged to Iraq, in particular, so I urge donors to ensure that the extra money they gave to Iraq is really additional money, and is not taken from Africa or other places with even greater needs.

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