Posted on 12/31/2004 7:29:35 PM PST by JohnCliftn
Q: Can you just flesh out in a little more detail the kinds of logistical problems you're facing? Are they problems of transportation, with coordination and other things? Just describe in a little more detail how that's unfolding and what you're facing.
Mr. Egeland: Our main problems now are in northern Sumatra and Aceh. We have problems all over, and I agree that it is beyond the reach of all our combined resources in these five massive parallel operations from Somalia to Indonesia.
In Aceh, today 50 trucks of relief supplies are arriving. They will have arrived because it's already late there. Tomorrow, we will have eight full airplanes arriving. I discussed today with Washington whether we can draw on some assets on their side, after consultations with the Indonesian Government, to set up what we call an “air-freight handling centre” in Aceh. Tomorrow, we will have to set up a camp for relief workers – 90 of them – which is fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything, because they have nowhere to stay and we don't want them to be an additional burden on the people there.
One of the figures we had was that, in one of the towns in Aceh, there are 40,000 dead. So it just shows that, in that area, we have the full blast of the epicentre. And it is also the area where infrastructure was the worst to start with, distances are the biggest, and where most of the existing infrastructure is totally, totally gone.
There are some of the areas that have had conflicts or have conflicts – Somalia has still an active conflict going. We still have to reach with our food trucks. There has been a conflict both in Aceh and in the Tamil areas. We are heartened to see that we have not had political access problems, and I believe that this phenomenal catastrophe can bring not only the world together more than anything in the long term, but also the peoples of the region together and even the peoples of the countries concerned. So in all of this there are confidence-building measures that are possible.
Q: My question is about the support of the United States and their core group in the United Nations effort. Can you be more specific about the efforts of the core group and how they will complement the United Nations? And what are the coordination tasks being done to make sure that efforts are not duplicated between the different agencies?
Mr. Egeland: In the meeting today with the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, which is all the United Nations agencies, the Red Cross and Red Crescent and the non-governmental organizations, we again reviewed the structure, which is that OCHA, which is my Office – and I am the Emergency Relief Coordinator – is the one to coordinate our collective efforts through the country teams, where we have Resident Coordinators, strengthened by additional staff that we sent from some 15 countries, and a few dozen experts that have come to strengthen the country teams. So it is now actually pretty clear who should bring water to Aceh, who should concentrate on medicine – medical facilities – in Aceh, who should bring the food to Aceh, who will do the tent camp for everybody there, and who will do the logistics at the airport: we have divided the task between ourselves.
It makes a lot of sense that the United States took the initiative with this core group, because several of these have now sent military assets there. They have a heavy presence in the region. And as such I regard this group a little bit like the European Union group, whom we were meeting now – the Secretary-General and a few of us – this afternoon. The European Union will have the ministers' meeting on 7 January, the day after we launch the flash appeal, and they will then be able to respond as such.
Q: Mr. Egeland, there has been a lot of warnings out of Geneva about diseases. Have you had any evidence yet that diseases have begun to break out anywhere?
Mr. Egeland: Yes. This morning we were informed by the World Health Organization that diarrhoeal disease is on the clear rise. I have also heard that respiratory disease is on the rise. And we could be in the situation that more children could die from diarrhoea in the next weeks than those who were killed by the tsunami. This is always the after-effect of major natural disasters. It is also the after-effect of wars: more children die from preventable disease than from war.
Q: [unintelligible] cholera and things like that? No?
Mr. Egeland: Nothing like that. In terms of cholera and others – that kind of diseases – we are becoming increasingly good in combating that with the kind of standby teams that we have and that can go very quickly to try to kill an outbreak. But diarrhoea and malaria will be on the rise. These are water-borne diseases, if you like –and malaria also flourishes when there is a lot of water – and that will kill many people, unfortunately.
Q: What are the regions where you are getting these outbreaks? [unintelligible]?
Mr. Egeland: Well, we have heard from Sri Lanka and Indonesia already – the rise of disease. But I think it will be safe to say that we have had much more disease in all of the areas affected. And remember: India is also a severely affected society.
Q: I just wanted to check: this 40 million that the World Health Organization is calling for – this is in addition to the 130 million that you called for the other day?
Mr. Egeland: The 130 million was the appeals of the country team, including the World Health Organization officials, in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Maldives. Beyond these three countries, the World Health Organization also have needs, and therefore part of it is inside and part of it is outside, because it is for all of the countries, as I have understood.
Q: I had hoped to ask the Secretary-General this question because it is appropriate for him to do so, but I did not have a chance. President Bush had spoken about setting up a centre or a system – a global system to monitor future disasters. The Secretary-General has met with the coordinators – the four countries coordinating the major disaster relief programmes. And he has also spoken to Secretary Powell. Does he have any sense of where this agency or system – global system – will be placed: Whether it will be within the United Nations system or outside of it?
Mr. Egeland: These are among the things I hope we will be discussing in the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, in Kobe Japan, from 18 to 22 January. We will have 2,000 international experts and officials from 150 countries. We discussed today that we will have a special event looking at preparedness and early warning in these kind of situations. It is debated in the academic and scientific community what kind of early warning systems we can have and could have: for example, on tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. We, the United Nations, want to facilitate that, and we want to discuss which organizations should take part. I coordinate the international strategy for disaster reduction with a special secretariat in Geneva reporting to me, as Emergency Relief Coordinator. And in that network everybody from the World Meteorological Organization to the International Telecommunication Union and all our United Nations agencies – the World Bank and so on – participate. So, that could be one forum.
Q: Two questions: One, there were reports about wild animals being spared somehow, probably running away with some kind of inner – . Do you have confirmation for that? And, if so, will that be an early warning type of system. And secondly, do you feel that your comment – that “stingy” comment – created a healthy competition?
Mr. Egeland: The first one I do not know of. But I know there are many quite creative ideas, actually, to do early warning. Yes, so there are many ways and manners.
On the second one: No, I did not want to raise any discussion in the midst of this emergency. But, to your earlier question to SG: I was asked a question in this forum at the end of a very long press conference, when we discussed disaster prevention, preparedness, the Kobe Conference, the global needs. And in that context, I said that I am not satisfied with the many rich countries in the world, who are getting increasingly rich, and their ability to respond to the needs of those who are getting increasingly poor. It is my job, my full-time job, to advocate for the poor and to ask for more money from those who can give. I am particularly oriented to get more money from the newly rich countries in Asia, in the Gulf region, in Latin America, in Eastern Europe. And I was thinking as much of those as any of the traditional donors, and I am very sad that my clarification – which I thought was very clear also in the press conference – did not stop that one discussion. I see now that it may also lead to discussion of additional funding for good causes, and I would welcome that.
Q: When we talk about the damage and deaths in the coastal areas around the Indian Ocean, we are talking clearly about water and flooding. When you spoke a moment ago about the damage in Aceh and you said this caught the full blast of the epicentre, were you saying that the people who died there died from the earthquake, or died from the flooding, or died from both of those?
Mr. Egeland: I think it can be both, because really that is the only region which really also had a full blast of the earthquake. And many could be dead in buildings collapsing before they were drowned by the tsunami, actually. This is so close to the epicentre also that there was absolutely no time, really, between the earthquake and the tsunami. So, in a way, it is an academic exercise to see what was worst.
Q: Mr. Egeland, in answer to my question about the United Nations human resources being stretched thin, perhaps, by this, the Secretary-General referred to the idea of bringing some people in. Can you flesh out what he means by that: what number of people; putting people on contract for a period of time – what does he have in mind there, or do you have in mind?
Mr. Egeland: We are overstretched. We were overstretched already with Darfur and eastern Congo. Again, also back to my frustration of the funding for good causes – my good causes – is in eastern Congo we have surveys saying that 1,000 people die per day from preventable disease and from humanitarian neglect. That is a tsunami every four months – for years. We do not have enough resources. We do not, either, have enough personnel. However, I think it would be defeatist to say that, no, it is limited what we can do. In this world, everything is possible. And there are additional assets that we can and should bring on. I lie awake at night thinking of new ways we can bring in new partners and new resources. We have a very good opportunity to bring in military and civil defense assets here, and I welcome, really, the offer of the United States and Australia and India and Singapore and many other countries of military and civil defense assets to this response to natural disaster – because we do not have the capacities that they can bring.
So, that is one additional layer of support. If we also look at the list, it is very encouraging to see: I mean, East Timor gives $50,000. It is one of the poorest countries on the Earth. Eastern European countries are among those who now give us personnel that we sent within the first 24 hours – the wave of experts that we call the United Nations Disaster Assessment Teams. They were not in the family before. So: yes, we can. Everything is possible if we think creatively and if we are generous as an international community.
Q: To clarify that: I guess you are not really referring to adding people to the United Nations payroll?
Mr. Egeland: For example, the United Nations Disaster Assessment Teams came, in the first 48 hours, from 12 countries. They were paid by their own countries. They would be municipality workers in London or in Estonia or in India or anywhere else, or work in non-governmental organizations: highly trained people stand by. We cover some of the cost; usually the country itself covers their salary. That is the kind of standby arrangements that I think is the future, because we cannot have expensive staff hanging around in New York and Geneva – or Bangkok or Nairobi for that matter. We must be able to respond quickly by having standby arrangements. And, more and more, those should not be in the north-west, where most of the standby arrangements are now; most of them are within Nordic countries and Britain and Switzerland and Japan and Canada and the United States. We should have much more standby arrangements, as we are building them already, in Asia, in Latin America and in Africa. So, that is really the future.
Jan Egeland doesn't even know his own job for he said, "It is my job, my full-time job, to advocate for the poor and to ask for more money from those who can give. I am particularly oriented to get more money from the newly rich countries in Asia, in the Gulf region, in Latin America, in Eastern Europe."
His job title is "UN Emergency Relief Coordinator".
Both sound like full time jobs to me.
To Egeland it is part-time work to be Coordinating the UN's part of the biggest Emergency Relief operation in human history
I pick out key statements by Egeland. Any one of these statements would get a normal coordinator dismissed. Then, show that Egeland thinks bureaucratically on a pathetically slow time scale.
Jan Egeland should immediately be replaced by someone competent, such as Tommy Franks or Rudi Giuliani.
The UN will add to the death and destruction with their incomptence and corruption.
What have we been paying this pathetic little EURO WEENIE for all these years. He has not studied this scenario and made up or thought of any contigency plans?? I know a lot of Sgts and CPO's that have more on the Ball than this Ignorant Little Weasel!
He's been collecting his fat paycheck and doing the Tourist patrol, but has no idea of what should be needed, how much should be needed and how is he going to get it there.
Let's face it, in any disaster your going to need basic items. Water, Food , Meds and Transportation. This boy can't get it up!!
And .. does this explain why President Bush formed his own coalition with Australia, Japan and India ..?? I would think so, since IT WAS THE USA WHO ARRIVED FIRST.
(We have located two sheets of salaries for 2002 and for 2003; so, we must say 'excess' we cannot say exactly. Being UN Coordinator etc. probably brought him another increment to add to the standard Under Secretary General (USG) salary.)
And he pays no income taxes to any one, or the UN reimburses any income taxes he does pay. This is true of upper level UN employees in general. Some come from countries that require them to pay income tax; the UN reimburses any income tax they pay.
Pretty Cushy!!
Some post today indicated that we provide AID to foreign disasters, but that in the US we only provide Low Interest Loans!! I don't know about you, but that seems a bit bass ackwards to me! It also Pi$$e$ me off!! The US TAXPAYER NEVER gets a break! We GIVE to everyone else, but not to our own. This BS has got to stop!!
God forbid that Chirac, Schroeder, Zapatero and the rest of the EU princes should cut short their Winter Festival ski vacations in the French Alps to actually do something. It's far easier (and more fun!) to bash Bush and call Americans stingy.
But diarrhoea and malaria will be on the rise. These are water-borne diseases, if you like –and malaria also flourishes when there is a lot of water – and that will kill many people, unfortunately.
Nothing like lowering expectations - ho hum, lots of people are going to die and there's nothing we can (read: will) do about it. Let's just bash Bush some more. I just wonder if this idiot has even thought of something as basic as having the governments issue boil water orders for the affected areas? Something tells me that answer is NO.
To say nothing about what his vig on the Oil for Food honeypot was.
He would have been in Crawford, Texas, where all the comm gear is located, making sure the US relief effort got underway immediately. He would have had no time or patience for idiotic reporters asking blithering questions. He would have been doing "First Things First".
This is pure speculation on my part. I think it is informed speculation because I have read everything I can find in the library about President Bush. And I think that is the type of leader he is.
Unlike Jan Egeland, President Bush knows his job is to lead the American response. That means delegating authority and responsibility, and kicking things into high gear.
My atlas's population map shows me some 30 Million people at risk from disease, depression, and terrorism. (Oh, yes, you can bet the terrorists are going to strike, if they can. Terrorists are that sort of people.) An injury/death ratio of 10 injured for each death, which is a conservative ratio, gives over a million people suffering right now from injuries with no access to medical help, not even first aid.
" late breaking news, Under Secretary Egeland is still Norwegian"
Q: Mr. Egeland, there has been a lot of warnings out of Geneva about diseases. Have you had any evidence yet that diseases have begun to break out anywhere?
Mr. Egeland: Yes. This morning we were informed by the World Health Organization that diarrhoeal disease is on the clear rise. I have also heard that respiratory disease is on the rise. And we could be in the situation that more children could die from diarrhoea in the next weeks than those who were killed by the tsunami. This is always the after-effect of major natural disasters. It is also the after-effect of wars: more children die from preventable disease than from war.
ASTOUNDING observation! Come on into the U.S. Mr.Egeland and I'll wager you can find at leat a couple thousand people with the runs. ASTOUNDING, truly ASTOUNDING observation. Now if you will just leave your meal of caviar and suckfish and get out of your penthouse, called the U.N., you may just face reality.
It costs a lot of money to live in New York City! ;>)
"Tomorrow, we will have to set up a camp for relief workers – 90 of them – which is fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything, because they have nowhere to stay and we don't want them to be an additional burden on the people there. "
Its too late to replace Egeland for this one. He has already doomed a million or so people.
Notice, the UN can't get started until they have a plush place to live. Get a tent, you morons!!! It would be funny if it were not so tragic.
To stop malaria, all they need do is spray DDT. The UN and the wackos send millions to their death each year because they won't allow DDT to stop breeding mosquitos from spreading malaria.
Sometimes you have to change horses in midstream. If the horse won't pull the wagon, and the wagon is important, and you have another horse, you shoot the first horse, let the current carry him away, and hitch up the second one.
We have many active or retired or reserve officers who know how to get things done fast. We have police chiefs, fire chiefs, former governors and mayors who have handled big emergencies. Any of them would be an improvement over Egeland.
Come on now, surely you can't expect the UN "relief workers" to take the local girls and boys into tents so they can rape them in exchange for relief supplies! Why that's positively barbaric.
Regarding your point about DDT spraying, you're right in saying that a massive aerial bombardment of DDT would save countless lives from malaria, assuming there is enough manufactured DDT in existence to do the job. Even if there was, though, they wouldn't do it - they wouldn't even think of doing it. Personally, I think the UN would like to see as many deaths as possible for the moment. They can then pin every single death on George Bush's "stingy" response.
I agree, but that wont stop millions from dying now.
Widespread publicity about Jan Egeland's incompetence just might prevent the UN from butting in and messing things up. The UN is unprepared and lead by an incompetent.
The USA is moving mighty fast. That's Bush's leadership. We're moving as fast as we did for the autumn floods and hurricanes considering that we had good roads in Florida and Pennsylvania.
I know we are doing everything we can, but the massive scale of this disaster precludes perfection, which is the only thing acceptable to our enemies (including the UN).
Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars we and other are contributing, we may not be able to stop massive additional deaths for a variety of logistical and politically correct reasons.
You can be sure we will be blame, even though it is the UNs fault.
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