General Assembly
Official Records
Fifty-fourth Session
Supplement No. 1 (A/54/1)
Chapter IIIMeeting humanitarian commitments
190. The past year was fraught with humanitarian disasters. The extraordinary rise in the number and scale of natural disasters was particularly striking. New armed conflicts broke out with enormous loss of life, massive forced displacement and human suffering in Eritrea, Ethiopia and the southern Balkans, while protracted emergencies continued in Afghanistan, Angola, Sierra Leone, the Sudan and elsewhere.
191. Timely humanitarian action in many countries continued to be compromised by the deliberate targeting of civilians and humanitarian workers and denial of access to humanitarian assistance. Responding to this unacceptable flouting of humanitarian norms, the Security Council initiated a series of open debates on the protection of civilians in armed conflict.
Coordinating humanitarian action
192. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has continued to strengthen its three core functions: coordination of humanitarian action, policy development and humanitarian advocacy.
193. Coordination efforts focused on improving the environment for humanitarian action in a number of ways, including negotiation with parties to conflicts over access and security; reinforcement of the principles of humanitarian action; and advocacy with the Security Council and other bodies. The need for greater respect for, adherence to, and application of, international laws and norms relating to the rights of civilians has been a central focus in this year of the fiftieth anniversary of the Geneva Conventions. In January and February 1999, the Security Council held two open sessions on this issue. The resulting presidential statement requested that I submit a report on the protection of civilians to the Security Council in September 1999, identifying innovative ways in which the Council, acting within its mandate, could strengthen its capacity to ensure the protection of civilians in conflict.
194. For the first time, the consolidated inter-agency appeals were launched simultaneously (in December 1998 for 1999). As at 31 July, the response to the appeals was about 49 per cent of the amount sought. Excluding south-eastern Europe, however, the response was 31.6 per cent, only marginally better than in 1998. The geographical and sectoral commitment of funds has been extremely uneven, meaning that not even minimum levels of assistance could be guaranteed in certain sectors and that some countries were left critically underfunded. The poor response to crises in Africa, at a time when many donor countries are enjoying a period of prolonged prosperity, was particularly distressing.
195. Effective coordination is particularly important in designing the inter-agency response to the needs of internally displaced persons, since there is no single international lead agency. Work carried out jointly by my Special Representative for internally displaced persons, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has formed the basis for a policy paper of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, which will soon be finalized, on protection of internally displaced persons. It identifies ways of ensuring that protection responsibilities are discharged effectively and sets out a system that can rapidly assign responsibilities to different agencies in emergency situations. Other initiatives during the past year included the undertaking of a review of country situations affected by internal displacement, the preparation of a compendium of good field practice and the development of a global database of internally displaced persons.
196. As the number of major natural and environmental disasters has increased, efforts to enhance the coordination of United Nations responses to them have included the launch of three major inter-agency appeals -- for hurricane Mitch and for the floods in Bangladesh and China. In addition, 17 United Nations disaster assessment and coordination teams were dispatched during the year. Situation reports on over 60 natural disasters were disseminated. Twenty-eight international appeals were launched, and over $1 billion was raised. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and UNDP jointly organized an international disaster management workshop in Beijing in June 1999 to examine ways of enhancing response-preparedness and capacity-building and bridging the gap between emergency relief and early recovery. Regional workshops and seminars were also held. These focused on the development of contingency plans and the strengthening of disaster assessment and coordination teams in disaster-prone regions.
197. A series of thematic events and regional conferences was organized to mark the end of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. This culminated in a programme forum, held at Geneva in July 1999 and involving all partners in the Framework of Action for the Decade. A comprehensive disaster reduction strategy for the twenty-first century was adopted by the forum, and reviewed by the Economic and Social Council. The latter evaluated the achievements of the Decade and adopted a resolution to ensure continuation of United Nations multisectoral and concerted disaster reduction activities in the future.
198. The Executive Committee on Humanitarian Affairs, under the chairmanship of the Emergency Relief Coordinator, has achieved greater synergy in dealing with issues that have strong security, peacekeeping and political implications for humanitarian assistance. FAO and WHO have recently been invited to participate in the meetings of the Executive Committee. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee remained the principal forum for inter-agency coordination, consultation and decision-making on humanitarian issues.
199. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee has set up working groups on a number of issues. These include natural disasters, improving the consolidated appeal process, human rights and humanitarian action, internally displaced persons, gender and humanitarian response, training, small arms, assistance to countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States, post-conflict reintegration and millennium initiatives. The admission of the World Bank as a member in March 1999 has further strengthened the effectiveness of the Committee. Major priority has also been given to strengthening the systems for coordination in the field, particularly the capacity of humanitarian coordinators, through, for example, the joint consultation of resident and humanitarian coordinators that was held in December 1998. Generic guidelines for strategic frameworks have also been developed from work piloted in Afghanistan.