Immediately after the earth rumbles, a massive wave gobbles up the shoreline or bombs explode, the race to save lives is on. When the General Assembly created the Central Emergency Relief Fund (CERF) in December 2005, it gave United Nations agencies and its Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) partners dedicated to humanitarian aid the ability to save thousands of additional lives by getting to those disasters faster and better equipped.

A woman washing vegetables in a wok. She is surrounded by collapsible jerry cans provided by UNICEF to store and transport water from central collection points. Location: Becora Canossiana Sisters IDP Camp, Dili Timor-Leste Photo/UNICEF Timor-Leste

The CERF, proposed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan as part of the package of United Nations reform and mandated by the 2005 World Summit, was launched in March 2006. Speaking to a high-level meeting at UN Headquarters, Mr. Annan announced that the Fund had committed $230 million to over 320 projects in 30 countries by December 2006-"from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, Lebanon to Liberia". He said that $25 million of CERF resources had "jumpstarted" humanitarian efforts in the Horn of Africa and helped avert a severe famine there, while providing food security for millions and mitigating the spread of disease from lack of clean water. Mr. Annan praised CERF for bringing help to "forgotten crises as well as headline disasters", and said "by alleviating suffering before situations spin out of control, it facilitates faster transitions to recovery and rebuilding".

In his last appeal to donor States, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland, who has headed the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs since 2003 and will step down at the end of 2006, said that with $395 million already in the CERF, he was confident that the Fund would reach its goal of $500 million. He pointed out that his country, Norway, had contributed an equivalent of $12 per capita, and that if each developed country did the same, the Fund would have $12 billion. Besides traditional donor States, CERF received donations from developing nations, including Indonesia and Trinidad and Tobago, as well as a municipal Government-the Hyogo Prefecture in Japan-and NGOs.

Mr. Egeland said he was amazed at how the United Nations "went from the idea of the fund to creating it and making it operational in a few months' time". He pointed out that response time to crises had reduced dramatically; from 2002 to 2005, 16 per cent of humanitarian appeals received funding in the first month, while in 2006, this figure jumped to 37 per cent. With a pool of humanitarian relief coordinators on standby, referred to by Mr. Egeland as "field marshals", "we will be able to save lives like never before in 2007", he said.

"This was the first element of the Secretary General's reform package to be launched, funded and effectively used. It has North, South, East and West support. It is one of the few things that all countries can agree on - let's help people and save lives", he said.

One of the refugee camps was set up in the national stadium (empty stadium) Photo/UNHCR Timor-Leste	Stadium with 186 tents, toilets and kitchen facilities ready for people to move in. Photo/UNHCR Timor-Leste

He also said that donors are making more predictable contributions rather than "responding to events in the media", and this allowed humanitarian efforts to reach lesser known crises that might not have received aid before, such as the one that began in April and May 2006 in Timor-Leste. After violent clashes between the police and military in the capitol, Dili, led to widespread burning, looting, destruction of property and injury of people, more than 100,000 people fled their homes, most into overcrowded camps without sufficient clean water and sanitation. Under these conditions, illnesses like diarrhea can easily become fatal for more vulnerable refugees like children and the elderly. With CERF funding, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) was able to build latrines and bathrooms, distribute jerry cans and improve access to water to 70,000 refugees living in camps in Dili and thousands more in the countryside. The World Food Programme was able to deliver food rations, consisting of several hundred bags of corn soya blend, sugar and tins of vegetable oil, together with government-provided rice. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) worked with implementing partners to distributing 2,300 tents, 3,500 plastic sheets, 25,000 blankets, 3,300 jerry cans, 2,400 kitchen sets and 200 stoves, and airlifted goods from Jordan and Indonesia on eight occasions. According to the CERF website, the Fund contributed over $4 million to the crisis in Timor-Leste through August 2006.

CERF funding enabled a rapid response to the crisis, said Sofia Borges of the Permanent Mission of Timor-Leste to the United Nations. She pointed out that the first 20 latrines for refugees were functional within 10 days of the start of the crisis.

Carl Skau of the Permanent Mission of Sweden, who helped facilitate the negotiations for the 2005 resolution that created the CERF and the 2006 resolution that reiterated support for it in the General Assembly Plenary, noted increased support for the Fund. "In 2005 the negotiation was very difficult; many countries were very skeptical that the CERF should be fully funded and that it would work well. This year, we had complete political support, and including the goal of $500 million in the resolution went through without questioning", he said.

Besides raising the $105 million missing from the Fund, the top priority now is to ensure "accountability and transparency so that everyone feels comfortable with the way the money is handled", said Mr. Skau. He also saw possibilities for growth, adding "we could also have a much larger Fund in the future".