Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Assistant-Secretary-General and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Kyung-wha Kang

Transcription

1 United Nations Nations Unies Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Assistant-Secretary-General and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Kyung-wha Kang Remarks to the informal EU COHAFA meeting Bringing humanitarian influence to bear: OCHA s advocacy to political decision makers Vilnius, 11 November 2013 Good morning, bonjour, buenos días, labas rytas. As prepared for delivery It s a pleasure to be here with you today. I would like to thank our Chair, Lithuania, for this invitation and to congratulate the Government and people of Lithuania on your Presidency of the Council of the European Union and your chairmanship of this Working Party on Humanitarian Aid and Food Aid. The European Union is a vitally important partner for OCHA and the wider international humanitarian community. Taken together, the European Union including ECHO and your Member States is the world s largest donor of humanitarian aid. Collectively you provide around 50 per cent of all humanitarian assistance. But beyond this, the EU has become an incredibly important strategic partner for OCHA, especially when it comes to influencing the global humanitarian agenda. We have welcomed the recent work of this group to ensure that humanitarian concerns are represented alongside political and security ones, and to promote common humanitarian messages and positions. We were particularly encouraged by the common messages on Syria that were included in the most recent report from the Foreign Affairs Council, emphasizing the need for greater humanitarian access and respect for International Humanitarian Law. Friends, Advocacy the process of influencing political decision makers is at the core of OCHA s mandate. It is there in General Assembly Resolution 46/182, which established the current humanitarian system, and sits alongside policy development and emergency response coordination as one of the three pillars of OCHA s work. Advocacy is carried out by all parts of OCHA. We advocate for a number of reasons: to mobilize funding and other resources; to raise awareness of forgotten or neglected crises and causes; and to highlight the critical role of coordination in humanitarian aid.

2 Above all, we advocate to save lives; to secure better assistance for people affected by conflict or disasters, and to enhance the protection of people in need. We use a range of channels and tactics to reach audiences that can help us affect positive change. We advocate publically through the media, online through social media and through OCHA s different web portals, and we collaborate with the entertainment and private sectors to bring our messages and concerns to new audiences. We advocate in more discrete and systematic ways with Member States. That s what I would like to talk about here. Our primary focus for advocacy with Member States is on influencing Security Council decisions. We do this in a number of ways: through briefings of the council by the Emergency Relief Coordinator; through bilateral discussions with Member States; and through engaging with groups like the Security Council Expert Group on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict or various groups of friends. Today, much of our advocacy with the Security Council is centred on the deteriorating humanitarian situation in and around Syria. More than 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict that has raged since We now estimate that more than 9.3 million people in Syria are in need of humanitarian assistance, including 6.5 million people who have fled their homes. More than 2.2 million more have left the country, spreading the humanitarian impact of the crisis across the region. Humanitarian efforts inside Syria are constrained by persistent security and access concerns. Key humanitarian routes are regularly closed, and the process of negotiating access is slow, complicated, unpredictable and dangerous. Despite the growing needs and limited access, the humanitarian community has been able to expand its efforts in some areas. The World Food Programme now aims to provide food to about 4 million people every month, for example, and UNICEF and its partners have provided safe drinking water to 10 million people since the beginning of the year. But still; the humanitarian response as it stands today is insufficient when compared to the growing needs of Syrian children, women and men. We are unable to provide assistance to an estimated 2.5 million people trapped in hard to reach or besieged areas. It is necessary, therefore, that all parties to the conflict address these obstacles, and that all Member States with influence on the parties do what they can. As you will be aware, in early October the Security Council adopted a Presidential Statement on the humanitarian situation in Syria. This welcome development was the result, in part, of our engagement with Member States and the Council itself. It offers, for the first time, a united international position condemning violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, and calling on all parties to facilitate the immediate expansion of humanitarian efforts.

3 In Syria as elsewhere, our goal and the goal of the wider international humanitarian community is to bring relief and support to all communities in need, regardless of their political, ethnic or religious affiliations. This is the essence of humanitarianism. To achieve this, we place considerable emphasis on ring-fencing our agenda from broader political or security agendas. We do this by adhering to the principles of neutrality and impartiality, which dictate that we deliver aid based only on need. This is a fairly straightforward concept to understand in a discussion between friends in Vilnius. But humanitarian action almost always takes place in complex political and militarized environments. This uneasy balance between humanitarian concerns and the political agenda has been a feature of the Syrian crisis; but that is not unusual. In Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere, humanitarian agencies are delivering aid amid conflict. The crisis in Libya in 2011 provides another clear example. Even before the political process that authorized the use of military force, my organization, OCHA, was liaising with NATO and the EU. Through this dialogue we emphasized the importance of keeping our operations distinct. We established what was known as a deconfliction mechanism that fed information on humanitarian movements and locations into NATO headquarters, enabling the military strategists to alter their plans to account for humanitarian deliveries. We also resisted offers of direct military support to humanitarian operations. This was controversial, and a lot of pressure was placed on the UN and our humanitarian partners to accept this assistance. But we believed then, as we believe now, that military assets should only be used as an absolute last resort. If we had accepted them in Libya, they would have compromised our perceived neutrality and independence, and might have prevented us from accessing communities in government-held areas. The development and early issuance of guidance on the use of Military and Civil Defence Assets proved a useful political tool to influence Member States and inform humanitarian actors. So our principles are often put to the test. Much of the work to foster understanding and respect for them takes place behind the scenes, in academic or diplomatic settings, in New York, Geneva, Brussels and in the field. To take another example: earlier this year I launched a study on the Impact of Donor Counter- Terrorism Measures on Principled Humanitarian Action. This study was commissioned by the Inter Agency Standing Committee and found that, counter-terrorism measures of some donors, including of the European Union, have had negative impacts on humanitarian action. First of all, it is important to highlight, as the study did, that there is no inherent contradiction between the legitimate security aims of counter-terrorism measures, and humanitarian action. At the most basic level, both seek to protect civilians from harm. Furthermore, humanitarian groups share donor concerns about preventing the diversion of aid to armed groups. However, our ability to reach communities in need depends on our ability to engage with all parties. The study found that counter-terrorism measures can hinder this engagement or in some cases, prevent it completely, which ultimately prevents us from reaching communities in need.

4 This is particularly the case when people in need are located in territories controlled by designated non-state armed groups The report gives the example of the occupied Palestinian territory, where some donors have imposed policies limiting contact with the de facto authorities, affecting the quality of humanitarian programmes and the ability of aid agencies to respond according to needs. In one specific case, a distribution of food and non-food items to 2,000 families was not carried out because a donor would not allow the list of beneficiaries to be shared with the authorities. This study is an example of our constructive approach to advocacy with Member States. It is not about criticizing or singling out donors; far from it. The report recommends constructive and open policy dialogue between the humanitarian community, donors and other relevant actors. Our goal is to find a better way to reconcile counter-terrorism measures and humanitarian action. Ladies and gentlemen, I d like to turn now to some of the initiatives that are underway to improve advocacy. Successful advocacy requires strong leadership and coordination. Through the Transformative Agenda a collection of reforms to the humanitarian system that have taken place over the past two years we have worked to ensure that skilled leaders and effective coordination are in place. Both are of these are necessary to enhance advocacy that reflects the concerns of the humanitarian community as a whole. For example, we now have Regional Humanitarian Coordinators playing an important advocacy role in Syria and the Sahel, where humanitarian crises cross national borders. In the case of the Sahel, the Regional Humanitarian Coordinator has helped to raise the profile of an incredibly complex crisis, and in both cases, these positions have helped ensure common and coherent messaging to Member States, Governments and Donors. Furthermore, humanitarian advocacy particularly in terms of access to and protection of affected populations is now one of three overarching objectives, against which we measure the performance of our Humanitarian Coordinators. To support their ability to advocate, we have provided Humanitarian Coordinators with more training in areas such as international humanitarian law, international human rights law and humanitarian principles, and we are increasing OCHA s capacity to support them with situationspecific information and analysis. Leadership and advocacy are also about looking ahead. In 2016, the Secretary General will convene a World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul that will set an agenda to ensure humanitarian action is fit to respond to the challenges of the future. In the lead-up to the Summit, OCHA will be working with Member States to arrange a series of regional consultations. These events will help shape the summit. They will allow participants to take stock, to share best practices and identify ways that humanitarian action can be improved. These consultations will be inclusive and designed to bring in views from a diverse range of stakeholders, including civil society, the private sector, and affected communities themselves.

5 They will be shaped around four key areas: humanitarian effectiveness, reducing vulnerability and managing risks, innovation and serving the needs of people in conflict. I am happy to say that the EU has already registered its intention to co-host one of these consultations, as have a number of other EU Member States. We are counting on all countries, all governments, for your support. Ladies and gentlemen, We believe that all of our work, including our advocacy, is stronger when it is shared. Our goal is to foster collaboration and find common causes. This is what we are doing in the context of Syria, and what we did during the Libya crisis. It is what we are trying to achieve with the study on counter-terrorism, and it s what we hope to see as we all develop a new vision of humanitarianism through the World Humanitarian Summit. We thank you, your Governments and the EU as a whole for your solidarity and engagement with the humanitarian cause. We need your understanding and support here at COHAFA, within the EU and in the wider world outside, to cut through political and security agendas, to save lives and deliver aid to people in desperate need. I urge you to continue raising your voices at every opportunity and in every forum, individually and collectively, on behalf of the most vulnerable people in the world. We look forward to our fruitful collaboration for many years to come.