Advance planning, not just relief, needed to confront disasters

Foresight and advanced planning, not just emergency relief, are necessary to slash the tragic toll of extreme natural disasters such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.

“Humanity is not the helpless victim of nature. Our capacity to cope with natural disasters is much greater than we realize,” Mr. Ban said at the release of a report on lessons learned during the response to the giant waves of December 2004, which killed more than 200,000 people and left up to 5 million in a dozen countries in need of basic services.

Mr. Ban was accompanied at today’s event by his Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, former United States President Bill Clinton, and heard delegations from India, Indonesia, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand present their country’s experiences during and after the tragedy.

“We cannot prevent such events, but we can diminish their potential for disaster,” the Secretary-General said in his presentation, noting that the new report builds on the Hyogo Framework for action to reduce disaster risk, adopted by governments three weeks after the tsunami.

Experience has shown that good building design, proper land-use planning, public education, community preparedness and effective early warning systems can reduce the impact of severe weather events, he said.

He noted that many countries have shown the way by investing in flood control measures, hurricane-proof buildings and coastal ecosystems such as mangroves and coral reefs.

Above all, he said, committed leadership, strategic coordination and inclusive efforts are crucial. “We have learned the importance of building local capacity, focusing on the needs of women and the poorest, community participation and accountability and transparency.”

He said that much work had already been done to advance national coordination of disaster risk reduction. In that light, he noted that India has established a National Disaster Management Authority and Indonesia has created a Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Board.

In Maldives the government set up a National Disaster Management Centre, while in Sri Lanka, the tsunami was a catalyst for the creation of the Ministry of National Disaster Management and Human Rights. In addition, Thailand has enacted a Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Act and a high-level command for disaster response.

The UN matched those efforts by establishing a “One UN” office for Recovery Coordination in Aceh and Nias, noted Mr. Ban. “Coordination is not a luxury. It is an absolute necessity.”
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Multilateralism indispensable in tackling global crises, stresses Migiro

The significant hurdles the world faces today can only be addressed through global solutions, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said today.

“An effective multilateral system that delivers results has never been more important” in tackling the simultaneous food, energy, financial and climate change crises, she told a high-level meeting on the United Nations and the European Union (EU) in the Spanish city of Barcelona.

More than 50 million people have been pushed into poverty, 50 million are losing their livelihoods and 40 million are going hungry, the official said at the gathering.

“The numbers are startling enough, but there are other effects that are not easy to quantify,” such as human frustration, she pointed out.

Ms. Migiro commended the EU’s support of the three main pillars of the UN’s work: peace, human rights and development. The EU’s financial assistance is also invaluable to the world body, she added.

But its most valuable contribution to the UN lies in its political will, since EU nations “share the UN’s universal values,” she said.

The EU is one of the Organization’s most significant partners in peacekeeping, the Deputy Secretary-General said, and “these interventions help development, which is critical to cooling tensions before they flare and achieving lasting recovery after the guns fall silent.”

Thus, the EU-UN relationship serves as a model, and “all countries must join forces to respond to the challenges of our time,” she underscored.

“To succeed, we must build an effective multilateralism.”
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Secretary-General: empowering women promotes peace

Empowering women is essential to build better lives for all, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today, calling for greater efforts to achieve gender equality.

“We are still far from turning this understanding into universal practice,” Mr. Ban said in a video message to the “Women for Peace” dinner in New York.

Women are still under-represented in decision-making positions – especially when it comes to peace-making, peace-building and peacekeeping – in most nations, he said.

Their informal work towards peace is rarely ever reflected in formal peace processes, the Secretary-General lamented. The concerns of women, who are among those who suffer the most in conflicts, are most often reflected in negotiations.

“When women participate in peace negotiations, and in crafting a peace agreement, their societies are the winners,” he stressed, pledging the UN’s continued support to promote the role of women in peace-building.
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UN envoy warns of dangers to children eastern DR Congo

The United Nations envoy tasked with protecting the rights of children in armed conflict today warned of the dire security situation in some parts of strife-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Radhika Coomaraswamy, Special Representative of the Secretary-General, told reporters in New York that during her week-long visit to the DRC earlier this month the security situation “seemed less tense and more programmes were evident with regards to children” than two years ago, especially in the North Kivu capital of Goma.

However, in the Province Orientale town of Dungu, “a dire security situation exists,” with almost 1,000 children killed and some 300 abducted since last September by the Lords Resistance Army (LRA), the Ugandan militia notorious for seizing children to use as soldiers and sex slaves.

“Most of the schools [in the area have been] attacked and destroyed by the LRA,” said Ms. Coomaraswamy, underscoring the need to beef up security and to ensure that security personnel themselves do not commit grave violations.

Minors make up almost half the victims of sexual violence and 64 per cent of the perpetrators are men in uniform, noted the Special Representative. “The issue of impunity was the central question on the minds of people in civil society and the children themselves and the need for justice mechanisms to work.”

She emphasized that the reintegration of child soldiers into their families remained the focus of child protection teams in the area, noting that in the last month alone, some 1,300 child soldiers had been demobilized from the mainly Tutsi rebel militia, known as the National Congress for People’s Defence (CNDP), in North Kivu.

But concerns remain that many children are passing through into the ranks of the newly integrated Congolese Forces (FARDC).

“In fact when I arrived at the airport in Masisi, the Mai Mai [a rebel group] commanders wearing FARDC uniforms had bought with them four children as part of their troops and the child protection actors in our team actually separated them,” she said.

Referring to the latest annual report of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict, Ms. Coomaraswamy said, “we have also urged that the Security Council move towards setting up a system for setting sanctions against the 19 persistent violators who continue to recruit and use children.”

The Secretary-General’s report to the Security Council explicitly lists in its annexes 56 parties, both State and non-State, who have committed grave violations against children, including the 19 persistent violators who have been listed for more than 4 years.

The report also documents grave violations against children in 20 countries: Afghanistan, Burundi, CAR, Chad, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, DRC, Georgia, Haiti, Iraq, Lebanon, Myanmar, Nepal, Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, the Philippines, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Thailand and Uganda.

Ms. Coomaraswamy stressed that the child protection community was waiting for a strong signal from the Council on its commitment to tackle the protection of children during armed conflict when it discusses the report on 29 April.
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