The Economic and Social Council this morning held a panel discussion addressing the impact of current global challenges and trends on the effective delivery of humanitarian assistance. This was followed by a general discussion on the theme of the panel discussion.

Tiina Intelmann, Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council, said this panel should provide humanitarian stakeholders, including Member States and international humanitarian actors, with an opportunity to jointly discuss measures to address the adverse humanitarian impact of these challenges. The debate should also shed some light on national and regional angles, while thematically delving into how humanitarian actors could strengthen coordination with developmental organizations, particularly as the latter increasingly operated in non-traditional humanitarian contexts.

John Holmes, Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, moderating the panel discussion, said today the humanitarian landscape was being shaped in new ways by profound and threatening global challenges. The size of the problem was likely to exceed the ability of any State to respond. New and more effective social safety nets were needed in many places if these effects were to be contained. There would increasingly be a need to transcend traditional definitions of what was ‘humanitarian’ and what was ‘developmental’ and work towards more integrated country plans and partnerships that looked to increase resilience and reduce vulnerability overall, against a multiplicity of threats.

Randolph C. Kent, Director, Humanitarian Futures Programme, King’s College, London, said he wished to convey three specific measures: the types, dynamics and dimensions of humanitarian programmes were expanding; science and technology offered exciting opportunities to offset the crises; and the international community could not afford to wait - it had to prepare now. The international community should be looking at the consequences of synchronous system failures and the factors that intensified vulnerability. In order to prepare for the future now, there were a range of steps to be considered: there was a need for a change of attitude, beginning with helping organizations to look for systematic ways of monitoring what might be the crisis drivers and what could be the ways to offset these. Innovation should be rewarded, and there should be cross-institutional, integrated horizon scanning.

Dian Triansyah Djani, Permanent Representative of Indonesia to the United Nations at Geneva, said that Indonesia experienced a wide array of disasters, and between the years 1980-2008 the country lost $21 billion to disasters. It was necessary to come up with a comprehensive approach to disaster management, and not an emergency disaster management approach. Disaster management had to be tailor made. Maintaining a coordinating attitude was crucial, in order for local Government to take over the transition process heading towards rehabilitation. Legal support was also necessary, not only in terms of disaster management, but also concerning disaster aid financing and management, and participation of international institutions and foreign non-governmental organizations in disaster management.

Carrie Auer, the United Nations Children’s Fund Representative in Malawi, said the food crisis led the Government of Malawi, together with its partners, to design a Social Protection Policy with the aim to develop longer term responses to chronic poverty, recurrent risks and vulnerabilities. Malawi already faced a number of existing vulnerabilities, exacerbated by a high unemployment rate, a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, and food and nutrition insecurity being prevalent throughout the country. The overall goal of the Social Support Policy was to reduce poverty and to enable the poor to move out of poverty and vulnerability, being designed to reach the most vulnerable households. There was no doubt that Malawi was well placed to respond to global challenges, but it was critical that, in order to continue to face these threats, the humanitarian and development sectors be strongly interlinked. Social protection provided a valuable opportunity.

Abbas Gedi Gullet, Secretary-General of the Kenyan Red Cross, said the effects of globalization on Kenya left the country to face severe economic problems, rising external debt, declining currency, low per capita income and a problematic international financial climate. Kenya was extremely vulnerable to climate change due to its dependence on rain-fed agriculture, livestock and tourism. There had been a four-fold increase in the number and severity of droughts over the past 25 years. The trend of death, suffering and destruction was worrying. Many looked for opportunities outside Kenya in the more developed countries of the West. A challenge for the Kenya Red Cross was to find a balance between maintaining the organization’s traditional strengths in relief response and integrating this with longer-term developmental approaches for risk reduction and capacity enhancement.

Thomas Loster, Chairman, Munich Re Foundation, said last year was second in the number of natural disasters, with significant numbers of dead. The poor were the vulnerable here. The key issue was population growth. There would be more mega-cities in only seven years, and thus whenever a storm hit these, then more people would be affected. The poor were attracted to large urban areas, and thus suffered more. Awareness was key - not only community awareness, but individual awareness. Besides strategic and Governmental issues and global frameworks, the issue had to be building resilience and awareness. Disaster trends showed increasing risk with or without climate change, and social vulnerability and building resilience were key issues. There should always be a strong top-down as well as bottom-up component.

Manuel Aranda de Silva, Special Advisor to the Executive Director of the World Food Programme, said despite a recent decrease, global food prices around the world were still well-above historical levels. International food prices had declined in the second half of 2008 but remained high compared to 2005, and were still more than double than the 2000 level. The International Monetary Fund estimated that sub-Saharan Africa exports would decline by half in 2009, cutting off a vital source of employment, income and foreign capital. Last year they saw food riots in more than 30 countries reminding them of the key role that access to food had in preserving stability within nations. The world urgently needed a robust and comprehensive approach to peace, development and humanitarian assistance both in terms of donor funding and operationally.

During the general discussion on the impact of current global challenges and trends on the effective delivery of humanitarian assistance, speakers raised issues and questions on, climate change, technological dangers, and improving capacities in these areas being very important for reducing vulnerability in populations. In view of the future humanitarian crises being driven more by slow-onset, cyclical or chronic causes, what would the role of humanitarian response be, a speaker asked, noting that humanitarian assistance was currently linked to development responses. The importance of early-warning systems and democratic sharing of data and training for dealing with natural disasters were not negligible, but countries did not have the same capacity in this regard - could OCHA help in this regard, a speaker asked. Humanitarian requirements in the future would be different from in the past, and maybe more easy to predict. Disaster-risk reduction was central to the current humanitarian and development strategy - how this should be changed in order to respond to new and complex challenges was also a matter of concern.

Representatives of the delegations of the Russian Federation, Sweden (on behalf of the European Union), Malaysia, Pakistan, Burundi, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Finland, and China took the floor during the discussion. A representative of the Arab Commission for Human Rights also spoke.


The Council will resume its meeting this afternoon at 3 p.m., to continue and conclude its general debate under its humanitarian affairs segment.

Opening Statements

TIINA INTELMANN, Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council, said the Secretary-General, in his report to ECOSOC and the General Assembly, expressed concern that the combined impact of global challenges such as climate change, extreme poverty, urbanisation, water and energy security, and the food and financial crises could generate substantial increases in humanitarian caseloads, affecting hundreds of millions of people in the next few years. He also outlined how these challenges could impact the provision of humanitarian assistance and its coordination. This panel should provide humanitarian stakeholders, including Member States and international humanitarian actors, with an opportunity to jointly discuss measures to address the adverse humanitarian impact of these challenges. The debate should also shed some light on national and regional angles, while thematically delving into how humanitarian actors could strengthen coordination with developmental organizations, particularly as the latter increasingly operated in non-traditional humanitarian contexts.

JOHN HOLMES, Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, moderating the panel discussion, said today the humanitarian landscape was being shaped in new ways by profound and threatening global challenges. Climate change, the recent global food crisis, which had not gone away in many developing countries, population growth in many poor parts of the world, demographic shifts causing many people to live in high risk areas, rapidly growing urbanisation, land, water and energy scarcities, disturbance to key ecosystems, the risks of pandemics, and last but not least in the shorter term, the impact of the global economic and financial crises on the poorest and most vulnerable groups in the world, were creating larger humanitarian caseloads and a more complex operating environment. Individually these global challenges were likely to increase humanitarian needs by creating more poverty and vulnerability; greater levels of inequality; higher unemployment, increased frequency and intensity of disasters; new kinds of conflicts; and major weather driven migrations. Combined, they threatened to create chronic vulnerability on a much larger scale, in many more countries in all parts of the world. As a result, the context of humanitarian work may be transformed beyond recognition. The size of the problem was likely to exceed the ability of any State to respond.

A combination in 2008 of increasing food demands from a growing population, rising oil prices, development of the bio-fuel industry, and extreme weather events in some parts of the world let to food price spikes, and a food security crisis that affected almost everyone to a greater or lesser extent, and it was very far from over. And the bad news did not stop there. Unfortunately today’s deep global economic slowdown was bound to increase chronic poverty, food insecurity and overall humanitarian needs in a large number of countries. New and more effective social safety nets were needed in many places if these effects were to be contained. The humanitarian community needed to broaden its notion of vulnerability and risk, reconsider what drove a humanitarian emergency, and rethink what constituted an effective international humanitarian response, observed Mr. Holmes. There would increasingly be a need to transcend traditional definitions of what was ‘humanitarian’ and what was ‘developmental’ and work towards more integrated country plans and partnerships that looked to increase resilience and reduce vulnerability overall, against a multiplicity of threats.

Statements by Panellists

RANDOLPH C. KENT, Director, Humanitarian Futures Programme, King's College, London, said he wished to convey three specific measures: the types, dynamics and dimensions of humanitarian programmes were expanding; science and technology offered exciting opportunities to offset the crises; and the international community could not afford to wait - it had to prepare now. The sort of crises that would be faced in the future were not the type that could be responded to in a few months time, and the whole way of dealing with them was changing. The exponential nature of humanitarian crises was reflected in the natural hazard disaster impacts over the past 40 years. The eroding nuclear waste dumps in Central Asia were not being considered - nobody was focusing on the consequences of system hacking, and the consequence of nanotechnology, in terms of water and soil pollution also should be borne in mind, having a global impact. The international community should be looking at the consequences of synchronous system failures and the factors that intensified vulnerability. The long-term consequences of major infrastructure collapse should be considered, as should sequential and simultaneous crises, as well as how these fit into organizations' strategies.

More and more, as pandemics rightly showed, there was a global crisis phenomenon. In the history of humanitarianism, it had always been assumed that in the West there were the margins to protect from the worst consequences of these. That assumption would not be here in a decade. Vulnerability would increase, not only in the so-called developing world, but also in the developed world. However, there was an extraordinary world of opportunities ahead. Science was two decades ahead of the institutions that should be using and focusing on these opportunities. These opportunities were multitudinous, and existed at the community level, the regional level, the global level, the operational level, the preparedness level, at accountability level, organisational level, and in research loops. The world needed to keep an eye on the emerging technological world, in order to deal better with the future. Most crisis drivers had a significant impact on organizations dealing with them. The way to decode this was to verify if concerns were matching actions to deal with them - and very few organizations were in this situation. In order to prepare for the future now, there were a range of steps to be considered: there was a need for a change of attitude, beginning with helping organizations to look for systematic ways of monitoring what might be the crisis drivers and what could be the ways to offset these. Innovation should be rewarded, and there should be cross-institutional, integrated horizon scanning.

DIAN TRIANSYAH DJANI, Permanent Representative of Indonesia to the United Nations at Geneva, said that Indonesia had experienced a wide array of disasters, and between the years 1980-2008 the country lost $21 billion to disasters, ranging from storms, drought, wildfire, epidemics, volcanoes, earthquakes and floods. In a case study of Indonesia’s Tsunami in Aceh on 26 December 2004 what was most important was how one responded and looked at the situation and challenges: the magnitude of the disaster, the lack of communication structures, scattered resources and coordination or resources, and lack of training and experience, particularly in the local areas where the disaster hit hardest. It was necessary to come up with a comprehensive approach to disaster management, and not a emergency disaster management approach. He said they needed a good strategy, a disaster management system, that included a before: coordination of prevention, mitigation and preparedness, during: emergency response command control coordination, and afterwards: coordination. Disaster management had to be tailor made. Reconstruction actors included: local Governments, non-governmental organizations, contractors, suppliers and consultants. Maintaining a coordinating attitude was crucial, in order for local Governments to take over the transition process heading towards rehabilitation.

Legal support was necessary, not only in terms of disaster management, but also concerning disaster aid financing and management, and participation of international institutions and foreign non-governmental organizations in disaster management. When it came to disasters, especially for developing countries the military component was increasingly important, as they were fully equipped and ready to facilitate needs during these times; however it was important that this factor was coordinated appropriately within existing efforts, underscored Mr. Djani. In addition, Indonesia’s strategy for emergency response, reconstruction, and mitigation, included: dissemination of laws and regulations on disaster management, acceleration in establishment of and strengthening of a regional disaster management agency, emergency logistic management training, and acceleration in establishment of regional depot logistics. In conclusion, lessons had been learned from this experience; it was necessary to change mindsets and attitudes - emergency response to comprehensive disaster management; early and accurate information – real time data; synergy, planning and coordination – preparedness to implementation; gaining trust – international, domestic, local communities; capacity building; financing and accountability – empowering provincial and local Governments; multi stakeholder involvement; international involvement; and transitional and continuity and sustainability.

CARRIE AUER, UNICEF Representative in Malawi, said in Malawi overall 52 per cent of the population lived in poverty, and 22 per cent were ultra poor. The food crisis led the Government of Malawi, together with its partners, to design a Social Protection Policy with the aim to develop longer term responses to chronic poverty, recurrent risks and vulnerabilities. Malawi already faced a number of existing vulnerabilities, exacerbated by a high unemployment rate, a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, and food and nutrition insecurity being prevalent throughout the country. Hence, there were further threats and challenges which were only likely to further exacerbate these existing vulnerabilities. While it was difficult to disaggregate consequences and identify specific attribution of the different global challenges, there was no doubt that some impact had been observed. The economic consequences were most evident, notably with the depletion of reserves, increased fiscal deficit, and reduced fiscal space. These trends were not acute and not evident in the short-term, but were evident over longer periods. The Government faced increasing needs with potentially diminishing resources.

In the context of global challenges, in particular the recent increase in commodity prices, the Government, together with its partners, was implementing a multi-faceted social protection system to protect and support the most vulnerable, with five main components to the system, complementing and reinforcing each other. The overall goal of the Social Support Policy was to reduce poverty and to enable the poor to move out of poverty and vulnerability, being designed to reach the most vulnerable households. The comprehensive approach to social protection potentially led to greater results, and no single intervention could be considered in isolation of others. The input subsidy programme had led to better crop production and food security. However, the programmes and interventions described within the social protection framework alone were insufficient to mitigate against the humanitarian consequences of the global challenges. UNICEF, along with the United Nations and other partners, had been working collaboratively to support the Government in strengthening these programmes, and ensuring that they were institutionalised within Government systems. There was no doubt that Malawi was well placed to respond to global challenges, but it was critical that, in order to continue to face these threats, the humanitarian and development sectors be strongly interlinked. Social protection provided a valuable opportunity.

ABBAS GEDI GULLET, Secretary-General of the Kenyan Red Cross, said the Kenyan Red Cross was part of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The International Federation of Red Cross’s new global strategy for 2020 was designed to adapt to the challenges and opportunities presented by a fast-changing world. It recognised improvements in democracy, health, education, and technology experienced in the recent decades; that millions of people living in poverty had been assisted through greater creativity, productive enterprise, and a more widely shared social consciousness. The effects of globalization on Kenya left the country to face severe economic problems, rising external debt, declining currency, low per capita income and a problematic international financial climate. Kenya was extremely vulnerable to climate change due to its dependence on rain-fed agriculture, livestock and tourism. Climate change was already having a direct impact on the humanitarian work of the Kenya Red Cross Society. Kenya saw a loss of income from the Diaspora. There had been a four-fold increase in the number and severity of droughts over the past 25 years. Kenya’s population growth rate was one of the highest in the world, and led to very high rates of urbanization; resulting in slums, over-stretched infrastructure and services, and limited livelihood opportunities. Informal settlements were particularly vulnerable to disaster hazards such as landslides and flooding. Moreover, global trends placed in jeopardy Kenya’s gains in reducing HIV.

Mr. Gullet, said the economic and social impact of disasters was growing as were the numbers of people affected each year. Communities were increasingly faced with humanitarian challenges which they were too poor to cope with. The trend of death, suffering and destruction was worrying. Many looked for opportunities outside Kenya in the more developed countries of the West. In the context of challenges faced in the delivery of humanitarian assistance, at the local level, increased frequency and magnitude of disasters resulted in an increase in the number of affected and an increased need for limited resources, and increased poverty and vulnerability to disasters. At the national level it was necessary to transform both mind-sets and attitudes. Changing the nature of communities and their needs; building new capacities; promoting innovation in social mobilization and harnessing new knowledge and advances in information communications technology remained challenges. A challenge for the Kenya Red Cross was to find a balance between maintaining the organization’s traditional strengths in relief response and integrating this with longer-term developmental approaches for risk reduction and capacity enhancement.

THOMAS LOSTER, Chairman of the Munich Re Foundation, said he was an alien in this discussion, belonging to the private sector. It was all about awareness and coordination, as previous speakers had said. Money had a good effect, such as remittances, which immediately reached those in the countries, and was immediately available in the case of disasters. There were challenges at regional, global, international and local levels, and the important factor was ownership, as if one link in the chain was missing, then aid and assistance did not go through. Last year was second in the number of natural disasters, with significant numbers of dead. The poor were the vulnerable here. There should be early-warning systems that covered the "last mile", and the people in the "last mile" were also the people in the "first mile"- they were those at risk, who should be helped. Individual awareness of risks was crucial. The key issue was population growth. There would be more mega-cities in only seven years, and thus whenever a storm hit these, then more people would be affected. The poor were attracted to large urban areas, and thus suffered more.

Every year, there were some 800 events around the globe, and one third were geological in origin. Three-fourths were more or less due to weather and climate change. This had strong economic impacts, as well as strong trends in humanitarian effects, in particular as nine out of ten took place in poor regions, whereas only one took place in the developed world. If climate change continued, there would be stronger effects in this regard. Awareness was key, not only community awareness, but individual awareness. It was not about the "last mile", it was about the last millimetre in people's brain that had to be reached, creating individual awareness, which would of course improve the situation. Besides strategic and Governmental issues and global frameworks, the issue had to be building resilience and awareness. Disaster trends showed increasing risk with or without climate change, and social vulnerability and building resilience were key issues. There should always be a strong top-down as well as bottom-up component.

MANUEL ARANDA DE SILVA, Special Advisor to the Executive Director, World Food Programme, said despite a recent decrease, global food prices around the world were still well-above historical levels. International food prices had declined in the second half of 2008 but remained high compared to 2005, and were still more than double the 2000 level. At the local level, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations had found that in 80 per cent of the countries with data, food prices were still higher than 12 months ago. As the global economic downturn continued, vulnerable households were being hit from several sides: not only through high food prices; but also by lower incomes and increased unemployment. For example, it was estimated that in 2008, 19 per cent of the Kyrgyz Republic’s gross domestic product was made up of remittances. That was a lower rate than in 2007 and it could fall further in 2009. The slowdown had thrown 600,000 into urgent hunger. The Government had requested the World Food Programme to come back for the first time since 1992. Furthermore, as exports slowed so did incomes in poor countries. The International Monetary Fund estimated that sub-Saharan Africa exports would decline by half in 2009, cutting off a vital source of employment, income and foreign capital.

Last year they saw food riots in more than 30 countries reminding them of the key role that access to food had in preserving stability within nations, underscored Mr. De Silva. That same year, thanks to the enormous generosity of many nations, the World Food Programme ramped up to reach 100 million people in need, helping more than 80 nations cool down food instability and helping prevent massive suffering. The world urgently needed a robust and comprehensive approach to peace, development and humanitarian assistance both in terms of donor funding and operationally. This included stronger partnerships and dialogue with all key stakeholders and ensuring access for humanitarian deliveries and the safety and security of humanitarian workers, where violence threatened assistance efforts, as well as sustained predictable funding for life-saving humanitarian assistance. In conclusion, the World Food Programme realized that they needed a new approach for an increasingly unpredictable world, and they had created an analytical economic tool, called the Economic Shock and Hunger Index to identify which countries would be most threatened by the financial crisis and economic slowdown.

Discussion

During the discussion, speakers said, among other things, that the information on early-warning, climate change and technological dangers and improving capacities in these areas was very important for reducing vulnerability among populations. All this affected sustainable development in the United Nations context. In view of the future humanitarian crises being driven more by slow-onset, cyclical or chronic causes, what would the role of humanitarian response be, a speaker asked, noting that humanitarian assistance was currently linked to development responses. The importance of early-warning systems and democratic sharing of data and training for dealing with natural disasters was not negligible, but countries did not have the same capacity in this regard - could the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs help in this regard? Humanitarian requirements in the future would be different from in the past, and maybe more easy to predict. How could the current financial and economic crises be prevented from impacting on funding for humanitarian assistance, asked another. Disaster-risk reduction was central to the current humanitarian and development strategy; how this should be changed in order to respond to new and complex challenges was also a matter of concern.

Responses and Concluding Remarks

RANDOLPH C. KENT, Director, Humanitarian Futures Programme, King’s College, London, said with regard to innovations and acting on what they knew, it was important to get used to providing incentives to looking at what might be effective innovations. There was a need to understand this at the local level and how to capture it creatively. One of the roles of the multilateral system could be to bring together the United Nations, banks and other actors, to define what innovations already existed. One of the things that underpinned the problems faced in the humanitarian sector was what was the underlying problem – defining the source of the problem was a key issue. The second issue was that one could know even more now. On non-traditional partners, it was important to define who was out there and only then would one know who to address.

DIAN TRIANSYAH DJANI, Permanent Representative of Indonesia to the United Nations at Geneva, said in Indonesia a Government decree had been issued to deal with the experts and the rest of the humanitarian bodies after the tsunami, in order to determine the rules of the game and procedure. This included some flexibility and leeway. There was a need for administrative requirements in order to begin reconstruction. The good had to be separated from the bad, and the effective from the ineffective. The ambit of the humanitarian response architecture had to be changed in order to ensure a certain comfort level. The issue was not the question of whether the military should be present or not - the question was who could respond best and fastest to the situation. There was a need for a comfort level, the rules of the game, and an international agreement on how the military could be involved.

THOMAS LOSTER, Chairman, Munich Re Foundation, said with regard to migration insurance, the issue of migration was a very discussed and complex issue, the challenge faced had to do with the definition of migrants. With respect to questions raised on a change in architecture, it was surprising to see, and more communication and collaboration was necessary. An assessment of the hot spots around the world had already been done; however information and data had to be used and shared beyond boundaries.

ABBAS GEDI GULLET, Secretary-General of the Kenyan Red Cross, said that what happened up to now was that national Red Cross societies would estimate the price of a disaster, posting the price on the website. There were teams to assess the disaster in this regard, and this information was therefore freely available. With regards to cooperation with non-traditional partners, in Kenya there were efforts in this regard, with collaboration with the universities and the private sector, to whom the Red Cross addressed itself for man-power and funding. On the auxiliary role of society compared to the Government, in this process in the context of Kenya, the Government had appointed the Kenyan Red Cross to be the leader of reconstruction within the country following the post-election riots last year, and it had filled in gaps in terms of health, medicine, and other areas.

CARRIE AUER, United Nations Children’s Fund’s Representative in Malawi, said with regard to innovation, the rapid SMS programme was helping the Government of Malawi get fast and reliable data, and it could be used in sectors other than health. Smart cards and mobile banking initiatives were underway, as well as, in partnership with the European Union, a project on cash transfers, to make them more affordable in Malawi.

MANUEL ARANDA DE SILVA, Special Advisor to the Executive Director, World Food Programme, said that it needed to be determined that there was evolution - there was good governance, and Governments should lead the process of response to natural disasters, and should do so from a stance free from politicisation and bias. The use of military response could be a good thing, as the assets were there. The military needed to have this role in times of peace - it made them far more useful than just to sit around. The era of agricultural surplus was over - the big issue today was how to give people access to food, and what was preventing this access. In many countries today, WFP was being requested not to bring food, but to bring the tools and analytical tools to develop national Government policy on how to address this issue of distribution.

JOHN HOLMES, Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, wrapping up the discussion and re-capping questions raised and discussed, said with regard to how could the system be changed to deal with the challenges, he said there was no answer now, but looking at United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in a thematic way and how the humanitarian architecture could be transformed was a step in the right direction. On what was done when Governments covered up their own natural disasters, he said this should be tackled in so far as it could be. On fears of budget cutting in humanitarian assistance funding, he said so far Governments had not cut humanitarian budgets in 2009 and he hoped that would remain the case for 2010 and 2011, so far the effect had been less than feared. Lastly, on climate change; how could they make sure that there were earmarked funds to address effects of climate change, much had already been done, but this would be further discussed and assessed in Copenhagen.


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