The UN: The United Nations launched an appeal yesterday for governments to donate some $3 billion to help ease humanitarian crises in 21 "hot-spots" around the world in 2004.
The annual appeal, launched every November, is intended to lessen the impact of humanitarian emergencies in countries particularly ill-equipped to deal with them and that never make it to the world's front pages.
"Seventeen of the 21 crises that we have in this year's appeal are in Africa, which shows that we really hope that the donors do not now forget Africa in these days of crisis in the Middle East and Iraq," said UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Mr Jan Egeland.
"Those who are living in affluence should give according to need and not according to what is politically most in focus," Mr Egeland said on the eve of the 2004 appeal.
The $3 billion figure excludes the rebuilding of Afghanistan and Iraq, whose 2004 needs will be covered in separate appeals. Iraq alone accounted for about $2 billion of last year's UN consolidated appeal. This year, the single biggest component of the combined appeal is for Sudan in north-eastern Africa, whose numerous conflicts have left it with the world's largest population of homeless people, Egeland said.
On instructions from the 191-nation UN General Assembly, the United Nations has issued an annual consolidated appeal for the past decade in search of funding to help feed the world's hungry, heal the sick and shelter those driven from their homes by war and other crises. Last year's appeal sought some $5 billion to aid tens of millions of people in crisis around the world in 2003.
Mr Egeland, just back from a trip to the strife-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, said the United Nations raised just two-thirds of the money it asked for last year.
"I was very demoralised, outraged that we could save more lives if we had modest sums of additional money for the African and other forgotten crises," he said.
"We have had to cut back on some refugee programmes and some very, very important programmes for the internally displaced in many war situations and also natural disasters," he said.
"The good news is that we have never been more effective in our humanitarian work, never more coordinated in our response to emergencies," he said, expressing hope governments would respond more generously this year. - (Reuters)