Measuring Commitment to Best Practice
HRI
NEWS
Interview with Jan Egeland
“The Humanitarian Response Index is a very valuable contribution to improve humanitarian action.”
DARA spoke with Jan Egeland, Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General. With more than 25 years of experience in peace negotiations and humanitarian operations throughout the world, Egeland has held important positions in the United Nations, as well as in non governmental organizations. In this interview, he reveals some of the issues he will analyze in greater detail in his chapter of the Humanitarian Response Index.
In recent years, the humanitarian assistance resources have increased to the highest rates ever. Yet, an increased number of people are affected by natural and man-made crisis. Is there a gap between resources and results?
There is a big gap. I have painstakingly said that the rich world is stingy with its foreign assistance and by that I meant that we now have a generation that has never been richer, that has never had better technology and which has never had better tools and institutions for our work and still we fall miserably short in too many places and too many crises. But I am not a pessimist. I believe that we are making progress. The problem is only that we could have made much faster progress if we have juster resources and technology and our tools more systematically. I am particularly worried in two areas. One is natural disasters which are exploding with climate change, and especially among the poor and vulnerable communities in the south. And secondly, I am very concerned that we are not protecting civilian populations effective by law and in terms of life, particularly women and the civilian population at large are abused still on a horrific scale.
So, from your point of view, which are the lessons learned up till now?>
The number one lesson learned is that we can perform miracles. We have political agreement among the leading members of the United Nations and the Security Council. These miracles are possible if rich nations take the sufficient minimum of the resources to fund operations and if the growing number of humanitarian organizations truly are willing and able to coordinate themselves.
I initiated the humanitarian reform when I was Emergency Relief Coordinator that I detail in my chapter in the HRI Report. A major step forward was when we could increase manifold the Central Emergency Response Fund and ensure that money was received within hours or, at the most, days after a disaster had struck and ensure also that money was given to the forgotten and neglected and underfunded emergencies. The new cluster approach fortunately has ensured that money is spent in a more coherent and coordinated manner in emergencies. The problem is that the fund is still too small to ensure predictable funding for all and everywhere.
What is the role of the civil society within the humanitarian responses?
I think the civil society has not always been sufficiently recognised, but there is growing awareness that in emergencies it is the neighbours and the local communities that really is the first line of defence. And it is only when they are empowered and supplied and supported that we will really be able to succeed. One of the biggest lessons of the tsunami review was that too many western organizations came with too much money and put to the side local structures and local resources.
How will the Humanitarian Response Index contribute to the evaluation and impact of humanitarian projects?
It can be a very valuable contribution because we need to measure that our programmes have more quality control and we need to get more data and documentation on the very important work we are doing. And there are purposes to get humanitarian work even more effective, cost efficient and predictable for everybody everywhere.