YouSaid · the spoken record

Jan Egeland

lines on the record
13
first
2020-04-29
most recent
2020-04-29
sittings or episodes
1
sources
un-security-council

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “States parties should ratify or accept the amendment to ensure that it enters into force. There must be consequences when men with guns and power prevent children and families from accessing food through harvests or aid, and hunger is the consequence. The Security Council must ensure investigations and accountability through a mechanism to monitor and report on humanitarian access and starvation crimes. Only then will generals, commanders and politicians think twice before they deny civilians food. Starving civilians is a war crime and will never achieve legitimate military objectives. We urge the Security Council to renew its commitment to breaking the vicious cycle of conflict and food insecurity and to consider the five points that I have listed.”

    2020-04-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/340 (2020) · source

  2. “In a similar vein, the many current COVID-19 restrictions put in place by States should also always include provisions that allow coronavirus-safe humanitarian assistance to continue, for example, by designating humanitarian workers as essential personnel, just like medical personnel. Otherwise, the current health crisis may provoke a food crisis with even graver consequences for vulnerable populations. Fifthly, monitoring, reporting and accountability mechanisms must be strengthened. The starvation of civilians in warfare and the denial of humanitarian relief are grave violations of humanitarian law, for which perpetrators must be held to account. The recent amendment to the Rome Statute, expanding the war crime of deliberate starvation to situations of non-international armed conflicts, is a welcome step.”

    2020-04-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/340 (2020) · source

  3. “A well-known example is the drought-related food crisis that in 2011 became a famine in south-central Somalia, where sanctions imposed on Al-Shabaab greatly complicated the response to the famine. It delayed donor funding and caused widespread risk aversion among humanitarian organizations, which believed that they could not respond in those areas owing to the legal risks. Exemptions were introduced too late, and too many died. Today, in many of the conflict areas where the Norwegian Refugee Council’s 15,000 humanitarian workers struggle to get food and other relief to civilians in the crossfire, we are delayed or restrained by the lack of clear-cut exemptions for the provision of humanitarian aid in all sanctions regimes and counter-terrorism measures.”

    2020-04-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/340 (2020) · source

  4. “Deconfliction and humanitarian diplomacy can work, even in the cruellest of wars, but the information provided must always be verified and accurate and, most importantly, there must be accountability for attacks on protected sites. States must work to ensure respect for international humanitarian law among their own armed forces and among those they support and can influence. Fourthly, standard exemptions for humanitarian aid, including food and agricultural products, must be included in counter-terrorism laws and sanctions regimes. Humanitarian work, access, supply, procurement, visas and movements in conflict zones are increasingly affected by counter-terror legislation, measures and sanctions regimes.”

    2020-04-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/340 (2020) · source

  5. “When military commanders are informed of when, where and what will be supplied in terms of food and other relief items, they have an obligation to ensure the safety and security of a relief convoy for the entire operation. That has worked in many conflicts and with many parties but, too often, the parties, their sponsors and the humanitarian system fail to ensure that deconfliction is effectively organized and respected. We have often seen convoys get through to places of hunger and hopelessness after having been successfully deconflicted with multiple governmental armed forces and non-State armed groups. In other places we have seen deconflicted convoys, hospitals, schools, camps and humanitarian offices and warehouses attacked and bombed.”

    2020-04-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/340 (2020) · source

  6. “When many besieged areas were again denied food and hunger took hold, it was primarily because the pressure on the parties by States was waning. A criminal military logic won over compassion and humanitarian law. Thirdly, we must strengthen the instrument of deconfliction with parties to armed conflicts. Deconflicting by informing parties of protected humanitarian and medical sites is a key tool to enable food, medical relief and humanitarian assistance to reach civilians without being attacked. The protection of neutral, impartial and independent humanitarian relief is a basic tenet of humanitarian law. To attack medical and humanitarian sites are war crimes.”

    2020-04-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/340 (2020) · source

  7. “Access challenges are nearly always man- made. The Council’s intervention can enable life-saving food and other aid. From 2016 to the end of 2018, I chaired a humanitarian task force on access in Syria with some 25 influential United Nations Member States. The task force was set up after horrific reports of children starving to death in besieged towns in Syria. Within 72 hours of the creation of the task force, convoys were rolling into several besieged areas that had not received any food or other relief for many months. Humanitarian diplomacy by States and the United Nations system was a key factor in enabling that. States with influence over the parties to conflict have a particular responsibility in that regard.”

    2020-04-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/340 (2020) · source

  8. “We urge the Security Council to avoid politicizing access to aid and rather, by default, to enable us, as front-line humanitarian actors, to provide relief wherever and whenever there are unmet needs — across front lines, borders and political, religious and ethnic lines. Women, children, the elderly and the disabled everywhere must always receive aid. Resolution 2165 (2014), on cross-border relief in Syria, is an example of the type of mechanisms needed. Secondly, we need stronger humanitarian diplomacy to promote humanitarian access. Missions deployed by the Security Council, as well as the bilateral diplomatic missions of Council members, must give priority to humanitarian diplomacy with parties and actors that can eliminate access challenges and ensure that we can reach people with food and other assistance.”

    2020-04-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/340 (2020) · source

  9. “And if we go beyond the Sahel to Syria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Somalia, we see the same need for a real reboot. So, what should be done? Having consulted with many field colleagues, let me focus on five asks. First, we need safe and unimpeded humanitarian access to all populations in need. The Council must help us, as front-line humanitarian agencies, to reach all communities in need in conflict areas. States have an obligation to facilitate impartial humanitarian aid according to humanitarian law. Yet, when we try to reach children, women and men — all civilians — with life-saving relief, every day we face obstacles, roadblocks and prohibitions in multiple conflict settings. Both assertive Governments and non-State armed groups are blatantly denying civilians access to relief.”

    2020-04-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/340 (2020) · source

  10. “A family of seven or eight people shared 20 litres of water per day. How can one avoid the coronavirus disease with 1,000 huts next to each other, with 10 people in each small shelter and three litres of water for drinking, food and hygiene per person per day? There was no school, as teachers had fled the targeted violence against education. Food insecurity has increased threefold. The emergency in northern Burkina Faso is not unique. We see the same food and basic relief crisis across the Sahel, from Mali to Lake Chad. There is an overreliance on counter-terrorist military responses. Too little is done to address the root causes of violence, such as massive unemployment, a lack of education, abject poverty, the lack of good governance and a lack of hope for the large generation of young people.”

    2020-04-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/340 (2020) · source

  11. “Nowhere else in the world have we seen such a tenfold increase in forced displacement, from 70,000 to 750,000 people, in just a year. In the small northern town of Barsalogho, the population had increased manifold due to continuous brutal attacks throughout the region by different armed groups. Most of the families were single-parent and mother-led. Men were targeted by extremist violence and fathers and husbands were dead or had fled further away. These women and children were suffering alone and unprotected. We were only a couple of aid groups present in this large area, and we are overstretched and underfunded. There are no public services or any law and order in sight. Most families had some basic shelter but they were in acute need of everything else: food, water, sanitation and education.”

    2020-04-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/340 (2020) · source

  12. “Linked to more, longer and crueller conflicts, we see mounting hunger caused by political violence and violent extremism. Conflict forces families to flee their homes, their farms, their fields and their livelihoods and to become dependent on the generosity of host communities that themselves are often in a precarious situation. To make that storm even worse, climate change is also hitting the displaced and their hosts, which, in turn, deepens hunger and leads to further displacement. Perhaps nowhere else is that vicious cycle clearer than in central Sahel and the Lake Chad basin in Africa. I witnessed this first-hand when I visited Burkina Faso earlier this year, just before the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.”

    2020-04-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/340 (2020) · source

  13. “I wish to express my gratitude for this opportunity to speak about conflict- induced hunger and what Security Council members can do to follow up on their commitment to “break the vicious cycle between armed conflict and food insecurity”, as expressed in resolution 2417 (2018). The importance and urgency of global food needs have been well presented by my colleagues from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Food Programme. I will therefore concentrate on the need for help from the Security Council with our field-based obstacles to reach the hungry in war. In my 40 years of humanitarian work there have never been as many people — more than 70 million — displaced by horrific violence and conflict.”

    2020-04-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/340 (2020) · source