YouSaid · the spoken record

Morris

lines on the record: 163
first: 2002-12-03
most recent: 2005-06-30
sittings or episodes: 5
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

“If you feed a young girl, and she goes to school for a few years, everything about her life changes. We can feed a child in Bangladesh for $16 for a school year. We can feed a child in North Korea for $24 a year, and, generally, for about $35 a year, we can provide a meal for a child every single school day of the year. The power of the investment is just enormous.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“SADC is our very close partner in terms of regional work, in terms of food security, in terms of HIV, in terms of early warning systems - and that is a good thing. The representative of France asked a question about access to the population and the security of our personnel. I hope that I have answered that question. He also raised the issue of the nutritional concerns of children. We are very focused on iodine, on iron, on Vitamin A; we know that, if we can fortify food - it is very inexpensive to fortify a school biscuit or some other food commodity that is going to be distributed - a small investment will provide enormous leverage in terms of the overall commodities to be distributed. I hope that you all will help us think through how we build this movement - this partnership - to change the issue of child hunger in the world.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“Its focus on the Niger gives me a chance to mention not only the locust infestation, which is overwhelming, but also the fact that, in the nine Sahel countries that have among the lowest school enrolment in the world, we have a chance to work together with nine ministers of health and education to dramatically turn that situation around, especially in a place like the Niger, where maybe 20 per cent of the children go to school. We know that, when there is a meal at school, children come, they stay, they learn, and, if they go for a month in a row, we give them a package of vegetable oil to take home to sort of compensate the family for the lost energy of the child's not being home to help. I would say to the representative of Tanzania that we work closely with the Southern African Development Community (SADC).”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“That figure is now down to 4 per cent. With 80 per cent of Africa relying on agriculture, to cut by two thirds the amount of investment in basic infrastructure for agriculture just does not make sense. NEPAD and the African Union have made a commitment to encouraging African countries to invest 10 per cent in basic agricultural infrastructure. That will make a profound difference if it comes to fruition. We do a lot of small food-for-work projects, where we invest in micro-irrigation systems or in the rebuilding of roads, but we do not have the capacity to do the macro stuff. That is an important step in the right direction that NEPAD and the African Union have taken. Clearly we are profoundly grateful to the United States.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“Beyond that, the single most important effort that the world needs to make in the battle against HIV is educating children aged 5 to 15 about the seriousness of this pandemic. That is best done in school and best done when children are fed and nourished, so they can learn in school. Peter Piot would tell you that, when he goes to a village with a high HIV prevalence rate, the first thing they ask for is food and water. Antiretroviral treatment does not work in a poorly nourished body. I wish to thank my colleague from Algeria, which has become a very important donor. We work closely with the African Union and in the context of New Partnership for Africa's Development. With respect to the issue of basic investment in agricultural infrastructure, at one point 12 per cent of ODA went to basic investment.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“We will close our operations in China in December of this year, and China will become a major donor to the WFP, which is a wonderful transition. The WFP will always be available to help China in an emergency, but that country will become an important stand-by partner to help us respond to emergencies. The representative of Greece asked questions about child hunger. We are a very close partner of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). The head of UNAIDS would say that hunger and nutrition are the most important factors in the fight against HIV. If people are well nourished, they have a better chance to resist. If they are infected and well nourished, they can resist opportunistic diseases. If they are pretty far along and well nourished, they will have a few more months or years to live with their children.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“Such support begins to diminish envy and anger, and makes a huge contribution to peace and security. We work very closely with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). I will not take the time to go through them in great detail, but the partnerships are very good, especially on the ground in the field. I appreciated China's commitment. We have worked in China for 40 years and have fed tens of millions of people there. China no longer needs us.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“If we focus on child hunger, we will be able to make huge progress in that regard. I also appreciated the comments made by the representative of Japan. It is a very moving experience to be in Japan - or in Germany, for that matter - to talk with people who benefited from the rebuilding of their education systems and from the international community's generosity in providing food, milk and cereal for distribution through school systems. I had the former Minister for Agriculture of Japan tell me that the fact that the United States went in to provide milk and cereal to the people of Japan after the Second World War brought Japan's education system alive and changed his country. I had the same experience with ministers in Germany. The fact of the matter is that every child in the world deserves that kind of support.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“In a place like Guatemala, 50 per cent of the children under the age of 5 are chronically malnourished. The numbers are smaller in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, but they are large. The Inter-American Development Bank, the business community and the World Bank are getting involved. These are doable things, and clearly very important things. I am hopeful that we will find a way to build this extraordinary partnership. If we feed the 300 million hungry children in the world, that would account for about half of the hungry people there are. As you feed a child you make an enormous contribution to infant mortality, maternal health, gender equity - as hunger disproportionately affects girls - the issue of HIV/AIDS and universal primary education. Those coincide with the first six of the Millennium Development Goals.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“We could not have done our work in the tsunami without the help of Citicorp, the Boston Consulting Group and the Dutch company T & T. The latter has 175,000 employees. Every one of them has made the commitment to feed a school child, and the company has committed itself to matching their contributions. When we begin to put enough pieces in place, we can make a difference. Canada has made a remarkable commitment to feed children in five countries in Africa. In Mali, as I may have mentioned earlier, its commitment to girls' education has increased the enrolment of girls from 34 to 43 per cent in two years. I am hopeful that France and Belgium will take a special look at francophone countries in Africa. The child enrolment in schools in Niger is very low. We have a chance to build the same kind of partnership in Central America.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“Malawi does the same thing: it made a $13 million commitment to help support WFP's work in Malawi. My own sense is that we need a movement in the world that says that it is no longer acceptable for children to be hungry. If only everyone would just do a little more. The cost of getting that done is the same amount of money we spent to feed the people of Belgium after the First World War. It is the same amount of money we spent to feed people during the Berlin airlift. It is the same amount of money we spent to build Disneyland in Paris. We have got to figure out how we, as the international community, can eliminate child hunger in the world. The Council will see UNICEF, the World Bank, the Red Cross and all sorts of people mobilizing to take action in that regard. We now have commercial partners.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“That is the only place where we somewhat compromise our access requirement. I appreciate the reference by members of the Council to the Millennium Development Goals and child hunger. I strongly believe that a concerted worldwide effort led by the WFP, UNICEF, the World Bank and the relevant non-governmental organizations, with support from the business, faith and youth-serving communities can make a difference. Let us say that there are probably 115 million people in Africa who need help: 93 million children and their mothers. There is no substitute for being born to a healthy mother and nursed by a healthy mother. Our estimates are that that constitutes an annual expense of about $5 billion. Forty to 50 per cent of that can be provided by host Governments. Kenya supports our work to feed children in Kenya in an extraordinary way.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“With regard to the security dimensions to humanitarian access, in the last year we have quadrupled our own security coverage. That is having a huge impact on our budget. It is costing more, making fewer resources available to feed people. We have 135 duty stations throughout the world that are categorized as phase III or higher under the standards of the United Nations Security Coordinator. Several members of the Council have said nice things about our staff. Their humanitarian commitment is remarkable. We have a wall of honour in our building. Sixty-two people from the World Food Programme (WFP) have been killed in humanitarian service. We require that we can go anywhere. North Korea is about the only place in the world where we do not have complete access. We have access to about 160 of the 203 counties in North Korea.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“Every 10 days there is a "tsunami" in the world, in all sorts of places. Our Romanian colleague asked what the Council could do. It is the most important decision-making body in the entire world. The fact that the Security Council would focus on the issue of hunger, as it has today and several times earlier, is a powerful message. I have tried to respond to my colleague from the United Kingdom, talking about building capacity. Clearly, climate change is certain, but there is a difference. We are doing three times as many natural disaster assessments today as we did in 1960. I am not a scientist, but I know that things have changed. Humanitarian access is a basic principle of our work. We rarely compromise it. We require that we have complete access to any population in any country where we work.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“We do not monetize food. We are very respectful of markets. So I would just like to make that point quickly. I am grateful that the representative of Brazil mentioned the notion of forgotten emergencies. We all get focused on the tsunami, or we get focused on Darfur; but the fact of the matter is that 92 per cent of the people who will die today of hunger will die in places that are not in the headlines, forgotten places that most people just do not think about. The life lost in the dusty road in Bolivia or Malawi or Bangladesh is just as precious as the life lost in a high-profile situation. We were all generously funded with regard to the tsunami; we had all the money we needed. But the fact of the matter is that 25,000 people die every day of hunger - 18,000 children, a child every five seconds, all day long.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“But if I can just tell you that through multilateral support - support that goes through institutions like ours, or through NGOs - 90 per cent of the food that we distribute gets to the hungriest, the poorest people in a country. We have no agenda whatsoever, other than the humanitarian agenda of ensuring that those most at risk - usually women and children - are fed. We know that we are very good at assessing need, targeting the distribution and actually physically doing the distribution and then measuring, monitoring and evaluating what we have done, and we are accountable to you. So, as you think about what the agendas are - and I appreciate the fairness of all sorts of approaches - the humanitarian approach of getting food to those who are most at risk is best done, more often than not, through a multilateral institution.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“Clearly, if their 1.2 million comes in and the 400,000 to 600,000 is produced, that, together with the 300,000, would slightly exceed their cereal requirement. Only time will tell. This is a very tough issue. They clearly had a bad weather situation, but you all know the dynamics there as well as or better than I do. There are a few places in the world that I worried a lot about last year, including North Korea and the Sudan, and this is in that category. So we will simply keep you posted. I am grateful that Russia talked about the multilateral approach. There are all sorts of reasons why one country chooses to help another country.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“The Government of Zimbabwe has said, "We take ownership. It is our responsibility to feed our people, and we have tendered and committed to buy 1.2 million metric tons of food". That is the public position; that is what they would say if asked that question. They would also say that they are going to buy an additional 600,000 tons of food to replenish their reserves. They have been reluctant to ask the international community for help, but they have used words to the effect that if the international community chooses to help them, such support would be welcome. We are uncomfortable with that. It is easier in our tradition to do business if people say what they need and explain it, and we go about pulling it together. We have essentially said that we will try to raise resources and food in the neighbourhood of 300,000 metric tons.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“The best estimates now of the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZimVAC) - a body comprising representatives from the United Nations, non-governmental organizations and the Government - suggest that crop production will be between 400,000 and 600,000 metric tons. That is different from the food assessment survey that the WFP and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations would do together, but it is sophisticated enough that we have adequate reliance on it, and we can represent to you that we have confidence in it. As I said Zimbabwe needs 1.8 million tons to feed the population and had represented that crop production would be 2.4 million metric tons. So now there is a shortfall of, in the worst case, 1.4 million tons, and in the best case, 1.2 million tons.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“We have been able to do out work and respond to those who need us most. This time I had the same conversation again, and emphasized the critical importance of the NGO community. I can assure the Council, without any equivocation, that the food that members are providing for us is getting to those who need it in Zimbabwe. There are other sources of food that the Government distributes, and I have had the same conversation with the President about the Government adhering to the same kind of internationally accepted policies that we follow. But I can assure the Council that the food that members give us is getting to those who need it. This is a tough situation. You may recall that a year ago they estimated that their cereal crop production would be 2.4 million metric tons. They need 1.8 million metric tons of cereal to feed the population.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“I visited with President Mugabe within the past month, and we had a very straightforward conversation about the importance of our being able to go anywhere in the country to feed the hungriest and the poorest, of having no interference or political guidance or influence whatsoever with regard to where we go and how we do our work. I said that we could not do our work without our NGO partners, and that they needed to be respected and supported. Three years ago, when I made my first visit, I simply said that if we did not have that freedom and flexibility, we would simply leave - we would have zero tolerance for any interference. I have to say that we have been able to do our work to distribute the food that the World Food Programme receives because the Council supports us.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“I always meet with the leaders of the non-governmental organization (NGO) community before we start a mission and, truly, without exception, they have begged the United Nations community to stay together as a single family, because it serves them a very well. The issues in Zimbabwe are challenging and difficult. It is a place where about 4 million people are now at risk. At the high point of 2003, we provided food for 5.5 million people in Zimbabwe; in 2004 it went down to 4million; and this April we provided food for 1.1 million. I have to tell the Council that we started off with four NGO partners. At the high point we went to 23; today we have 15.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“In places like Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana and Namibia - countries that have populations of less than 2million- if there are suddenly 30 donors and 10 United Nations agencies on the scene, and the Governments have a dramatically weakened capacity for all the reasons that we have talked about, the Governments are simply overwhelmed, and they spend their time responding to us, instead of focusing on the substantive agenda. We have got to find a way to bring the United Nations family almost completely together, especially in the very small countries. I am sort of encouraged that places like Botswana are very much interested in doing that. Comparing where we are today to where we were three years ago shows that there has been a remarkable amount of progress.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“I tell my colleagues at WFP that, if we do our work with the beneficiaries, everything else about WFP will be taken care of; we will not have to worry about it. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) is part of that effort as well. I think that members would all be extraordinarily pleased about the way in which the United Nations family is working in the field at the regional level. We are working to try to get the United Nations country teams to reflect that same partnership. That requires a new sense of leadership, a new calibre of leadership among the resident coordinators.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“The issue of Southern Africa and how the United Nations family is working together may not be interesting for front-page news coverage. But what is happening in Johannesburg, where the regional offices are located, is that the entire United Nations family has come together. The World Health Organization, UNICEF, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Food Programme are essentially co-located. The regional directors are functioning as a single team. That is the epitome of United Nations reform, happening on the ground, in the field. It is happening because, first, the crisis is so enormous, but also because people are focused on the beneficiaries.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“We have to work together, but as soon as the conflicting population sees the humanitarian community as an extension of peacekeeping or military activity they are less likely to respect the humanitarian space, as has traditionally been the case. Our job is to feed the hungry at-risk population. We leave the political issues for others to resolve. We are just as concerned about those who are starving - mostly women and children - wherever they find themselves in the conflict. We have to have the respect of all sides to a controversy in order to do our work. We are, clearly, involved in the joint assessment mission process, and today there is much more conversation about how we work together than there was three or four years ago.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“We have almost 900 trucks under contract, but three truck drivers from private contractors have been killed in the past month, and it is easy to imagine what a disincentive that becomes for people to want to do that kind of work. The security issue is the pre-eminent issue in terms of the humanitarian response and in terms of the long-term response. We work very closely with the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in the Sudan. We support the inter-agency process. We understand and support the notion of integrated missions. In the Sudan we work closely with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Mr. Pronck, and his Deputy Special Representatives. We have to be careful not to confuse, in the public's mind, the role of the humanitarian community with the role of peacekeepers.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“We see that, with this population coming in, water resources and food resources have been overwhelmed; the international community has responded generously to help the local population. I suspect that we are providing food support for between 200,000 and 250,000 refugees in Chad and ultimately probably not quite that many local citizens, though a substantial number. So I urge the Council please to remain very focused on our work and that of the entire humanitarian community in the Sudan. It is very risky. I do not want to repeat myself, but I will recall that we fed 1.8 million people in May. Probably another 700,000 people in the north and in the south should have been fed, but for security reasons we simply could not get to them. We had and continue to have the food available to put into position because of the rainy season.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“In order to preserve the peace, we have to be as focused on the host community as we are on the IDPs or the refugees. Otherwise chaos could ensue: one would end up with a situation where the World Food Programme, UNICEF, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and various non- governmental organizations have worked effectively to reduce malnutrition in the camps, and where suddenly the nutritional status of people in the camps, especially children, is substantially better than that of people on the perimeter. We have been very lucky that the Government of Chad and the people of eastern Chad have been very hospitable in welcoming the refugees that have come from Darfur into Chad. But that has led to an enormous responsibility.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“There are, essentially, 1.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs); but there has been no crop production in Darfur this year, and until people feel safe and secure about going home there will be no crop production next year. The worst fear is that, if people are not comfortable going home and beginning life again to start the agricultural cycle, we could end up with a situation like the one we have in Algeria, where the Western Sahara refugees have now been there 27 years, with more people having been born in the camps than came to the camps originally. Thus, restoring order, peace and security is fundamental to enabling people to go home. But the fact of the matter is that there would be another 2 million people in Darfur who would depend on agricultural production from people who are now IDPs.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“I have not come here to ask for money; that is not my purpose in being here this morning. But Council members have invested billions of dollars in the peace process - feeding people and providing shelter and other kinds of humanitarian assistance - during the 21-year conflict. My concern, which I think is widely shared, is that, if we are not able at least to provide food, water and shelter for people as they come home, much could be at risk. We are doing better in Darfur. The resourcing is going pretty well. The security issue in Darfur involves a great deal of risk. We have now concluded that at the high point of the peak hunger season in Darfur we could be required to provide food for 3.5 million people, and I have even heard it suggested on occasion that this could go as high as 4 million.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“Mr. Morris: I thank all Council members for their perceptive, useful, helpful and encouraging comments and questions. I will do my best to respond. Members asked lots of questions worthy of longer responses, and we will try to provide such responses in writing soon. The first issue that was raised related to the Sudan: southern Sudan and the humanitarian issues there, including the refugee issue. The situation is very serious. Our estimates suggest, setting Darfur aside, that there are 3.2 million people who need help in the part of the Sudan that is affected by the current peace process. People are returning, but the number of people who have fled, for example, to Kenya as refugees is actually exceeding the number of people who are coming back to southern Sudan. I think the entire humanitarian community is woefully underfunded.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“It is time we began to show progress and, with that, build peace and security on a troubled continent. The most powerful leverage to investment we can all make is to find a way to feed the 300 million hungry children in this world. That is doable proposition; it is not an expensive proposition. The payoff - the change in a young person's life when he or she is fed early in life and has a chance to go to school, even for a few years- everything about that child's life and that community, and, ultimately, that country, changes for the better. The cash requirement to do it, in partnership with the host countries, is not a huge amount of money, but, in my judgement, it is the most powerful opportunity we have to meet the Millennium Development Goals by virtually, over a period of 10 years, eliminating child hunger in the world.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“In some respects, we are taking the perspective of the insurance industry, where we will actuarially determine the reliability of the support you provide for us actually coming to our bank account. Once we determine actuarially the reliability of what is likely to come, we can begin to spend that money on the first day, as opposed to waiting for the cash actually to be transferred. We know that if we are able to use the resources we have earlier, we can probably feed 20 per cent more people with the same amount of money during the course of a year. We are proud that globally WFP has phased out of food aid in 25 countries since the mid-1990s. One day, we want to phase out of Africa, too. In 2000 at the Millennium Summit, every nation here made the pledge to halve hunger and poverty.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“The G-8 debt initiative; renewed popular interest, as seen in the revival of Live Aid; the Bush-Blair announcement of $674 million in emergency food aid; the work of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the African Union; and other home-grown development initiatives give us cause for optimism. WFP itself is trying to be more creative in its approach and is looking at a famine insurance scheme in Ethiopia, in partnership with the World Bank. Ethiopia is an unusual place in that it has the highest per-capita support for emergencies and the lowest for development work. We are also looking for ways to maximize the impact of the support you give us.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“The Blair Commission has been extraordinary in focusing public attention on humanitarian and development needs in Africa. Presidents Lula, Chirac and Lagos, as well as Prime Minister Zapatero, are working together to give hunger top priority. As I close, may I thank the members of the Council for their support for Africa's hungry and for the World Food Programme. France has recently doubled its contribution; Japan, Denmark and the United Kingdom have been consistently strong contributors for emergencies; and Russia, China and India have joined the ranks of our donors. Once again in 2004, the United States provided more than $1 billion of support. There are encouraging signs for Africa.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“Occasionally I have thought that the worst place for a hungry child to live in Africa today would be in a country at peace with its neighbours and relatively stable, but just plain poor. Funding levels rise with the incidence of violence and media interest. We are encouraged by growing donor attention to some of the less popular emergencies. President Bush's recent announcement of 50,000 tons of food aid for North Korea was particularly welcome, as was an earlier donation by Germany. Let me give the Council a very powerful example that helps to make clear the importance of food aid. In a comparison between a 7-year-old boy in North Korea to his 7-year-old counterpart in South Korea, the North Korean boy would be 8 inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“Overall commitments to ODA are climbing, and recent European initiatives, especially in the Nordic countries and the European Union, are especially encouraging. Food aid, which is critically important in Africa, is in sharp decline. Globally, it dropped by more than 1.8 million metric tons last year, excluding Iraq. This is happening despite the fact that the number of hungry people worldwide actually rose from 790 million in 1990 to 852 million today. Had the Chinese not had the remarkable success of moving 300 million people out of conditions of hunger and poverty, by their own standards, over the last 25 years - truly one of humankind's great accomplishments - the number of hungry people in the world would be simply out of sight.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“The world's major donors all make clearly political choices on which humanitarian aid projects to fund. Some make those choices in an effort to have a global scope to their emergency aid, others concentrate regionally, on former colonies or where they see the greatest socio- economic interest at home. Some time ago, we compared aid channelled through WFP with the broader patterns of ODA, which includes humanitarian assistance, and the results were interesting. In 2003, 23 percent of ODA went to least developed countries and 24 percent to Africa. WFP's portfolio is heavily emergency-oriented and heavily African in focus. Three quarters of our aid - our work - went to least developed countries and African countries.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“A peace deal brokered by South Africa has encouraged some optimism with regard to cote d'Ivoire, but the country remains dangerously divided. Disarmament was due to start this week but will be a challenge. Our operations target 922,000 people in the region, including 700,000 in Cote d'Ivoire and the remainder in neighbouring Burkina Faso, Mali and Ghana. We provide rations for 26,000 Liberian refugees and displaced persons within C6te d'Ivoire. The fighting in Cote d'Ivoire ostensibly began over political disenfranchisement. Here again, competition for limited agricultural resources played a role as the economy sputtered, living standards fell and the number of internal migrants began to rise. In our View, there are few phenomena in modern life as political as humanitarian aid.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“I can never help but mention, as we look at the ex-combatants on all sides of the conflict in Liberia, that 70 to 80 per cent of them were very young children. Just this past week, we approved a new demobilization aid package for 150,000 former army and militia combatants in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where pressure to demobilize and disarm has grown in recent months. In West Africa, where thousands are still displaced by over a decade of war, food aid is used to help restore social and economic stability. One of my colleagues has reported that today's stability in West Africa is fragile, and progress is impossible if people lack basics like food, shelter and the means to keep their families healthy. Food aid is now a tool to support education, help rebuild communities and give people the means to safeguard their own welfare.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“The continuing presence of large numbers of internally displaced persons and refugees is inherently a threat to political and economic stability, and the threat of hunger presents significant complications in resettling them. It is difficult to persuade a family in Angola, for example, to return to its home Village if it does not have sufficient food to tide it over to the next harvest. WFP invests heavily in repatriation packages that allow ex-combatants to feed themselves and their families while they get re-established at home. Food aid has been a critical component in disarmament, demobilization and reintegration efforts in Africa. In the last five years alone, we have targeted 800,000 combatants in Liberia, Burundi, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Angola.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“In March, an inter-agency mission warned that, without more aid, there would be further displacement and growing tensions between the community of internally displaced persons and the host communities. Access to food was used as a weapon at the height of the civil war in the Sudan. The famine in 1988 cost a quarter of a million lives. Now that there is a peace agreement in much of the Sudan, it is ironic that support for food aid has dwindled, and that could well undermine the peace process. It is our estimate that at least 3.2 million people in the rest of the Sudan, who are generally affected by the peace process, are severely at risk of hunger and require food. There are now more displaced Sudanese fleeing into neighbouring Kenya and Uganda as refugees than returning home. That is quite remarkable.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“The fact that African agriculture is so dependent on rainfall and that there are comparatively large pastoral populations contributes to population movements that can incite conflict. The Violence in Darfur, for example, has reduced the movements of nomads and led to overgrazing in areas with insufficient water, and the result has been drought-like conditions. We have seen that problem for decades not just in the Sudan, but in Mauritania, Senegal and other places as well. When families can neither plant nor market livestock products, they begin to move. The economy in North Darfur is now in total shambles. Most markets are closed, fighting has virtually eliminated cultivation, and cereal prices have skyrocketed. Insecurity has pushed people northwards, placing unbearable strains on scarce supplies of water and wild foods.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“Projections for urban population growth in sub- Saharan Africa are among the highest in the world, with cities such as Nairobi, Lagos and Lusaka experiencing growth rates of over 6 per cent per year. The impact of rural-urban migration on employment in Africa has been precisely the opposite of that in Western Europe and the United States - it has led to higher rather than lower rates of unemployment and social instability. At a certain point, the capacities of municipal Governments are stretched to the limit and social demands are not met, aggravating internal political and social tensions among competing ethnic groups perhaps not accustomed to sharing the same space. Competition for limited food resources can ignite Violence and instability.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“It spurs the continuing migration of rural people into cities, where the existence of at least some basic social services - including subsidized or free food - acts as an incentive for people to come to the urban environment. There is a chance that as antiretroviral treatment becomes more widely available - undoubtedly first in urban areas - that, too, will act as a magnet to enhance, encourage and increase rural-urban migration. Waves of AIDS orphans are fleeing the countryside and arrive in cities without any means of economic support, often contributing to social disintegration and crime. Hungry children are far more easily recruited as child soldiers in such places as northern Uganda. We need a dedicated effort through school feeding and other activities to keep those children in rural areas and in school.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“In other areas where conflict has been less of a factor - Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi and Madagascar - the nutritional situation of the people has improved. All of us engage in an exercise called "vulnerability mapping", in which we use various indicators, such as market prices, rates of malnutrition and household food consumption patterns to put together maps showing hunger hot spots. The correlation between hot spots and political Violence in such places as Somalia, the Sudan and northern Uganda is striking. Chronic hunger in the African countryside is a destabilizing influence that undermines political stability and security.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“A United Nations review of half a dozen conflicts in Africa over a 20-year period showed an absolute correlation between armed conflict and reduced agricultural production, on average by 20 per cent per year, with a concomitant rise in the prevalence of hunger. Conflict clearly can cause hunger, but what about the reverse? The relationship between hunger and conflict is similar to the relation between hunger and poverty. Hunger is both a cause and an effect of poverty. It is also both a cause and an effect of political conflict. One African in three is malnourished and there has been little sign of change in that over the last 10 years. In Central Africa, where war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has disrupted the region, the percentage of undernourished people rose from 53 per cent in 1995 to more than 70 per cent today.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“We are doing pretty well on the food front, but camp workers live in fear that, as food supplies in Darfur dwindle, even more people will be drawn into the camps where the United Nations and non- governmental organizations are woefully short of being able to provide water, sanitation and basic health services. In much of Africa, the prevalence of hunger is an accurate barometer for the level of social instability. It does not matter whether that instability is caused by civil conflict, drought, AIDS, bad governance or any combination of those factors - hunger is almost always within the group.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source
“Whatever a Government's perceived sins or the level of popular indignation, we cannot withhold aid as a political tactic in an emergency. Over the last decade, we have seen starvation used as a weapon in war in Darfur, the southern Sudan, Somalia, Angola, northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and West Africa. The tactic is not unique to Africa; it was employed in Europe in 1992 by the Bosnian Serbs in the siege of Sarajevo. When hatred strips us of our civility, we are all capable of incredible brutality. The most egregious example of the use of food as a weapon today is in Darfur, where the situation continues to deteriorate. In January, we estimated that 2.8 million people would need food aid to avert mass starvation; today, the number is closer to 3.5 million.”
2005-06-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5220 (2005) · source