| Date | 20 October 2003 |
|---|
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Agenda item 40
Strengthening of the coordination of humanitarian and disaster relief assistance of the United Nations, including special economic assistance
Report of the Secretary-General (A/58/344)
(a) Strengthening of the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance of the United Nations
Reports of the Secretary-General (A/58/89, A/58/434)
(b) Special economic assistance to individual countries or regions
Reports of the Secretary-General (A/58/133, A/58/244, A/58/225, A/58/273, A/58/280, A/58/285, A/58/286, A/58/358)
(c) Strengthening of international cooperation and coordination of efforts to study, mitigate and minimize the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster
Report of the Secretary-General (A/58/332)
(d) Participation of volunteers, "White Helmets", in the activities of the United Nations in the field of humanitarian relief, rehabilitation and technical cooperation for development
Report of the Secretary-General (A/58/320)
(e) Assistance to the Palestinian people
Report of the Secretary-General (A/58/88 and Corr.1)
Mr. Bennouna (Morocco)
I am very proud to speak again on behalf of the Group of 77 and China on the very sensitive item on United Nations humanitarian assistance.
Mr. Bennouna (Morocco)
As members are aware, the question of strengthening the coordination of humanitarian and disaster relief assistance is an extremely sensitive issue, on which we ourselves have found it difficult to coordinate our action in the Group of 77 (G-77) and China. Coordination at the global level is indeed difficult.
I wish to take this opportunity to thank the Secretary-General Kofi Annan for the documents to which the President has just referred. These documents submitted to us assist us greatly in our efforts to coordinate the work of the United Nations in providing humanitarian assistance.
The Group of 77 and China believes particularly that the report submitted pursuant to General Assembly resolution 57/152, on international cooperation in humanitarian assistance following natural disasters, from the relief phase to the development phase, is an essential report. We will focus our statement on that report.
While it is true that the international community can play a very important role in the area of natural disasters, I wish to repeat what I said this morning. We cannot address United Nations humanitarian assistance without recalling how traumatized we all were by the tragic attack of 19 August, the target of which was the United Nations. It was an attack that, in a way, struck at the image that we all have of the Organization. These tragic events therefore compel us to review our role and to channel our work clearly. These events also prompt us to work to strengthen protection of United Nations staff, associated personnel and local staff, who do outstanding work in the field. An international convention has been adopted in this regard and is entering into force. We will now have to work to effectively protect United Nations personnel everywhere in the world.
Another thing that my Group wishes to recall is that the United Nations, if it is to be effective, must reach out to people. It cannot lock itself up in offices or behind ramparts. That openness is what United Nations work in the field is about.
The problem of natural disasters is crucially important to the international community, particularly, to the least developed countries. When these disasters occur, their impact on affected populations is long lasting, as it is on economic and social development and environmental protection. It is therefore up to us to determine how the international community can more effectively deal with these types of situations, which can have a lasting effect on the development of the least developed countries.
For the Group of 77 and China, the principle guidelines contained in the annex to resolution 46/182 of 19 December 1991 are, and should remain, the basis of all responses to humanitarian emergency requests for assistance. These principles, in fact, should continue to allow us to play a fundamental role in the deployment of United Nations humanitarian assistance and assistance provided by other players, whether non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or other entities in the field.
In this context, I would like to recall that the State affected has the primary responsibility in the organization and development of humanitarian assistance. It is the affected State's responsibility, and it must call for international assistance and accept this humanitarian assistance. It has a fundamental role to play. But it is important for us, as the United Nations and the international community, to help such a State strengthen its capacities at the national and local levels and to foster closer cooperation between the affected State and the United Nations system and other humanitarian organizations. The States whose peoples are in need of emergency humanitarian assistance should facilitate the work of the humanitarian organizations, in particular, by providing security for the delivery of food, shelter and medical care.
As the Secretary-General pointed out in his report, we have seen during the last few years a significant increase in the number of natural disasters of which the poorest countries are the primary victims. Faced with this fact, the Group of 77 and China believes that it is vital to act first in terms of prevention. It is, in fact, essential to give priority to reducing what has been called vulnerability, through a global approach based on a greater effort at international cooperation. This means a strengthening of capacities, to transfer the appropriate technologies and to develop a system of advance warning in order to identify and predict natural disasters and possible disasters of a human origin. There are natural disasters and disasters that have a human origin.
In this context, the Group of 77 and China would like to reiterate the importance of strengthening international cooperation in all phases of a catastrophe, ranging from initial relief and mitigation to assistance for development, through a proper use of multilateral channels and the provision of adequate resources.
Mr. Bennouna (Morocco)
There are countries where, following a natural disaster, people sometimes remain in tents for months and even years. In this context, the Group of 77 and China welcomes the fact that the resolution adopted in the framework of the Economic and Social Council's humanitarian segment last July particularly encouraged donors to allot humanitarian assistance on the basis of need, with a view to ensuring a more equitable distribution of humanitarian assistance across all emergencies, including those of a protracted nature.
It is true that resources are often abundant in humanitarian situations that have benefited from wide media coverage. By contrast, significantly less in the way of resources is provided, unfortunately, to certain geographical areas, or when the relief phase gives way to the development phase.
It is appropriate to reiterate here that contributions for humanitarian assistance should never be granted to the detriment of resources that are provided as cooperation for development. When I say that there is media coverage, I mean that when television screens show natural disasters, there is always a strong reaction from the community. But, when television and other media leave and no longer show what is happening, we get the impression that nothing is happening any longer, whereas obviously people's hardships do continue.
In his report, the Secretary-General refers to the coordination efforts now underway between the United Nations Development Programme, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. This coordination should be strengthened with a view to advancing the implementation of provisions related to vulnerability, risk assessment and disaster management. All of this is contained in the Plan of Implementation that was adopted in Johannesburg at the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
I would like at this point to mention the use of remote-sensing technologies, both in space and land-based, which have become very important for the prediction and mitigation of natural disasters. As we know, access to scientific progress in outer space should be access for all humankind, because such research -- at least, basic research in that category -- is considered to be the heritage of humankind. Unfortunately, developing countries often do not have access this very costly remote-sensing technology. It is therefore essential to encourage a transfer to the developing countries of these technologies that can save human lives.
The Secretary-General, in his report, also referred to the need to take into account the special needs of the most vulnerable populations. The Group of 77 and China reiterate on this occasion that the international community must appropriately and on a priority basis take into account the specific needs of the least developed countries affected by natural disasters. This should be done in the framework of what I would call a real duty to provide assistance, the duty of all those who have the means to come to the aid of those who are in danger. We may call this an obligation, of sorts, to assist a community in danger.
As in previous sessions, the Group of 77 and China will submit a draft resolution on international cooperation on humanitarian assistance following natural disasters, ranging from relief through development. The Group of 77 is delighted at the growing support that this resolution is receiving and hopes that it will encounter even broader international consensus this year. This would constitute a real message of hope for us and numerous people the world over as they come to believe in this duty of international solidarity.
Mr. Spatafora (Italy)
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| <type 'exceptions.UnicodeEncodeError'> | Python 2.6.6: /usr/bin/python Tue Jun 18 08:25:30 2013 |
A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred.
| /data/vhost/www.undemocracy.com/docs/trunk.py in |
| 194 if __name__ == "__main__": |
| 195 pathpart = os.getenv("PATH_INFO") |
| 196 maintrunk(pathpart) |
| 197 |
| 198 |
| maintrunk = <function maintrunk>, pathpart = '/generalassembly_58/meeting_37/pg011-bk02' |
| /data/vhost/www.undemocracy.com/docs/trunk.py in maintrunk(pathpart='/generalassembly_58/meeting_37/pg011-bk02') |
| 131 elif pagefunc == "gameeting": |
| 132 LogIncomingDB(hmap["docid"], hmap["gadice"] or "0", referrer, ipaddress, useragent, remadeurl) |
| 133 WriteHTML(hmap["htmlfile"], hmap["pdfinfo"], hmap["gadice"], hmap["highlightdoclink"]) |
| 134 elif pagefunc == "agendanumexpanded": |
| 135 LogIncomingDB(pagefunc, hmap["agendanum"], referrer, ipaddress, useragent, remadeurl) |
| global WriteHTML = <function WriteHTML>, hmap = {'docid': 'A-58-PV.37', 'gadice': 'pg011-bk02', 'gameeting': 37, 'gasession': 58, 'highlightdoclink': None, 'htmlfile': '/home/undemocracy/undata/html/A-58-PV.37.html', 'pagefunc': 'gameeting', 'pdfinfo': <pdfinfo.PdfInfo instance>} |
| /home/undemocracy/unparse-live/web2/unpvmeeting.py in WriteHTML(fhtml='/home/undemocracy/undata/html/A-58-PV.37.html', pdfinfo=<pdfinfo.PdfInfo instance>, gadice='pg011-bk02', highlightth=None) |
| 322 if dclass == "spoken": |
| 323 if not gadice or agendagidcurrent == gadice: |
| 324 WriteSpoken(gid, dtextmu, councilpresidentnation) |
| 325 elif dclass == "subheading": |
| 326 if agendagidcurrent and (not gadice or agendagidcurrent == gadice): |
| global WriteSpoken = <function WriteSpoken>, gid = u'pg013-bk03', dtextmu = u'<h3 class="speaker"> <span class="name">Mr. Spat... success in his new and challenging position.</p>', councilpresidentnation = None |
| /home/undemocracy/unparse-live/web2/unpvmeeting.py in WriteSpoken(gid=u'pg013-bk03', dtext=u'<h3 class="speaker"> <span class="name">Mr. Spat... success in his new and challenging position.</p>', councilpresidentnation=None) |
| 69 print '</cite>' |
| 70 |
| 71 print dtext[mspek.end(0):] |
| 72 |
| 73 print '</div>' |
| dtext = u'<h3 class="speaker"> <span class="name">Mr. Spat... success in his new and challenging position.</p>', mspek = <_sre.SRE_Match object>, mspek.end = <built-in method end of _sre.SRE_Match object> |
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end =
1515
message =
''
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u'\n\t<p id="pg013-bk03-pa01">I have the honour of s... success in his new and challenging position.</p>'
reason =
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