Jan Egeland - the UN Under Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief (who regrettably made the "stingy" comments last week, and is in charge of ALL relief efforts for the UN all over the world, including Darfur and Congo) - said today (in a presser I saw on C-Span) he appreciates the unprecedented out-pouring of relief aid, and - echoing comments I made yesterday in this blog - said he only wished that there was a similar response to other man-made disasters which also cause widespread and preventable loss of life - like the on-going genocide in east Congo where he said there is a loss in human life which is the equivalent of a great tsunami every four months!
UPDATE (1/4/05) Here's a quote (via CNN):
On Monday, he [Egeland] described himself as "desperate." "We have 20 parallel catastrophes unfolding," he told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York. "I am now as afraid for the situation in Darfur as I was at the peak, nearly, in the summer," he said in reference to the turbulent region in Sudan. "I am just desperate to get attention to the 'tsunami' coming in Congo every four months," he added, arguing that there are as many preventable deaths in that time as the number who died in the tsunami disaster. "In eastern Congo we believe that there are in the millions of preventable deaths in the last decade," he said.
I agree: the UN ought to do more to publicize these horrors and to mobilze worldwide efforts to prevent GENOCIDE. The fact that the UN has not is an indictment of the UN and of Kofi Annan - a man who more than any other LEADER IN THE WORLD repeatedly looked away as genocide was committed over and over again in Africa - HIS HOME CONTINENT! (UN Secretary Generals are selected on a rotating basis, by continent.)
SHAME ON THE OLD MEDIA, AND THE UN, AND ON KOFI ANNAN FOR NEGLECTING THESE OTHER HORRIFIC EVENTS - EVENTS WHICH MIGHT BE CORRECTED IF THERE WERE A HEIGHTENED AWARENESS -- WHICH IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY!
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