IRIN interview with Michel Kassa, outgoing head of UN OCHA

Michel Noureddine Kassa, the outgoing head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has completed his mandate, after more than eight years of humanitarian service to the country with the UN as well as the international medical relief NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). OCHA, which in 1998 succeeded the Department of Humanitarian Affairs, is mandated to help coordinate humanitarian emergency response; to advocate on behalf of humanitarian issues with political bodies, notably the UN Security Council; and, in support of the UN Secretary-General, to ensure that all humanitarian issues, including those which fall between gaps in existing mandates of agencies, such as protection and assistance for internally displaced persons, are addressed. Kassa spoke with IRIN on Saturday, during which he talked about his experience in the DRC, the many challenges faced by humanitarian agencies and the state of current relief efforts in the country. QUESTION: You have just finished eight and a half years in the DRC, most recently as head of UN OCHA. How would you assess your time here? ANSWER: These past eight years have been truly something to behold, a time of trying to respond to the needs of people devastated by armed violence, particularly in the east of the country, but also in southern and northern Katanga [Province, in southeastern DRC]. During this time, we had an increasing amount of difficulty trying to find, identify, count and assist these people to recover. I would have to say that the most heartbreaking phenomenon I have witnessed and which we tried to address was the difficulty of gaining access to the most vulnerable of affected populations, particularly women and their families living in rural areas in the interior of the Congo. These people were victims of attacks and counter-attacks. They were totally disregarded by their armed Congolese brothers or by foreign soldiers in the Congo or by militias who took advantage of them. One consolation I will have as I leave is to see that the ending of the crisis in this country will mean a return to dignity for these people, a greater consideration of civilians, these people who have been voiceless all this time. But we should also not forget the international aspects of what has happened here in Congo. In particular, I am referring to the arms trade that has unfortunately become almost completely "democratic": anyone can become involved in the trafficking of arms, especially with the vast number of small arms that have come into circulation since the end of the Soviet empire. Of course, there are two sides to the tragedy of small arms: not just the sellers, but the buyers as well, people interested in possessing arms because it will enable them to gain political status through violent means. It is against this phenomenon that urgent action must be taken. There would be no arms vendors if there were no buyers. People should no longer be able to believe that they can gain power through violence. For those of us in the humanitarian sector, we have had to witness the unfortunate collateral effects of this trade: an estimated 3.3 million deaths, according to the International Rescue Committee. Deaths that could have been avoided, deaths resulting from treatable illnesses such as malaria, or acute respiratory problems. Illnesses such as these that could have been treated was not possible because these people did not have access to necessary medical care. Either the people had no means of reaching a medical centre, or once they reached the medical centre, would find no medical personnel there. All of these deaths are due, in large part, to local warlords who prevented us from reaching their brothers, under the pretence that they were protecting them. But they were not protecting them. They were letting them die by preventing us from reaching them. This has been the most heartbreaking experience of my years here. Q: How do you view humanitarian action after all of your years working in this domain? A: Here in Congo-Kinshasa I have always tried to ensure that humanitarian action respected people's dignity, enabled them to live as human beings who could take charge of their own destiny. Not for one second did I see myself working in the capacity of a charity. Rather, I saw humanitarian action as something that could empower human beings. For me, successful humanitarian action is when someone you have assisted says thanks, but really means to say goodbye, I can get by on my own from now on. Q: Are you leaving with a sense of frustration about not always having been able to take the necessary action because you could not get access to people in need? A: Well, just this week I have had some consolation in that my colleagues in OCHA, MONUC [UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC] and various NGOs were able to reach the area of Ubwari in South Kivu [Province], where they found people we had been trying to reach for years but were unable to because we were never granted permission by local authorities. So, the dark clouds are finally lifting. Nevertheless, I have mixed feelings of both frustration and resignation, as maybe it was unreasonable to think we could have provided a strictly humanitarian response to some 20 million people suffering the effects of war. This country will be able to recover once armed violence has been brought to an end, once the leaders of all the armed groups in this country, including the national army, have come to their senses. Q: Now, at the moment of your departure, how is the humanitarian situation in the Congo? A: In terms of internally displaced persons (IDPs), I believe we reached the absolute low point last June, when about a million people were brutally forced to flee Ituri [District, northeastern DRC] during the events of March to June. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced around Kanyabayonga and Lubero following armed offensives last June in North Kivu [Province]. Fighting in other areas, such as South Kivu, also led to tens of thousands of people being displaced. All of which resulted in an estimated total of some three million IDPs. I hope we never reach that point again. Already, a fair number of these people have returned to their homes. Sometimes these displacements lasted no longer than 48 hours, but the damage was done: personal belongings were pillaged, fear took hold, children were traumatised. Meanwhile, some 20 million people are suffering from chronic malnutrition. Greater attention is being paid to victims of sexual violence. More and more women are finding the courage to come forward and speak out against what has been done to them. Social taboos are being overcome in order to put an end to these heinous, monstrous crimes. Beyond all this violence, maternal mortality has reached astronomical proportions, even here in Kinshasa. Infant mortality, as well: one child in two dies before their first birthday. Again, even the city of Kinshasa is no exception. This is not solely a result of war. It is also the result of decades of insufficient government health budgets, of an abandonment of the health and education sectors for the past 20 years. After seven years of acute crisis, the education sector has also become a domain in which urgent humanitarian action is needed. Think about it: a child who was four years old when conflict first erupted in 1996 is now 11 years old, without having attended school. A national education budget is essential, and teachers must be paid. It is time that the state took responsibility for the payment of the people who are educating the youth of this nation. Q: But do you not have the impression that given the number of abandoned children, living in the streets, the number of civil servants who have not been paid for months on end, that everything is in some way a humanitarian crisis in this country? A: Absolutely not. I think it would be a big mistake to say that. On the contrary, there is a better response than humanitarian action, although this is certainly needed for cases of acute crisis. Above all, the most fundamental response must be economic. There are millions of people here who are caught somewhere between poverty and economic recovery. Some basic support is all that would be needed to allow these people to lead productive lives instead of allowing them to find themselves among the most vulnerable of the population, in need of humanitarian support. It is at the community level, in particular, where I believe that economic initiatives can have the greatest impact. Just as one example, to this end, we are in the process of reopening river traffic, rehabilitating roads and, in the near future, restarting rail transit in the southeast of the country. Thousands of tonnes of food goes to waste in the interior of the country. Perhaps the people producing this food will soon see trains running again, roads being rehabilitated in their regions. This would be the start of bringing an end to poverty. Q: What has been the prevailing character of humanitarian interventions in the Congo? A: Humanitarian interventions have had an extremely varied character, ranging from the fight against Ebola and Marburg [virus] to the delivery of state education exams across the country, with medical, sanitation and nutritional efforts somewhere in-between. I should note the work of [international] NGOs such as MSF and ACF [Action contre la Faim], as well as national initiatives such as FOLECO [Federation of laic and economic NGOs in the DRC] and CNONGD [National Council of Development NGOs] which have saved millions of lives in various regions. Every day, small planes have left from Goma [eastern DRC] or Lubumbashi [southeastern DRC] or Kinshasa, carrying medicines and other supplies that have saved thousands of lives. Sometimes despite the wishes of certain warlords. I would say that humanitarian action has most often taken the form of rapid, multi-disciplinary action via air transport, given the fact that the government of this country has for decades refused to maintain the roads out of fear of facilitating a coup d'etat. Therefore, you can imagine the conditions under which we work here, absolutely apocalyptic. A country of 2.3 million km2 without roads. It has been very difficult to mobilize the funds needed for humanitarian action. Such intervention has usually taken place by means of small aircraft, because there are no airstrips available for large aircraft. Sometimes the aid you manage to bring to one small village will not have any impact on another village only 10 km away, simply for lack of logistical means. Nevertheless, little by little, these small initiatives have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Q: Did you have sufficient means available for humanitarian initiatives? A: We always operated with about 50 percent to 60 percent of the funds we requested. There was always a certain amount of scepticism on the part of the international community with regard to our capacity to reach civilian victims in far-off places. Reluctance to finance humanitarian action in this country was always limited by the belief that political progress needed to accompany humanitarian action. Nevertheless, I want to give special thanks to certain donors, in particular Holland, Belgium, the European Union via ECHO [the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid Office] and the EDF [European Development Fund], as well as countries such as Italy, Japan, Sweden and Norway, who made remarkable contributions during these years of crisis.