CERF launch promises immediate impact

Flanked by the Prime Minister of Grenada, senior United Nations and government officials, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan formally launched the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) in New York on Thursday. Annan told those attending that, of all the World Summit decisions, the CERF had received the most clear cut consensus and was perceived as having the potential to save lives. The Prime Minister of Grenada, Keith Mitchell, told the gathering that he had felt compelled to be part of the launch event, given the vulnerability of his Caribbean region to natural disaster. "I stand here today, not only as a head of government, but as a survivor of an unprecedented catastrophe, which having experienced, I fully comprehend the meaning of vulnerability," he said. There had been disappointment at the low international response in the wake of hurricane Ivan and Emily, which devastated the region in 2004 and 2005, he said. Pledging contributions to the CERF, on behalf of CARICOM, the member states of the Caribbean community, he urged those who had not contributed to do so. So far, the fund has attracted broad ownership, with over 35 developing and developed nations participating. Officials noted that the recent tsunami disaster and South-Asian earthquake had brought the need for a flexible global fund into sharp focus. Last year, 250 million people were affected by natural disasters, and 45 million were affected by war. "This is a fund for the world, and we need the world to contribute," said Hilary Benn, the United Kingdom’s minister for international development. "It is simply not good enough that when crisis strikes, UN agencies have had to pass around the begging bowl to help. And it is simply not good enough that the UN and NGO’s have had to depend on donors to respond quickly when not all of us have done so, and some have not responded at all," he said. Benn raised the inequity of global relief aid, and how some crises received far more funding than others. For example, last year’s humanitarian aid to the Democratic Republic of Congo, to Darfur and to the tsunami crisis was US $10, $100 and $1,000 per head respectively. While rational on their own, the sum of donor decisions often led to an irrational international response to global crises, he said. India’s minister for external affairs, Anand Sharma, said international cooperation in disaster and humanitarian relief was the praxis of an ancient Indian idea - "the world is one family". "That is what breathes life into international solidarity and gives meaning to the idea of multilateralism in the lives of ordinary people," he said. The UN Humanitarian Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, welcomed the "impressive vote of confidence in the fund" and said that it would provide quicker and more evenly spread response to emergencies. He told reporters that the CERF would be put to immediate use to counter the effects of drought in the Horn of Africa, as well as in western Cote D’Ivoire "where the civil population has been severely abused". During the launch, $40 million was pledged by new donors, notably Canada and the United States, bringing the total available grant to $255 million, and closer to the target of half a billion US dollars. While many representatives expressed broad support for the CERF, virtually all stressed the importance of monitoring and transparency in how the fund was managed. It was considered vital that CERF funds were not held up by bureaucratic procedures, and could be disbursed rapidly to all implementing partners, not just UN agencies. The Executive Director of Oxfam America, Raymond Offenheiser, used the launch to flag important concerns on behalf of NGO partners. Donor contributions should be made with new money, and not be a redirection of existing donor resources, he said. He urged donors to review their replenishment of the CERF on an annual basis, and recommended that funds not spent within the year, be reallocated to under-funded crises. Offenheiser expressed his confidence that, if run well, the CERF had the potential to grow up to $1 billion, echoing the sentiments of aid experts that the event marked one of the most significant humanitarian reforms in over a decade.