Kosovo refugees should not eclipse 22 million others - UNICEF

The Kosovo refugee crisis should neither eclipse the plight of 22 million other displaced people throughout the world nor dictate the allocation of humanitarian aid to crises that attract the most media coverage, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said on Thursday. News outlets tended to focus on "the crisis of the moment", she said in a press release, but "relatively little attention has been paid to similar conflicts in Angola, Sierra Leone, Eritrea and Ethiopia, and many other places, where thousands of persons are displaced from their homes, tortured and killed every day". She noted that a total of some seven million people were displaced in Africa. Bellamy noted that UNICEF's initial fund-raising goal for Kosovo was "substantially met in just a few weeks" while its appeal for US $180 million to deal with emergencies in 22 countries had so far achieved only 15 percent of its goal. "Commensurate attention should be given to the situation of children and women at risk - wherever they may be", she said.