Interview: UN humanitarian official, Jan Egeland

The UN’s top humanitarian official, Jan Egeland, is visiting war-torn Cote d’Ivoire following violent protests last month that targeted UN facilities. In an interview with IRIN, Egeland warns that violence against humanitarian workers must end and perpetrators punished or assistance could be scaled back. QUESTION: You are in Cote d’Ivoire. The humanitarian agencies here have had a pretty torrid time of it. What is your impression of the situation, particularly given the views of aid workers? ANSWER: A lot is at stake now in Cote d’Ivoire. We are in a real crisis situation. Civilians have been attacked and abused on a large scale for a long period of time. At the same time humanitarian workers have been targeted. Humanitarian offices have been torched. Our offices have been looted. We have had to evacuate from many areas of the country, including the city of Guiglo. We now need to see action on behalf of all those with authority in this country, political leaders and military leaders to protect the civilian population and to protect impartial, neutral humanitarian work. If this does not happen, we will not be able to help hundreds of thousands who need our humanitarian work. Q: You talk about the need for action from the authorities. What kind of gestures and guarantees are you looking at? A: Well, we are looking at people being held accountable for their violence. We have now a culture of impunity where criminal gangs can rape and pillage and attack civilians, defenceless civilians, and I don’t see many, if any, being brought before justice. We have also not seen anyone being brought before justice after having attacked, burned down, pillaged humanitarian offices. We saw millions of dollars of losses in those attacks. I think that people being held accountable is one of the many steps that we have to see now. Security has to be reinstated. Another thing is that criminal gangs get disarmed and dismantled. A third issue is that the hate media, radio stations who now say: kill, chop up, attack either minorities in this country or international organisations, that those again are brought to justice because this is a criminal act according to national and international law. Q: Have you got transcripts of the broadcasts? If you present those to the judicial authorities will you have a clear case for saying: “this is hate media, this is targeting civilians and so on”? A: I understand that there is ample evidence out there for what the hate media has done and I asked the authorities today, saying it’s very clear who was behind this action, that they need to be brought before justice because the evidence is very clear. Q: Can you see any reason why humanitarian agencies should come under attack in Guiglo, any rationale for those attacks, any legitimacy on the part of the demonstrators? A: No, not at all. There is no rationale, because what they did was to undermine humanitarian action for hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people. We are humanitarian workers. We work in an impartial, independent, apolitical manner. What I think happened was frustration that was felt by many in the political struggle was taken out against defenceless internationals that had nothing to do with the political crisis. Q: If you were sitting in this room with a group of ‘Jeunes Patriotes’ [youths from the pro-Gbabgo militant group] and they were trying to defend their actions, what would you say to them, how would you get them on side? A: Well, if and when I meet them I would basically say: you are tearing down your own country. You are taking away assistance from your own people and from your brothers and sisters across the official frontlines in this country. It has to stop. You will be held accountable. Justice will prevail, sooner or later and now is the time to stop it completely. Q: You talked about the role of hate media. What can a responsible media do to bring down the temperature, to help build peace? A: I think the media now have to focus on all the hope there is for Cote d’Ivoire and also to project information on humanitarian principles, on human rights principles and everybody’s obligation to protect the basic human rights of Ivorians and stop this discrimination and these hate machines that there are so many of in this society. Finally, there has to be more attention in general to the crisis in Cote d’Ivoire. The world has to wake up to this being a very major crisis, which has to come to an end. Q: The situation in Cote d’Ivoire has gone up and down. There have been periods of calm. There have been periods of crisis. What is the reading of Cote d’Ivoire from New York? How is the international community looking at it? Are they sufficiently worried to pull the plug and get out? A: Nobody is planning to pull any plugs. We would not want to leave a vulnerable people to themselves. However, we want to give security for our own employees. We cannot take risks from New York or anywhere else with our people in the field. So if we continue to be targeted I cannot see us maintaining the levels of assistance that we were hoping to do. Q: One concern raised by humanitarian agencies over a long period is the lack of support, that there has not been enough cash coming in, that Cote d’Ivoire is somehow marginalised. Why do you think that is and what can be done about it? A: I agree that Cote d’Ivoire is not getting the attention that it needs. I also agree there are too few donors. But one should not over-exaggerate the humanitarian crisis in Cote d’Ivoire. This is not Darfur. People are not starving in great numbers here. The general population do get their basic needs met. It is, however, a very severe protection crisis and in that context I would have liked to see our operations fully funded, which they have not been in the past. So I am appealing on this visit and elsewhere for donors to really step up to the plate and fully fund our operation. We are asking for some $40 million for urgent assistance to three and a half million people in need in this country. Q: We know that the UN is seeking compensation from the Ivorian authorities. How can you make sure that they will pay this money? What can you do if they don’t pay up? A: Well the letter which is sent from the Secretary-General Kofi Annan of the United Nations to President Gbagbo and which I will give a copy of to the President is a letter which really asks the authorities to be accountable for the damage that has been done on their watch. We can only appeal to their honour and their integrity and ask them to reimburse, and more importantly, to do much more to prevent this from taking place in the future and thereby punishing those responsible for the violence. Q: There has been a lot of talk about sanctions at least against selected individuals in Cote d’Ivoire. There is also the fear that putting people on the sanctions list will actually raise the political temperature, that things will actually get more out of hand. How do you view that? A: Well as a humanitarian worker, I do not have strong views on the sanctions, whether there should be more or less or how they should be applied. But I would say that it is good that the Security Council tries to hold individuals accountable for their actions. There has been too much impunity, too many people who are known criminals under international and national law have gone unpunished for too long.