Interview with Jan Egeland, head of OCHA, on Bam earthquake aftermath

Jan Egeland, the head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as well the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, flew to the earthquake-stricken Iranian city of Bam on Thursday to join Manuel Saurez del Toro, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) for the first-ever joint launch of a United Nations Flash Appeal. The appeal has asked donors for US $73 million dollars – $31.3 million on behalf of the United Nations and $42 million on behalf of the IFRC. The money raised will be to address the urgent and immediate needs of Bam and its people for the next three to six months. But this money falls drastically short of the amount needed for the rebuilding of the city razed by the earthquake - the United Nations has told international donors that rebuilding Bam will cost up to $1 billion. IRIN spoke to Egeland after he had spent several hours surveying the destruction of the devastated city and speaking to survivors. QUESTION: What is the purpose of your mission? ANSWER: I come now on behalf of the Secretary General to oversee the relief work so far, and plan this appeal for the next three-month period. We ended the search and rescue phase from now, and these last days we’ve got relief work well on its way from local, national and international teams, so we now need to work on rehabilitation and more longer term relief. So I therefore launched the appeal as prepared by the United Nations teams and the resident coordinator, Frederick Lyons. We will ask for approximately $30 million for the United Nations agencies for these next three months and then we will start after that with the longer-term reconstruction efforts. Q: Given that OCHA has an advocacy role, how can your agency contribute to maintaining international suopport for Bam's longer term needs? A: Our advocacy role has been closely linked to ensuring that there is enough international attention on the plight of the population. The longer term needs and development effort, as such, is increasingly now taken over by UNDP [United Nations Development Programme] and UNESCO [United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation]. What they are taking care of on one hand is the livelihoods of all of the people. Perhaps the number one priority next to shelter, water and sanitation, is to restore the cultural heritage of this region –2,500 years old buildings have collapsed. Q: What is your assessment of the situation? A: Well it was very moving. I spoke to many people and I’ve never been to a situation where you can see that the loss of life has been so concentrated. All of those surviving have lost an enormous number of relatives, so I think we have to look beyond just being able to feed them and give them water. What they first needed and the number one priority was to search in the rubble. What we then should recognise is that many of the international rescue teams unfortunately came too late to be able to recover wounded and living people - nearly all of those who were recovered, were recovered by locals. Then immediately we started with the provision of relief feeding people and keeping them warm in the freezing temperatures of Bam, and that has gone, in many ways, extraordinarily well. I think that in recent days nobody has really starved and nobody has really frozen, and no injured person has not been seen to, and that is quite extraordinary given the magnitude of the disaster. The problems now are really psychological and mental. People are really severely traumatised. Secondly, there are no jobs, no livelihoods. Thirdly, we need to look at reconstruction, and also from a cultural heritage perspective. Q: What were the survivors telling you? A: They had mixed messages. They were very appreciative of the relief efforts. The IRCS [Iranian Red Crescent Society] started immediately, and of course for Iranians who have felt isolated by the international community, it was impressive to see relief work coming from fifty to sixty countries. But on the other hand, from another sense, you know we haven’t really got many things yet, and then you reflect that the tents and the blankets and the daily plate of food is really very little compared to what happens, and compared to what they’ve lost, and they feel a hopeless frustration. That’s why we’re doing the reconstruction phase. Q: Will the UN work with the Iranian government on preventative measures? A: We will work very closely with the government as we have done in the past, and we will be advising on prevention. We must recognise that there are few countries in the world which have as good preparedness in a problem as Iran. Just remember that some 13,000 wounded were airlifted out of the area - few places in the world could airlift 13,000 wounded - many of them on stretchers - in the course of a few days. We will, however, advise them. It’s very important that when Bam is rebuilt it is earthquake proof, which it really wasn’t - it was tremendous to see how all of these rooms became death traps. We will also, the United Nations, advise them on how to use international expertise in the reconstruction phase, and we will also try to facilitate exchanges between Iran and other earthquake countries of the South Pacific. Today, I will present to President Khatami, and [I presented to] the foreign minister yesterday, the fact that the United Nations and Iran will cooperate on a seminar with earthquake prone countries in the south, especially where the Iranian experience can be shared, and other countries can learn from their experiences. We will also engage in cooperation and agreement between Iranian Red Crescent and the United Nations through my office, OCHA, in which Iranian Red Crescent workers, of which there are very many, can help in emergencies elsewhere in the world. I find that there are far too may northwesterners. In our preparedness, we should have people from Iran and other countries that have varied experience of national relief.