Jan Egeland
Jan Egeland
Jan Egelandis a Norwegian politician, formerly of the Labour party. He has been the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council since August 2013. He was previously the Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch and the Director of Human Rights Watch Europe. Egeland formerly served as director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and Under-Secretary-General of the UN. Egeland also holds a post as Professor II at the University of Stavanger...
NationalityNorwegian
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth12 September 1957
CountryNorway
North American pets get more investment per month than we have money for all our humanitarian operations in the world.
This is not enough. We have never had this kind of logistical nightmare ever. We thought the tsunami was the worst we could get. This is worse.
I've never seen such devastation before. We are in the sixth day of operation, and every day the scale of devastation is getting wider.
The loss of life, the new displacement of families, the destruction to businesses and property, as well as threats to humanitarian workers, are creating a climate of fear and tension for civilians.
It is unconscionable that the LRA is carrying out these vicious attacks on unarmed humanitarian worker.
All in all we expect the U.N. involvement to grow as we expect there to be a very considerable increase in the number of international relief flights to the United States from many parts of the world.
Tens of thousands of people will not get any assistance today, because it is too dangerous.
It will be a marathon sprint throughout the winter where we have to do lifesaving assistance until the snow melts sometime in April.
I would salute the very effective American efforts to warn the populations of the imminent danger and the very successful evacuation.
This appeal, ... is truly forward-looking in that it attempts to avert hunger and at the same time promote sustainable recovery of livelihoods. Investing in prevention will prove much more cost effective than providing emergency assistance year after year.
But certainly the Pakistani army is continuing to look for people.
The secretary general said it may take as much as five to ten years. We hope it will take much less time.
Had there been better prevention, better early warning, better schools, earthquake-safe buildings - tens of thousands of lives would have been saved both in the Indian Ocean tsunami and in the South Asian earthquake,
Over the last few days, the world has finally woken up, but it took graphic images of dying children for this to happen,