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
It is not right to sit with the money for reconstruction for one year from now if it is a question of whether people will still be alive.
This year has really been the year of natural disasters, with nature at its worst and humanity at its best.
More is currently at stake in terms of lives saved or lost in Africa than on any other continent. As humanitarian workers, we cannot accept that so many lives are lost every year on this continent to preventable diseases, neglect and senseless brutality.
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.
Finally, I also come in recognition of the great work that has been undertaken by the NGOs and UN agencies that have been active for many years here, especially through the local staff and international staff here in Somaliland and in Somalia at large.
It is, in my view, not right to sit with reconstruction money for one year from now if we're not sure whether those people will be alive one year from now.
It's really been a terrible year in terms of suffering and in terms of challenges. But it ends with a glimmer of hope.
It is not slow. The first three or four days there weren't even (open) roads here,
People are dying as we speak because we're not there in all of these villages where there are wounded people.
We estimate that humanitarian agencies have access to about 350,000 vulnerable people in Darfur - only about one third of the estimated total population in need.
We are trying now to move from saving lives in daily food distribution to doing agricultural work: livestock, water and irrigation recovery projects.
Over the last few days, the world has finally woken up, but it took graphic images of dying children for this to happen,
Our biggest concern now is that we will have tremendous bottlenecks. Every day there are 60 to 100 trucks coming in from all over Pakistan.
Our assistance in Somalia has been remarkably effective and successful, and we have helped with very small resources - a large group of people and we can now do even more.