|
Grim accounts of poverty, post-conflict and post-disaster crises
Nairobi, 5 April, 2005 – Delegates at the plenary
of the twentieth session of UN-HABITAT Governing Council listened in grim
silence on Tuesday as representatives of three countries suffering the
consequences of war, and the tsunami killer wave gave accounts of how
they are trying to bring relief to their citizens and secure international
aid.
Sri Lanka said its ministerial delegation had been unable to accept an
invitation to the Nairobi meeting, held every two years to set UN-HABITAT’s
work programme, because the officials had been compelled to remain at
home to attend to reconstruction and rehabilitation following widespread
devastation caused by a giant tsunami wave that hit 13 Indian Ocean countries
on 26 December last year. Some 112,000 homes in Sri Lanka were wiped out,
and more than 40,000 people killed.
Somalia told the conference how after more than 15 years of conflict,
85 percent of its population was currently living in slums or partially
destroyed homes, and that, added to this situation of misery, was the
plight of some 500,000 Ethiopian refugees, as well as tens of thousands
of displaced people.
Liberia, recovering from 14 years of civil war, said it was struggling
to recover. It hoped an international donor conference to be held in May
or June would help the country redress its rehabilitation crisis. UN-HABITAT
is helping rehabilitate ex-combatants in Liberia, providing building and
construction skills, and helping reintegrate by providing them with training
in construction and other skills.
In a message read by the Acting Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka,
Mr. W.M.S. Bandara, on behalf of his government, the delegates listened
in silence to a first-hand account of the scale of the tsunami tragedy:
“I speak to you with a lot of pain in my heart. We still have not
been able to recover and bring the lives of those affected back to normal.
At this point of time we need the assistance of the United Nations and
its member states for the resettlement of those displaced by providing
them with permanent shelter, conservation of the environment and the coast
of the areas affected.”
He said the effects have had far reaching economic, environmental, social
and psychological consequences, which a poor country like Sri Lanka could
not absorb. “The livelihood of the poor in disaster-stricken areas
is totally destroyed. Major infrastructure such as roads, railway lines,
electric power and telecommunications have been damaged or destroyed bringing
most vital services and economic development activities in the areas affected
to a standstill.
“The security of women and children is also threatened. Hospitals,
schools and other buildings were damaged,” he said citing a “tremendous
need” for the formulation of disaster management strategies. “This
a time Sri Lanka needs the assistance, support and advice of the United
Nations and its member countries to help re-build the devastated nation,
and continue our efforts beyond relief and to assist us in our pro-development
activities. This covers the development of infrastructure, housing, the
environment, fisheries, and the rehabilitation of devastated industries.”
UN-HABITAT’s Disaster Management Programme has undertaken a variety
of rehabilitation activities for half a million people in Sri Lanka since
the outset of the disaster. [For details see: http://www.unhabitat.org/Tsunami/projects_by_country.asp]
In Somalia, where the agency is also engaged in post-conflict rehabilitation
and reconstruction, Mr. Qasim Hersi Farah, Permanent Secretary for the
Ministry of the Environment and Disaster Management, people who are normally
nomadic pastoralists, are nowadays flocking to the country’s urban
centres.
Addressing the plenary, Mr. Farah said: “It is now estimated that
no fewer than 60 percent of the Somali population are living in urban
areas with without adequate shelter. This statistical proportion shows
that the situation has changed from what it once was – a country
in which 75 percent of people were nomadic before the 1980s.”
The Somali government, he said, wanted to bring this situation to the
attention of the international community, and to notify its urban centres
do not have enough accommodation and that structures were going up without
a city planning system in the capital, Mogadishu. A similar situation
prevailed in many other towns and villages around the country where roads,
market places and gardens were materialising without planning.
He appealed to the international community to help the country gather
data on the situation as part of a new post-conflict survey.
“Because of the frequent movements and internal displacements due
to the civil war, certain areas of Somali cities are extremely overpopulated,
while other areas are not populated at all, and have become ghost neighbourhoods.
This has led to heavy garbage disposal everywhere, shortages of shelter,
water, and the growing spread of communicable diseases,” Mr. Farah
said.
As the Somali, Sri Lankan and Liberian delegates addressed the plenary
session of the Governing Council, government ministers and senior officials
were deliberating on post-conflict and natural and human-made disaster
assessment and reconstruction – a special theme of the weeklong
conference – in the conference hall next door.
The theme was chosen because such crises, according to the main conference
document prepared by UN-HABITAT, “turn back the development clock”.
It said 90 percent of the victims, are civilians, especially women and
children, in a world already having to protect and assist an estimated
20 million refugees, and some 25 million people displaced within their
own borders.
The UN’s inter-agency secretariat of the International Strategy
for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), announced its support for UN-HABITAT’s
humanitarian and longer-term post-disaster and post-conflict work.
In her keynote address to the meeting, Ms. Nicole Rencoret of UNISDR
welcomed the agency’s decision to put disaster risk reduction high
on its agenda as a special theme of the conference. She asked the Governing
Council and UN-HABITAT to take a more active role in the Hyogo Framework
for Action in urban risk assessment and recovery; increase its capacity
for UN country teams; and finally, to continue cooperation with the ISDR
secretariat at the global and regional levels in support of disaster risk
programmes around the world.
For further information, please contact: Sharad Shankardass,
Spokesperson & Head, Press & Media Relations Unit, or Ms. Zahra
Hassan, Media Liaison, Tel: (254 20) 623153, 623151, Fax: 624060, E-mail:
habitat.press@unhabitat.org,
Website: www.unhabitat.org
|