Bangkok, 11 July 1986
1986 CCSDPT Annual Conference on Indochinese Displaced Persons in Thailand
Statement by Tatsuro Kunugi
Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations
for Humanitarian Assistance to the Kampuchean People
the
It gives me great pleasure to participate once again in this forum which will be an occasion for a wide-ranging and valuable discussion on questions of international humanitarian concern. I particularly welcome this opportunity for an exchange of views among the four main partners of international humanitarian operations, that is to say, host government whose co-operation is essential; the international organizations which establish the framework and standards; the donor governments which support the operation and give guidance to it; and members of voluntary agencies who deliver relief assistance and expert services in the field.
Inasmuch as all of us belonging to different categories of partners are guided by our respective value systems and interests we pursue, it is only natural that different approaches and opposing views should, from time to time, give rise to certain difficulties. Such interaction process of differing views and approaches, however, could positively contribute to the strengthening of our partnership, particularly if we all accept the consideration of the interest and human dignity of the recipients of relief assistance as the primary and ultimate unifying force in our partnership in action. And I hope that the absence of the recipients as participants in our forum today does not in any way signify an oft observed tendency for us to be oblivious of this key consideration.
Annual Conference of CCSDPT also gives us an opportunity to draw upon the lessons of the past years and to broaden the examination of our joint work from a medium and longer-term perspective. About 10 days ago I attended a meeting in Geneva where the U.N. Secretary-General and the heads of all the agencies in the U.N. family had an interesting discussion with governmental delegations on the capacity of the U.N. system to deal with complex emergency situations, drawing upon reflections on the recent experiences in Africa. After the discussion, the meeting, inter alia, strongly endorsed a recommendation submitted by its Working Group headed by Maurice Strong that emergency assistance must be tied as much as possible to recovery and development objectives and that the recovery phase should receive as much urgent attention as the emergency phase.
While listening to the debate there, a question occurred to me as to whether a self-examination should also be made of humanitarian operations within the U.N. system, which utilize every year a very large portion of the total resources made available to it. According to a recent survey as much as 39.4% of the total resources of U.N. proper during biennium 1984/85, were allocated to humanitarian activities and this
‚* /
/percentage
*/ See U.N. Association of U.S.A., The U.N. Today:
A Profile of the Distribution of U.N. Resources, May 1986.