UNITED NATIONS — A year of disasters around the world sparked an unprecedented outpouring of aid, but richer nations still are not giving enough money to tackle lingering humanitarian crises, the U.N. humanitarian chief said.
Jan Egeland said, for example, that as many people die in Congo every eight months as in last year's Indian Ocean tsunami.
He also criticized political leaders for failing to take action to end the wars that create humanitarian crises or invest in disaster prevention to mitigate the impact of earthquakes, hurricanes and floods.
The work of U.N. and other relief workers in conflict-racked eastern Congo, in the Darfur region of western Sudan, and in northern Uganda has become "an alibi for lack of political and security action," Egeland said.
"We are a plaster on a wound which is not healed," he lamented, "because there's no political action to put an end to the wars, and there's too little also invested in preventing natural disasters."
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Egeland looked back on the tsunami, hurricanes and monsoons, drought and near famine in Africa, and the recent South Asian earthquake.
"This has been really a year of disasters, a year of suffering, but it's also been a year of compassion and solidarity like probably no other year," he said. "The tsunami was world record in concrete solid compassion. We've never been as generous — ever — as a world."
After the Dec. 26, 2004, tidal wave swept across the Indian Ocean devastating coastal communities in 12 countries, Egeland urged the world to help, saying many of the richest countries were "far too stingy."
Egeland did not use the word "stingy" again, but he said he still was dissatisfied with the response to helping the world's less fortunate.
