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Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published
by the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC) from 1995 to 2001 and by Africa Action
from 2001 to 2003. APIC was merged into Africa Action in 2001. Please note that many outdated links in this archived
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USA: Africa UN Funding
USA: Africa UN Funding
Date distributed (ymd): 000926
Document reposted by APIC
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +security/peace+ +US policy focus+
Summary Contents:
This posting contains an action alert from the Washington Office of
Africa, calling for immediate action to urge Congress to restore
funds for UN peacekeeping in Africa. Congress is currently on the
verge of cutting funds for Africa peacekeeping to zero, despite
previous U.S. commitments and the $1.4 billion debt the U.S. owes
the UN for past peacekeeping obligations. The posting also
contains an eloquent tribute from Jeff Drumtra of the U.S.
Committee for Refugees, for Mensah Kpognon, a UN High Commission
for Refugees (UNHCR) worker who was killed a week ago in Guinea,
and a call for full funding of the UNHCR budget for this year,
which has a 36% shortfall on its modest target of $976 million
worldwide.
While the obligation for providing more adequate funding for these
UN efforts is worldwide, the most glaring failure to fulfill the
obligations is in Washington. [Since this posting contains action
requests primarily relevant to U.S. citizens and residents, it is
going only to U.S.-domain (three-letter suffix) e-mail addresses on
the Africa Policy list.]
APIC/Africa Fund director Salih Booker, commenting on the proposed
Congressional action, said: "Proposals for cuts like these
specifically targeting Africa reflect the unashamed racism that
still permeates U.S. foreign policy. The same mentality is at work
in the failure to fund even modest cancellation of illegitimate
debts of African countries or to address the global health
emergency which is devastating Africa."
Additional background on UN Peacekeeping can be found in a posting
earlier this month (http://www.africafocus.org/docs00/un0009.php>)
and in a recent background briefing by Foreign Policy in Focus
(http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol5/v5n28peace.html).
For more information on UN financing see:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/finance
APIC's most recent postings on Africa's debt are at:
http://www.africafocus.org/docs00/debt0009.php> and
http://www.africafocus.org/docs00/ox0009.php>
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Washington Office on Africa
http://www.woaafrica.org.
September 25, 2000
Dear friends on the Washington Office on Africa's Rapid Response
Network,
Urgent Action on US Support for Peacekeeping in Africa
We urge that you contact key Senate and House members asking that
they restore funds for UN peacekeeping in Africa. Please contact
the members listed below immediately and urge them to restore
critical funds already promised and legally owed to the UN.
The situation
Congress is set to cut US funding for peacekeeping missions,
particularly in Africa. Appropriations decisions are being made in
these final days before Congress adjourns. Recent Congressional
actions are jeopardizing the ability of the United Nations to be an
effective vehicle for peace in some of Africa's most troubled
nations. Not only is Congress trying to cut by one-third our
overall legal obligation to the UN for peacekeeping operations, the
House version of the Commerce, State, Justice and Judiciary
Appropriations bill zeros out funding for each and every African
mission, while fully funding missions in other parts of the world.
The US has played an active role in the Security Council supporting
missions in Sierra Leone, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Western Sahara, and
Angola, and we have provided training and supplies. But with
financial cuts like these, we will send a clear message that peace
and security in Africa is not a priority to the US. This is
unacceptable.
WOA recognizes, of course, that there have recently been serious
problems in the Sierra Leone peacekeeping forces, and the viability
of peacekeeping arrangements in the Congo remain up for question.
Nevertheless, the presence of international peacekeeping forces can
be a critical element in peace and reconciliation initiatives, and
it is both right and pragmatic that the US meet its obligations.
Contacts
While it is always valuable to let your own members of Congress
know of your concerns, we recommend that you contact the following
members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees and their
Subcommittees on Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary, where this
matter is being considered.
In the Senate:
Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH)
393 Russell Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
tel: 202/224-3324
email: mailbox@gregg.senate.gov
(Senator Gregg chairs the Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary
Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations)
Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK)
522 Hart Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
tel: 202/224-3004
email: senator_stevens@stevens.senate.gov
(Senator Stevens chairs the Committee on Appropriations)
Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC)
125 Russell Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
tel: 202/224-6121
(Senator Hollings is the ranking minority member of the
Subcommittee)
Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV)
311 Hart Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
tel: 202/224-3954
email: senator_byrd@byrd.senate.gov
(Senator Byrd is the ranking minority member of the Committee on
Appropriations)
In the House:
Rep. Harold Rogers (R-5th KY)
2470 Rayburn House Office Building
US House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20510
tel: 202/225-4601
email:talk2hal@mail.house.gov
(Rep. Rogers chairs the Commerce, Justice, State, the Judiciary,
and Related Agencies Subcommittee)
Rep. Jose Serrano (D-16th NY)
2342 Rayburn House Office Building
US House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20510
tel: 202/225-2461
email: jserrano@mail.house.gov
(Rep. Serrano is the ranking minority member of the Subcommittee)
Rep. C.W. Young (R-10th FL)
2407 Rayburn House Office Building
US House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20510
tel: 202/225-5961
(Rep. Young chairs the House Committee on Appropriations)
Rep. David Obey (D-7th WI)
2314 Rayburn House Office Building
US House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20510
tel: 202/225-3365
(Rep. Obey is the ranking minority member of the Committee on
Appropriations)
If these are not your members of Congress, you may also contact
your own members by writing to Senators at the U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC 20510 or calling 202/224-3121; or by writing to
Members of Congress at the U.S. House of Representatives,
Washington, DC 20515, or calling 202/225-3121.
If you have questions, call us at 202/547-7503; or write to us by
e-mail at woa@igc.org, or at 212 East Capitol St., Washington, DC
20003; or consult our website, http://www.woaafrica.org.
Thank you for considering these actions.
Presentation at Commemoration Vigil for Four Slain UNHCR Staff
by Jeff Drumtra, U.S. Committee for Refugees
http://www.refugees.org
September 25, 2000
Following is full text of comments prepared for the Commemoration
Vigil conducted today in front of the White House at Lafayette Park
in Washington, D.C. in honor of four UN aid workers slain this
month:
My name is Jeff Drumtra, with the U.S. Committee for Refugees.
I did not have the privilege of knowing the three UNHCR aid workers
who were killed in West Timor earlier this month. But I did have
an opportunity to meet Mensah Kpognon, a UNHCR worker who was
killed a week ago in Guinea. I would like to tell you about Mensah
and the work he was trying to do.
Almost exactly one year ago this week, I met Mensah Kpognon. Mr.
Kpognon was working in the West African country of Guinea. Guinea
is not a well-known country, but in fact Guinea is hosting more
refugees than any other nation in Africa. Mr. Kpognon was in a
town called Macenta because about 30,000 refugees from Liberia had
fled to that town. The refugees needed assistance and protection,
and Mensah was working there on behalf of the UN High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR).
You have to understand this is a very remote place. It is
surrounded by one of the world's last great tropical rainforests.
The nearest airport with a dirt runway was almost a 3-hour drive
away.
I had a chance to talk with Mensah over several days. He discussed
with me the challenges he was facing.
+ New refugees were still arriving from Liberia. + The government
in Guinea was closing the border and was harassing new refugees. +
A town just a few miles away from where Mensah was working had just
been attacked and many people had been killed. + Refugees needed
protection, and yet Mensah and UNHCR did not have a single
protection officer on location because donor governments refused to
give UNHCR enough funding. + Mensah was trying to move the
refugees to a safer location, but he needed funds from the
international community to build a new refugee camp a safe distance
from the border.
Those were the daily problems that Mensah Kpognon was facing at
this time last year, as he entered what was to be the last year of
his life. When I learned last week that Mensah had been killed in
the line of duty, I remembered immediately what he told me exactly
a year ago. It is written in my notebook:
"The situation here in Macenta is that we are only 15 km from the
Liberia border," he told me. "We have tensions at this border
between the two governments of Liberia and Guinea. We don't have
any funds for Liberian refugees now. We are using other parts of
our budget to feed them. We have real financial constraints."
And to make matters worse, Mensah was concerned that he and his UN
colleagues were losing the confidence of the Liberian refugees.
"They don't trust us anymore," Mensah told me.
The slogan on these T-shirts today is "Enough." Enough violence.
Enough killing of innocent aid workers and the people they are
trying to help. But the slogan could just as appropriately be,
"Not enough."
Not enough support from major governments for the good work that
Mensah Kpognon and other relief workers are trying to do. Not
enough funding to give aid workers the resources they need to
accomplish the job they went out there to do. Not enough attention
to the world's humanitarian needs. Not enough people who care
about the risks that relief workers are asked to take on behalf of
the international community.
When humanitarian workers like Mensah Kpognon are asked to work in
dangerous conditions to help refugees, the international community
should be willing to give them the resources they need to do the
job they have been asked to do. There is something fundamentally
immoral about a world community that asks talented, committed men
and women to put their lives on the line for a higher humanitarian
cause, and then betrays them by all but abandoning that cause.
If you go back to Guinea today, back to the same town where Mensah
Kpognon was killed last week by a cross-border attack, what would
you find? You would find refugees facing harassment. You would
find cutbacks in refugees' food rations. You would find frightened
refugees.
Mensah Kpognon was not killed because he was in the wrong place at
the wrong time. He was exactly where he should have been. He and
UNHCR were exactly where they were supposed to be -- here refugees
are in distress.
But the world's full support was not there with them. The UNHCR
program in Guinea -- the same humanitarian program for which Mensah
Kpognon worked and died -- has received less than half the
financial support it needs from donor governments. Less than half
the money it has requested to address the refugees' humanitarian
needs.
And if you walk down the street to the U.S. Capitol, you will find
a Congress that at this moment is ready to pass a foreign aid bill
that would cut U.S. funding for refugee assistance in Africa to its
lowest level in 10 years. And you would find a House of
Representatives that recently passed a bill to cut American funding
for all UN peacekeeping in Africa to zero dollars. Zero dollars.
Pay nothing to end violence. Pay the smallest possible price to
aid the victims of violence. And then expect relief workers like
Mensah Kpognon and his colleagues to pay the highest price of all
-- with their lives.
My condolences go to the family and colleagues of Mensah Kpognon
who was killed last week in Guinea. And his UNHCR colleague Sapeu
Djeya, who was kidnapped and has disappeared. And his three UNHCR
colleagues who were brutally murdered in West Timor earlier this
month. It is all very sad.
In my travels to refugee sites, I have seen that many people who
work in the field for UNHCR and for other aid organizations are
willing to take extraordinary risks to do outstanding humanitarian
work. What they need from the rest of us is a whole-hearted
commitment to their effort. The risks these people take are risks
worth taking - but only if we give them the support they need to do
the humanitarian work they are sent out there to do.
Thank you.
This material is being reposted for wider distribution by the
Africa Policy Information Center (APIC). APIC provides
accessible information and analysis in order to promote U.S.
and international policies toward Africa that advance economic,
political and social justice and the full spectrum of human rights.
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