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New York, N.Y.

[Note: the transcript begins in progress.]

FRANK WISNER: Jan Egeland is well known to so many of you, and his biography is in your kit. But I would only underscore what a remarkable man the secretary general named to the position of undersecretary in the summer of 2003—a lifetime of commitment to humanitarian and human rights causes, and the making of peace. I have admired him for many years for all of that, for what you did to launch peace between Palestinians and Israelis, and the Guatemalans; and also admired you for a lifetime of friendship with this country, and the fact that you did part of your education as a Fulbright student in California. Jan, it’s a pleasure to have you tonight. Let me give you the floor, and then we will resume our seats as soon as you finish.

JAN EGELAND: Thank you very much indeed, Mr. President. Friends, thank you for having me. I look forward to the dialogue between us this evening. There are many things to discuss, not only the tsunami, but I hope also other humanitarian challenges that I and my staff now face as we start a new year which will be a tough year, at least as tough as the one we just ended.

I was woken up very early in the morning on the 26th of December by my staff in Geneva. They reported on a tsunami having struck. They said it’s the worst earthquake in 40 years; 9 on the Richter scale. Very unclear what had happened to Indonesia, but the Maldives was totally flooded, so much that in most of the islands they disappeared and the population had to swim for a while for their islands to reappear. They also told that Sri Lanka was unbelievably bad hit, and both Sri Lanka and Maldives had in the morning of that December the 26th already asked for assistance. We sent our first teams that same morning, the first flights out of Geneva, but also from Asian countries where we have standby people we have trained for this kind of natural disaster.

A tsunami is, as you know, the whole sea, the whole sea bed, the whole sea moving. And a tsunami is not necessarily more than 30, 40, 50, 60 centimeters high, until it reaches land, and when it reaches land it becomes a wall of water 10, 12 meters high. It flooded Seychelles and the Maldives. Sri Lanka, India, Thailand saw a crushing wall of water. But what happened really in Indonesia was even worse, because on the epicenter side of Indonesia, Aceh coast, it was an explosion. It cannot be explained in any other way. It is like a thousand bombs went off along the coast. One of the reasons we didn’t know how bad it was in Indonesia that first day was that neither the government nor we in the international community, the U.N., got any phone calls from that coastline, not even from our own staff in the conflict-ridded Aceh. Everything had gone—all phones, all offices—everything. And it took until the 27th to really understand that this was the worst-hit area in terms of ferocity, but also in terms of people having been swept away. There will be more than 200,000 dead altogether. We do not know how many tens of thousands above 200,000 that will have had fallen to the wave.

For us, it was an enormous, complex task. It soon became clear that, yes, the U.N. had to play the leadership role in this effort. The United Nations is the only one which can really do the coordination of a response spanning 12 countries on two continents. The first responders are, of course, not the international community, the first responders are the local governments and the national governments, and the local Red Cross, Red Crescent societies, the local communities. I’d like to pay tribute here and now to Sri Lanka, Thailand, also to the local authorities in Aceh, certainly in India and elsewhere, because a lot of lives were saved immediately by the local people themselves. However, the international response was also very swift and very effective. We had more than 100 international organizations active over this last month in Indonesia; another 100 organizations active in Sri Lanka. We coordinated the donations from more than 60 countries. Azerbaijan gave. Trinidad and Tobago gave. Nigeria gave a million dollars cash very early on. Macedonia gave. Slovakia, Hungary. Estonia sent personnel very early, very qualified personnel. And of course the big donors: the United States, Germany, Japan, European Union, U.K.; Sweden and Norway being the biggest.

Unique also in this response was the military-civilian humanitarian cooperation. In many other disaster situations, it is controversial with military assistance because there is a conflict there. Usually it’s one side who welcomes foreign militaries and not the other one. And the humanitarians, especially NGO [nongovernmental organization] partners, are not very happy to see military involvement in the aid effort. In natural disasters, it’s very different. In this case, the military involvement, and I would say the U.S. military involvement in particular, was decisive from the first week on. Without the approximately 100 helicopters and hundreds of airplanes flying in cargo, we would not have been able to achieve what we achieved.

What have we achieved? Well, the goal was defined on that very first day by me and others who went on to appeal for international assistance, was to avoid the second wave of death and destruction which usually comes in the wake of this kind of devastation. And the second wave of destruction is epidemic disease due to water and sanitation being smashed and destroyed, health facilities being totally destroyed, and all food locally. Today—or rather yesterday, we made up stock on the one-month day of the disaster, and we could say that so far, there has been no epidemic disease anywhere. In the malnutrition surveys, even in Aceh in Indonesia, shows that there is not even significant increase of malnutrition compared to pre-tsunami levels. That attests to a remarkably effective response.

The areas where we still have problems are parts of the inner—parts of the west coast, south of Meulaboh and down to Sibolga, as you see there [on a map displayed during the talk], and inland for some kilometers. There are still areas there where we have extreme access problems, but even in those areas all major communities have received assistance, minimum of health, minimum of food, minimum of water and sanitation. We’re now declaring a second phase. In Sri Lanka here we have already started the second phase, which is recovery and rehabilitation. Because there is really no need for complacency here, saying we saved all of these lives; it was a successful operation. The people have received a tent, they have received a meager daily ration, they have received life-saving medical supplies. But that is no life. They want to have back their communities, they want to have back their livelihoods. And the mental scars which are there among all are just going to be there for a very, very long time.

As you will see here, all of the coastal provinces of Sri Lanka, except one, have massive displacement of people, all of the coastal areas. All of the coastal areas have massive destruction. To rebuild will be a monumental task and it will go on for years. That task will be led not only by the U.N., but even more so, I believe, by the World Bank, by the Asian Development Bank [ADB], and by the governments themselves. What we can hope is that Sri Lanka, with its conflict, and Aceh, Indonesia, with its conflict, and Somalia, the third of the conflict-ridden countries hit by the tsunami, will see the international assistance as a confidence-building tool in their conflict.

In the beginning, the first few days, there was a lot of examples of the peoples reaching out to each other. [Sri Lankan] Tamil Tiger guerrillas gave the dead bodies, and also wounded government officials, and even soldiers to the other side, and vice versa. They worked together to do early search-and-rescue operations. In the last three weeks, it’s not been easy to deal with the parties, neither in Aceh nor in northern Sri Lanka. Still, we are working very hard to see that both sides are consulted on international assistance, both sides work on equal footing with us as international relief workers, and that the governments, which are governments in their nations, also understand the need to avoid any kind of discrimination in assistance being given. It was not a good thing that Kofi Annan, our secretary general, could not go to the north when he visited. But my deputy, the special, who has become the special representative of the secretary general for coordination in the area, Margot Wallstrom, has recently visited the Tamil-held northern areas.

Let me—as I understand, we will spend most of our time discussing here—end up by a couple of appeals in all of this. Well, the outflowing of assistance has been so generous that it has really given an enormous boost to all humanitarian work in the beginning of this year, 2005. We could save lives effectively. We could start early recovery more decisively and earlier than in any other relief operation I can remember ever. I expect it now to still be in the life-saving phase. We are handing out fishing boats to fishing men next to the fishing villages. We are sending 60,000 school kids back to school yesterday and today, even in Aceh. And in Sri Lanka, school started two weeks ago. All of this is because there was an effective international response in generous donations where the private sector actually was as generous and actually quicker in disbursing the assistance to the aid organizations than the governments.

However, today I did, as the president said, brief the [U.N.] Security Council on forgotten and neglected emergencies in Africa. I talked about the Congo, where 1,000 people die every day because of preventable disease that we are not preventing. Another probably several hundred die every day in Sudan, many of those in Darfur, because we are not reaching all of Darfur because the parties there behave increasingly irresponsibly; the government-sponsored militia as well as the two, now three, rebel groups. We must be able to administer our compassion in a more balanced way. We must be able to say it is the tsunami which is Congo with its death toll every five months, year in and year out, also has to stop. Not only must we stop the second wave of death on the Indian Ocean beaches. My hope is that we will be able, in a richer and richer and bigger and bigger rich world, be able to fund all of our humanitarian appeals for 2005. It should be possible.

In 2004, we had an average of 50 to 60 percent coverage in our appeals in Africa. Some of them were down to 20 percent coverage. In Guinea, in Ivory Coast, in Central African Republic, all of these very, very poor, very, very crisis-ridden areas, we are not getting any funding there at all. I’m very pleased to see that all governments, having given so generously to the tsunami, albeit at least the big ones, say that these are new and additional monies. There will not be robbing Peter to give to Paul in this case. We will, indeed, not forget Africa, and I hope we will also be able to discuss a little bit Africa as we now go to questions and discussion. Thank you very much. [Applause]

WISNER: Well, that was superb. One is reminded again, from your remarks—one is reminded again, from your remarks, of the truly indispensable nature of the United Nations. No other institution could have brought such a disparate range of parties, either warring parties, governments, militaries, civil society together, and without you and without the work that you quite correctly point out that you do every day in the many humanitarian crises around the world and notably in Africa. So I know I open this discussion of a world of well done and thanks from all of us. [Applause]

Jan, as heroic as your efforts have been and that of the international community, I can only assume that having not anticipated an event of this horrific nature, there must be gaps in the way you think you had conceived of responses as the international community, and there have got to be some ways we all ought to be thinking in the future about how to organize ourselves and how to deal with the sort of crisis that the tsunami represented, from climatological interventions to humanitarian ones. What are your reflections at this stage in the crisis?

EGELAND: The one thing we have to learn from this is that it never should have happened as it happened. There should have been an early warning system in the Indian Ocean. Even though this is—it’s 100 years since the last big tsunami and it could be 100 years until [the] next one, but it could also be one year until the next one, we have to be able to do an early warning system. And it was an international wake-up call for early warning.

In Kobe, Japan, I just was chairing the World Conference on Disaster Prevention, and we there agreed to have an Indian Ocean early warning system, which is easy to set up as a surveillance system because, you know, the seismic experts can see any earthquake anywhere, and they can then see even the tsunami coming. The problem is, how do you tell the people? How do you tell the fishermen? How do you tell the fishing villages? And that kind of a system will be set up, we believe, within the next one to two years in the Indian Ocean. In terms of response as such, it was a textbook—it will go down as, I think, a textbook example of how it can be done, really.

WISNER: Terrific.

EGELAND: Darfur should have been done in this way. I tried to tell the Security Council today that it is mind-boggling that we are—provide helicopters in March of last year; we got no helicopters until we got enough money to charter commercial helicopters in late June, four months later. In this case I asked, appeared on the television, I think, on the second day of the emergency for helicopters, and within five days we had five helicopter carriers from five countries.

WISNER: Terrific.

EGELAND: And this is the kind of response we should have had.

WISNER: That’s just terrific. You know, and you mentioned the fact that we’re now moving from relief, though—the relief responsibilities, notably in Aceh, are huge—to a reconstruction phase. And you mentioned the roles of the governments. You mentioned the roles of the World Bank and other major international institutions. Pause for a moment. What has been the response of nongovernmental organizations? What role are they playing, particularly as we move into the reconstruction phase? And notably, how do you assess the capability of nongovernmental organizations that are Indian or Sri Lankan or Indonesian or Thai, the local national responses?

EGELAND: Well, the local response is the most important. We tend to overestimate our international response, both the U.N. and international Red Cross and international NGOs. The local Red Cross or Red Crescent chapter, the local civil defense, the local soldiers, the local mayor, the local priest, or the local mullah is really those who can save lives in the search-and-rescue phase. We come in with the resources in the second phase.

And then the international nongovernmental organizations have become increasingly important. Today I would say they are decisive. The U.N. would fail unless—if we didn’t have the NGOs. We’ve had now an increasingly effective partnership established, whereby the NGOs now take the lead of the U.N. for the coordination. They, for example, recognize my role as the emergency relief coordinator with its [U.N.] General Assembly mandate. They recognize my staff from OCHA [U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] as they go out to be the coordinators. Typically, we had OCHA people there who would say, working sanitation people [go] here, the food people, distribution people, there, those who will go into shelter, come over here. We have a meeting at five, six, and seven, and we divide work and we draw down a map, and you go left and you go right. This works in practice, and it is the U.N. who says, more or less, this is what you should do. But wait, don’t do it because we’re too expensive and we’re too few. It’s the NGOs who do it with the locally employed staff, but with their international leaders.

WISNER: You will find in this audience tonight and in the streets of this city those still dramatically concerned by this crisis and wonder, Jan, how best they can help at this stage, as we leave the relief and move to the reconstruction phase. Obviously private citizens, however generous, aren’t going to rebuild roads. The relief phase you put beside, behind us. What are the most effective interventions private benevolence can aim at today? Where can we play the best role in relief, in reconstruction and rehabilitation of the societies? What’s that middle spot?

EGELAND: I think what will happen now very effectively is that individual NGOs will sort of adopt villages. They will rebuild the villages. They will rebuild the clinics, and they will rebuild the schools, and they will rebuild livelihoods locally. The private sector has come also like never before. We just heard one corporation here who had—that had assisted very generously in matching the contributions of their staff. I’ve had myself a number of high-level contacts. [Former U.S. President] Bill Clinton himself called with ideas on how corporations could contribute. And we will see that we will have a lot of assistance in terms of in-kind help to the medical sector, to the educational sector, et cetera, later on.

What I would just urge is use good, well-tested channels. There will be an even greater problem of coordination in the reconstruction and rebuilding phase than there was now in the immediate live-saving rescue kind of phase, because even more organizations will come in. And the mom and pop organization [that] really comes with an aspiration of helping and a million dollars in the pocket should really try to link up with those who are there already and who have established some network.

WISNER: Very good advice. But coupled with it, I think all of us need to worry about a lively issue in the face of this huge outflow of resources. How can the U.N., together with nongovernmental and governmental institutions, deal with the problem of diversions and corruption? How can we assure those who are responding generously today that their generosity will be well used and therefore be a springboard to the generosity you want for other crises in the world? How do you tackle this issue of misuse?

EGELAND: The question of misuse is a very real one. And some of these countries have a history of local corruption. It has been there probably for generations in Aceh area, for example. Already we’ve seen military and others saying they want to have a commission when they help with the convoys of relief goods and so on. The relief phase, usually we can handle it well. And there was such also media—immediate media attention—you can say that no, I will not pay; I will tell the media. And then they say no; then you can go for free this time. [Laughter]

In the rebuilding phase, it is, to some extent, more complicated. And that is also why we have established a series of auditing firm connections. We have established with the help of PriceWaterhouseCoopers on a pro bono basis a financial tracking system which is enhanced of the one we already have, which is Internet-based. You can now go into Internet and see exactly where Japan or the United States has given its money, to which organizations [and] when. What we want is to expand that to when it went to the organization and which organization is spending which money where. I think that is also an added level of transparency which is going to be there always in the future and which we should always have. And then in the end, if we could, really would be like I want to have it, you would even see that the money to this project was reported on at such and such a time. You could maybe even click into the very report and then audit it by which company when.

WISNER: Well, your comments on auditing remind me that for all of you when you leave this evening, downstairs there is a note that Jan’s staff has brought. It’s a web, ReliefWeb, notification, where, with the indications of how you can get on the web and read about the unrolling of this crisis and how it’s being dealt with. So I recommend everybody pick up a copy.

Jan, let’s hope that some good in other ways comes out of this crisis. You mentioned a bit ominously that efforts to bring the Acehenese and the Indonesians together, efforts to bridge the gaps between the Tigers and the Sri Lankan government appear to be slowing. What’s the right way forward? How can this crisis and the international community and the parties seize on the opportunity to give peace a fresh prospect?

EGELAND: I think that it is of utter importance that all governments, all NGOs, all private citizens, all media organizations now basically address very forcefully all the sides in these conflicts and say it’s utterly crazy to continue now with your political conflict in a situation when your people and your area and your country was so devastated. There is now a chance to work together, to rebuild together. And there is going to be a tremendous confidence-building measure in this if it’s going right. And we need to keep both the government and the rebel groups accountable for following up the lead we give now by saying that we want to be transparent and we want to have them on board in our work. The Tamil Tiger relief organization is very admirable. It’s doing very effective work. It is, however, very suspicious that resources go disproportionately out of their areas and not to the people. If they are shown that it is transparent, I think it can be a confidence-building measure.

WISNER: That’s excellent. Tell me—I think I’ve heard, increasingly, voices rising in concern that the huge response to the tsunami has actually detracted from what you are receiving or what private bodies are receiving to deal with crises, notably in Africa. Is that true? Are we facing a real diversion of humanitarian response?

EGELAND: No, we have no reason to say that. But we have no reason to say, either, that the unprecedented generosity to the tsunami victims has led to an equal kind of generosity to people in Africa and elsewhere. What I have tried actually since the 10th day of the emergency, when we saw this enormously generous response to the tsunami—more than $5 billion now real firmly pledged—we tried to say that it is as bad to be wounded in Congo as in Kosovo, in northern Uganda as in northern Iraq, or to be devastated in Somalia as in Sri Lanka. And I hope we can use in a way the tsunami as the standard now. This is the way it should be. This is the way we should be, as donors.

We shouldn’t be here. It was bad to have—we had too little appeal for Congo last year. We asked for 160 million and we got 100—100 million to a country where 3.6 million people have died due to war and neglect. It’s too little. It should be more like the tsunami response. What has been very heartening is to see that now 60 countries say yes, we should be donors—60 countries. It shouldn’t be the usual suspects, which is two North Americans and three Scandinavians and another five Europeans and Japan that foot the bill in all of these things. We should have 40 donors, because there are so many rich countries now in the Gulf, in Asia, even in Latin America, in Eastern Europe, and Central Europe.

WISNER: Jan, I appreciate you letting me monopolize you, but I think it’s only fair we open the floor to the many questions that are [inaudible]. Let me again remind you: please do identify yourself [and] keep your questions short for there, I can tell already quite a lot of them. Why don’t you go first?

QUESTIONER: Thank you. I’m Sam Zarifi from Human Rights Watch. I wanted to ask you about the two conflict areas in Sri Lanka and Aceh and your dealings with the long-standing conflicts. In Aceh specifically, on December 25th our main concern was the lack of accessibility to the conflict areas by international organizations. We understand now from our staff there that the inland areas, the non-tsunami-affected areas, are still essentially not getting that much relief and are not, international organizations are not allowed to go in; there are certainly not observers. I’m wondering if you are pressing on this issue in light of the peace process that’s just starting in Helsinki. And I would certainly like to encourage the U.N. to press for access to those [inaudible].

In Sri Lanka, it’s a question of a more practical nature. There’s been a lot of fighting again in the last couple of days between the government—not physical fighting—but whether the Tigers should be allowed into the conference on distribution of aid. And you mentioned that your, the special representative had gone in. And I’m curious, just from a practical point of view, how will you, how will the U.N. be dealing with the TRO [Tamils Rehabilitation Organization], and how will the U.N. be dealing with the Tigers without necessarily the Sri Lankan government’s blessing, if that blessing doesn’t come?

EGELAND: In Aceh, we had zero access outside of Banda Aceh, the capital, until the 26th of—actually, until the 27th of December. On that day, everything changed and we got generalized access outside of Banda Aceh. It would really have helped us to jump start the operation if we had had access also before. Banda—no, Aceh was part of my life, 2004, 2003, because we were really denied access there. We had to have the so-called blue book, which is a special visa, which was only given to two, three colleagues, really, for a very long time.

Our people say we have not been hampered for political reasons, neither by the government, or the army, or by the GAM [the Free Aceh Movement], the rebel movement, in our work for the tsunami victims. There has been some concern that they say there may be a notification system, which is fine as long as it’s a notification system in a high-risk area with a lot of banditry and looting, for example. It would be a problem if that notification becomes one like we saw it in Darfur, where you ask one day and you get permission maybe in a week. That would be devastating for our work, and we’re told, in so many words, by government. We will certainly work for generalized access in the future. And if confidence-building measures take place, hopefully—hopefully—we will not retreat to the old days.

In Sri Lanka, it is our position that the full organizations, local organizations, should participate in the reconstruction effort and also in reconstruction conferences. And the Tamil Relief Organization is a very effective one, a very representative one for the Tamil areas, so we have asked for joint commissions, U.N., government and the Tamil, not the Tamil Tigers but Tamil Relief Organization, which is their social branch. Hopefully, this will be the case. We have been having positive indications.

WISNER: The gentleman in the back of the room. Yes.

QUESTIONER: Norton Zinder, Rockefeller University. I think that it is somewhat ridiculous to compare the tsunami with the two situations that you’ve talked about in Africa of Congo and Darfur. The only thing that’s similar about them is that people are dying. The tsunami is not a political event. On the other hand, the events in Darfur and in Congo are political events. And the U.N. is not very well-suited to solving political problems, in my opinion.

EGELAND: Well, it may be—I mean, I’m not in charge of the political efforts of the U.N., but the U.N. is entrusted by the international community to coordinate as much the effort in Darfur and in Congo as in the tsunami-stricken areas. I completely agree it’s very different to have a war, on the one hand, and a natural disaster on the other one. But for the children that have no food, no health care, no school, it is the same situation, and for them it is not a political conflict, it’s a disaster, it’s a tsunami, if you like, if you don’t have anything and you fear for your life. In my view, it is [a] good comparison, the toll of the disaster, whether it’s man-made or nature’s own, and I think our generosity should be the same. And as I say, the U.N. is [inaudible] as much responsibility in the war situations as in the natural disaster situations, and we should be held accountable for being advocates for all those in need, wherever they are.

WISNER: And I’d like to also think that the world community, through the Security Council, has given the U.N. very specific political mandates, both for the Congo and for Sudan. Over here.

QUESTIONER: Steven Kass. You spoke about the need for rebuilding. And I wonder what you have in mind. An awful lot of the villages, the coastal areas, after all, were exceptionally vulnerable, not just to tsunamis, which may occur whenever, but to ordinary storms and indeed to sea level rise. And I wonder whether it really is wise to simply replicate what was there in many of the communities. And if not, what process do you envisage to be followed either locally or at international levels to decide what could be done instead?

EGELAND: This is a very key question because the communities have to rebuild as communities. Their houses do not necessarily have to be rebuilt and in some cases should not be rebuilt. Not only would they be very exposed and very dangerous, but some of them were very—too bad, really. They were too unsanitary. There should be a lift now also with the resources that we now have available. However, in a place like Aceh, it is highly political also. There is a conflict. There is a movement. It’s, of course, a question of control of people, control of movement of people and so on.

My sense is that the following will happen. We will, as an international community, consult with local authorities, local community leaders, and in the local mosques, which are the normal meeting places, and try to agree on how to rebuild, where and in what manner. Already we see that some do not want to return. Some people who have lost everything in terms of also all their children and most of their relatives would not necessarily want to go back either to the old days. They refuse to do that. Their mental scars [inaudible] too big. Others are super keen to get their fishing boat back, and already are fishing. This will vary. And here again the NGOs that you mentioned, Frank, are very important, because they are good in consulting with people and taking the view of the population and then ending up rebuilding in the best possible manner.

WISNER: Mrs. Weiss, you had your hand up.

QUESTIONER: You have good vision. Cora Weiss. I wonder if you would comment on trafficking of children and what the U.N. is doing about it. And historically, natural disasters have contributed to major cultural and political change. And I wonder what special efforts the U.N. is making to include women in decision-making on reconstruction.

EGELAND: Well, on the last, I can only say that it is very much part of UNICEF’s [United Nations Children’s Fund] culture, of World Health Organization’s culture—well, I would say of all of our agencies and all of our NGO partners—to consult with the women and through the women. So when I said, you know, to talk in the local religious or social setting, it would certainly be with women, and especially on issues like education, health, et cetera. And I think and I believe it will lead to more participatory societies, and it should.

On the trafficking issue, it is a very sensitive one, first of all because trafficking is a real problem in all major upheavals. Women and children are very exposed to be trafficked. However, it’s also very sensitive that rumors and exaggerations go everywhere. And we had a real problem—among the 1,000 problems that I was dealing with, with my colleagues in those very intensive first 30 days, that we had Christian organizations from America and elsewhere who immediately said, “We want to adopt children,” and this making banner headlines in the Muslim press in Indonesia, of course. And of course it would be that. If Iranian Muslim organizations said they would really want to come to New York on 9/12 and adopt the children there and bring them to Iran, I don’t think people would be very enthusiastic around here. [Laughter] And nor would they necessarily be the same were they like that in Aceh. So it has become a very contentious issue. And when we checked in most of these issues, there was nothing to it. It was a declaration of intent by some well-meaning and utterly naive organizations, actually.

WISNER: John Brademas.

QUESTIONER: John Brademas, New York University. Mr. Egeland, I was asked earlier today, is there anything aside from contributing money that university students in the United States can do to be helpful in response to the tsunami, and perhaps universities as organizing entities in this country.

EGELAND: It’s a very good question. I think it would be important to engage with and consult with the excellent American NGOs who are active in Indonesia and in Sri Lanka, learn from them, debate with them and see what kind of things they would need longer term. I think it would be important to try to focus on some of the issues we just mentioned. Campaigning, actually, for access, universal generalized access for all humanitarian workers everywhere, in Aceh and Sri Lanka and Somalia and elsewhere. Campaigning also for participatory democracy in the rebuilding of societies. There are a lot of human rights and humanitarian principles issues that I think students would be very welcome to take part in.

WISNER: Talbot.

QUESTIONER: Bill Talbot. Certainly the work of the NGOs has been critical and will be critical to the care of these people in the reconstruction. Some local officials, we hear, who were already overburdened, are finding that the number of VIPs brought by these NGOs is really a chore for them, and that with so many NGOs there working, they don’t have time for their regular business. Is there any way to increase the coordination of the NGOs [inaudible] in these situations?

EGELAND: No. I mean, it is actually a real dilemma for us, because, on one hand, we really want there to be transparency in what we work on; we want there to be, the parliamentarians to see what is happening, to learn what is happening; we want the media to keep its public eye on what is happening; but at the same time, we want to be able to do our job. And I remember at one point in Darfur, one point—it was actually three months in Darfur—40 percent of the time of my staff, which is very critical, the coordinators, was [spent] receiving, you know, senators and congressmen and ministers and parliamentarians from the 10 most important donor countries—40 percent of the time, which means it is too much, really. What is the right—is it maybe 10 percent? Probably I would say it is as important as that, to have that political VIP style and attention.

If there—again, we are not very evenly dividing our attention. I’d rather have some of these VIPs really to Central African Republic, have some movie stars there, even, to get a minimum of attention, and maybe a few to Darfur and to, for example, the tsunami victims.

WISNER: Great. Mahesh?

QUESTIONER: Thank you. I understand that—I’m Mahesh Kotecha, [inaudible]. I understand that Indonesia has suggested that 26th March is the deadline to stop the relief effort. I wondered if you could talk about how the transition takes place between the relief and the reconstruction, and how the leadership changes—or does it change?--between—from the U.N., let’s say, to either domestic, the governments or to the reconstruction agencies, like the World Bank or the ADB or others. Thank you.

EGELAND: Well, the 26th of March was an arbitrary date for the end of the participation of foreign military forces in the tsunami effort, which again became a big issue at the time. It was not—it was ill-advised at the point, I thought, because it was really when we needed these at the most, it was a little bit of a disincentive for the people who have just arrived that you have to leave on the 26th of the March, which anyhow is long after that phase is over.

The Lincoln will leave now—the [USS] Abraham Lincoln, the big [aircraft] carrier, will leave now in the next two, three, weeks anyhow. It was always scheduled to be like that. It costs $6 million today, if I understand it. It’s not the—it’s a very expensive way to do relief work. We now have 300 trucks, 11 civilian helicopters, and three big landing crafts. That will, more or less, be enough to do that kind of work, and we are then the U.N. humanitarian-led, -coordinated effort. We’re already phasing gradually out us who are the emergency relief people. We have something we call the UNDAC teams, United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination teams, who are people who sit with a regular job somewhere and are highly trained people, some of them from the United States, and who have, as a contract with their employer, that they can go anywhere in the world within 24 hours for us in the U.N.

And we sent 30 of those within the first 24 hours, and they were the ones setting up camp at the airports, in the ministries, on the beaches, in the ports and so, on to really receive, distribute, coordinate the relief effort; put up, as we do, on a virtual and, coordination center on the Web, where you see what is needed, what is on its way, when does it arrive, what should you send, what should you not send, for example.

These people are already being phased out now, and the more regular people will—humanitarian people will be there, are coming in and will be there now for the next six months. And little by little, developmental types, through UNDP [United Nations Development Program] and World Bank and Asian Bank, will take over. Even tomorrow we will have a big meeting with all the member states in the U.N., and it will be co-chaired by me and Mark Malloch Brown, head of UNDP. I would say within three months, it would be really reconstruction people, mostly, and developmental people, and less emergency relief people.

WISNER: Sir?

QUESTIONER: Eugene Marans, at Cleary Gottlieb. Following up on World Bank and Asian Development Bank, I think of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, as being more funding agencies than operational agencies. What do you see as the role of the World Bank and the Asian Bank, particularly in the soft lending, funding, grants, operational areas, within the next four months, six months, a year?

EGELAND: Well, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank are, their crucial role will be to organize the consultative groups in each of the countries. And then the consultative groups, as they’re called, the government—supposed to be in the lead, really—and then it is discussed with the banks, the international financial institutions, the U.N. agencies, bilateral partners—could be U.S. aid, could be Australian aid, for example, which in Indonesia will be very important—and it is then decided what kind of infrastructure will be needed and how to fund it. And as you say, yes, World Bank and the Asian Bank will be, to a large extent, there to facilitate the funding of the rebuilding of the roads, for example, the airstrips, the harbors, et cetera. Then the U.N. agency and the NGOs will do most of the rebuilding of the schools and the clinics and so on, and the banks and the bigger infrastructure.

WISNER: Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve promised Jan Egeland tonight, given the fact that he’d brought a bad case of the flu back from his coordinating mission in Tokyo, that we would end promptly at 7:00, and I do, on behalf of all of us, want to make sure we keep that promise, too. You’ve been very generous. The engagement that you’ve given us tonight, the insights, is just outstanding. You’ve been very helpful in letting us see a way forward. You leave us troubled, with the crises that lie before you, those you know and those you don’t know, and the continuing responsibility of the world. But I want to just say thank you again for keeping the light burning and keeping all our attentions on this vitally important subject. So thank you, Jan. [Applause]

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