By Andreas von Warburg
From the frontlines of war and chaos in Iraq, to scenes of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, to the ground zeroes of famine, earthquakes, and tsunamis, Jan Egeland has seen it all. As one of Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s closest advisers, Egeland was at the heart of crises during a difficult period in UN history, when the organization was plagued by the divisive aftermath of the Iraq war, the Oil-for-Food scandal, and terror attacks against UN workers.
His adventure as head of the UN’s humanitarian office is now the subject of his new book “A billion lives,” published by Simon and Schuster in March 2008.
“This book is an eyewitness account from many years of travel and work in the disaster and war zones of our time,” Egeland writes in the preface of his bbok. “Both in the field and the world’s capitals I have met the best and worst among us. I have confronted warlords, mass murderers, and tyrants, but I have met many more peacemakers, relief workers, and human rights activists who risk their lives at humanity’s first line of defense.”
Egeland, a Norwegian national, was appointed by then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the post of Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, succeding Kenzo Oshima of Japan, and the belated Sergio Vieira de Mello, who lost his life killed in the Canal Hotel bombing in Baghdad along with 21 other members of his staff on August 19, 2003, while working as the Secretary-General’s Special Representative in Iraq.
On the day Egeland came to New York to take up his job, the UN building in Baghdad was destroyed by a huge bomb, killing one of his predecessors, Sergio de Mello.
“At that moment I realized that everything has changed. The UN and its mission, its work, and its environment will not be the same again. The age of innocence has gone,” Egeland recalls in his book. “I had expected to spend al my energies in the UN on the security and survival of disaster and conflict victims, not the security and survival of our own UN staff.”
Two months after the attack, Annan sent him to Iraq to judge whether the UN could keep a presence there.
“We first pay and emotional visit to the Canal Hotel ruins. Where Sergio’s office was there is a gaping hole in the floor and in the wall facing the street, where the truck came through with its ton of explosives,” he continues in the book. “It is worse than I had expected. Papers from the filing cabinets are spread all over the floors in the adjacent offices with smashed glass and pieces of furniture, walls, floors, and roofs.”
In the book, Egeland, who gained 25 years of active experience in humanitarian, human rights and peace work through the United Nations, the Norwegian Government, the Red Cross and other non-governmental and academic institutions, challenges the first world to
act and recognizes the limit within which the United Nations has to operate.
“There was no lack of early warnings from the United Nations about the growing conflict in Darfur, but most member states were not interested,” Egeland writes. “Incredibly, nobody seemed interested in our cries for attention. When I went to the representatives of the United States, United Kingdom, and Norway, who together constituted the troika facilitating the North-South peace talks in Sudan, I was politely told to not ‘rock the boat.’”
Egeland, who took up as director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs on September 1, 2007, recalls one of his speech at the Security Council, when he delivered “perhaps the toughest of the ten briefings I have given to the Security Council.”
“I return with a plea from beleaguered Darfurians for immediate action to finally stop the atrocities against them,” he stated in front of the 15 members of the most powerful UN body. “For more than a thousand days and a thousand nights, the defenseless civilians of Darfur have been living in fear for their lives, and the lives of their children. The Government’s failure to protect its own citizens even in areas where there are no rebels, has been shameful, and continues. So does our own failure, more than a year after world leaders in this very building pledged their own responsibility to protect civilians where the government manifestly fails to do so.”
From the Darfur crisis, to Iraq, to the mega tsunami that hit South-East Asia in December 2004, only one year after Egeland’s appointment.
“From that moment it is nonstop action, day and night, weekdays and weekends, for many weeks. No one in the UN or in the affected countries had been prepared for a huge tsunami hitting the heavily populated Indian Ocean shores,” Egelands describes the days in the aftermath of the tsunami. “It was the least likely of a series of possible disasters listed by the governments in the region.”
In spite of the desperate need of so many, Egeland is convinced that, “For the vast majority of people, the world is getting better, that there is more peace, more people fed and educated, and fewer forced to become refugees than a generation ago. So there is reason for optimism,” he concludes in this groundbreaking book that does not flinch but holds out reasons for hope.
“Whether the one billion poorest and most oppressed on our watch get any help at all is still an immoral lottery,” he writes. “We are only on the first leg of a long marathon toward coherent and predictable multilateral action for all vulnerable communities.”
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