UN Launches $500m Disaster Relief Fund

The UN launched an emergency response fund yesterday for natural and man-made disasters to try to establish a permanent pool of $500m (£288m) that can be quickly channelled to emergencies as they happen. Britain has taken a lead in the initiative by providing $70m.

UN officials said it took four months for the world to provide aid after Sudan lifted restrictions on helping displaced people in the western region of Darfur.

During that period the number of people in need of emergency help rose to 1.6 million.

In 2004, when locusts devastated crops in the Sahel, a $9m appeal by the Food and Agriculture Organisation to spray the insects and prevent their spread, failed to get enough funds. As a result the locusts multiplied in eight countries and the FAO had to raise its appeal to $100m.

Twenty-two countries have pledged $193m to the new central emergency response fund so far. Britain's contribution is the biggest.

In one sense, the new fund is simply a renaming of an existing fund. But the present central emergency revolving fund has only $50m in resources, making it hard to respond adequately and in time.

"The goal of the fund is simple: to provide aid workers with sufficient funding to jump-start lifesaving relief operations and to immediately deploy staff, goods and services for people in need when most lives are on the line," said Jan Egeland, the head of the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha).

"Too often, aid resembles a lottery in which a few win but most lose based on considerations other than need. We must move from lottery to predictability so all those who suffer receive aid."

Money from the fund should be released immediately to help save lives in the growing food crises in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, Hilary Benn, Britain's international development secretary, said at the fund's launch in New York.

"All too often, as we have seen with the tragedies in Darfur and Niger, it takes the media's spotlight to prompt countries to pledge funds," he said.

"Now, with this new single source of rapid funding, there should be less forgotten crises and less focus on passing around the begging bowl when crises do strike, so saving time and people's lives."