Articles and Analysies
Open letter to Mr. Holmes UN under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator/Al-Haj Hamad M.K Haj Hamad (Ph.D)
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Nov 30, 2008 - 9:14:35 AM

Open letter to Mr. Holmes UN under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator

In your six days visit to our country may I attract your attention to the negative impact of the policy and implementation packages for humanitarian aid since 1986, namely its insensitivity to create dependency. My observations come from a person who followed closely your operation in this country since the eighties of last century.

1-      Your major strength is using the misery of the victims of natural and man-made disaster to collect resources and waste it in a quite in efficient management system. Your department doesn�t respond properly to evaluations made by quite professional persons since OLS. The reason for your poor response was and still is, that you put huge management, mathematical infrastructures as part of the cost of delivery. This makes you like an ostrich burying your head in the sand (even the ostrich do that for a noble cause) your unit is doing it for bad politics because you don�t keep a good distant from your donors and your host government. The end result that your department is the social marketing institution for most of the donors to recycle the resources they put for �humanitarian� aid to become a package for opening over seas markets. For job creation at home and over seas and to hide their subsidies for the food and non-food sectors. It suffice our purpose here to give a simple calculus example. It is claimed that we have now currently about 2 millions displaced (by the quite unreliable estimates of Eric reeves) you are asking for 2.7 Billions US$ this gives 135.000 US$ for person. The wealthiest resident of Darfur, even in Khartoum, has quite less per capita income. If you see this in time line we should have eradicated the root causes of the conflict not only in Darfur but all over the Sahelian region. So it is not the government, the rebels, the African mission, as all of them are just poor services partners who want to survive in the peanuts, it is your UN system this main broker just like those in wall sheet who ruined the US economy. Please try to show us that you are here to reduce the misery of people and ways to maximize benefit to your donors who will be generous for you when they are confident that your activities are helpful towards perpetuation and sustainability of the crisis. Using the big lie policy is face saving at the moment but it is the main source of our mistrust in UN system that it had already fallen an easy pry to the same ill-farmed League of Nations by becoming a tool and mouth peace for imperialism. So please stop begging for your salary under the name of mortality and comprehensive humanism. Such words as � to ensure the protection of civilians, programs such as these related to gender based violence, mental health and the role of law, which are as much a part of modern humanitarianism as food and medical care, must be supported� said ERC. (see press release by OCHA 26/11/08) .

2-      If you are ready to advocate for ending the crisis why don�t you invite local CBOs and NGOs and not only talk and listen diplomatically, with cameras showing you as good guy who involves the CSOS, but make a standing commission that action their suggestions as, I don�t need to emphasize much, that the people know that all, the above them structure, are the main source of their misery you will tell that the poor system of transportation compel the �humanitarian� to pay 60% of the budget for air delivery I will tell you that millet of dhurra, the staple food for the people of Darfur need only 12 weeks to mature.   Water is much available in Darfur but the most expensive and least efficient source is the hand pump while the most efficient and least expensive is the water harvesting in the Wadi�s but that first make it easy to control people, livelihoods the second reduces the conflict over scarcity of natural resources. When you met with an �elder� in Hamadiya camp you were told that the problem is security your insisted on the above issues. Mental health??!! Are you joking or insensitive to our misery.  

 Wish good luck as you have come this time where donors are facing the misery of the financial crisis and our displaces in Darfur and the relief dependents in the South, the customers since the eighties to OLS and still under different names, they will enjoy their humanity with less relief and you will see that people will become productive and once they went back to their productivity they will change such failure government and rebel groups.

Al-Haj Hamad M.K Haj Hamad (Ph.D)

[email protected]