EUROPA - Gateway to the European Union
Images of conflict and disaster fill our television screens and newspaper front-pages every week. In these situations, the European Union has one aim. This is to get help to those who need it as quickly as possible, irrespective of race, religion or political convictions, or whether the crisis results from a man-made conflict or a natural disaster.
The EU is present in all trouble spots including Iraq, Afghanistan, the Palestinian Territories, and several parts of Africa. Its relief activities are global, sometimes taking place away from the cameras of the world media in so-called forgotten crisis zones and areas of post-conflict instability. These include Chechnya, Kashmir, Nepal, Burma (Myanmar), the Western Sahara and Colombia.
The European Union’s relief operations are handled by ECHO, its humanitarian aid office. ECHO’s activities reflect the proliferation of serious crises around the world and the EU’s willingness to take the lead in getting essential equipment and specialist help to the victims. Its average annual budget in recent years has been around €700 million.
ECHO’s first duty is to help save and preserve life, reduce suffering and protect the integrity and dignity of those affected.
Emergency supplies can include tents, blankets and other essential items, such as food, medicines, medical equipment, water purification systems and fuel. ECHO also funds medical teams, mine-clearance experts, and transport and logistical support. It has operated in more than 100 countries since 1992.
The EU and ECHO cannot themselves mobilise the resources on the scale required to deliver emergency relief supplies, provide rescue teams, set up emergency field hospitals and install temporary communications systems. ECHO therefore funds and coordinates these operations, while relying on humanitarian partners – non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the UN specialised agencies and the international Red Cross – to deliver food and equipment and handle emergency programmes.
Displaced women receive assistance in Darfur.
Each partner plays a special part. NGOs often have a key role in regions hit by civil war, where UN agencies or the Red Cross have been denied access, and only they are present. In complex crises involving big areas and large-scale population movements, only major UN agencies like the World Food Programme or the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have the ability to deliver large amounts of aid to all the victims. The International Committee of the Red Cross, with agents around the world, is often the organisation which can move aid fastest to regions hit by unexpected natural disasters.
The Union’s humanitarian assistance has three main tools: emergency aid, food aid, and aid for refugees from conflict areas and those displaced within a country or region at war.
Disaster relief and emergency assistance are almost by definition short-term. EU-funded operations generally last for less than six months. But the Union wants to ensure that, when humanitarian aid is withdrawn, the people it has helped can once again cope with the situation, or that another form of longer-term development assistance is available to take over. The risk is that nothing is in place after humanitarian relief is phased out.
To reduce this risk, the EU asks its partners in the field to build in an exit strategy when they define a project, whereby they either hand back control to a local authority on completion or, if this is not possible, they ensure other aid structures can replace them after they leave.
The EU’s main focus for emergency operations is the Middle East, Asia and especially Africa. Post-conflict operations are under way in Liberia, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Darfur in western Sudan and neighbouring areas of Chad.
