2005 disasters sparked unprecedented aid

He also criticized political leaders for failing to take action to end the wars that create humanitarian crises or invest in disaster prevention to mitigate the impact of earthquakes, hurricanes and floods.

The work of U.N. and other relief workers in conflict-wracked eastern Congo, in the Darfur region of western Sudan, and in northern Uganda has become "an alibi for lack of political and security action,” Egeland said.

"We are a plaster on a wound which is not healed,” he lamented, "because there’s no political action to put an end to the wars, and there’s too little also invested in preventing natural disasters.”

In a wide-ranging interview Friday, Egeland looked back on the response to the tsunami, devastating hurricanes and monsoons, drought and near famine in Africa, and the recent South Asian earthquake.

"This has been really a year of disasters, a year of suffering, but it’s also been a year of compassion and solidarity like probably no other year,” he said. "The tsunami was world record in concrete solid compassion. We’ve never been as generous — ever — as a world. We feared it would take away from other emergencies and we can now safely say it did not.”

After the Dec. 26, 2004, tidal wave swept across the Indian Ocean devastating coastal communities in 12 countries, Egeland urged the world to help those who had lost everything, saying many of the richest countries were "far too stingy” in helping the poorest.

Egeland did not use the word "stingy” again, but he said he still was dissatisfied with the response to helping the world’s less fortunate.

"We have given more than in any other year. Are we giving enough? No,” he said.

If the world’s richest countries continue to keep up to 99.8 percent of their gross national product for themselves, "they have a big potential for giving more to the poorest of the poor,” Egeland said.

He did not name any countries but according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, none of the world’s richest countries donated even 1 percent of GNP and the United States was lowest at 0.14 percent.

On Nov. 30, the United Nations appealed for a record $4.7 billion for major humanitarian crises in 2006, with over half earmarked for Sudan and Congo.

The appeal, which covers 31 million people mainly in Africa and Southeast Asia, is worth the equivalent of 48 hours of worldwide military spending or the cost of two cups of coffee for the planet’s 1 billion richest people, the U.N. said.

"North American pets get more investment per month than we have money for all our humanitarian operations in the world,” Egeland said.

He said the world did "exactly the right thing in the tsunami,” with governments, corporations and individuals pledging about $12 billion, which should be enough to rebuild devastated areas along with funds from their own governments.

"We should have a similar kind of response to emergencies elsewhere,” he said.

At the time of the tsunami, Egeland said, he tried to point out that "an equal amount of compassion” was needed in Congo.

According to a survey by experts, "in the Congo, we lose a thousand lives per day to neglect,” he said. "That’s 365,000 lives per year. This is a tsunami every eight or nine months.”

The tsunami killed at least 216,000 people and left more than a million homeless. Similarly, Egeland said, he could not generate enough donor interest to prevent a food crisis in Niger this summer.

He said it was also "a shame” that the U.N. still has not received $250 million of the $550 million it appealed for to provide emergency aid to the 3.5 million people left homeless in the latest natural disaster — the Oct. 8 South Asia earthquake. It killed 87,000 people mainly in Pakistan.

"I am afraid for a massive loss of life in the Himalayas in northern Pakistan where we’re still in an emergency phase, and where still hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake as a very harsh winter is descending on the people,” Egeland said.

Egeland expressed hope that former President Bush, the new U.N. envoy for quake relief, will help generate the emergency aid needed.

He said he is also "really optimistic” that 2006 will be an even better year for the world’s poor and often forgotten millions because the rich and powerful Group of Eight — the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia — and the European Union, which is the biggest donor group in the world, set new and higher goals for aid.

If the billions of dollars they promised come through in the next few years, Egeland said, "I think we will then see an end to much of the starvation among children, children without school, children without health care.”