Jan Egeland
Jan Egeland
Jan Egelandis a Norwegian politician, formerly of the Labour party. He has been the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council since August 2013. He was previously the Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch and the Director of Human Rights Watch Europe. Egeland formerly served as director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and Under-Secretary-General of the UN. Egeland also holds a post as Professor II at the University of Stavanger...
NationalityNorwegian
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth12 September 1957
CountryNorway
This is not enough. We have never had this kind of logistical nightmare ever. We thought the tsunami was the worst we could get. This is worse.
This is one of the most destructive natural disasters ever measured in the amount of homes destroyed, people affected, people displaced,
This is one of the biggest challenges of our time and age, we need to make vulnerable people living in developing nations more resilient to natural hazards.
This appeal, ... is truly forward-looking in that it attempts to avert hunger and at the same time promote sustainable recovery of livelihoods. Investing in prevention will prove much more cost effective than providing emergency assistance year after year.
The most important and urgent appeal we have to make is for an immediate cease-fire. Initial reports from the cease-fire talks being held in N'Djamena in Chad are not very encouraging.
Stopping these attacks against women, children, the displaced and refugees and ensuring their protection is our number one priority.
Nowhere else on earth is so much at stake as in Africa. It is here where most lives are at stake.
North American pets get more investment per month than we have money for all our humanitarian operations in the world.
They were deathtraps, ... We have to build schools all over the world that are not deathtraps, that are earthquake proof.
This is a desperate situation. As you can see we are making progress in the more populated areas but it is so hard to reach the others,
The point here is it could have been avoided. It didn't have to reach these proportions.
I think with all its local and regional flaws, it was the most effective, efficient and response-oriented relief effort ever. We had never faced a challenge like this in our history, with a dozen countries on two continents hit at the same time.
People are dying as we speak because we're not there in all of these villages where there are wounded people.
I think it's a matter of weeks or months that we will have a collapse in many of our operations. As I told the Security Council today, I don't think the world has understood how bad it has become of late.