Commissioner Nielson's Speech at the Annual ECHO partners conference

Good afternoon,

Well, I look forward to meeting you again. I appreciate this dialogue very much and in fact it represents very well the kind of exchange that we find extremely important.

The present discussion about Europe's way of organizing itself has in some ways an influence on what we do and in any case there are a few questions that present themselves in front of us. That is a good reason for starting the discussion quite basically, looking at what we have to be able to do concerning our own citizens and what we have to be able to do in relation to the global responsibility we have.

I also think enlargement in its own way gives us some kind of reminder of the interplay between what usually has been seen as our own internal responsibility and the world outside. It is quite clear that something that really does not stir up differences in opinion is that a stronger enlarged European Union should play an important role internationally.

The fundamental values that are at the basis of our European project - democracy, human rights, open dialogue and a common approach to solve the problems we are facing, these are values that we must promote globally. These values may not in fact be specific for Europe and I think it is more the fact that we are deliberately developing and deepening the principal application of them that is our specific achievement and contribution.

In this sense the present discussion in the Convention is of quite some importance. The Convention itself is a new approach with key words like transparency, increased efficiency and popular participation and support. Other players than the usual participants are involved: candidate countries, the national parliaments and the civil society in a broader sense are in fact participating. At the same time, the citizens of Europe, if they want to, can follow practically the whole process on the Convention web site on the net. On the external relations side, one of the main objectives of the Convention is the fight against poverty and insecurity or maybe more analytically, one could say that the Convention has adopted these terms, which in itself is a show of the fact that we have managed to get these ideas at the centre when we talk about the external relations.

One issue that comes up as a consequence of the broader discussion about how Europe should handle its external relations, is the relationship between humanitarian aid and conflict resolution/conflict prevention/crisis management or whatever it is called, there are many, many words for it, but basically they all cover the soft aspects of the security policy. This is driven forward by the thrust to establish some real instruments. With some decisions in the area of military preparation having been made already, there is a strong need for having the civilian aspect pushed forward also. It is a nice balance of course not to have one of them only, but it also means that the search for tools, the search for something real is absolutely on and humanitarian aid is in my view in a risk zone as to being pulled into the situation of becoming another instrument in the handling of foreign policy interests.

This is a challenge that we have to face/cope with in different versions. This discussion has been going on for a long time. In practice, in the field, this has been often discussed and we have had real cases of the difficult interface between the political side of a conflict and the use of military assets more or less well managed vis-à-vis the humanitarian work carried out. The new thing is that it is a more broad discussion, reflection a genuine search at the political level in Europe of how to organize a more comprehensive way of relating to the totality of external relations challenges. So the trick in my view is to be able to convince others in this discussion of the need and wisdom and necessity of having the humanitarian space and the neutrality of humanitarian assistance being respected as something that in itself has its own rationale reflecting the basic ideas of solidarity and the job simply to support people who need support.

This cry of independence and neutrality is not always easy to have respected and we do see conflicts where things get quite mixed up. There are probably more of those difficult cases today than previously. One of the main reasons for insisting on this special character of humanitarian aid and the need to have the neutrality of it respected, is the issue of access. There are too many cases, it is enough just to mention the denial of entry into Israel of EC funded humanitarian aid and development organizations. Chechnya is another clear case in point.

So the reasoning for why not to be mixed up with the political handling of these situations, is that this would erode and diminish the access, which already is enough of a problem.

My experience after these years of working with this is, that it is better to have a lower ambition as to what added impact in terms of reducing the conflict, doing something that might be nice to do, it is better not to pursue that too actively, if the trade off is to be able to effectively guard the neutrality of the humanitarian aid. So my advise, my opinion here is that a relatively puritan, clear definition of what humanitarian aid is and how it should be conducted, is the line I favor - simply to protect the access and to protect the integrity of the whole operation. But the threat or the pressure I mentioned is very real and it is also perfectly legitimate that there is this need for a comprehensive handling of the problems. Still some division of labor makes a lot of sense.

I will also add that recent years have shown that it is possible to improve co-ordination between all those who are involved in delivering in different conflicts/crisis situations. We have today a better co-ordination with UN-agencies, humanitarian NGOs than we have had anytime before in my view. The neutrality of ECHO as a funder and manager and coordinating player is very important in order not to compromise our credibility as a major funder. The problem is that if we get pulled into a situation where our neutrality is questioned, I think many of those organizations working for us/organizations we are funding will find themselves in a difficult position. So this is why I will be continuing to argue for this 'arm's-length', if you will, between the CFSP-track of what Europe as such is doing and the handling of humanitarian aid, which I think should continue the way it is organized.

One very bad clear case this year has shown the danger of blurring the way in which humanitarian is delivered. The presence of American and British military personnel in civilian clothes, but armed, in Afghanistan, where they are delivering humanitarian aid at the same time as they, in all probability, are collecting different sorts of information. This is a provocation to the whole profession of humanitarian aid. Endangering others in the field and in fact also contributing to a very problematic political confusion. We have reacted very strongly against this and some modification of this situation seem to have taken place, but I do not feel confident that this is a problem that we will not see again.

One short sentence on summing up this above discussion about the political handling of emergency or conflict situations and humanitarian aid, is that I strongly believe that humanitarian aid is not a crisis management tool. Humanitarian aid is humanitarian aid.

On our relation with ECHO partners I certainly would use this opportunity to thank all our partners for the way you work and also note that we are still progressing even if there are very big difficulties out there. We still need the advise and feed-back that you can give, working in the field, and we are appreciating also the support as to the principles that we work in order to advance. But we do have a discussion that we need to take on the issue of informing first of all our own European public about what we are doing. It is a risk, if the so-called visibility of the funder gets below a certain level, because that would in fact involve the risk of erosion of public support for actually organizing this funding. When the taxpayers cannot see anything that comes out what they are contributing to, they will of course ask questions. And if all these magnificent, implementing partners never tell the public who is funding them, how would the public know? And that would involve a risk for this funding to have sufficient political backing. I think we are in this together. It is not an either/or discussion about visibility.

My line of reasoning is that both you and we share a need of clarifying how this whole operation comes together and do this to the European public.

It is nice to travel, because I see so many brand new stickers, very new! But it is incredible. Maybe I should travel a little more in Europe.

But it is a real problem. It is probably bigger for development co-operation activities than it is for humanitarian aid. The method of funding where our humanitarian implementing partner organizations to a large extent have their own life in terms of mobilizing money and public support, seems to make it not so easy for all of you to remember to tell the whole story of how you are funded. It should also be in your interest to tell the public that with the money they have given to organization X or Y, they have to be told the fact that this money from voluntary contributions only does this much. I mean, if you give them the false impression that you are yourselves actually funding your achievement, forgetting to mention what you get from the taxpayers also, collectively at European level, then you will never be able to teach the correct proportions to those people who are ultimately the decision makers for sustaining our work namely our citizens.

And for us the risk is that we are ridiculed or at least not understood at all on what we are doing if there is no recognition in what people see of the role that we play in the game. So I am appealing for a partnership in this, I am appealing for a realistic communication strategy, where the shared interest in telling the whole truth is the driving inspiration.

I think in discussing policy in our relationship, this is very much at the heart of that discussion and communicating this better to the European public is also part of creating quality in the thinking of the European public.

Next point I would like to raise is the long discussion on linking relief, rehabilitation and development.

I was pleased with our communication, also because it did not continue the regrettable tradition of self-congratulatory language. It is more open and analytical in the attitude and a clear conclusion is also that this illusion of a smooth transition from one end to the other is simply not realistic. An illustration of what at least I have learned about this is that when I took office it was clear that the area of food aid, food security was an organizational mess, very unclear and not a clearly defined policy and it was in fact overlapping in several parts of the organization. We had too many things to do in the beginning, so we left it on the shelf a little and came back to it later. That was a lucky choice of how to do things, because at that time we already knew more about the value of having an instrument available which is not very narrowly and clearly defined.

The flexibility, which I first saw as a more or less disorganized mess, this flexibility, which I prefer to call it today, of what we can do and how we can do it in the broad area of food aid/food security is exactly what we need to able to do something meaningful in this unclear movement from delivering humanitarian aid in a narrow sense and gradually getting more and more forward oriented. Food aid/food security also has a nice overlap between the funding mechanism of ECHO and of the development activities. So as long as we have an overall management and an overall co-ordination, it makes some sense to have this flexibility available in the system.

It also turns out that each conflict/each post-conflict case is different. Different players are involved and of course the situation as such is individual. We still have of course big problems for the users or the organizations we are funding.

I think I mentioned last year the clear case in Eritrea, where humanitarian NGOs prefer to be able to continue to access ECHO funding because this is what they are into and this is in many ways easier, and where the change of the operation towards applying in the other system, the more permanent overall oriented and longer term system, involves risks of getting a 'No'. So it is slower and more risky. But then the activity as such also ought to change as the post-conflict situation gradually changes.

One important point in handling the transition phases is to make it clear that ECHO has to exit even without a so-called exit-strategy. We are never able to talk about exit without saying strategy also, because that sounds wiser, so that's that. We also talk about 'the smooth transition', we cannot talk about a transition, it must be smooth. Well, these are maybe not the biggest problems we have, but the language reflects a sort of identity which I sometimes find it necessary to question. But still, significant progress has been made.

Things are normalized or normalizing is very important. I think we have managed quite well and also, for which I want to express my appreciation and thankfulness, we have managed this without getting into more or less misunderstood or crazy negative discussions between you and us. I think this is one show of a quality in our relationship that in cases like Bosnia, Kosovo, quite many other places, it has been understood and accepted by your organizations that there is an end to the involvement of ECHO in regard to preserve ECHO's ability to do something meaningful in the next country that comes up somewhere in the world, because otherwise we would end up having used the total volume of money available, simply because it is more convenient and nice to continue in places where things are more or less routine.

On the forgotten crises, I think we have a good reason to be happy with the development of a methodology to better define these forgotten crises. Also the size/position of ECHO means that we have found it our responsibility to take up an active role in developing this concept, simply to counter the CNN factor and to play the long-term credible role as a humanitarian aid provider, which corresponds to the role Europe should play.

We are of course interested in a continued dialogue about this concept of forgotten crises. Not only to make sure that we do not forget any, but to measure and to discuss the working method by which we rate these problems and maybe also to calibrate them and fine tune one or two things.

Western Sahara and Angola have been cases that are important in this category and it was quite ironic that Afghanistan also was on the list last year of forgotten crises. It was exactly to highlight that we were in serious activity in a forgotten crisis country that I was on my way to Afghanistan on 11 September last year. With something like 29 humanitarian NGOs working inside the country. I wanted to go and visit them, also to give some moral support and visibility to this very good work in what we then called a forgotten crisis.

Highly ironically, one could say today we are present in Iraq delivering humanitarian aid on the ground, very much in a forgotten crisis, trying to ease the suffering of the people who are victims of a conflict of a special kind. But I could see a parallel in fact, I certainly hope that we will be able to keep that humanitarian support within the context of how the situation is now and that we can avoid - well sort of a repetition of history.

The global play relating to the UN summits, the general mood of the times, well, we think Europe has been able to contribute in a meaningful way to do what can be done, to promote the emergence of an international society. The relation between all this work and the work of delivering humanitarian aid is of course that the humanitarian aid and the victims out there are the ultimate illustration of what is wrong in the world. The conflicts for instance: when we talk about food problems, it is estimated that around 80% of people who starve are in that situation because of conflicts. I dare count Zimbabwe as a version of a conflict, it is deliberately bad managed to such an extent that it is justified to put it into the category of conflict. And that is a wild description of what is going on in Zimbabwe.

This, I tried to communicate clearly at the World Food Summit in Rome this spring. It was not easy and it is quite problematic that the third world countries in general still prefer to address this as if this is a problem created by nature or by the rich north or what have you. I think we have to strengthen our language, because these conflicts are really also the root of more than starvation, they scare away any potential investor and damage a lot progress that has been created.

I was a few days ago in Bourgainville in Papua New Guinea. Terrible, nothing was functioning, it looked as if there had been a long, very bad, real heavy war, and indeed 15,000 people had been killed. But the paralysis of the society down to the smallest village was terrible and this is only now gradually starting to change. So these conflicts of course are really something that must be addressed. And hopefully, the mood of the world would change to something different from what we have right at this moment, because I do fear that the rhetoric dominating right now from the only superpower we have in the world is not part of the solution. Even if the intentions are clearly to create stability and peace, but I am not sure that military might is the direct approach to creating peace and stability and dignity in this world.

Well, I may have spoken a bit too long, that is because my timing is slightly distorted because of jet-lag.

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• Commissioner Nielson's Speech on EU development policy (11/11/2002)