Donors largely making good on tsunami aid pledges

 
UN relief chief Jan Egeland said Thursday that donors to tsunami-hit countries were largely making good on their pledges, but he wished the same commitment was shown in other humanitarian crises.

"The donor response has never, ever been better or more generous or more immediate," Egeland, the UN's undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, told a conference on disaster reduction in Kobe, Japan.

Donor nations promised billions of dollars after the tsunamis, but the United Nations on January 6 appealed for 977 million of it to come as soon as possible to meet the immediate needs of millions of survivors. Egeland said 86 percent of the 977 million dollars had been "covered" and 60 percent of that had been transferred.
"It's the first time ever no one has starved and no one will have no medical services for lack of resources," Egeland said.
 
"I wish we could say the same about Sudan and Congo and the Ivory Coast and a lot of other emergencies where people suffer just as much as on the Indian Ocean beaches," he said.

England famously annoyed rich nations, particularly the United States, when immediately after the tsunamis he accused wealthy governments of being "stingy." But on Thursday he said the money for tsunami victims - along with foreign military assistance - had been effective in providing food, sanitation and water to survivors.
"We have not had the second wave of disease and destruction that we were fearing," Egeland said. Aid advocates have long complained that much of the money promised when major humanitarian crises break out fails to come through after the world spotlight shifts elsewhere.
 
Meanwhile the death toll from last month's Indian Ocean tsunami disaster rose towards a quarter of a million while floods hampered relief efforts in worst-hit Indonesia's Aceh province.
The Indonesian death toll jumped to 166,320, the health ministry said late Wednesday, more than 50,000 higher than the government's previous tally. With the latest tolls, the tsunamis triggered by a 9.0-magnitude quake off the coast of Sumatra island have left nearly 220,000 dead in 11 Indian Ocean countries.