Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday urged that the burden of responding to the world’s crises be more evenly shared, as leaders and aid groups gathered in Istanbul seeking to transform the global humanitarian aid system.
The more than 60 heads of state and government gathered for the two-day summit convened by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon are to have to defeat considerable skepticism that the event will turn into a well-intentioned, but fruitless talking shop.
With about 60 million people displaced around the world and at least 125 million requiring assistance and protection in the biggest humanitarian crises since World War II, Ban said that the summit represented a chance to forge a “different future.”
Photo: EPA
He said that realizing the aims was not “an easy task” and required a “political will on a scale we have not seen in recent years.”
The summit aims in particular at early warning prevention of conflicts as well as ensuring that humanitarian law is properly observed, amid alarm on attacks against schools and hospitals in the conflicts in Syria and Yemen.
Host Erdogan emphasized the contributions of his country, which is hosting about 3 million refugees from the Syria and Iraq conflicts and, in a barb at the West, complained others were not sharing the burden.
“The current system falls short... the burden is shouldered only by certain countries, everyone should assume responsibility from now on,” he said. “Needs increase every day, but resources do not increase at the same pace. There are tendencies to avoid responsibility among the international community.”
“Turkey knows this bitterly,” he said, adding that Turkey had spent US$10 billion on its hosting of Syrian refugees compared with US$450 million from the rest of the international community.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of the highest-profile guests at the summit, called for an end to empty pledges on aid that fizzled into nothing.
“Too many promises are made and then the money does not come for the projects — that must end,” Merkel said, adding that the world had no humanitarian system that was “compatible with the future.”
The commitments adopted by the states would be non-binding and while leaders like Merkel and Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah are attending the summit, many other prominent world leaders are conspicuous by their absence.
The summit is the result of years of planning, but there has been criticism that its actual outcomes could fall well short of its lofty ambitions.
Medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) is boycotting the event, saying it risked being just a “fig leaf” for the world’s failure on humanitarian action.
“I regret very much that they came to that decision,” UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said.
“One of the main purposes of this conference is our outrage against violations of international humanitarian law,” Eliasson said, adding that he hoped the “convictions they [MSF] stand for” would come out of the meeting.
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