Sixty-first General Assembly.

• Author: Hagen, Jonas
• Position: Central Emergency Relief Fund

General Assembly President Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa, in her closing statement to the sixty-first session, told Member States that "when we are united in partnership and overcome mistrust, we can achieve much more for each other", noting that the adoption of the long-awaited resolution on strengthening the UN Economic and Social Council was a good example. She also pointed out other successes, including the adoption of two important international Conventions: on protecting the rights of persons with disabilities, and the protection of all persons from enforced disappearance. The Millennium Development Goals also figured prominently, and at a high-level meeting former Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that prospects for achieving the MDGs were "mixed at best", stating further that it was "not too late to turn the situation around". He called on both donors and developing countries alike to make good on a promise that world leaders had made at the 2000 Millennium Summit, where they agreed to halve extreme poverty and radically improve the lives of at least 1 billion people by 2015.

CENTRAL EMERGENCY FUND GETS UNANIMOUS SUPPORT

Donors Are Making More Predictable Contributions

Immediately after the earth rumbles or a massive wave gobbles up the shoreline, or bombs explode, the race to save lives is on. When the General Assembly created the Central Emergency Relief Fund (CERF) in December 2005, it gave United Nations agencies and their nongovernmental organization (NGO) humanitarian partners the ability to be better equipped and save thousands of lives by getting to the disaster areas faster.

Proposed by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan as part of the United Nations reform package and mandated by the 2005 World Summit, the CERF was launched in March 2006. At a high-level meeting at UN Headquarters, Mr. Annan announced that the Fund had committed $230 million for 320 projects in 30 countries by December 2006-from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, from Lebanon to Liberia. He said that $25 million of CERF resources had "jump-started" humanitarian efforts in the Horn of Africa, which helped avert a severe famine in the region, by providing food security for millions and mitigating the spread of diseases from lack of clean water. He praised the Relief Fund for bringing help to "forgotten crises, as well as headline disasters. By alleviating suffering before situations spin out of control, it facilitates faster transitions to recovery and rebuilding"...