{"id":17370,"date":"2016-05-22T15:41:34","date_gmt":"2016-05-22T15:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/?p=17370"},"modified":"2018-04-22T12:00:01","modified_gmt":"2018-04-22T16:00:01","slug":"world-humanitarian-summit-will-be-launch-pad-for-new-initiatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/blog\/2016\/05\/world-humanitarian-summit-will-be-launch-pad-for-new-initiatives\/","title":{"rendered":"World Humanitarian Summit will be ‘launch pad’ for new initiatives"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Just hours away from the opening of the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit<\/a> (WHS), United Nations senior officials highlighted that the global event is to serve as a wake-up call for action in the service of common humanity, providing a launch pad for new initiatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have tremendous suffering in the world today. There is huge need for us to show solidarity with those who are affected by natural disasters and man-made disasters,\u201d UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson told<\/a> reporters at a press conference in Istanbul, Turkey, where the two-day conference is beginning tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the meeting here in Istanbul, always think of the people who are affected \u2013 the victims. This conference is about the victims, and having a more effective way of reaching out to help them,\u201d he continued, recalling his recent visits to Nepal and Vietnam where he met with vulnerable communities to learn directly about their plight.<\/p>\n

More than 65 Heads of State and Government are expected to join representatives from the UN community, civil society, the private sector, academia and thousands of other participants. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA<\/a>) \u2013 the Summit’s organizing entity \u2013 the goal is to strength the humanitarian system so that preparedness and resilience are taken more seriously.<\/p>\n

Speaking from the podium alongside the Deputy Secretary-General, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and head of OCHA, Steven O’Brien, said the world needs a Summit so it can make the scale of change that is necessary to help meet the needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this ever globalizing world where we know things so quickly, we need to be able to reach the people who have the greatest vulnerability and need, and the ones who are furthest behind first,\u201d Mr. O’Brien stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is people caught up in crisis through no fault of their own who need us to be even better at delivering humanitarian action of food and shelter, and making sure that water and sanitation and medical treatment is available to them,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

On his way to the Summit, Mr. O’Brien stopped in the Lake Chad basin in western central Africa. He visited Diffa, a commune in Niger which borders Nigeria, where hundreds of thousands of people have fled to escape the terrorist group Boko Haram.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is an area that is already deeply challenged by the huge scarcity of resources brought about by climate and weather effect, and so here you have a confluence of all contributory factors that lead to humanitarian need,\u201d he explained, adding that he also stopped in Maiduguri, Nigeria, where he met with people who were torched out of their homes 11 months ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the stories we carry with us,\u201d he underlined. \u201c

[The World Humanitarian Summit] is a once in a generation opportunity to set in motion an ambitious and far reaching agenda to change the way that we alleviate, and most importantly that we prevent, the suffering of the world’s most vulnerable people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four years ago, UN Secretary-General<\/a> Ban Ki-moon called for the World Humanitarian Summit to be organized, recognizing that the status quo could not continue. Since then, 23,000 people were consulted in over 150 countries. The outcome of this global exercise is the Agenda for Humanity<\/a>, a guiding document for the Summit in which Mr. Ban calls for people’s safety, dignity and right to thrive.<\/p>\n

It calls on world leaders to commit to five core responsibilities<\/a>:<\/p>\n