Afghan Humanitarian aid and development package
10 November 2001 Media Statement
Humanitarian aid and development package: Afghanistan
Associate Minister of
Foreign Affairs in charge of overseas aid Matt Robson today
announced an aid and development package for
Afghanistan.
He launched the package at the Alliance Annual Conference in Auckland.
“The Alliance has worked hard in government to address the suffering of refuges from the conflict. The New Zealand government sent $1 million of aid last month, and today I am announcing the government’s humanitarian aid and development package for Afghanistan,” Matt Robson said.
“These are a set of short term and long term steps. The most immediate concern is getting relief aid into the refugee camps, both inside and outside Afghanistan. New Zealand has offered to send:
- A C130 plane to assist
in the delivery of aid.
- A medical team for refugee
camps.
- Engineers to assist in refugee camps.
“To enable us to carry through on these offers:
- My colleague
Phil Goff and I have agreed that he will discuss the aid
package with the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees
and the Office of the Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs
while in New York next week, to establish what may be needed
and when.
- A fund of up to a quarter of a million
dollars will be available for the government to assist the
work of NGOs in New Zealand who are already fund-raising and
active on the ground in Afghanistan.
- If and when New
Zealand teams travel to Afghanistan to assist with
humanitarian aid, either myself or Phil Goff hope to travel
with them.
“At all times we must bear in mind New Zealand’s modest resources. We cannot hope to compete with the budgets of bigger countries. But we can offer assistance which is uniquely New Zealand.
“We must also make sure we stay within the parameters of our established development framework. Our new aid agency, announced in September will have a clear focus on poverty reduction and our own Pacific region.
“We all know that terrorists recruit in the countries where there is greatest poverty, insecurity and conflict. Properly directed development aid will help to create a new environment of opportunity and safety, not only in the Pacific region but in Afghanistan too.
“Today I am announcing that New Zealand is willing to play a part in a co-ordinated international framework for Afghanistan once the fighting is over. Our experience in East Timor is invaluable. Although these are two very different countries, we now have experience in helping a country re-build itself.
New Zealand’s longer term role in Afghanistan will:
- Be part of an international effort led by the
United Nations to consolidate peace.
- Offer assistance
that could range from help to rebuild government
institutions in Afghanistan through training programmes, to
the offer of experts on the ground.
- Assist with a
de-mining programme (New Zealand military engineers trained
Afghan people to disarm landmines in the 1980s after the war
with the Soviet Union,) if required.
- Support
agriculture rehabilitation programmes, if required, to
ensure adequate food security in the medium to long term,
and develop cash crops that are an alternative to poppies
that have been grown for the production of opium.
Other initiatives include:
- Commitment from the New Zealand
government to work towards the extension the Financial
Action Task Force (which works to stop avenues for money
laundering). An extension would cover terrorist funding,
especially in our own region of the Pacific.
-
Participation in the United Nations Conference for Financing
Development to be held in Mexico in March of next year. This
conference will play a key role in creating the conditions
for security in the world, after the conflict in
Afghanistan.
ENDS