A Billion Lives

"This is written by Jan Egeland, a Norwegian who has done various jobs, mainly in the humanitarian field. For the last three-and-a-half years of Kofi Annan’s mandate he was the emergency relief co-ordinator and head of the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian affairs. What’s interesting about Jan’s book is not so much the administration as the different conflicts that he was involved with. He’s obviously very idealistic, a classic Norwegian, Christian middle-class figure. There’s a lot about Darfur in the book. There’s a lot about the tsunami, which I think was on the whole a UN success, in that it did, by and large, pull together the relief effort after that major international catastrophe, in this case not a conflict, but a natural disaster. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . And again, what comes out of this book, is the terrible dilemmas that often arise, the question of how far do you take account of political constraints? How far are you prepared to go along with people who are really very reprehensible, warlords and the like, in order to relieve people’s suffering? And also, when you take a stand on principle, how much you should publicize your views. For example, in the war in Lebanon in 2006, Jan Egeland was publicly and vocally critical of the Israeli bombing campaign in Lebanon and the amount of damage it did to civilians. He did also go to northern Israel and see the shelters where Israelis were hiding from Hezbollah rockets. But he got quite a lot of flak from Israel and its supporters for taking a public stand on that. And some people said: “Well, he should just get on with the job and not make public statements.” But I think by and large Kofi Annan felt that making these statements was part of the job. Where there were problems, where it was difficult for his staff to get through, or where they were threatened, it was his job to speak up for them, and he did. I think it’s one of the most difficult things that the UN has to deal with. The views about it are so polarized around the world; it’s perhaps of all the conflicts in the world, the one that has most repercussions beyond the geographical area where it’s happening. As you say, there are a lot of people in the United States, and to a lesser extent in Europe, who instinctively side with Israel and feel that it’s being unfairly criticized. Equally there are very large numbers of particularly Muslim people who feel the opposite. But it’s not only Muslims, because by and large the developing world tends to sympathize instinctively with the Palestinians, which it sees as the people that have suffered colonization, as most of the developing world has. It was noticeable to me that the first years for Kofi Annan were on the whole the easiest, especially looking back on them afterwards. And I think one of the reasons for that was that that was the period of the Oslo peace process, when there was a temporary lowering of tension in the Middle East, and a relatively hopeful atmosphere. But when the second intifada started at the end of 2000 and the Camp David talks broke down, then the whole atmosphere in the organization became poison. Of course it wasn’t the only thing, there was also the Iraq war, but it was very noticeable. It made life difficult. The last couple of years I was there I was supposed to liaise with the American Jewish organizations. Kofi Annan certainly cared about Israel and he cares about Jews. His wife is the niece of Raoul Wallenberg, the man who saved large numbers of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust before the Soviet army took him prisoner and he was never seen again. So Kofi certainly has a strong sensitivity about the terrible things that have been done to the Jewish people, and feels that they have a right to a hearing and that Israel is also a member of the UN and is entitled to the same rights and treatment as other member states. Which it often doesn’t get. But, on the other hand, he to some extent had to try and stand up for the Palestinians, and had to stand up to his own staff, who were sometimes targeted by Israel. And he was also answerable to the membership as a whole, which includes a majority of states that are much more pro-Palestinian and very critical of Israel. While we were fighting a battle with American public opinion on the one hand, and as you say, one of the accusations against us was that we were anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic, through much of the Arab world we were seen as being much too soft on Israel, and much too willing to do what the US told us. So in a sense you can’t win with that kind of conflict. The only thing you can do is try to stick to your principles and try to make fair judgments about both sides. But that’s a lot easier said than done."