Address Delivered by Director-General
Antonio Maria Costa
UNOV
United Nations, Vienna
13 January 2005
Welcome, and thank you for being here today. Eighteen days have passed since a massive tsunami swept across the Indian Ocean, killing thousands of people and changing the lives of their families and entire communities forever. In the following weeks, weve seen a generous outpouring of concern and resources. Across the world, people and organizations have responded quickly and effectively.
At the UN in Vienna, staff members have mounted their own personal and collective campaigns to help affected populations recover. Together, we organized a collection as part of a joint relief effort. A call went out to help the people of Sri Lanka through donations of medicine, clothing, food, and other basics and UN staff members answered that call quickly and generously as well.
These efforts prove that, although we have little control over external forces such as tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, and disasterswhat really matters is how we react how we respond to these disasters. Here in Vienna, the UN people demonstrated their concern and commitment in immediate and tangible ways, and it is an honour to work with you.
As welcome as all these efforts and gestures are, it is also important to remember that States and people hit by this disaster will not recover overnight. Their needs will continue. Their suffering will be long and hard. So it is our responsibility to support them, and to be there, months down the road, when the TV lights will be turned off and the press gone.
The cascading effects of this tragedy will still be affecting the victims, making it impossible for them to live anything close to normal lives. We live in a world that expects fast recoveries and instant cures. And the grief the world feels for victims in distant places inevitably diminishes. But the people of Sri Lanka, Thailand, India, Bangladesh, Somalia, Tanzania, Myanmar, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Maldives, and the Seychelles dont want out grief they want our help. And we must not forget how much they will continue to need it.
Long after the tragedy recedes from public memory, children in these countries will still be parentless. Homeless families will still need shelter. Businesses will need to start again. Men and women who are unemployed will still need decent, legal ways of making ends meet. When that happens, I know that the UN all of you will still be there.
The UN in Vienna intends to reach out to these victims in ways that are meaningful for them, and compatible with our mandate. In humanitarian disasters, States and citizens become very vulnerable to specific kinds of threats. In the areas affected by this tragedy, we know, instinctively, that there is bound to be an increase in human trafficking attempts, violence, and criminal schemes to divert charitable contributions.
We need to ensure that people who have already been victimized by nature do not also become the victims of crime.
This memorial today is not only a tribute to those who lost their lives, but also to the courage and generosity of all those who have worked to preserve life in the midst of this disaster, both in the affected regions and across the world. The Permanent Representatives of the States hit most severely are all with us today, and it is their stories that I hope we will continue to hear over the coming months.
His Excellency, Thomas Sriwidja, the Permanent Representative of Indonesia, is their spokesperson on this occasion, and I want to thank him and his counterparts for bringing us their message of need and hope to us today. I also want to thank Dr. Prashanti Mendis, the wife of the Ambassador of Sri Lanka, for bringing us the same message in a different form music selected in memory of the lives lost in the tsunami. Our prayers and thoughts are with them, today and in the months to come.
Thank you.