DEVELOPMENT REPORT - Top Aid Official at U.N. Says World Is

DEVELOPMENT REPORT - Top Aid Official at U.N. Says World Is Failing Africa
By Jill Moss¹

Broadcast: Monday, May 16, 2005

I'm Gwen Outen with the VOA Special English Development Report.

The United Nations has made fourteen appeals for aid to Africa so far this year. Yet eight of those appeals have received less than twenty percent of the amount requested. And only one, a small appeal for Angola, has received more than forty percent.

 
Jan Egeland
These numbers are from the U.N. official who supervises emergency aid. Jan Egeland, from Norway, says that in general there is too little investment in the area of the world with the greatest need.

Mister Egeland spoke² last week to reporters and the U.N. Security Council about the humanitarian³ crises in Africa. Later, the council released a statement of deep concern about the situation.

The U.N. appeals included a request for more than twenty-three million dollars for the Central African Republic. Only six percent of that has been received, and only eight percent of a requested one hundred sixty-four million dollars for Somalia.

Mister Egeland says too many people are dying because of too little money or because it arrives too late. And he says Africa has new crises faster than the U.N. can solve old ones. The recent political conflict in Togo, for example, has created thousands of refugees.

And Mister Egeland spoke of recent killings⁴ in northern Uganda by rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army. Almost two million people have been displaced by years of civil war in northern Uganda. Mister Egeland said more aid is needed to prevent a break in the food supply in June.

He warned about food shortages in several countries in southern Africa as well as Ethiopia and Eritrea in the east. The U.N. official spoke of the combined threat of AIDS, food shortages and weak government in Zimbabwe and other countries.

Also, he says promises of aid are not being met fast enough to help the refugees from Darfur, in western Sudan. About two hundred thousand people have entered Chad to escape two years of violence in Darfur.

Mister Egeland said there is "an inbuilt discrimination" against Africa. In his words: "If we all agree that a human life has the same value wherever he or she is born, there should be the same attention to northern Uganda as to northern Iraq, the same attention to the Congo as there was to Kosovo.

"And that," he added, "is not the case today."

This VOA Special English Development Report was written by Jill Moss.  I'm Gwen Outen.

1 moss   

n.苔，藓，地衣

参考例句：

• Moss grows on a rock.苔藓生在石头上。
• He was found asleep on a pillow of leaves and moss.有人看见他枕着树叶和苔藓睡着了。

2 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

3 humanitarian   

n.人道主义者，博爱者，基督凡人论者

参考例句：

• She has many humanitarian interests and contributes a lot to them.她拥有很多慈善事业，并作了很大的贡献。
• The British government has now suspended humanitarian aid to the area.英国政府现已暂停对这一地区的人道主义援助。

4 killings   

谋杀( killing的名词复数 )； 突然发大财，暴发

参考例句：

• His statement was seen as an allusion to the recent drug-related killings. 他的声明被视为暗指最近与毒品有关的多起凶杀案。
• The government issued a statement condemning the killings. 政府发表声明谴责这些凶杀事件。