U.N. and Other Donors Decide on Tsunami Aid
January 12, 2005
by Kevin Caruso
The United Nations (U.N.) and government officials met in Geneva, Switzerland, on January 11 to plan how to use and track the tsunami aid donations.
Over $4 billion has been pledged by the U.N., the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and various governments. The pledged funds will be used for humanitarian relief, reconstruction, development, and loans.
One concern that the U.N. is addressing is the need to closely monitor the use of the funds, so the U.N. has hired outside accountants to do the bookkeeping. PricewaterhouseCoopers has volunteered its services for free; they will be working to minimize waste, abuse, and fraud.
And the logistics of managing and distributing the money needs to be carefully planned.
“We need to focus our efforts on coordination, on the logistical systems and on rapidly moving into the rehabilitation and reconstruction phases, working with the governments of the countries that we're hosted by," said Andrew Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.