UN chief Kofi Annan on Wednesday appealed to donors for 4.7 billion dollars (four billion euros) to fund desperately needed humanitarian programmes for 31 million victims of disasters around the world in 2006.
Flanked by UN relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland and Norway's State Secretary Raymond Johansen, the secretary general officially launched the "Humanitarian Appeal 2006" on behalf 31 million disaster victims in 26 countries.
"Through this appeal. We ask for 4.7 billion dollars on behalf of people who are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance," Annan said. "They are the survivors of conflicts, natural disasters and often terrible combinations of the two."
He cited victims of conflicts in Sudan's Darfur region and the Central African Republic, civilians displaced by instability in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Burundi and people facing starvation in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso.
Egeland said the biggest component of the appeal was 1.5 billion dollars for Sudan, followed by one in excess of one billion dollars for the DRC where 1,000 people die a day because of neglect and preventable diseases.
"The amount we seek today, while by no means insignificant, is not large for the tasks at hand," Annan said. "It is less than what the world spends every 48 hours on its militaries. Two days of military spending against a year's worth of life-saving humanitarian assistance. For 31 million people!"
Annan praised the generosity shown by donor countries and their citizens in response to last December's Indian Ocean tsunami disasters and hurricanes in the Americas.
"This humanitarian appeal is an opportunity, which must not be missed, to extend that generosity to people whose plight may not capture the world's attention, but whose suffering is no less tragic," he said.