An informal meeting of the Council’s Working Group on Humanitarian Aid and Food Aid (COHAFA) was held in Vilnius on 11 November. The meeting discussed enhanced coordination for effective delivery of humanitarian assistance.
The discussion focused on challenges to and factors for the coordination of humanitarian aid hampering aid workers’ access to victims. This was illustrated through the examples in the Occupied Palestinian territories, Syria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Delivery of humanitarian assistance received much attention. Participants of the meeting discussed how the EU and its member states could ensure the delivery of humanitarian assistance to those in need.
The event was attended by the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Kyung-wha Kang, the European Commission’s Director-General of DG Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO) Claus Sorensen, representatives from the EU member states and other humanitarian aid organisations: the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The Lithuanian Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Rolandas Kriščiūnas welcomed the participants of the meeting and stressed the vital role of humanitarian assistance in cases of both natural and man-made disasters, for example, in seeking to provide relief to victims of the typhoon in the Philippines or conflict in Syria.
The UN official Kyung-Wha Kang presented issues related to the international humanitarian assistance and informed the participants about preparations for the Humanitarian World Summit in Istanbul in 2016.
The informal meeting of the Council’s Working Group on Humanitarian Aid and Food Aid (COHAFA) is traditionally held every six months in the EU Council Presidency. The working group discusses provision of humanitarian assistance.
