Mr. Vice-President, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen,

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is pleased to
take the floor today with reference to the Report of the Secretary
General on "Strengthening of the coordination of emergency
humanitarian assistance of the United Nations".

2007 again has seen great challenges in many countries for
emergency humanitarian assistance which demanded collaboration and
partnership by a broad and growing range of humanitarian actors.
The report of the Secretary General offers a valuable opportunity
to take stock of progress made and draw lessons for the future with
respect to new modalities of working together and IOM would like to
reflect only on some selected humanitarian challenges, highlighted
in this report.

Mr. Vice-President,

Firstly, collaboration and coordination is most relevant for
IOM's operational work in situations of population displacement and
sudden population movements. The issue of internal displacement is
multifaceted and many organizations work on its different aspects,
collaborating to meet the protection, assistance and recovery needs
of IDPs. This potential however is not used to the fullest, as
safety and security of humanitarian personnel, as well as unimpeded
access remain a challenge. IOM would like to support the
Secretary-General in his call for Member States "to recognize that
access to vulnerable populations and the safety and security of
humanitarian personnel are prerequisites for effective humanitarian
response. States are urged to facilitate the rapid and unimpeded
passage of humanitarian personnel and relief consignments to
populations in need".

Secondly, Mr. Vice-President, this year marks the two-year
evaluation of the CERF, a fund which has become a valuable tool for
the humanitarian community's emergency response activities,
including IOM's. The relevance and usefulness of the CERF as a
flexible response mechanism filling an important gap between sudden
emergencies and timely availability of cash flows cannot be
overstated.  The evaluation also highlights the link to the
cluster system noting that where clusters have been used for
sectoral coordination, the interaction with the CERF has been
positive. So far IOM has received nearly USD 30 M from the CERF, a
somewhat limited amount equal to a little over 3 per cent of CERF
commitments since its inception, and yet representing a critical
mass of resources to jump start operations in 49 crises. Currently,
we are seeing a strain on the CERF given the food crisis in
addition to a number of other complex emergencies and in light of
this, would welcome an increase of contributions to the CERF.

Thirdly, the Secretary-General's Report touches on another topic
of great concern – that of climate change. Given its mandate,
IOM is particularly concerned about environmentally-induced
migration and displacement. IOM's approach to
environmentally-induced migration considers the cases of
populations who, for reasons of sudden or progressive changes in
the environment, that adversely affect their lives or living
conditions, leave their habitual homes, either temporarily or
permanently. These migrants include those who have moved
voluntarily as well as involuntarily, and who have either moved
within their country or abroad. This broad approach encompasses
different scenarios such as migration as a coping strategy for
medium to advanced stages of gradual environmental change or forced
migration as a survival strategy reacting to extreme and sudden
environmental events. This wide range of situations from sudden
humanitarian internal- or cross-borders migration to long term,
structural migration patterns will have to be factored in the risk
reduction and adaptation strategies at the national, regional and
international levels. Within those different hypotheses, special
attention needs to be paid to the different experience and
vulnerabilities of men and women.

In addition to the dramatic human casualties, as we have seen
only recently in China and Myanmar, natural disasters cause
considerable damage and destroy basic infrastructure and services,
often generating population displacement and making return, at
least in the short term, unfeasible in many cases. In these kinds
of situations of forced migration, as in any crisis and emergency
situation, women and girls and men and boys are exposed to
different types of risks and trauma, in particular gender-based
violence, human trafficking.

The IASC principles in their recent session have agreed that
intensified research efforts to improve empirical data and
analysis, in order to better understand the humanitarian
consequences of climate change and IOM is happy to do its
share.

To conclude, Mr. Vice-President, IOM is committed to those most
vulnerable in times of crisis and remains dedicated to working
resourcefully and proficiently with its IASC partners.  We
express here our deep appreciation to our partners and supporters,
and in particular to the ERC and the OCHA leadership for their
unwavering commitment to the improvement of humanitarian response
capacities. 

Thank you.