Aid and health experts call for Government to support humanitarian capacity to respond to weapons of mass destructionJanuary 09, 2003The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Merlin, the charity that provides healthcare for people in crises, have completed a study of the potential humanitarian response to the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In the detailed paper we call for the Government to support an independent group of NGOs to prepare for a response to the humanitarian disaster that such an attack will cause. The paper entitled Hope for the best, prepare for the worst: how humanitarian organisations can organise to respond to weapons of mass destruction can be found at weblinks www.merlin.org.uk and www.lshtm.ac.uk/hpu/docs/wmd.pdf This call for action comes just days after Tony Blair, in his speech to the Foreign Office conference, warned of the urgent need for a global response to the threat of WMD. The paper stresses the importance of NGOs collaborating amongst themselves, and ensuring that the humanitarian community is able to act independently in their response. Geoff Prescott, CEO of Merlin, says: 'NGOs need retain their neutrality and impartiality whilst developing the knowledge and capacity to respond to weapons of mass destruction". But as Egbert Sondorp,one of the paper's authors, comments: 'The reality is that expert knowledge in protection from and response to weapons of mass destruction currently lies almost solely with the military'. The paper concludes that 'The humanitarian community needs to learn new skills, to confront the ethical, organisational and practical challenges that such a crisis will bring, to be bold and principled in working with new partners and to be supported to do so'. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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