jeudi 8 février 2007

Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture - Feb. 8th - EAD

United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture

8th of February

Palais Wilson



Representing and speaking in the name of theBoard:


Ms. S. Picado from Costa Rica, Chaiperson

Mr. K. Kanev

Ms. Goonesekere

Mr. Oloka-Onyango

Mr. Pounder

Secretariat


The purpose of the meeting was to brief Member States on the work and priorities of the Board for the year 2007.


After the Chairperson exposed the situation it appeared that there are two main issues to concentrate on. First, the Torture Fund is not known enough. Many organizations don’t know about it or don’t know how to make requests. Second, there is a big gap between money supply and demand. So they need support for money funds. Regarding that problem, Kanev emphazised that the Fund is only able to scratch the surface but a big amount of the demand is not met. In the last years they covered the 2/3 of the demand., now only ½ of it. Moreover the requests always stay secret. They need more visibility for the ONG’s and the donors.


Spain agreed on the fact that it is important to develop donors for the Fund until the Council is able to organize mandates. But he asked how the priorities were given and what were the criteria of focus on important areas.

The Chairperson answered explaining how they procede to the visit. Until now they were able to visit evey situation and can tell exactly the donors where the money has gone. These kind of visits are useful to know what the victims think and how they can improve.

They aslo procede to a second stage of visits to make evaluation and determine where it is indispensable to help. Before they used to answer and provide money to every request. But now they are trying to put some priority on the areas that need more help. Refering to this, conflicting areas are important criteria. This change appeared after they realized that, as the Fund was so far demand driven, some countries like Western countries have more possibility to get help although they are not part of the Third World nor in a conflicting situation. They are better equiped and can check more easily what are their possibilities. To illustrate the disproportion, they gave us an overview of the distribution money granted: 6% to Africa, 9% to Asia, 9% to Eastern Europe and 63% to Wetsern Europe. This is why they need more focus on conflicting areas (like Colombia or Africa) and to shift from a reactive Fund to a more proactive appraoch with increased presence in the regions concerned.


Speaking about the money problem, Italy asked if there was a possibility that non-State actors could rise their contribution in the future. The response was that the Board is already trying to create a foundation with private donors but some difficulties are appearing concerning the coordination with the High Commission. Private donors and the Trust Fund have to be coordinated correctly.

The good news came from the Government of Argentina that decided to make a contriubtion to the Fund.


Regarding the problem of visibility in Africa and Asia, Thailand brought up the difficulties of some countries to prepare an adecuate proposal. The Sercretariat said that they are well aware of that problem and are thinking how they can help. However, although the possibility of making a demand manual based for countries that don’t have good internet access exists, over 300 requests, only 3 were manual demand last year. Moreover, if the demand is not correctly filled the secretariat usually send it back to the organization and explains it.

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