Annan donates $500,000 in award grant to cash-starved Darfur relief

To highlight – and help alleviate – the severe lack of donations to the United Nations-led relief effort in Sudan’s Darfur region, Secretary-General Kofi Annan has decided to contribute to it the $500,000 he was awarded in February by the Zayed Prize for environmental leadership.

Mr. Annan had announced on receiving the prize that it would serve as seed money for a foundation he had planned to establish to promote girls’ education and agriculture in Africa.

“Given the massive shortfall in contributions to the Darfur relief effort, he now feels that the money is more urgently needed there,” a UN spokesman said in New York, adding, however, that he is still proceeding with plans to establish a fund along the line he had announced.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), only 20 per cent of the funds requested from donors has been contributed for the region, which has been devastated by a three-year struggle between rebels and the Government and its allied militias.

Because of the funding gap, the World Food Programme (WFP) said in April that it would have to drastically reduce food rations this month for 6.1 million people all over Sudan, and Mr. Annan said last Friday that he hopes that not just Governments but – as with the Tsunami relief effort – ordinary citizens, corporations and other actors will step forward to help meet the urgent needs.

“He hopes his decision will help encourage other donors to contribute,” his spokesman said today.