-There is no doubt that with sufficient political will, both nationally and internationally, the conflict in Northern Uganda could have been brought to an end and the humanitiarian crisis resolved, said OCHA- director and deputy Secretary general of the UN Jan Egeland, right, at a seminar in Norway last week. (19-FEB-06)

This article is written by HRH / Niels Jacob Harbitz. Photo of Jan Egeland: IRINnews, the UN website for the Office for the Cordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

-It is all about attention and allocated importance. If we paid as much attention to for instance Northern Uganda as we do to Jerusalem or as much to Southern Sudan as we do to Bagdad or even the whole of Iraq, the problems we see in those two relatively small parts of Africa most probably wouldn’t be there. The easiest and best way out of the many crises we see in Africa right now, is to radically increase the attention we pay to them. Unfortunately, with the amount of small arms in circulation throughout West, Central and East Africa, including the Horn region, it is far too easy to start a war, and equally difficult to end it. Hence, there’s a need for a new and different approach, Egeland appealed to his audience.