The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (the IFRC) is privileged to address this High-level Conference on CERF, the Central Emergency Response Fund.
We commend the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affaires, OCHA, for arranging this event and we thank OCHA for inviting us to take the floor.
We appreciate this demonstration of the relationship of mutual respect and cooperation which exists between OCHA and the Red Cross Movement.
We equally congratulate OCHA for successfully planning CERF and managing this important funding instrument.
The IFRC knows from its very own experience how crucial the instant availability of funding is to all humanitarian scenarios including neglected emergencies.
A rapid emergency response is all too often a matter of life and death.
We are well aware of the administrative challenges and technical problems that can occur when operating an emergency response fund such as CERF and we engage with OCHA and other partners of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) in sharing expertise as well as seeking answers and finding solutions.
Since 1985 the IFRC has been managing its own emergency fund called "Disaster Relief Emergency Fund" (DREF).
In mid November this year all Member States received the IFRC's "2008-2009 Appeal" seeking to expand the fund from currently CHF 11 million to a total of annually CHF 25 million by the end of 2009.
Chair, The DREF is designed to fund mainly rapid responses to small scale disasters in communities, through the IFRC's network of 186 National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, their branches and volunteers, and in instances when other funding mechanisms do not apply.
In 2006, for example, the IFRC made 100 allocations to National Societies to support emergency interventions, predominantly in the Asia Pacific region and in Africa.
These grants or loans can be as little as 15,000 for the Chad Red Cross action on Cholera or as much as 400,000 for the Kenya Red Cross response to drought.
The Governments of Norway, the Netherlands, Ireland, United Kingdom, Denmark and many others have been generous contributors to DREF in the past and we, the IFRC, certainly count on their continued support in the future as well as support from new donors.
The expansion of DREF over the next two years is sought because of three trends we experienced over the recent years:
firstly, the marked increase in the number of small scale disasters;
secondly, the increased frequency of disasters that are related to climate change, several impacting on large areas and,
thirdly, the need to invest more in disaster risk reduction.
We are strong supporters of the Good Humanitarian Donorship process and encourage increased support through multilateral channels such as the CERF and the DREF.
We ask all donors not to confuse those two Funds and also not to confuse these Funds with other funding mechanisms such as the CAPs, IFRC appeals, and the Climate Change Adaptation Fund.
It is important to support each of these mechanisms as unique elements in the broader humanitarian field of action.
We would equally discourage supporting these funds by means of budgetary reallocations.
The need for flexible, responsive funds to assist local communities and national governments to respond to the increasing numbers of crises and tremendous disasters is clear.
We encourage all donor governments to meet the promise of the CERF, and to support this important mechanism for strengthening urgent humanitarian action.
It is important to underline that both funds - the CERF and the IFRC's DREF -- are operated in humanitarian partnership and in complementarity, not in competition.
This point is helpfully noted in the Secretary General's first report on CERF last June where he notes that the DREF of IFRC complements the CERF in that funds are allocated mainly for smaller scale disasters for which no international appeals are launched.
We look forward to continued strong cooperation with OCHA in all regards, and continued support from donor governments for Red Cross and Red Crescent disaster response action.