ENVIRONMENT BULLETIN-UKRAINE: Chernobyl Fund Evokes Little Donor Sympathy

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 9 1998 (IPS) - The international community has offered little sympathy – and hardly any funds – to the United Nations in its efforts to help victims of the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl.

“I am extremely frustrated and disappointed,” says Sergio Vieira de Mello, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, complaining about the less-than-magnanimous response from Western donors.

The United Nations has raised only 1.4 million dollars for a U.N. inter-agency programme which needs an estimated 74 million dollars. The money is intended to assist those who were exposed to radiation in the widely publicised radioactive catastrophe of Apr 26 1986.

Described as one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents, the series of fires and explosions at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant near Kiev, USSR (now in Ukraine) left at least 31 people dead and spread significant quantities of radio active material over much of both Eastern and Western Europe.

The three countries suffering the most are Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. The radiation released into the atmosphere has been blamed for tens of thousands of cancer deaths as well as increase birth defects in all three countries since 1986.

“You don’t overcome the consequences of a nuclear tragedy in a matter of months or even years,” says Vieira de Mello. “Twelve years later, there was nothing to celebrate.”

He said that projects for which funding was being sought were humanitarian efforts aimed at addressing the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. The proposed U.N. programmes would consist of projects deaing with problems in health, especially in the ar eas of treatment and research, as well as with psycho-social and environmental rehabilitation.

Vieira de Mello said the proposed U.N. projects also included diagnosis and treatment of thyroid carcinoma, leukemia and lymphomas, as well as research on the consequences of radiation in parents, in order to ascertain the health of their descendants.

He pointed out that thousands of volunteer “nuclear fighters” who worked in the early stages of the catastrophe had been gravely affected by the radiation. The inter-agency programme “would help them survive, if at all possible,” he added.

Although the response from the donor community had been disappointing, the United Nations will continue its efforts to raise the funds needed to implement its projects, Vieira de Mello said.

Briefing reporters last week, Ambassador Sergey Lavrov of Russia said that 19 regions and 56 square kilometres of his country had been contaminated as a result of the disaster. Since 1989, his government had implemented a number of programmes to help abo ut 50,000 persons resettle and find economic employment. Additionally, more than two million square metres of housing had been built, along with hundreds of schools, hospitals and clinics.

But despite these efforts, the problems caused by the Chernobyl disaster continued to be severe, Lavrov said. While more than 350,000 Russians had participated in eliminating the consequences of the disaster, some 40,000 of them had become disabled, he s aid.

Lavrov said the latest donor conference held in Geneva in March was a disappointment. However, he hoped to raise the donor community’s awareness with the help of the international news media. “The United Nations could raise awareness to some degree, but members of the media must help to focus on such issues as the lasting effects of Chernobyl,” he noted.

Ambassador Alyaksandr Sychou of Belarus told reporters that more than 70 percent of the radionuclides from Chernobyl had fallen on his country, resulting in the long-term contamination of nearly 23 percent of the territory. “Belarus had lost the use of land and forests,” he said.

Total damage to Belarus alone is put at nearly 235 billion dollars. During the past 12 years, the Belarus government had allocated between 15 and 20 percent of its national budget to mitigate the consequences of the nuclear accident, he said.

Ambassador Volodymyr Yel’chenko of Ukraine said that his country “carried the heaviest part of the burden.” The irreversible losses caused by the accident, he said, amounted to about 120 billion to 130 billion dollars: more than six times the country’s national income.

“The government had allocated more than one billion dollars annually for the social protection of the affected population. but efforts to date did not match the real needs,” he added.

All three countries meanwhile have appealed for assistance from the recently established one billion-dollar Turner Fund which is being financed by billionaire U.S. media mogul Ted Turner, head of Cable News Network (CNN).