Dear Mister Annan,

I have known and appreciated your qualities for some time and I found it encouraging that even before being appointed you said that it was up to the Secretary-General to be the Organization's "moral voice". This is obviously a subject close to your heart since in your very first official speech on 17 December you courageously put the "moral dimension" before legal obligations and political/diplomatic considerations.

I instinctively share these concerns, because of the ideas I have always believed in, because of my current responsibilities and because there is desperate need for more emphasis on that rare commodity in the modern world, "the moral dimension".

The humanitarian aid community experiences this lack of a moral dimension and suffers as a humiliating defeat the resultant daily trampling underfoot of the very principles underpinning humanitarian aid. What can explain this sudden triumph of barbarism over civilization?

Only a year ago representatives of the major international aid organizations (including the UN agencies) assembled in Madrid for the first humanitarian summit: heartened by the signs of peace finally emerging in the former Yugoslavia, they appealed to the international community for more "humanitarian spaces" in a world increasingly ravaged by microconflicts.

This year the opposite is true - we have a plethora of crises where "humanitarian spaces" are being obliterated amidst general indifference. From Burundi to Chechnya the Red Cross has been fired on. In Afghanistan the UN compound was broken into by an armed faction that used the UN flagpole to hang its adversaries and then proceeded to impose on Afghan women "Jaws" that negate and trample on the principles endorsed by the UN World Conference on Women at Beijing, all without a murmur from the UN representative. In northern Iraq, which seemed to be the focus of the whole world's attention only a short time ago, the confines of the protected areas set up to aid the civilian populat on have been erased without a finger being raised.

And now, for a grand finale, we have this new crisis in the Great Lakes region which has seen the unconditional surrender of humanitarian principles. First, we witness, dismayed and impotent, as refugee camps flying the UN flag are bombarded. Then we wath incredulously the unfolding of the "multinational force" - or should I call it "multinational farce"? - which was finally deemed to be superfluous as there were "only" a couple of hundred thousand human beings in Zaire threatened by hunger and disease. Now we watch indignantly the forced repatriation, with guns and cudgels, of a half a million refugees from Tanzania to Rwanda.

Since 1994 the European Union has been the main provider of funds to humanitarian organziations which have been working with refugees in the Great Lakes region, chief among them the UN agencies. But what exlpanation must be given to European taxpayers who see money they thought destined for humanitarian purposes being used to organize a mass deportation? What has made many humanitarian bodies violate the principles of international conventions and their own statutes? Who decided, and for what reason that the deportation should take place in this way and, furthermore, be completed by 31 December and no later? I have read thet 50 children have already been born on the road and that in these conditions many more could be abandoned. Why is the UN allowing them to pass such a Christmas?

As you know, when it comes to the Bosnian refugees in Germany even legislation aimed at encouraging, their return home, never mind beatings, is controversial.

You are right, Mr Annan. Someone has to put the moral dimension back in its rightful place among the UN's guiding principles. For the sake of this moral dimension I hope that, failing justice, we can at least aim for transparency.

Let me finish by heartily congratulating you, and the United Nations, on your appointment as Secretary-General. Merry Christmas.

Emma Bonino

Brussels 22.12.96