[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 119 (Thursday, September 10, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1695-E1696]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO HUMANITARIANS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. TONY P. HALL

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 10, 1998

  Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, during the past month a series of 
deadly events has brutally thinned the ranks of those who are devoted 
to helping the world's poor and sick.
  The bombing of our embassy in Nairobi was perhaps the most visible 
loss of Americans who worked to reach out to people in other countries. 
Twelve Americans perished there, alongside nearly 500 Kenyans.
  Last week, four more Americans died while traveling on U.N. business 
aboard the plane that crashed near Halifax. Ingrid Acevedo, Pierce 
Gerety, Mary Lou Clements-Mann, and Jonathan Mann represented our 
country in key positions at the United Nations, and their deaths are 
keenly felt by their colleagues, as well as their families and friends.
  I have said many times that many of the Americans I have met in the 
field of humanitarian work are remarkable. They are among the most 
selfless and dedicated of people, and their examples never fail to 
inspire me.
  They also are dying in increasing numbers, as are the local people 
and other nations' representatives who serve as their colleagues. It is 
now more dangerous to feed and care for hurting people as a U.N. 
humanitarian worker than it is to serve in a war zone as one of its 
peacekeepers--for the first time in more than 50 years.
  This increasing pace of deaths cannot be attributed to the toll that 
disease takes on humanitarian workers' health. Nor does it include 
those killed in plane crashes. It reflects only the growing number of 
attacks against aid workers employed by the United Nations and private 
charities alike.
  I am encouraged to know that Secretary General Kofi Annan and the 
leaders of private charities are looking for ways to guard humanitarian 
workers' safety. The world can't afford to lose more of these dedicated 
individuals, but the courage their work demands, and the very nature of 
the dangers they regularly face, make protecting them enormously 
difficult.
  What is within our power, though, is to remember their contributions, 
and to stay the humanitarian course for which they gave their lives, 
and I urge my colleagues in Congress to do that today and as we go 
about our own work in the days ahead.
  It is only in the work of those we now mourn, and not the manner of 
their tragic deaths, that Ingrid Acevedo, Pierce Gerety, Mary Lou 
Clements-Mann, and Jonathan Mann represent an extraordinary corps of 
professionals.
  Ingrid Acevedo, a young woman from New York, most recently has led 
efforts to spread the word about UNICEF's trick-or-treat effort on 
behalf of needy children. Acevedo began her career of service to the 
poor at Bread for the World, fighting hunger and poverty in the United 
States. She then moved to the U.S. Committee for UNICEF, where as its 
director of public relations, she brought needed attention to the life-
saving work UNICEF does throughout the world.
  Pierce Gerety was a Yale educated and Harvard-trained lawyer who, 
after receiving those institutions' highest honors, dedicated

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his life to helping refugees in some of the world's most desperate 
places. He most recently had been working for the U.N. High 
Commissioner of Refugees in Rwanda, and for the U.N.'s Operation 
Lifeline Sudan, which brings relief to 2.6 million people facing 
starvation there.
  Mary Lou Clements-Mann and Jonathan Mann, were doctors whose fight 
against AIDS made them pioneers. Together, they led the push for a 
vaccine for the world's poor afflicted with AIDS. Clements-Mann was an 
epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins; Mann founded the World Health 
Organization's global AIDS program.
  Today, along with those gathered in New York and elsewhere to mourn 
these remarkable Americans, we honor them and others in their fields 
who have gone before. Each died in the noble endeavor of serving those 
less fortunate among us. Each represented the best of our great 
country, and their deaths diminish us all.