The following text is excerpted from a resolution introduced on March 17, 2005 to the U.S. House of Representatives by Albert Wynn, D-Maryland, in support of a U.N. Emergency Peace Service. The resolution was also introduced by Jim Leach, R-Iowa, and co-sponsored by eight other congressmen. It was referred to the House Committee on International Relations.

Mr. Speaker, most Americans have the comfort of knowing that in the event of an emergency, police, fire, and emergency services are just a phone call away. Unfortunately, in too much of the world today, there is no emergency telephone number to call in the event of a humanitarian crisis.

Today, Congressman Leach and I are introducing a resolution to encourage the creation of an international emergency service for the world community — The United Nations Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS). The service would consist of 15,000 expertly trained and equipped professionals, ready to respond immediately in the early stages of a crisis, be it caused by violent conflict or natural disaster. The Emergency Peace Service ranks would be made up of military peacekeepers, civilian police, military, humanitarian and judicial professionals, and other emergency response and relief personnel. ... They could respond to crises within days or weeks, rather than months, thereby saving lives around the globe.

Mr. Speaker, despite this administration’s current focus on Iraq and terrorism, the U.S. cannot solve our security problems alone. Increasingly, being safe at home means making others feel secure in their homes.

Failing states quickly become failed states. They provide breeding grounds for terrorism and international crime. It is, therefore, in the United States’ security interests to prevent destabilizing events from causing the collapse of states.

The creation of an Emergency Peace Service is also in our financial interest. The fact is: It is much cheaper to prevent an emergency by intervening early in its development than it is to respond after an emergency has reached its tipping point. According to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, the international community could have saved nearly $130 billion of the $200 billion it spent on managing conflicts in the 1990’s by focusing on prevention rather than reconstruction…

Rwanda, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Bosnia and Kosovo, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and now Darfur; these are just a few of the places where the U.N. and its member states should have responded more rapidly and robustly. As a result, more people died, and more people suffer. The world can do better.

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