FRANCE'S foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, called Wednesday for the United Nations to act on its "responsibility to protect" by delivering aid to the people of Burma - even if the ruling junta continues withholding visas for aid workers. Kouchner, a founder of Doctors Without Borders, is understandably exasperated with the junta's failure to protect hundreds of thousands of people at risk of dying from lack of food, shelter, and potable water.
In 2005, the United Nations formally acknowledged a responsibility for citizens left unprotected by their governments. And as Burma's cyclone victims suffer, there could hardly be a better example of the need for the world body to act on that responsibility.
The generals had advance warnings from India about the severity, timing, and track of the cyclone last week, but civilians in Burma have told reporters that nobody heard such warnings on radio or TV. And no effort was made to get word of the approaching cyclone to residents of the Irrawaddy River delta, who are mostly rice farmers too poor to own a radio or TV.
These are the people who had their villages destroyed and their wells contaminated, and who are now in jeopardy of contracting malaria and dengue fever. They desperately need the high-energy biscuits, water-purification pills, and medicines that foreign governments and aid organizations are eager to deliver. The regime did not forewarn these people, and the army is doing too little now to save their lives.
Kouchner spoke Wednesday of boats, planes, and relief teams that were within a half hour of the delta region and prepared to ferry needed supplies to the homeless, exposed people huddling on patches of dry ground. In keeping with the 2005 commitment, Kouchner proposed a UN resolution that "authorizes the delivery of aid and imposes this on the Burmese government." But at a Security Council meeting Wednesday, China, Russia, South Africa, and Vietnam rejected the French proposal.
The excuse given was the mantra of most authoritarian or irresponsible regimes - the inviolability of national sovereignty that makes sacrosanct each government's right to be free of foreign interference in its internal affairs. As long as the UN defers to such governments, its supposed "responsibility to protect" will remain an unrealized vessel of good intentions. Still, Kouchner's move may goad the nations of the world to insist that the junta let outsiders save the people of Burma.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was acting in this spirit yesterday when he told the junta to postpone Saturday's constitutional referendum in Burma - and save lives instead.
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