Cyclone: Q & A on international aid

May 6, 2008 04:17 PM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

(Reuters/ Vorasit Satienlerk )

Burmese soldiers unload boxes of instant noodles Tuesday for cyclone victims.

By Roy Greene, Globe Staff

Patrick Webb, a Tufts University professor and a specialist on humanitarian emergencies, answers questions about challenges the world community faces in responding to the devastating cyclone that struck Burma early Saturday, killing untold thousands.

Patrick Webb

Webb, dean for academic affairs at Tuft's Friedman School, assisted in the relief operation for the 2004 Asian tsunami with the UN World Food Program, and has worked in countries like North Korea and Burma. He visited Rangoon in May 2002.

Q. The reclusive clique of generals that runs Burma has said it will accept outside disaster aid. What are the greatest obstacles to providing aid to Burma?

A. Burma, like North Korea, has kept the international community at arm’s length for some time. This is unfortunate for many reasons. The most effective forms of humanitarian response build on pre-existing grass-roots relations with communities that are vulnerable to shocks of many kinds (be they cyclones, tidal waves, earthquakes, or locusts).

Good early warning builds on a deep understanding not only of risks, but also of the capacities that exist among institutions and communities to cope with shocks. That most UN organizations and nongovernmental agencies have not been allowed a long-standing interaction with vulnerable communities in Burma means that there is limited local knowledge of conditions on the ground, and few established partnerships with indigenous organizations that would facilitate timely and tailored actions.

The Burmese have also been reluctant to accept emergency assistance from the US, which means that they are cutting themselves off from potentially large resources that could make a big difference. There was similar reticence among some countries impacted by the Asian tsunami to allow the US ground access because of political and military sensitivities—but when that was overcome the US played a key role in the relief operations.

Q. In disasters such as this, what is needed the most and the quickest?

A. There are multiple needs at multiple levels. The most urgent, at the ground level, is to find and treat people who are still alive but in need of urgent care. In Aceh after the 2004 earthquake and tsunami, pulling people out of the mud or out of collapsed buildings was a daily task for thousands of volunteers. The same is happening now across southern Burma.

Bringing appropriate medical resources, sniffer dogs, bulldozers (and yes, body bags) to places where roads are damaged, bridges washed away, and communications systems damaged is a major challenge—but it can be done if sufficient helicopters and shallow boats are made available. For people not requiring medical attention but displaced, traumatized or having lost home and belongings, the most urgent needs include shelter, warmth, clean water, food, and personal security. That sounds like a lot, and it is. The essence of keeping people alive who were not immediately killed or hurt is to protect and sustain. That includes heading-off problems like diarrhea, measles or cholera epidemics, and child malnutrition.

But effective response also requires collaboration and support of domestic institutions, on the one hand, and coordination of international resources, on the other. The nature of relations between authorities and citizens matters a great deal (as was noted in the context of hurricane Katrina). Without mutual trust that relief will be appropriate and delivered according to need, panic and chaos may ensue, followed by recrimination. Ensuring sufficient complementary international resources is also crucial. Many organizations have skills in disaster response, but not everyone is needed everywhere. Professional needs assessment should precede a rapid analysis of response options, leading to a large-scale mobilization of people and products needed to succeed.

Q. Should humanitarian groups be worried about how much access the regime will give aid workers?

A. Yes they should. Unhindered access of care-givers to those in need is a key to successful humanitarian action. If certain populations are kept off limits, because of who they are (marginalized political or ethnic groups), or where they are (inhabiting politically sensitive locations, such as contested borders, military zones or secret production facilities), then innocents can die and the necessary objectivity and neutrality of the relief endeavor itself can be compromised.

For example, many of the dead who washed up on the shores of Thailand in 2004-05 were found to be Burmese fishermen who had been fishing well down the Thai coast when the tsunami struck. While the international community invested very large sums of money into post mortem investigations to identify bodies so that they could be repatriated, it proved to be rather difficult to interact with affected families in Burma due to restrictions on communications.

Today, Burma’s Minister of Information has reportedly stated that the authorities “will not hide anything,” but there is a credibility gap. Continuing disputes over political freedom, repression of minorities, and the government’s resistance to engage with many international organizations, including UN representatives, have led to distrust on both sides. The UN’s experience in North Korea and in Afghanistan under the Taliban suggests that while humanitarian access may have to be insisted on, a firm line can pay dividends.

Q. What lessons can the world community learn from the response to the 2004 Asian tsunami?

A. Three lessons stand out. The first is that relief actions are increasingly professional and successful. While concerns are sometimes voiced about where the money goes, financial transparency continues to improve while humanitarian goals (saving lives, resolving malnutrition, etc.), are being met faster and better than ever before. The Burma relief operation should be closely monitored and evaluated as part of the accumulated knowledge of the humanitarian community. There is little place of amateurism, however well-meaning, in large-scale disaster response.

The second lesson is that development planners, not just relief agencies, need to focus on the fact that large-scale natural disasters, particularly wind storms and floods, have been increasing in the past decade. Whether associated with climate change or not, cyclones such as Nargis are no longer unusual nor unexpected. Shocks can no longer be seen as “blips” on the radar, but as part of the process of development. Countries achieving poverty reduction have to factor large-scale threats into their development planning -- particularly, since many shocks now affect urban locations where large numbers of poor people are increasingly migrating.

The third lesson is that early warning matters. There are many examples of early warning systems that developed critical expertise and critical mass over many years, only to decline due to a lack of funding and staffing in periods without major shocks. When disasters are repeated, the importance of well-funded warning systems is visible.

When shocks are less frequent, poor governments seeking to cut budgets often find warning institutions an easy option. The growing threat to increasing numbers of people around the world means that national systems need to be strengthened (technologically, financially and politically), they need to be regionally combined to generate cross-border exchanges of information, and global systems need to be better grounded back at the national level.