Cyclone Victims Turn to Towns for Handouts

A woman walks amongst the debris of homes still being occupied in the Irrawaddy Delta. (Photo: AFP)

By AUNG THET WINE
The Irrawaddy News

RANGOON — Economic hardships have forced a growing number of survivors of Cyclone Nargis to leave their homes in rural parts of the Irrawaddy delta to seek assistance in Rangoon and other urban centers, according to local sources.

“I came to Rangoon to look for donors,” said a 50-year-old man from Kyone Chin, a village in Dedaye Township. “We don’t have enough food in our village, and our farming and fishing businesses have still not recovered. We need assistance badly.”

Kyone Chin village lost 50 of its 1,400 inhabitants and ninety percent of its structures in the deadly cyclone, according to the man. He added that food supplies and other assistance from UN agencies and the government have been dwindling over time.

“The whole village was terribly destroyed. The worst thing is that now we are facing hunger,” he said, explaining why he had come to Rangoon to find support for his village.

Private donors played an important role in the early stages of the relief effort, but nearly four months later, their numbers have fallen. Due in part to government efforts to control movements in the cyclone-stricken region, few trucks carrying privately donated relief supplies are now reaching remote villages, say local people.

Other cyclone-hit villages in Dedaye Township, including Leik Kyun, Hmae Bi, Lay Ywa, Mae Kanan, Taw Pone and Yae Pu Wa, are also facing severe shortages of foodstuffs and other basic supplies, according to local residents.

They are not alone in waiting for aid. A volunteer from Rangoon who has been involved in relief and rebuilding efforts in the delta said that many villages in Kungyangone Township, including Taw Kha Yan Gyi, Taw Kha Yan Kalay, Mayan, Maezali and Hti Pha, are also desperate for additional assistance.

“The situation is hard to say,” said the volunteer. “They do get a little assistance from the government and they have received some from UN agencies. But it’s not enough.

“There are still many people living under make-shift temporary shelters constructed with bamboo posts and tarpaulins sheets. Some can’t get rice to eat, so they are just surviving on what little food is available to them,” the volunteer added.

A local journalist who recently returned from Laputta Township said that farmers there were also struggling, as seeds planted late in the season have not been growing well. Fishermen are also worried about their future food security, as poor-quality nets and boats provided by the government have proven to be almost useless.

“In Laputta, there is no immediate concern about rice, since it is mainly provided by the UN,” said the journalist. “The problem is with rebuilding livelihoods. The farmers are not doing well because the tillers provided by the government are often broken, and seeds are not growing properly. Fishermen also have trouble because the boats they received after the cyclone often need fixing, and the nets are useless for fishing.”

The journalist added that much of the aid that does reach some of the more remote villages soon ends up in the hands of village officials, as little effort has been made to rein in widespread corruption.

Meanwhile, in Mawlamyainggyun Township, there are also reports of severe food shortages in the villages of Yae Twin Kone, Pet Pyae, Ta Zaung, Alae Yae Kyaw, Myit Kyi Toe and Pya Leik.

According to a resident of Alae Yae Kyaw, some local villages have sent small groups to Laputta to appeal for aid from local relief organizations based there. The results of their efforts have been disappointing, however.

“When we asked an NGO in Laputta for assistance, they provided just 3 pyi (about 750 ml) of rice per person for the whole month.”

Little aid ever reaches the villages of Mawlamyainggyun Township because of their inaccessibility. Villages located on the boundary of Mawlamyainggyun and Laputta townships, such as Yae Twin Kone, Pet Pyae, Ta Zaung, Alae Yae Kyaw, Myit Kyi Toe and Pya Leik, are especially deprived because they can only be reached by chartered boats and are reportedly not on the government’s list of villages eligible for support.

If villagers in these areas do not receive aid to rebuild their lives soon, the hunger and destitution they face now could result in more severe problems in the future, said a local volunteer who has witnessed the situation.

“Unless they receive some means of surviving, the hunger of these villagers could lead to killings and robbing. If we can’t heal a small sore now, we may face more serious harm in the long run,” said the volunteer.

Aiding Burma's Recovery

VOA - 24 August 2008
Aiding Burma's Recovery - Download (MP3)
Aiding Burma's Recovery - Listen to (MP3)

As Burma recovers from the devastation of the May 2nd, Cyclone Nargis, the United States and other international donors continue to provide needed help. The worst disaster in Burma's recorded history, Cyclone Nargis killed up to one-hundred-thousand people. Thousands more are still missing. Damage is estimated at over four-billion dollars.

Relief agency officials say that by now almost all of the more than two-million survivors of the storm and seawater surge have received some food aid. About half of the estimated four-hundred-eighty-eight-thousand households have received some building materials. But the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that despite the delivery of more than twenty-five-thousand tons of food assistance, people in remote areas, "are still living in dire conditions."

To help those most in need, the U.S. Agency for International Development is supporting nonprofit partners, such as Church World Service and the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development, a non-governmental organization based in France, to resume agriculture and other kinds work in vulnerable areas.

Already, eight-hundred drinking ponds that were fouled with salt water have been filtered and cleared of debris, dead animals, and, most tragic, human bodies. Work is underway to repair nine-hundred schools and establish four-hundred temporary safe learning places for sixty-thousand children.

Relief workers are distributing fishing nets as well as seeds and other agricultural inputs in time for the monsoon-planting season, which will end this month. After a tardy response that put many Burmese at risk, the Burmese government has gradually opened the country to outside help.

The U.S. government has given fifty-million dollars in disaster aid to Burma. From May 12 to June 22, the U.S. flew one-hundred-eighty-five airlifts of U.S., Thai, United Nations and non-governmental organization relief supplies from Thailand to Burma. At an August 7 meeting with Burmese democracy activists during his visit to Bangkok, Thailand, President George W. Bush said he is "pleased that a lot of the aid that we paid for is actually getting to the people themselves."

Ghosts amid the wreckage in Myanmar

By Seth Mydans
August 25, 2008

BANGKOK (IHT): Nearly four months after the cyclone, the Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar is a flat, dark expanse of ruin populated by dazed survivors, unburied bodies and visions of wandering, moaning ghosts.

The region seems to have avoided mass starvation and epidemic, and people are rebuilding their precarious lives in this vast and often flooded marshland where the margin between survival and death has always been thin.

Within that thin margin, recent visitors say, many of the survivors seem to have lost their spark of life, and some of the dead seem not yet to have disappeared as they haunt the minds of those they left behind.

"There is a weariness in people's eyes here," said a photographer who has been chronicling the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, which struck on May 3. He spoke on condition of anonymity because access to the region is forbidden to foreign journalists.

"There's a lost feeling that you get," he said. "People are physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. Some of them don't have the strength to start over."

After an international furor over the government's refusal to admit foreign relief workers, a tightly controlled system has been put in place, and aid is reaching much of the area, where the United Nations says 2.4 million people were affected.

The cyclone left 138,000 people dead or missing and 800,000 homeless, according to UN figures, after tremendous winds and a storm surge that resembled a tsunami.

It leveled most of the fragile thatch homes in its path, uprooted trees, swept away the livestock and fishing boats that provided a livelihood and polluted many rice fields with salt.

For those fields that survived, this year's planting season has now passed, and experts say it may be more than a year before many people see their next decent harvest.

Although some houses are being rebuilt and some fields are being worked, the delta remains a vista of ruin and debris, where human and animal bones and the last decomposing bodies still cluster at the edges of waterways.

Fantastical tales circulate among the survivors, the photographer said, weaving a tapestry of stories from this world and the next.

There is the tale of the boy who survived by clinging to the back of a crocodile, and the story of the boatload of people stranded at low tide who sat waiting on the silt for the water to rise, surrounded by stranded corpses.

There is the story of the mother who was reunited with her baby after it was swept away in a washtub, and the story of the woman who gave birth as the cyclone hit and pulled her baby from the water by its umbilical cord.

And there are the stories of wandering ghosts, whose cries for help can be heard at night in haunted places that no villager dares to enter.

Among these phantoms and traumas, international relief workers have become the survivors' lifeline, delivering aid to all but the most remote parts of the delta.

More than 1,800 visas have been issued to these workers, aid officials say, though access to the hard-hit delta is slowed by an ever-more-complicated process of permissions and paperwork.

By now, most survivors have received aid, said Andrew Kirkwood, country director for the aid group Save the Children. "But very few people have received enough assistance to get them through the next three months, and almost no one has received enough assistance to enable them to rebuild their lives."

He said the reconstruction of schools, clinics and other infrastructure, which should be well under way by now, still lagged because of delays in delivering basic emergency assistance.

The xenophobic military junta that holds Myanmar in its grip prevented large-scale foreign aid deliveries for the first three crucial weeks after the cyclone, then loosened its controls only gradually and partially. It never did allow U.S. and French naval vessels to bring in tons of aid and equipment.

But despite the early demands from around the world that the government permit open deliveries of aid, the United Nations says that nearly half the assistance pledged by foreign donors has yet to appear. Recently it said it had received $339 million in international donations, a shortfall of $300 million.

But life has always been bitter for the people of the Irrawaddy Delta, with 8 out of 10 families living in poverty even before the cyclone, according to Save the Children.

For many people, the harshness of life today may not be so very different from the harshness of the life they have always known.

"They live on a thin line, every day of every year of every decade," the photographer said. "And that is what they are doing now. They just keep going, day by day by day."

Disaster Lessons

By John Holmes

(WP)-Three months have passed since Cyclone Nargis and an accompanying tidal surge swept across Myanmar's fertile Irrawaddy Delta region, claiming nearly 140,000 lives and devastating the livelihoods of many more people. All told, some 2.4 million people were seriously affected by Nargis, ranking it among the worst cyclones in Asia in the past 15 years and the worst in Myanmar's history.

I recently completed my second trip to Myanmar, where I was again sobered by the immensity of the tragedy but was also cautiously hopeful about relief efforts. In May, government reluctance to allow international aid workers into the affected region sparked a storm of international criticism.

We have made a lot of progress since then. Touring the delta by helicopter, I could see that many houses had been repaired one way or another. There was agricultural activity in the fields and commercial activity on the waterways. Schools are in session, in tents if not permanent classrooms. And hundreds of international aid staffers are now working in the delta. The promises about access made to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon when he saw Myanmar's head of state, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, in late May have essentially been kept.

Without question, the international response has helped save lives and reduce suffering. While it is impossible to be sure all survivors have been reached, I am confident that the overwhelming majority have received help, even if many still need a good deal more.

Crucially, a much-feared second wave of deaths from starvation or disease has not happened -- no small achievement, given that 75 percent of hospitals and clinics in the affected areas were destroyed. The people's resilience has been remarkable, as was the degree of help and solidarity from individual citizens and organizations in Myanmar.

Challenges remain, of course, including over issues such as aid exchange rates, and it would be unwise to gloss over them. But the main priority now is to help remote communities further and to ensure that assistance is continued systematically until all concerned can feed themselves and rebuild their lives.

So, what can we learn from this crisis?

First, no nation, rich or poor, can go it alone when confronted by a natural disaster of the magnitude of a Cyclone Nargis. It would have been much better, not least for the survivors, if the government of Myanmar had recognized the value of an international presence from the start. I encourage Myanmar's leaders to continue down the path of cooperation, including in response to other humanitarian challenges, based on the universal principle of the impartial provision of aid.

Second, we must stay focused on the goal: assisting people in crisis. From the first, the aid operation in Myanmar -- as is true everywhere we work -- had to be about helping vulnerable people in need, not about politics. In this post-Iraq age, I am concerned that humanitarians are often pressured to choose between the hammer of forced intervention and the anvil of perceived inaction. Was there a realistic alternative to the approach of persistent negotiation and dialogue that we pursued? I do not believe so. Nor have I met anyone engaged in the operations who believes that a different approach would have brought more aid to more people more quickly.

This is not to say that there can never be a role for humanitarian intervention, even in natural disasters. But it must be the last resort, when all else has been tried and the only alternative is death and suffering on a mass scale.

Third, Nargis showed us a new model of humanitarian partnership, adding the special position and capabilities of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to those of the United Nations in working effectively with the government. This may prove the most important -- and, I hope, enduring -- lesson of the cyclone response, with implications for how we respond, anywhere, in the future.

ASEAN's leadership was vital in building trust with the government and saving lives. In recent years, ASEAN members have significantly stepped up participation in the humanitarian arena. Given that eight of the 10 worst natural disasters last year occurred in Asia, this represents a lifesaving investment, where the United Nations is helping to build local capacity.

Fourth, Nargis demonstrated once again the importance of disaster risk reduction and preparedness. Simple, low-cost measures -- local evacuation plans, shelters, community early-warning systems -- have saved tens of thousands of lives in neighboring Bangladesh when it has been faced with similarly devastating cyclones. We need to help the people of Myanmar strengthen their resilience and reduce their vulnerability. Building back better, to minimize future disaster risks, is a top priority.

In coming years we can expect to see more, and more intense, weather-related natural disasters as the effects of climate change become more pronounced. We must be better prepared and must cooperate as neighbors and an international community in meeting this challenge. The need for effective global humanitarian partnerships has never been more apparent -- or more necessary.

The writer is U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.

Cyclone Nargis response enters a new phase in relief and early recovery

Fourth Press Release of the Tripartite Core Group (TCG)

Yangon Myanmar (Relief Web), 30 July 2008 - The Government of Myanmar organised a field trip involving more than 148 representatives of foreign missions, UN agencies, international non-governmental organisations, relief organisations and the media to the cyclone Nargis-affected areas in the Ayeyarwady Delta using six Myanmar Air Force helicopters on 29 July 2009.

‘This is to reassure that access to the disaster-affected areas continues to be unimpeded and is expanding. This is also to give first-hand information to encourage the international community to work with us to intensify the emergency relief and early recovery for the affected communities,’ explained U Kyaw Thu, Myanmar’s Deputy Foreign Minister and TCG Chairman. He also expects the field trip will bring forward and provide complementary support to the government’s 50-billion-kyat recovery programme. Other TCG members also joined the field visit.

The field trip follows the release of the Post-Nargis Joint Assessment (PONJA) Report on the sidelines of the 41st ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Singapore on 21 July and concurrently in Yangon. US$303 million is urgently needed to intensify the relief and early recovery efforts as presented in the 10th July Revised Appeal by the UN, while recovery needs are estimated at US$1 billion over the next three years as assessed in the PONJA Report.

On the ground, the TCG reported that all of the disaster-affected communities have received relief assistance at least once. Bishow Parajuli, UN Resident Coordinator and also a member of the TCG said, ‘Now, we have double challenges, one, sustaining the relief and two, advancing the support for early recovery in terms of livelihood and subsequently local level recovery on the ground. There is progress in the ongoing farming recovery activities. However there is still a lot to do and we are concerned that many farmers may be unable to catch up with the fast-ending monsoon paddy crop planting season, with their subsequent future food security concern’.

The TCG has facilitated more than 2,000 visas for humanitarian workers involved in Nargis-related tasks. Humanitarian clusters continue to deliver aid together with the line ministries and local governments.

Along that line, the TCG recently launched a Community-Based Early Recovery Pilot Project at Seik Gyi in Kungyangon Township. This TCG special project will focus on early recovery efforts, such as community infrastructure repairs including monasteries and cleaning of community dug wells; and livelihood stimulation support such as planting of betel leaves, building fishing boats and providing fishing nets for the affected communities.

During the first TCG’s visit to the village on Saturday, 26 July 2008, H.E. Bansarn Bunnag, Thailand’s Ambassador to Myanmar and senior ASEAN member of the TCG explained, ‘This project will serve as the model for an integrated relief and early recovery that we could replicate quickly in other places in the affected areas’.

* Note: The TCG is an ASEAN-led mechanism to facilitate trust, confidence and cooperation between Myanmar and the international community in the urgent post-Cyclone Nargis humanitarian relief and recovery work. The TCG started its work on 31 May 2008 and has been meeting at least once a week in a spirit of mutual understanding, trust and cooperation. It has been working closely with the National Disaster Preparedness Central Committee chaired by His Excellency Prime Minister General Thein Sein, Union of Myanmar.

The TCG comprises three members from the Myanmar Government: (Deputy Foreign Minister H.E. U Kyaw Thu who is the Chairman; Acting Director-General, Ministry of Social Welfare and Resettlement U Aung Tun Khaing; and, Deputy Director-General, Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation U Than Aye); three members from ASEAN (Thailand’s Ambassador to Myanmar H.E. Bansarn Bunnag; Dr Puji Pujiono, a senior UNDP officer seconded to the ASEAN Secretariat; and, Dr. Anish Kumar Roy, Director of Bureau for Resources Development of the ASEAN Secretariat alternating with Ms. Adelina Kamal of the ASEAN Secretariat); and three from the UN (UN Humanitarian Coordinator Mr Daniel Baker; UN Resident Coordinator Mr Bishow Parajuli; and, a rotating UN agency representative).

For further information, please contact:

Ms. Adelina Kamal
Head, Coordinating Office for the ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force
Phone No.: +951 544500 ext 417
E-mail: akamal.aseanhtf@gmail.com

Soe Soe, Myanmar: "Life is totally bleak"

"That night I went into labour in a small bamboo, thatched house on the banks of the Pyapon River to deliver my first child. But as the wind roared, my husband and I struggled outside only to see our home destroyed right before our very eyes.

--Read More: here

A plea for forgiveness

The mother was holding her baby tightly under an umbrella, trying her best to guard him from the pouring rain.

I could not see her face in the picture. But as a mother, I could feel her shaking fear, not for herself, but for her baby's safety, as a group of soldiers forced her and other Karen refugees to board a boat back to the war zone in Burma.

As a Buddhist, I know I should not feel enraged. Yet I was doubly enraged at the forced repatriation in Mae Hong Son last week.

It is bad enough to know that Thai troops have no heart for the innocent people who are war victims. But to force them back to face possible violence and death on the holy day of Asarnha Bucha? How could they possibly do this?

The cruelty is eye-opening. When such an important holy day has no power to arouse even a pinch of morality among those who declare themselves as the protectors of Buddhism, and when society at large feels nothing against such inhumanity, we are in a very deep, dark pitch.

But condemnation, however legitimate, only deepens our negativity. To have any hope at all of cleansing our souls and our sins, we must probe the roots of such cruelty.

It helps to go back to the gist of the Buddha's First Sermon on Asarnha Bucha Day. In case we have forgotten, here it is:

Our suffering stems from our likes and dislikes rooted in the false sense of self.

To end this cycle, we need to see that we are mere temporary composites of mind and matter under the natural laws of impermanence and conditionality. To realise this truth, the Buddha advises we follow the Eight-fold Path to see for ourselves the natural laws or dharma, to maintain ethical conduct, and to foster spiritual development.

The path helps us to avoid hurting or exploiting others. When the cessation of anger, greed and delusion can be many lifetimes away, constant contemplation on impermanence can miraculously fill our hearts with calm and loving kindness.

The realities of our daily struggles and politics have made it difficult to follow the path. That is why we celebrate Asarnha Bucha, so we can stop and review ourselves.

Buddhism is an optimistic system. People are not originally bad. Our behaviour is conditioned. We can change when the conditioning changes.

So we must ask why the military and the public believe that forced repatriation is not sinful? Also, why do we believe we are good Buddhists when we treat ethnic peoples like dirt?

Is it because fear has made us heartless? Is it because our traditional concept of sin has become too narrow for the modern age? Or is it because we are the faithful followers of a religion much more powerful than Buddhism - that of racist nationalism?

Is it all of the above?

The forced repatriation in Mae Hong Son last week was not the first, and it won't be the last, which failed to shake our hearts.

The public felt undisturbed when a group of youngsters from the Hmong refugee camp in Phetchabun was repatriated to Laos without their parents. Their camp was burned down after a petition against power and sexual abuse. And when they tried to make their voices heard in Bangkok, they were immediately deported to risk their lives from persecution in Laos.

Similarly, we feel nothing in using immigrant workers as slave labour, or when their families are shattered by separate deportations.

Meanwhile, the deep South has become a war zone because we insist on seeing the ethnic Muslim Malays as outsiders.

If this is not racist nationalism, what is?

As the country is fired up by the Preah Vihear nationalistic frenzy, I wonder how the Karen mothers and their children are doing back in the war zone.

It is still raining hard. Can they find shelter and food? Can they stay safe? Can they forgive us our sins?

Sanitsuda Ekachai is Assistant Editor (Outlook), Bangkok Post.

Email: sanitsudae@bangkokpost.co.th


--Source: Bangkok Post

International community must step up response

Now, more than two months after Cyclone Nargis left a trail of death and destruction in Burma, events and developments elsewhere around the globe have captured many of the region's news headlines. But not being the centre of the media's attention does not mean that the plight of Burma is over. Unfortunately, that is far from being the case.

--Read More: here

Myanmar: Cyclone Nargis Revised Emergency Appeal No. MDRMM002

Relief Web

GLIDE no TC-2008-000057-MMR

This Revised Emergency Appeal seeks CHF 73,987,907 (USD 72,537,164 or EUR 45,955,222) in cash, kind or services to support the Myanmar Red Cross Society to assist 500,000 beneficiaries (100,000 households) for 36 months.

This operation will be completed by May 2011; a Final Report will be made available by August 2011 (three months after the end of the operation).

Appeal history:

- 16 May 2008: An Emergency Appeal was launched for CHF 52,857,809 (USD 50.8 million or EUR 32.7 million) to assist 100,000 households for 36 months.

- 6 May 2008: A preliminary Emergency Appeal was launched for CHF 6,290,909 (USD 5.9 million or EUR 3.86 million) to assist 30,000 households for six months.

- 5 May 2008: CHF 200,000 (USD 190,000 or EUR 123,000) was allocated from the International Federation’s Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF).

This Revised Emergency Appeal reflects the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ continued commitment towards assisting the Myanmar Red Cross Society (MRCS) in meeting the huge needs of communities affected by Cyclone Nargis. This appeal builds on the emergency appeal launched on 16 May, and the preliminary emergency appeal of 6 May. It provides an update on the progress and challenges of the relief and recovery operation (based on available information), and in particular, outlines the way forward for priority sectors.

Progress of relief and recovery operation

Achievements

Since the cyclone, MRCS staff and volunteers, with the support of the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, have worked tirelessly to provide assistance to those affected by the disaster. To date, over 500,000 beneficiaries have been reached with emergency relief of water, food and relief items. About 80 per cent of the beneficiaries are in the Ayeyarwady Delta, and between 10,000 and 15,000 people are being reached every day. Up to 2 July, 55 Red Cross Red Crescent chartered relief flights, 97 regular commercial flights and two courier flights, have landed in Yangon, carrying a total of 1,570 tonnes of relief items. Transportation by sea has also begun, with about 100 tonnes of relief items received so far. It is estimated that around 10,000 MRCS volunteers are active in the relief efforts at any one time. They have been providing assistance to people throughout the affected regions. The MRCS also continues to scale up its first aid and community health efforts

Present situation

Over the last few weeks, the operation continued to face various challenges. Guiding principles on carrying out aid and assistance activities were issued for the international humanitarian community, by the Myanmar government on 10 June. This caused some confusion among the international organizations and the government authorities, as to how they should be implemented and created delays in the processing of visas and travel permission. However, this has now been largely clarified and delays experienced in receiving permission to travel to the delta appear to have eased. There is also some hope that information, analysis and assessments will be improved. As the humanitarian operation continues to be allowed to develop, there is evidence of improved operational infrastructure and it is clear that the delivery of muchneeded support to the beneficiaries is more effective and comprehensive.

It has been widely reported that the magnitude of destruction of Cyclone Nargis on Myanmar and its people is unprecedented. MRCS had no previous experience in responding to a natural disaster of these proportions. This situation understandably created significant constraints which continue to be identified and tackled, with the support of the International Federation and other partners of the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement.

The unpredictable and complex nature of the operational context continues to have an undeniable impact on the response. It is requested that if particular operational constraints continue to affect the operation, partners agree that the resources pledged can be re-negotiated for use in other related programming.

Despite all of these constraints, the MRCS and its volunteers in particular, with assistance from the Movement, have been recognized for the immediate response on the ground from day one. The MRCS, in its auxiliary role to the Myanmar government, is widely recognized as one of the leaders in the national response to the disaster.

Moving forward

With the revision of this three-year plan, the operation will continue to concentrate on immediate needs until they are met. The plan also provides for the development and implementation of programmes designed to address medium to long-term needs in the following sectors: relief, shelter, health and care; water, sanitation and hygiene; food security and livelihoods; and the cross-cutting measures of disaster preparedness and risk reduction.

Lessons from this operation have highlighted the importance of and the need to support local communities with the capacity to respond to and mitigate the effects of natural disasters. In order to achieve this within an environment of poor infrastructure which includes transportation and communication difficulties, an integrated or multi-sectoral approach is imperative.

It is crucial to recovery that communities themselves take an active part in identifying, preparing for and working towards reducing the risks and vulnerabilities that they face. This is central to the success of the

operation and incorporates the way much of the affected population begins recovery and responds to the effects of floods and other natural occurrences.

How we work

All International Federation assistance seeks to adhere to the Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Disaster Relief and is committed to the Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response (Sphere) in delivering assistance to the most vulnerable.

The International Federation’s activities are aligned with its Global Agenda, which sets out four broad goals to meet the Federation's mission to "improve the lives of vulnerable people by mobilizing the power of humanity".

Global Agenda Goals:

- Reduce the numbers of deaths, injuries and impact from disasters.

- Reduce the number of deaths, illnesses and impact from diseases and public health emergencies.

- Increase local community, civil society and Red Cross Red Crescent capacity to address the most urgent situations of vulnerability.

- Reduce intolerance, discrimination and social exclusion and promote respect for diversity and human dignity.

Contact information

For further information specifically related to this operation please contact:

Federation zone office in Kuala Lumpur:

Jagan Chapagain, deputy head of zone office, phone: +6012 215 3765, email: jagan.chapagain@ifrc.org

Amy Gaver, head of disaster management unit, phone: +6012 220 1174, email: amy.gaver@ifrc.org

For pledges of funding:

Penny Elghady, resource mobilization and PMER coordinator, phone: +6012 230 8634, email: penny.elghady@ifrc.org

For mobilization of relief items:

Jeremy Francis, regional logistics coordinator, phone: +6012 298 9752, fax: +603 2168 8573, email: jeremy.francis@ifrc.org

For media/communications:

Jason Smith, communications manager, phone: +6012 387 0829, email: jason.smith@ifrc.org

Federation secretariat in Geneva:

Christine South, operations coordinator Asia Pacific, phone: +41 22 730 4529; mobile: +41 79 308 9824; email: christine.south@ifrc.org

--Source: here

Relief Rice Piles Up in Min Bya

Min Bya: People from Min Bya Township donated a large amount of rice as relief aid to Cyclone Nargis victims soon after the storm had struck lower Burma, but the authorities in Min Bya have yet to send the rice to the stricken Irrawaddy Division, reports a teacher from Min Bya.

The teacher said, "I do not know why the authority piled up the rice in the store and is not sending it to Irrawaddy, but the rice will be ruined in the future if it is not sent to Nargis victims."

The rice was donated to Nargis victims by people throughout Min Bya Township and there are currently over 200 sacks of rice being kept in storage.

"I am really surprised about the authorities' manners and why they have not sent our donated rice to the victims from Irrawaddy on time, and we do not know the reason behind the pile-up of rice in the store," the teacher said.

Zaw Myin Thein, Chairman of Min Bya Township, told residents that he wants to send the rice to Irrawaddy Division but there are no funds for transporting the aid.

It has also been reported that the authorities are likely to send cash to the victims in Irrawaddy after selling the donated rice to traders in the markets of Min Bya. #

--Source: Narinjara News

Myanmar: 1st press release of Tripartite Core Group

1 The Tripartite Core Group (TCG) was formed after the 19 May 2008 Special Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministerial Meeting in Singapore, and the 25 May 2008 ASEAN-United Nations International Pledging Conference in Yangon, Union of Myanmar. The aim of the TCG is to act as an ASEAN-led mechanism to facilitate trust, confidence and cooperation between Myanmar and the international community in the urgent humanitarian relief and recovery work after Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar (2 to 3 May 2008).

--Read More: here

Doubting donors withhold Burma aid

Reverting to their tried and tested diplomatic strategy of making concessions and then not following through on those commitments, Burma's ruling junta appears to be weathering yet another storm of international criticism over its controversial handling of the Cyclone Nargis disaster.

--Read More: here

Will corruption hurt relief effort?

"The misuse of aid remains a concern," Amnesty International's Southeast Asia researcher, Benjamin Zawacki told me. "Indeed, the problem with much aid distribution to date is not so much that it has fallen into the 'wrong hands', but that it has not reached the right ones. There are still people who have not received aid, and much of it remains simply unaccounted for."

--Read More: here

A firsthand look at Burma aid relief frustrations

Nearly two months after Cyclone Nargis slammed into Burma's Irrawaddy Delta, humanitarian relief groups are still struggling to get government permission to deliver life-saving aid to 2 million survivors, said Richard Jacquot, a San Francisco resident and emergency program manager for Mercy Corps.

In a conversation with the San Francisco Chronicle, Jacquot, who returned early this week from a month in Burma, detailed the enormous frustrations and the modest triumphs of helping cyclone victims recover under the watchful eye of an authoritarian regime.

--Read More: here

Who was there to help?

In a squalid, bare room dozens of survivors from Cyclone Nargis sat and laid upon the concrete and thin mats of a monastery in Burma's afflicted Rangoon Division – the complex's hti standing ominously and noticeably askew. Just shy of a week after the devastating storm, the monastery and its remaining monks were supplying what relief they could. And what relief the monastery was in a position to supply, was not nearly adequate.

This is a scene that played itself out seemingly ad infinitum throughout Rangoon and Irrawaddy Divisions in the immediate wake of the storm, which hit Burma's delta region with all its force on May 2nd.

--Read More: here

Dodging the Junta

Though the junta has attempted to commandeer every level of the relief effort--backed by its legions of foot soldiers in the army and police--some local groups have found detours around the blockades, helped by ground-level officials willing to look the other way. On a Wednesday afternoon last month, a group of volunteers visited a makeshift shelter in Shwebaukan, an area in the outlying districts of Rangoon. Inside a government school--the only concrete building in the neighborhood--500 homeless cyclone victims were huddled, "being threatened by the local army guy [who was saying] that they could not stay there for long," according to a Western expatriate who accompanied the group. The military man turned out to be a member of Suan Aa Shin, the local "brute force" contingent. Two days later, the victims were evicted from the school, left to patch together lean-to shacks from the wreckage of ruined huts.

--Read More: here

Burma Gives 'Cronies' Slice of Storm Relief

On Magazine's List of Junta's Chosen Tycoons Are Some Facing U.S. Sanctions

Just seven days after Cyclone Nargis devastated Burma last month, the ruling military junta parceled out key sections of the affected Irrawaddy Delta to favored tycoons and companies, including several facing sanctions from the U.S. Treasury, according to a Burmese magazine with close ties to the government.

--Read More: here

In Myanmar, a Times reporter worked in secret to cover the story

From the far side of a murky brown river, the only moving thing visible on the ravaged landscape was a tattered maroon cloth, fluttering listlessly atop a tree stripped of its branches.

Two Buddhist monks had torn it from the only material they had, one of their own coarse robes. Its message was just as plain: "Alive! Please help."

--Read More: here

Myanmar villagers scavenge for rotten rice

In Yawar Thar Yar, which has received no aid shipments since the cyclone hit, residents are reduced to hunting bits of food in mud littered with corpses.

YAWAR THAR YAR, MYANMAR -- The search for food begins just after dawn.

Each day, men, women and children fan out into paddies flooded by seawater, littered with corpses. Like prospectors working claims, they scoop up the muck in their bare hands and finger through it for grains of unmilled rice swept away by the cyclone.

When their luck is good, they discover red chile peppers or small onions in mud reeking of the dead. Then, they can have condiments with their next meal of rotten rice and coconut meat.

For more than three weeks now, the 149 survivors of Tropical Cyclone Nargis in this village have been living like stranded scavengers among the ruins of their own homes and the decomposing remains of their relatives. Ninety-one of them died in the storm.

Myanmar's military government, which has a relief hub just 10 miles north in the town of Bogalay, has not delivered aid to scores of remote villages like this across some of the most devastated areas of the Irrawaddy River delta. For now, the villagers' only hope is goods that arrive from time to time in an underground supply chain operated by Buddhist monks in Bogalay, who are defying the ban on private relief operations in the delta.

Monks say the government has loaded some of the villagers into trucks and shipped them off to work on forced labor projects.

Those who remain, once proudly self-sufficient rice farmers, have become desperate hunter-gatherers, scrounging in the dirt and debris.

"Now the only job for everyone in the village is searching for something to eat," said Ko Sein Lwin, 45, who before the cyclone hit was able to keep three daughters in a university, at $500 each per year.

"We're starting out life again, not from the first step, but from zero," he added grimly. "It's like going back to the Stone Age."

The death toll has continued to rise, to an official count of about 78,000, as this Southeast Asian nation struggles with the effects of the May 2-3 storm. An additional 56,000 people are missing.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Senior Gen. Than Shwe had assured him Friday that relief workers from any country would be welcome. But the regime has made no announcement itself.

It has said it needs $11 billion for reconstruction. But about 50 donor nations, including the United States, have made firm commitments for only $100 million, in part because of widespread distrust of the generals.

As the government tried to coax more aid from donors Sunday at a conference in Yangon, the country's principal city, Buddhist monks in Bogalay were secretly organizing six boats to carry out their next unauthorized relief mission.

After evicting thousands of people from Bogalay's relief camps, the government is trying to cut off the monks' aid to delta villages, said a local abbot, who is a leader of the underground effort.

He spoke on condition he not be named, fearing military reprisals against him and the relief operation, which thousands of survivors in remote villagers are depending on for support.

When they can, the monks gather donations secretly because authorities insist that all aid must be channeled through the military. On May 19, when private donors tried to deliver a few truckloads of supplies to the abbot's monastery, security forces attempted to turn them back.

"All the soldiers and police locked arms and blocked the street in front of our monastery," he said, as a military helicopter hovered before landing across the river. "The driver panicked, so I pulled him out and drove myself, shouting through a loudspeaker, 'Get out of the way or I'll hit you with the truck!' "

The abbot showed video, which he said a colleague shot with a camera hidden under his maroon robes, to support claims that the military is evicting cyclone survivors from private relief camps.

In one video, a soldier slaps an elderly woman in the face with a paper listing the names of the expelled. She was pleading for permission to stay in a Hindu temple over the weekend, the monk said. It was the last of several private relief camps operating before authorities closed it, he said.

"Most of these refugees are not educated," said the abbot, trying to explain the soldiers' disdain for the villagers. "They don't even know how to sign their names. They just use fingerprints. So the military thinks they're not human."

The evictions have resulted in a number of deaths, the abbot said. Dozens of storm survivors died May 18 when three riverboats capsized in a storm as they were heading back to villages flattened by the cyclone, he said.

Military officers told those returning to their destroyed villages to sign forms that said they were doing so willingly, the abbot said.

Soldiers herded thousands more onto trucks to be taken north to Mo Oo Pin, where they are being forced to make jute and do road work for less than $1 a day, the abbot said.

He said some of the laborers had made their way back into Bogalay under cover of darkness to ask the monks for food.

In another video, people who look scared and speechless, some crying, are loaded onto a large military truck in front of a monastery as an army officer with stars on his epaulets supervises. Two other soldiers stand nearby, apparently compiling lists of the storm survivors' names.

The U.N., the U.S. State Department and human rights groups have long accused the military regime that rules Myanmar, also called Burma, of using forced labor for road building and other projects. Activists who speak out against forced labor are routinely jailed.

The abbot said 36 monks are running the underground relief effort, along with 10 volunteer doctors and 20 village navigators who help them maneuver through the delta's network of rivers and canals to elude patrol boats and reach isolated villages.

"We're preparing for a confrontation," the monk said. "If they try to close us down, we're prepared to fight."

Echoing accusations made in other parts of the disaster zone in recent days, the monk said local authorities were providing barely enough basic food for storm victims to survive, while hoarding the rest for profit.

"They are selling the most valuable things to businessmen in Chinatown," he charged.

Sein Lwin's village is half an hour's walk from the closest river, so the monks' boats, and other unauthorized relief operations, don't reach it.

When the boats make their quick stops with aid at a nearby village, Sein Lwin and his neighbors must ask for a share of the fresh supplies. They make do with what other destitute survivors are willing to give up, usually just 2 cups of rice per person each day.

Cash savings disappeared on the cyclone-driven surge of waves at least 8 feet high that raced through the village. Gaping holes in Sein Lwin's roof are patched up with pieces of tarp that he dragged from the river as they floated past after the storm.

The cyclone smashed a brick and cinder-block primary school to rubble. All of the books are gone, and no one has heard from the teachers, who live in Bogalay and were scheduled to start classes again on June 1 for 80 students.

Many of Sein Lwin's neighbors have rashes from washing in filthy water. Eight adults in the next village have diarrhea.

So far, they're coping with antibiotics, but villagers said they fear health problems will get worse the longer they live in such primitive conditions.

When a visitor asked why the regime would refuse to help so many people like him, Sein Lwin stared blankly ahead. More than 20 villagers in the room with him sat in uncomfortable silence. They were afraid to speak their minds.

--Read More: here

General Assembly President calls for new culture of international relations, with principle of human security at its core, during day-long debate

‘It is my personal view that we need a new culture of international relations –- with the precept of human security at its core,’ declared President Kerim, adding that such a culture, though intrinsically embedded in the ideals of the United Nations, had never truly been enacted in practice. Yet, with our insecurities becoming more interconnected by the day, there was an urgent need to bring people, policies and institutions together in a far more effective and less fragmented way.

--Read More: here