Cyclone Giri - Two Years On - Burma Action Ireland

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Cyclone Giri: Two Years On The SPDC only reversed its policies under sustained international pressure, e.g. by the UN, China, ASEAN, Japan, and the West after Nargis. After Giri there was no such pressure, leading to prolonged unnecessary suffering – still occuring today; Monitoring, evaluation and oversight mechanisms by donors was rather limited; Livelihood recovery should be identified and initiated as soon as possible; The need for a broader protection cluster to address protection gaps as protection is a challenge due to the political sensitivity associated with human rights; A major obstacle to reporting fraud or relief misuse is that Burmese staff are reluctant to report bad news to donors; The Post-Nargis Recovery and Preparedness Plan (PONREPP) and other reports attribute a surprisingly positive role to the SPDC and its affiliates in the relief and recovery despite the junta’s failure to adequately support relief and recovery by contributing only very little despite huge foreign currency reserves: 141 no total amount SPDC/NDPCC earmarked and/or indicators of its impact on the survivors has been made public; The recovery would have been further if there had been no SPDC interference; 142 Donors committed funds for the relief stage, but insufficient funds for the recovery stage; 2 years on, the hardest hit townships were still in an emergency state; 143 and 3 years after Nargis (2011): o “Shelter was never given the priority it deserved from donors, say aid workers.” 144 some 375,000 people still needed housing (UN HABITAT). at least 62% of households live in non-disaster resistant shelters (UNISDR) o “The response of the international community was definitely not commensurate with the scale of the need.” 145 Just four agencies are still working on shelter. Shelter recovery was the least funded sector of all. As we will show in the next sections, barely two years later Giri would prove that many of these lessons were not learned. Furthermore, the Nargis window of opportunity did not end well (see Box 4.4) and did not help the Giri protection and assistance operation, especially in view of the upcoming election. Box 4.4: Burma Dashes ASEAN and UN Hopes of Disaster Cooperation “The [Tripartite Core Group (TCG): ASEAN, the UN and the government] has been a success in dealing with the delivery of assistance to the victims of Cyclone Nargis,’ [ASEAN Secretary General] Surin Pitsuwan told The Irrawaddy. The initial success raised hopes in both the UN and the region that it might be a model for other devastating development problems in the country and might even have a role to play in the government’s national reconciliation process. ‘Six months into the engagement that Asean had with Myanmar [Burma] on the recovery process, there was a real momentum, that all involved were confident it could open up a larger space for humanitarian work to be expanded to involve health, poverty eradication, primary education, in other parts of the country’ he said.[…] But this all came to nothing, as the government proved reluctant to have international aid workers have unhindered access to other parts of the country. In July, the Burmese government announced the complete end to TCG operations, raising fears in the development community in Burma that the old habits of the past will resume.[…] At the root of the problem is the Burmese regime’s own strategic concerns, which Asean is well aware of. ‘After a year of trying, we got a clear message that the Government would rather concentrate on preparing for the elections that had been promised for 2010, rather than having to deal with foreign aid workers flowing into the countryside,’ Surin Pitsuwan said. In fact the Burmese government was sending out strong signals long before that left few in any doubt that the top brass were embarrassed by the TCG operation, as in affect it gave the impression the government could not deal with the situation. In February 2009, the Burmese chairman of the TCG and then Deputy Foreign Minister, Kyaw Thu, was kicked upstairs and effectively released of his responsibilities in the TCG [...]. Noeleen Heyzer [ESCAP head] told 23
Arakan Human Rights and Development Organisation delegates at a forum in Bangkok to review the lessons learned from post-Nargis operations. Lessons were learned though, Heyzer insisted. The key ones were the need for leadership, partnership and trust, she explained. In particular, she stressed the need to work with civil society and the people in the affected communities. Ironically, as the only representative of local Burmese NGOs at the conference, Soe Tin was barred from speaking. ‘We should have been heard, we are on the ground, we are dealing with the people on a daily basis, we have the best insight into the real problems,’ he told The Irrawaddy. What is needed next time is a swifter response, Heyzer said. And she appealed to the international community not to just provide funds for the relief stage, but to commit to the early recovery phase equally generously. ‘What a white-wash,’ a European diplomat who attended the meeting told The Irrawaddy, adding, ‘It’s all about back slapping and image. ‘A realistic assessment of what was spent, what impact it has had, and what could have made the process more effective is still needed,’ he said. (Source: “Burma Dashes Asean and UN Hopes of Disaster Cooperation”, The Irrawaddy, 1 September 2010) 146 Although there has been a marginal improvement in natural disaster aversions since Nargis, sadly, Giri shows that it was not enough. Mismanagement of natural disasters is still occurring in inexcusable ways. In Arakan State no comprehensive DRR has been implemented in the last decade, exposing the population time and again to the lethal forces of nature, as we will now hear. SECTION 5: VOICES FROM ARAKAN STATE - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION This and the next section present the major findings of the fieldwork, where appropriate excerpts of interviews (contained in Annex I) will illustrate the points made. This section starts with an assessment of the death toll as well as the damage caused by the cyclone as recorded by independent local sources and compared to the official figures. A major raison d’être of this report is to question the misinformation given by official sources and INGOs under government control as our fieldwork and anecdotal evidence from numerous sources strongly suggest much higher figures. We also wish to highlight the need for future planning for natural disasters as well as assist those whose lives have been affected by cyclones Nargis and Giri. Due to space constraints it was unfeasible to include all of the figures and descriptions of the loss in human lives and physical damage in every village, which have been recorded by our fieldworkers. However, we will include a sample of all the figures available for one township and for one village to demonstrate the nature of the raw data collected. The long awaited general election of 7 November 2010 came shortly after Cyclone Giri, however, the authorities refused to postpone the election in the worst hit areas. We will attempt to answer the questions whether the authorities used the relief to influence the election results in the affected areas and whether there was interference by the authorities of the relief effort including misappropriation of relief goods. We conclude this section with a discussion to establish whether both the media and the democratic opposition parties inside as well as outside Burma largely ignored Cyclone Giri and its devastating consequences. 5.1 Impact of Cyclone Giri “The cyclone caused slight loss and damage and a few casualties.” The New Light of Myanmar, 25 October 2010 147 The state run media in Burma have for decades been a mouthpiece of the generals ruling the country. Table 5.1 below compares the official death toll 148 and the numbers provided by local relief workers, survivors and reported in non-state media. 149 Because there is a large discrepancy between the numbers reported by the different sources, there exists an unclear picture of Giri’s true impact that is difficult to resolve in favour of official accounts, given the regime’s historical record. 24
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Page 7 and 8: TABLE OF CONTENTS Arakan Human Righ
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Cyclone Giri - Two Years On - Burma Action Ireland

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