Burma Cyclone

In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, former U.S. secretary of state, Madelaine K. Albright offered three reasons why the world didn’t intervene more forcefully in Myanmar.

The introductory excerpt to the piece:

“THE Burmese government’s criminally neglectful response to last month’s cyclone, and the world’s response to that response, illustrate three grim realities today: totalitarian governments are alive and well; their neighbors are reluctant to pressure them to change; and the notion of national sovereignty as sacred is gaining ground, helped in no small part by the disastrous results of the American invasion of Iraq. “

Read the full op-ed here.

–Divya

This week’s New York Time’s Magazine carries an article by writer and political analyst, David Rieff, entitled ” Humanitarian Vanities.” The question he poses is a simple one - What does the urge to intervene amount to?

One of his main points seems to be that there is a “law of unintended consequences” operating when a country or set of countries decide to intervene in another on humanitarian grounds. Regime change is never just that - it comes with baggage and unforseen challenges that the intervening country/countries have historically seemed ill equipped to handle. Case in point - Iraq.

Read the full article here.

–Divya

On the second anniversary of the Tsunami, Bill Clinton wrote a piece which appeared in the Washington Post outlining four key lessons of the Tsunami reconstruction effort.Some of these are harder to follow than others, given the access constraints in the Burma context…

• First, we must get better at managing risk. Patterns of climate change mean that there will be more natural disasters in the future, not less…However, funding for prevention is much harder to come by than funding for relief after a disaster.
• Second, we should pursue recovery practices that promote equity and help break patterns of underdevelopment.
• Third, we must recognize that peace is critical to any recovery process.
• Finally, we must do more to harness the talents of local entrepreneurs and established businesses, domestic and foreign, in relaunching economies.

Read the full article here.

–Divya

In a recent column in the Huffington Post, Simon Jenkins, former editor of “The Times,” asks where the saber-rattlers of the West are “as Burma’s dying cry out to be saved.”

Excerpt:

I have opposed many of the macho military interventions conducted by the west over the past decade. Their justifications have been obscure, their motives mixed and their morality situational, especially those aimed at “regime change”. Those in Afghanistan and Iraq had the additional defect of built-in failure.

On the other hand the west did intervene to try to stop humanitarian catastrophes in Bosnia from 1992, Somalia in 1993, Kosovo in 1998 and Sierra Leone in 2000. The failure to intervene in Rwanda in 1994 and more recently in Sudan’s Darfur province was generally attributed not to timidity but to the logistical difficulty of deploying power in the African interior.>>

I disagree with that last sentence, but an interesting discussion nonetheless.

U.S. Campaign for Burma also compared Burma and Rwanda, calling on the U.S., U.K and France to send in aid without the junta’s permission and despite China’s block on a Security Council resolution to authorize such a move.

–Karen

In June 2007, the Economist came out with a great article titled, ‘Flood, famines and mobile phones.” It’s about how technology is transforming humanitarian relief operations. Given how angry the Gods have been with our planet off late, its highly relevant and worth reading in its entirety.

It also mentions an excellent resource on humanitarian disasters and relief work across the globe – ReliefWeb. According to the Economist article, the site got 3 million hits the day after the Tsunami struck.

– Divya

As NGOs are having trouble getting into Myanmar, a group of Burmese monks in New York has raised more than $2 million, which will be sent directly to monasteries in disaster-stricken areas.

Avaaz.org is raising money for them (at the moment: $ 1,734,275). Visit their Web site to find out more about their support of the monks.

A video I shot over the weekend can be found here.

- Lam

In an editorial in TheStar, the online version of Canada’s leading newspaper, The Toronto Star, columnist Thomas Walkom provides a view that for a dictatorship, the Burmese military junta is not acting unreasonably.

In the editorial titled “Burma’s leaders are not irrational,” Walkon cites an example from Saddam’s Iraq to explain the junta’s stance of not taking up offers by the U.S., Canada and France to offer their troops to deliver aid.

“It is not even being unusually paranoid in its suspicion of the UN. The world used to belittle Saddam Hussein’s claim that some UN weapons inspectors sent into Iraq after the first Gulf War worked for the CIA. But, as former American weapons inspector Scott Ritter revealed in his book, Iraq Confidential, Saddam was correct.”

Walkon offers a fresh, alternate perspective on the cyclone response and concludes that factoring in the constraints, foreign governments should keep an eye on the ball i.e. - preventing further casualties and getting aid and relief to the maximum number of people, as fast as possible.

Read the full editorial here.

–Divya

American aid worker Nicki Bennett just posted from Bangladesh on Nick Kristof’s On the Ground blog on nytimes.com. She’s been doing reconstruction work in the aftermath of Cyclone Sidr, which ripped through Bangladesh six months ago.

Here’s an excerpt:

<<While an earthquake measuring 6 or 7 on the Richter scale might kill tens of thousands of people in places like Kashmir (2005) or Iran (2003), a quake of the same magnitude in a place like Japan or California leads to far fewer deaths and less damage.

What’s the difference? Poverty, exclusion, inequality and bad policies.>>

She goes on to make the important point that due to climate change, floods and natural disasters of this magnitude seem likely to increase in frequency. With that in mind, Robert Kaplan had an interesting piece in the Jan/Feb ‘08 Atlantic Monthly, entitled “Waterworld” about how Bangladesh is dealing with climate change.

– Karen

(via Sree Sreenivasan, Dean of Students, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism)

The Carnegie Council for International Intervention has compiled a useful synopsis of some key lessons on humanitarian intervention in the wake of the Burma cyclone disaster. It draws comparisons to the Tsunami response and also one clear distinction:

” … in the case of the tsunami, the affected governments not only welcomed international humanitarian relief, they literally pleaded for it. Not so in Myanmar. What began as a purely natural disaster has quickly become exacerbated by the lack of cooperation–even the obstruction–of the country’s ruling Junta.”

The news digest goes on to pose a critical question: “Does the sovereignty of the state trump the responsibility of the international community to take action when the peoples of a nation are at risk?”

The think tank says it has been trying to answer the complex question by engaging some of ‘the brightest minds and most profound thinkers on this topic.’ The result is a comprehensive sampling of works from their journal - Ethics and International Affairs, that explore the boundaries (and beyond) of humanitarian intervention from a variety of perspectives.

See a list of work samples below:

———————-
THEORY
———————-

Toward a Realist Ethics of Intervention
http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/19_2/special_issue/5194.html
Michael Wesley, Vol. 19.2, Summer 2005 [Excerpt]
Wesley explores the possibilities for developing a realist-informed
normative framework for humanitarian intervention in the context of the
post–September 11 international concern with transnational threats.

The Moral Basis of Humanitarian Intervention [Abstract]
http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/16_1/articles/278.html
Terry Nardin, Vol. 16.1, Spring 2002
Nardin examines the moral principles underlying the idea of humanitarian
intervention from the perspective of international law and from that of the
natural law tradition.

Humanitarian Intervention: An Overview of the Ethical Issues [Excerpt]
http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/12/articles/001.html
Michael J. Smith, Vol. 12, 1998
This essay analyzes the arguments justifying or opposing the notion of
humanitarian intervention from realist and liberal perspectives and
considers the difficulties of undertaking such interventions effectively
and consistently.

Intervention: From Theories to Cases [Full Text]
http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/09/articles/403.html
J. Bryan Hehir, Vol. 9, 1995
This piece examines the ethics of intervention in light of recent policy
and academic debates on the subject. It proceeds from an examination of the
reasons for intervention today to an assessment of the moral and legal
traditions governing intervention and also provides a review of selected
cases of intervention recently confronting U.S. foreign policy.

———————-
LEARNING FROM THE PAST
———————-

Legitimizing the Use of Force in Kosovo [Full Text]
http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/15_1/review_essay/legitimizing_use_force_Kosovo
Julie Mertus, Vol 15. 1, Spring 2001
Kosovo captured the attention of policy makers, ethicists, journalists,
peace and human rights activists, military analysts, and international
relations scholars. Something new happened there. This review covers books
by Noam Chomsky, Howard Clark, Michael Ignatieff, and others.

Humanitarian Intervention: Which Way Forward? [Abstract]
http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/14/special_section/473.html
Richard Caplan, Vol. 14, 2000
NATO’s member states put aside their concerns for national sovereignty in
favor of humanitarian considerations, acting without UN authorization.
European states are rethinking historic prohibitions against humanitarian
intervention after Kosovo.

Special Section: The Politics of Rescue [Abstracts]
http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/11/politics_of_rescue/index.html
Lead authors Amir Pasic and Thomas G. Weiss, “Yugoslavia’s Wars and the
Humanitarian Impulse”, plus commentaries by Andrew S. Natsios, Morton
Winston, Alain Destexhe, and David R. Mapel, Vol. 11, 1997

———————-
THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT
———————-

Whither the Responsibility to Protect? Humanitarian Intervention and the
2005 World Summit [Abstract]
http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/20_2/articles/5384.html
Alex J. Bellamy, Vol. 20.2, Summer 2006
This article examines how consensus was reached on the responsibility to
protect, given continuing hostility to humanitarian intervention expressed
by many (if not most) of the world’s states and whether the consensus
will contribute to avoiding future Kosovos and Rwandas.

Responsibility to Protect or Trojan Horse? The Crisis in Darfur and
Humanitarian Intervention after Iraq
http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/19_2/special_issue/5193.html
Alex J. Bellamy, Vol. 19.2, Summer 2005 [Excerpt]
What does the world’s engagement with the unfolding crisis in Darfur tell
us about the impact of the Iraq war on the norm of humanitarian
intervention? Is a global consensus about a “responsibility to protect”
more or less likely? There are at least three potential answers to these
questions.

Redefining Sovereignty and Intervention [Full Text]
http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/17_1/review_essays/4446.html
Joelle Tanguy, Vol. 17.1, Spring 2003
The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty’s effort
to revisit intervention and the lessons of the 1990s have resulted in a
conception of intervention as a “responsibility to protect.” But its effort
to ensure that past failures are not repeated may go unfulfilled. (Review
Essay)

– Divya