By Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
Monday, March 8, 2010

ASEAN will accelerate aid delivery to Myanmar's Cyclone-Nargis affected population and hand over the coordination structure for post-Nargis recovery efforts to the Government of Myanmar as it prepares to complete its humanitarian operations in the country in July 2010. The decision was made at the 7th Meeting of the ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force (AHTF) held in Ha Noi today.

In his opening statement, Secretary-General of ASEAN and Chairman of the AHTF, Dr Surin Pitsuwan, said, "While the AHTF will end its operations in Myanmar in July 2010, the recovery process for many survivors of Cyclone Nargis will take many years. The newly-launched Periodic Review III observes that many gaps are still not met, in sectors such as shelter, livelihoods, and water and sanitation. It is, therefore, critical that ASEAN accelerates the delivery of assistance to quickly address the pressing needs of the people."

"At the same time, we must prepare to transfer the coordinating role of assistance to the relevant ministries of Myanmar to ensure sustainability of recovery as AHTF will end in July 2010," he added.

In November 2009, ASEAN, together with the humanitarian community, appealed for additional USD 103 million to address the pressing needs faced by Cyclone Nargis survivors. As of 28 February 2010, the total pledges had increased to USD 91.3 million, and a total of USD 38.57 million had been received by either trust fund or implementing partners.

Included in the transfer of coordination function are post-Nargis data on funding, expenditure, status of programme activities, and monitoring tools such as the Periodic Review and Social Impacts Monitoring. At the same time, ASEAN will continue supporting Myanmar to implement the Myanmar Action Plan for Disaster Risk Reduction (MAPDRR).

Dr Surin also stressed the need to document the lessons learnt from its humanitarian operation in Myanmar and to continue its coordination role between now and July 2010 to alleviate the suffering of Nargis-affected communities and ensure a smooth handing over to Myanmar.

"ASEAN's post-Nargis experience can be replicated elsewhere in the ASEAN region and be disseminated to strengthen the implementation of ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER) and the establishment of the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Centre)," he further said.

The ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force for the Victims of Cyclone Nargis was established by the ASEAN Foreign Ministers of ASEAN on 19 May 2008. The Task Force consists of senior-level representatives from the ten ASEAN countries. Under this ASEAN-led mechanism, a Yangon-based Tripartite Core Group comprising representatives from the Government of Myanmar, ASEAN and the United Nations was set up on 31 May 2008. The Task Force also has an Advisory Group consisting of representatives from neighbouring countries to Myanmar, the United Nations, the international community, Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the INGOs, World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

The Tripartite Core Group (TCG) was officially established on 31 May 2008. It comprises high-level representatives from the United Nations, Government of the Union of Myanmar and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

By DONALD M. SEEKINS/ The Irrawaddy
January 22, 2010

Following the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that devastated the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas on Jan. 12, US televangelist Pat Robertson claimed that the disaster “may be a blessing in disguise” ...the result of a curse inflicted upon the Haitian people for making a pact with Satan: selling their souls to the devil in order to drive the French colonialists off the island in the late eighteenth century.

Understandably, his statement aroused indignation both in Haiti and around the world; Christopher Hitchens wrote in the online magazine Slate that the Christian fundamentalist Robertson is an “evil moron” and that “a [geologic] fault is not a sin: it’s idiotic to blame anything other than geology for the Haitian earthquake.”

However, as the size of the disaster has become apparent (estimates of the dead have reached 200,000, with over one million homeless) and efforts to bring relief to the survivors have proven to be frustratingly slow, it has also become clear that the magnitude of the tragedy in Haiti is as much man-made as natural, that the deaths from the tremor in large measure were a consequence of decades of corruption, misrule, shoddy construction and overpopulation (Port-au-Prince, originally a city of less than 200,000 people, now has ten times as many, most of them jammed into crowded shantytowns such as the crime-ridden Cité Soliel).

At least the Haitian government has not followed the example of Burma’s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in 2008 by trying to restrict and control relief provided by foreign countries and international aid agencies.

Living in earthquake-prone Japan, I have learned not to take the solidity of the earth beneath my feet for granted (tremors – thankfully small so far – are a frequent occurrence here). On visits to Rangoon, I have sometimes wondered what would happen if Burma’s largest city, with a population of nearly six million, experienced a major earthquake.

Earthquakes are unpredictable, and defy scientific forecasting. Burma is located in a seismically active region: earthquakes shattered Pegu’s Shwemawdaw Pagoda, Burma’s tallest, in 1917 and 1930, the last event killing hundreds of people; pagodas and temples in Pagan were seriously damaged by an earthquake in 1975. Although the epicenter of the December 2004 magnitude 9.0 earthquake which caused tsunamis killing 240,000 people in countries along the Indian Ocean was located offshore, Burma itself suffered comparatively few fatalities. Over the centuries, Rangoon’s revered Shwedagon Pagoda has often been damaged by tremors, which sometimes caused the hti, the richly decorated finial, to fall from its summit.

Wherever one goes in Burma’s former capital, one encounters potential tragedies. Many people claim that the buildings erected by the British colonialists in the central business district during the 19th and early 20th centuries are studier than newer construction, but with a few exceptions they have been poorly maintained.

According to a Western diplomat I talked with a few years ago, at least two or three of them collapse during the rainy season each year. Downtown Rangoon, adjacent to the Rangoon River, is located in a low-lying alluvial area, and a 1986 report by the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements mentions that “foundation decomposition” caused by moisture is widespread.

Earthquakes in areas near riverbeds or other bodies of water often create a condition known as “liquifaction”: as the name implies, soil of a certain density containing water turns into something resembling a liquid state during a tremor, causing buildings to tip over or collapse.

With the exception of the 99-meter-high Shwedagon Pagoda, Rangoon historically has been a low-rise city. But after the ruling junta abolished Ne Win-era socialism and encouraged foreign private investment in 1988, many high-rise luxury hotels, condominiums and office buildings appeared on the skyline.

It is unlikely that even the most luxurious hotels such as Traders or Sedona have been built according to the strictest earthquake-resistant standards, but in the event of a big tremor, high-end tourists and elite expatriates probably have less to worry about than the residents of smaller, less generously funded apartments and condominiums that have been put up in the central business district, especially the old Chinatown area, and neighborhoods to the north of downtown.

Relatively small multi-story, multi-family dwellings have become ubiquitous since the junta took power, including those built under the government’s “huts to apartments” scheme, which (it claims) placed squatters in buildings constructed on land they formerly occupied. The post-1988 construction boom in Rangoon has led some developers to skimp on building materials in order to maximize their profits.

According to an article, “Yangon: the Vanishing Asian City,” posted on the Internet in 2002:

“There is little in the way of zoning, comprehensive city planning or corruption-free safety checks. Money earmarked for construction materials tends to evaporate; 50-cm diameter pilings supporting 10 or more storeys shrink to a mere 30 cm, concrete is thinned with sand; air circulation and fire evacuation contingencies are overlooked … The new Yangon abounds in accidents waiting to happen.”

However, the most vulnerable areas of Rangoon during a major earthquake may be settlements on the outskirts––in new towns such as Hlaing Tharyar and North and South Dagon townships––where large numbers of people were resettled (often forcibly) from the city center after the military junta seized power in 1988.

Most of them live in small, single-storey houses or shacks raised off the ground and constructed of bamboo and thatch or, in a few cases, wood. The houses are tightly clustered together and perennially in danger from fire, especially during the cool and hot seasons, a period of little rainfall that extends from November to early May. An earthquake could overturn cookers and stoves, causing fires to spread and become unstoppable, especially given the housing density and lack of modern firefighting facilities in the new townships.

During the Great Kanto Earthquake which devastated Tokyo and Yokohama in September 1923, fires were the single largest cause of as many as 140,000 fatalities, since these densely populated cities were largely constructed of wood. One huge firestorm killed nearly 40,000 people who had sought refuge in a Japanese army depot in downtown Tokyo.

One positive aspect of the post-1988 modernization of Rangoon has been the widening of major boulevards and the construction of bridges to link the “peninsula” that historically defined Rangoon’s city limits with areas to the east and west. Both measures would improve access to the city during a major disaster although some residents have told me that the new bridges, especially the Chinese-built one linking Rangoon and Syriam, may be structurally unsound.

Even under the best conditions, with a government that is actively concerned with the welfare of its people, “earthquake-proofing” a major metropolitan area is prohibitively expensive. Rigorous and consistent enforcement of building standards is also a governance issue that poses problems for even the most developed countries.

A few years ago, a scandal emerged in Japan—a nation second to none in terms of earthquake awareness—when it was discovered that an architect had falsified compliance with building standards in order to receive kickbacks from profit-minded construction companies. Many of the condominiums whose construction he had approved were unsafe and had to be torn down, and their residents relocated at great personal cost.

In a poor country like Burma, the temptation is to ignore such standards not only to make a profit in the short term but also in the over-optimistic belief that a major earthquake will never occur––at least in the near future. As much as resources and expertise can allow, this temptation must be overcome. It should also be emphasized that Rangoon is far from alone in facing a seismic threat; Mandalay, Burma’s second largest city, has experienced much jerry-built construction since 1988 and observers suggest that even buildings in the new capital of Naypyidaw may be sub-standard.

In the days following the Haiti earthquake, Port-au-Prince residents have been left to their own devices: the president, René Préval, has made himself invisible and his government has done virtually nothing to assist them. Even the police are largely unseen despite the fact that damage to the central prison had enabled hundreds of hardened criminals to escape into the city streets and terrorize the local population.

During Burma’s most recent natural disaster, Cyclone Nargis, neither Tatmadaw personnel nor the regime’s “grass roots” Union Solidarity and Development Association played an especially positive role in disaster relief, despite being numerous, well-organized and “on the ground” throughout Rangoon and the Irrawaddy delta. In part, this reflects the SPDC’s obsession with state security over human security, but it also shows the urgent need for the authorities to provide training for their personnel in disaster relief.

Perhaps foreign countries could assist in such training so that the government could help local people, including civil society groups and Buddhist monks, to help themselves during an earthquake or other disaster.

But Snr-Gen Than Shwe seemed more concerned in 2008 with minimizing the influence of foreign relief workers in the Irrawaddy delta than with helping his own people.

In May 2008, a kadaw-bwe (thanks ceremony) was held in Naypyidaw praising the Senior-General for having the foresight to relocate the capital from a natural disaster-prone region near the sea to a more secure area in the country’s hinterland. Some of his supporters went as far as to say that the SPDC’s avoidance of the cyclone (Naypyidaw was left undamaged) was a sign of its divine, or cosmic, legitimacy, its right to rule. Their self-centered complacency suggests that Hitchens’ “evil morons” are even more a problem in army-run Burma than they are in right-wing, Christian America.

Donald M. Seekins is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Meio University in Nago, Okinawa, Japan. His e-mail is: kenchan@ii-okinawa.ne.jp

Source: Agence France-Presse
November 25, 2009

International donors Wednesday pledged more than 88 million dollars to help survivors of Myanmar's devastating Cyclone Nargis 18 months ago, who still have "enormous needs", the UN and ASEAN said.

The pledges, made at a conference on the cyclone recovery process held by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the United Nations in Bangkok, were to assist the 2.4 million people severely affected by the disaster.

Nargis, which struck in early May 2008, left 138,000 people dead and devastated military-ruled Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta in particular. The cost of repairing the damage was estimated at over four billion dollars.

Wednesday's conference saw a "very, very impressive and successful mobilisation of funds", raising more than 85 percent of a 103 million dollar appeal, ASEAN Secretary General Dr Surin Pitsuwan said after the meeting.

In February a three-year 691-million dollar recovery plan was launched, but Surin told reporters the lower figure of 103 million was for a "scaled-down prioritised action plan" from now until next July.

"The overall need for the whole recovery programme in the delta could be even much more than 691 million," added the UN resident co-ordinator for Myanmar, Bishow Parajuli.

"There are enormous needs," he said, such as the rebuilding of around 500 schools in the region.

"They are making ends meet but there is still a lot to be done".

Myanmar's junta drew international criticism for blocking foreign aid from entering the country in the crucial days after the cyclone devastated the delta.

The ruling generals only relented after a personal visit by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Surin said donors had raised the possibility of pledging more funds if the political situation improved in Myanmar, where the junta has promised elections for 2010.

But he would not comment on whether pledges might be withdrawn if there were no improvements, preferring to look at "the glass half full".

"There's a new dynamic, there's a new opening, there's a new development inside," he added.

Noeleen Heyzer, UN Under-Secretary General, warned against under-investment in the region.

"You are seeing actually new trends of poverty being created because we have under-invested and we need to prevent the emergence of the new poor," she said.

Source: Bangkok Post
November 26, 2009

International donors have pledged US$88 million (2.9 billion baht) for Burma's Cyclone Nargis rehabilitation plan but the amount is still short of the target.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the United Nations and humanitarian agencies raised the money at a pledging conference in Bangkok yesterday.

Nargis, which struck in early May 2008, left 138,000 people dead and devastated Burma's Irrawaddy Delta in particular. The cost of repairing the damage was put at $4 billion.

The conference raised more than 85% of the $103 million targeted, Asean Secretary- General Surin Pitsuwan said after the meeting.

Mr Surin said donors had raised the possibility of pledging more funds if the political situation improved in Burma, where the junta has promised elections for 2010.

But he would not comment on whether pledges might be withdrawn if there were no improvements, preferring to look at "the glass half full".

"There's a new dynamic, there's a new opening, there's a new development inside," he said.

UN Under-Secretary General Noeleen Heyzer warned against under-investment in the region.

"You are seeing actually new trends of poverty being created because we have under-invested and we need to prevent the emergence of the new poor," she said.

Mr Surin regarded the fund-raising conference as a success, and said he hoped the rest would be forthcoming soon.

Pledges came from Australia, Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, the Netherlands, the European Commission, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The contributions would be used to build 17,800 new houses, 40 new schools, 16 cyclone shelters, livelihood rebuilding programmes for one million people, water and sanitation services for 800,000 people, education services to 35,000 students and health services to 900,000 individuals.

"The overall need for the whole recovery programme in the delta could be even much more than $691 million," said the UN resident co-ordinator for Burma, Bishow Parajuli.

"They are making ends meet but there is still a lot to be done."

Paul Sender, country director of the Merlin group, which coordinates post-Nargis humanitarian aid inside Burma, hoped the money would help Burma recover.

However, Mr Sender said cumbersome visa procedures for expatriate aid workers were complicated, which could hold back progress.

Source: Agencies
November 26, 2009

Hundreds of thousands of people are still living in makeshift homes 18 months after Cyclone Nargis killed at least 140,000 people in Myanmar, the UN has said.

International donors have pledged a fresh $88m for 17,800 new houses, 40 new schools and livelihood programmes for one million people.

But Bishow Parajuli, the UN resident and humanitarian co-ordinator in Myanmar, said on Wednesday that the amount falls far short of what is needed.

"What is reflected here is not what is needed. It is a much-reduced version of what may be possible to do between now and July," he said.

The pledge falls short of the $103m sought for the period until July by the UN and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional grouping that includes Myanmar.

The UN says 178,000 families need help with shelter and the shortfall in funds will leave about 100,000 families without a proper home.

Most of those families are living in makeshift homes covered with threadbare tarpaulins distributed in the early phase of the relief effort, according to aid workers.

Srinivasa Popuri, the leader of a shelter aid group in Myanmar, told the Reuters news agency that "the materials have gone through two monsoons and they won't last another season".

Cyclone Nargis swept through Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta in May 2008, flattening villages, destroying 450,000 houses, killing 140,000 people and leaving 2.4 million destitute.

Source: IRIN/Bangkok
November 26, 2009

A lack of funding is still posing a serious problem for recovery efforts to help the survivors of Cylone Nargis, the UN says, despite fresh pledges from donors.

At a Post-Nargis and Regional Partnership Conference, held on 25 November in Bangkok, donors pledged more than US$88 million for an appeal for $103 million to cover critical recovery needs – part of the earlier Post-Nargis Recovery and Preparedness Plan (PONREPP) released in December 2008 by the Tripartite Core Group, comprising the Myanmar government, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the UN.

The original appeal called for $691 million for a three-year recovery plan from 2009 to 2011.

“There was very good support and excellent response from the donors – there was a good acknowledgement of the recognition of the need,” said Bishow Parajuli, the UN Resident Representative and Humanitarian Coordinator in Myanmar.

However, “what must be underlined is that the $103 million is only for needs identified until July 2010, and moreover this need doesn’t include many other critical elements”, he told IRIN.

Nargis struck Myanmar in May 2008, killing at least 140,000 people and affecting another 2.4 million, mostly in the Ayeyarwady and Yangon divisions. Damage was estimated at more than $4 billion.

Recovery threatened

Thierry Delbreuve, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Myanmar, said there had been a sharp drop in contributions to recovery activities in the Ayeyarwady Delta.

“Pledges were made this year but very little has trickled down so far,” he told IRIN, adding that there was also a need for funding for general humanitarian assistance outside the delta in areas such as Chin state and the border regions.

Before the 25 November announcement, only $120 million of the $691 million had been committed, with $64 million received, according to the UN.

Parajuli warned that a lack of funding would stop recovery activities.

“It is a big challenge,” he said. “Several NGOs and UN agencies have started cutting down staff because of a lack of funding. If there is no new funding, some of the critical activities could be stopped.”

With money just trickling in for the PONREPP, the TCG decided in October to launch an appeal for the $103 million to address critical gaps in education, health, livelihoods, shelter, and water, sanitation and hygiene until July 2010.

The money will be used to provide 17,800 new houses, 40 new schools and 16 cyclone shelters, as well as livelihood programmes, water and sanitation facilities, education facilities and health services, ASEAN said.

Delbreuve said support for the restoration of livelihoods was crucial, with indebtedness growing among survivors who had borrowed money to rebuild their homes. However, he said shelter was the most important need identified for now.

“Only 10,000 individual shelters delivered by humanitarian agencies can be considered truly durable with cyclone-resistant features,” Delbreuve told IRIN.

“There is still an overall gap of 178,000 households that require urgent shelter assistance and have been waiting for support from the humanitarian community for over a year,” he said.

Source: Merlin
November 2009

Eighteen months after Cyclone Nargis devastated communities in the Irrawaddy Delta, there are critical needs that still haven't been addressed.

International donors pledged $88 million at an ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) conference in Bangkok last week to support the recovery effort, but more funding is needed to help the most vulnerable - particularly women and children living in some of the most hard to reach areas.

While three out of four households even now have no access to improved water sources and nine out of ten babies are still delivered at home, the UN has estimated that a further $483m is required over the next three years to meet the needs of the whole recovery programme.

Yet many organisations are downsizing their operations and some are even pulling out of the country, due to lack of funds.

In a speech to leaders at the conference, Dr Paul Sender, Merlin's Country Director in Myanmar said:

"The scale of humanitarian operations across the cyclone-affected Delta region is reducing month by month. From the time the cyclone hit in May 2008 to the end of that year, $74m was made available to international NGOs to provide humanitarian assistance. This figure fell to $64m available for 2009, and the figure for 2010 could be half that. The levels of funding currently available will not allow us to match assistance and actions to where even the most critical needs have been identified."

Merlin is co-leading the UN's post-Nargis recovery plan (PONREPP) for the health sector and advocating for greater funding from international donors.

At the conference, which was chaired by the ASEAN Secretary General and UN Under Secretary General, Dr Sender presented the PONREPP Prioritised Action Plan on behalf of international aid agencies on the ground, outlining minimum needs to be addressed by July 2010.

Recovery will take more than two years, but Merlin is calling for international donors to support the Action Plan to meet the most pressing needs in the next seven months.

Dr Ashok, Merlin's Senior Project Medical Coordinator based in Laputta, said:

"Merlin has made significant progress in meeting the health needs since the cyclone. We have rebuilt or refurbished 22 health centres that were damaged or destroyed in the cyclone. And our network of over 534 community health workers have provided frontline health care to over 185,000 people. But with more funding, we could reach many more people affected by the cyclone who are still in need of assistance."

By Stefan Håkansson/Geneva/Switzerland
November 30, 2009

The next time a cyclone hits Myanmar (Burma), the population in 50 villages will know what to do. These people have attended an ACT International "cyclone school", a disaster management programme put in place in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis last year. This programme, implemented by ACT member the Lutheran World Federation in Myanmar (Burma), has given the population the know-how to prevent a new cyclone turning their villages into chaos. They are now prepared to cope with a natural disaster.

"Next time we won't be so badly affected, now we know what we can do for ourselves to get through a disaster," says Khine Khine Myint, a resident of Thea Kone village who took part in the disaster management programme

In May 2008, a large part of the Delta region in southwest Myanmar was hit by Cyclone Nargis. More than 140,000 people lost their lives and 2.4 million people lost homes or arable lands. The high number of deaths was partly due to lack of disaster preparedness.

In contrast to neighbouring countries, there has never been any organised disaster management in Myanmar (Burma). In Bangladesh, opportunities for people to learn how to prepare themselves for natural disasters resulted in significantly fewer people losing their lives in Cyclone Sidr in 1997. In that disaster, 3500 were killed. Harrowing numbers, but a huge improvement compared to the cyclone of similar strength that cost over 100,000 lives at the beginning of the 1990s.

In the last year, the Lutheran World Federation has run disaster education programmes to prepare populations in a total of 50 villages in the Delta region of Myanmar (Burma). Participants learn to prepare themselves to cope with cyclones and how to get back to living a normal life in a principally self-reliant manner.

"Among other things we have learnt how to discover if a cyclone is on the way. Then we can plan for evacuating to safer places, manage food supplies and prepare so that we have fresh water," says Khine Khine Myint, a member of the medical group.

After the cyclone has passed, it is important that injured people receive medical care, that temporary housing is erected and that the authorities are informed if the village needs further help.

Following Nargis, it was a long time before many villages received help. They had to cope by themselves. "With the knowledge we have been given we will not be so dependent on external help. This education will save lives," says Khine Khine Myint.

By Marwaan Macan-Markar/IPS/BANGKOK
November 30, 2009

The list of high-profile foreigners heading to Burma to engage and advise the country’s military regime is about to get longer. The latest due to join that flow is Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz.

The former chief economist of the World Bank will fly into Burma, or Myanmar as it is also known, on Dec. 14 for a mission aimed to examine and improve the South-east Asian nation’s rural economy, says Noeleen Heyzer, head of a United Nations regional body based in Bangkok.

"He will share his ideas on what kind of economic decision making is critical for growth in the rural economy and poverty reduction," adds the executive secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). "He will be there for a couple of days."

"We hope that this mission will be able to open up a new space in economic decision-making and policy formulations," Heyzer tells IPS. "The focus is on how do we reach the poorest people in Myanmar."

Stiglitz, who has engaged with poorer countries to offer development models through the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a think tank he founded, will meet Burma’s Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Maj Gen Htay Oo and National Development Minister Soe Tha during this visit.

Both ministers are reportedly close to Burma’s strongman, Senior Gen Than Shwe, who presides over a regime notorious for its oppression and secrecy.

Stiglitz is due to deliver a lecture on ‘Economic Policies and Decision Making for Poverty Reduction: Reaching the Bottom Half’ in the afternoon of Dec. 15. The two ministers and Heyzer have also been billed as speakers during this ‘development forum’ under the theme ‘Policies for Poverty Reduction— Effecting Change in Myanmar’s Rural Economy’.

This forum, to be held in Naypidaw, the administrative capital, is one of a series of talks Stigliz will be involved in. Others will include an exchange of ideas with leading Burmese economists, U.N. experts, the diplomatic community and speakers from the local and international non-governmental groups.

Field visits to Burma’s dry zone are also on the cards, confirms Heyzer, who has been instrumental in the visit of the globally renowned economist. "It should be for two or three days to bring him into contact with the issues of the rural economy and the problems of trading, the banking system and the commodity prices."

ESCAP’s foray into Burma is part of a broader programme to reach out to countries with "special needs" among its over 50 member states. The foundation for this engagement with Burma’s rural economy was laid in August when Heyzer visited the military-ruled country. The initial talks she had at that time touched on issues like the need for farmers to gain greater access to rural credit and concerns over the state fixing of rice prices at rates that condemned farmers into permanent poverty.

Currently, some 7.8 million hectares are under paddy cultivation, producing an estimated 30.5 million tonnes of rice during the 2008-2009 harvest period, states the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Such rice production has come at a heavy price for Burmese rice farmers. Most of them, who are small farmers, have had difficulty accessing rural credit, according to Sean Turnell, an Australian academic who publishes the ‘Burma Economic Watch’, in an interview with IPS.

"The policies of the Burmese government have been anything but helpful," he says. "They have, in essence, stood by while Burma’s rural credit scheme has collapsed."

Burmese economists wonder how open the junta will be to Stiglitz’s policy prescriptions given previous foreign attempts to suggest improvements to the country’s beleaguered economy, which were initially received with much fanfare but then ignored by the regime.

A Japanese initiative in 2002 is illustrative. Tokyo, with early support from the regime, conducted a macro-economic and structural reform study. Researchers reportedly had access to sensitive economic data for this project.

But the implementation of the results, which the Japanese government was willing to back, found little takers within the regime.

"This research that was conducted by top Japanese and Burmese economist was rejected by the military government," says a Burmese economist based in northern Thailand, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "This was after the Japanese made every effort to offer a feasible programme that the regime could undertake according to its comfort level."

"Other efforts can face a similar fate," he adds. "They will fall on deaf ears."

Such reluctance for change has been attributed to the new wealth the regime has amassed since the discovery of huge offshore natural gas fields in the 1990s. Gas exports to neighbouring Thailand has resulted in Burma’s foreign exchange reserves reaching a record 3.6 billion U.S. dollars.

That figure is expected to increase with Chinese investments in a new offshore natural gas project.

Yet 75 percent of the country’s estimated 57 million people who live in rural areas and make up the largest slice of the country's poor have hardly benefited from such financial bounty. Malnutrition is rampant, affecting over a third of the country’s children. It is ranked by the U.N. as one of the hunger hotspots of the world.

The junta’s public spending offers some clues for this dire picture. Nearly 40 percent of the gross domestic percent goes to support of its over 400,000- strong army while only 0.3 percent is set aside for health, placing it just above the lowest ranked Sierra Leone, at 191st, on a World Health Organisation list.

Stiglitz’s solutions to help Burma’s rural poor will have to grapple with other numbers, too. Inflation is at 30 percent and the annual growth rate— estimated at four to five percent by independent analysts—is far lower than the 10 percent rate that the regime claims it to be.

By A Myanmar expert/Bangkok

For about 100,000 people in Myanmar who have been living in makeshift shelters since Cyclone Nargis hit 18 months ago, Wednesday's news of fresh donor money spells light at the end of the tunnel.

But for the remaining 900,000 people whose homes were destroyed or damaged, the prospects are dim.

International donors pledged a fresh $88 million for new houses, schools and employment programmes for the cyclone's survivors. The money will help fund 17,800 new family homes.

Using a U.N. standard of five to six people per family, it works out that the new houses will accommodate around 100,000 people. But about one million need help with shelter, according to the United Nations.

Earlier this year, the United Nations listed responding to the immediate need for sustainable shelter in Myanmar as one of its priorities for 2009-10. Despite that, shelter remains one of the most under-funded needs in the country.

Part of the reason, aid workers say, is the perception among donors that housing is the responsibility of the government and most donors want to avoid being seen as subsidising Myanmar's military regime.

"If we have resources, I believe we can do much more," said Bishow Parajuli, U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Myanmar. "The fundamental problem for the recovery support in Myanmar is lack of money - for everything."

Cyclone Nargis swept through Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta, once dubbed the country's rice bowl, in May last year, killing 140,000 people, destroying 450,000 houses and leaving 2.4 million destitute.

By MARWAAN MACAN-MARKAR / IPS WRITER
November 27, 2009

BANGKOK — Eighteen months after the powerful Cyclone Nargis tore through military-ruled Burma, one question that dogged early relief efforts has lost relevance: does the country have an active civil society to help victims?

The amorphous network of Burmese civilians, ranging from Buddhist monks in villages to middle-class women in cities like Rangoon, are winning praise as the unsung heroes who stepped in to aid and rebuild communities crushed by that May 2008 natural disaster.

The efforts by civil society groups in Burma, also known as Myanmar, became significant in the wake of the bureaucratic hurdles the secretive and oppressive junta erected to stop foreign aid workers flying in to help. Many international relief agencies with foreign staff complained that they were hit with restrictions on their movement in the devastated Irrawaddy Delta besides the tighter visa controls.

The inroads made by local civil society groups were highlighted this week by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a 10-member regional bloc, during a pivotal meeting of international donors to raise US$ 103 million for recovery efforts through mid-2010. Asean, together with the United Nations and the Burmese government, played a lead role in a unique partnership to mobilize funds and help implement reconstruction efforts.

The 42-year-old Asean includes Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

"Asean’s partnership with the civil society in the implementation of these projects does not only enhance people’s well-being and livelihoods building more resilient communities, but also empowers the communities," said Surin Pitsuwan, Asean secretary-general, in his prepared comments to the donor meeting held here on Wednesday. "Through a participatory approach, the communities have become more engaged in identifying their own needs (and) planning recovery."

Such an approach has strengthened accountability and transparency, winning "trust and confidence among communities, local authorities and other humanitarian agencies," added Surin in describing local initiatives following the disaster that killed more than 140,000 people and affected close to 2.4 million others.

The top UN official in Burma echoes the Asean sentiment about the position local civil society groups have carved out for themselves in the months since Nargis. "During the past 18 months I have seen an extensive enlargement of civil society," revealed Bishow Parajuli, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Burma. "There are new civil society groups emerging."

"Civil society plays an important role in every aspect of life," added Parajuli during a press conference that followed the donor meeting, where industrialized nations committed to pump in US$ 88 million to help fund recovery programs through 2010 in the devastated delta. "There is an extensive effort to build civil society."

Such praise stands in contrast with an unflattering view of Burmese civil society expressed by some international aid workers following the cyclone. One study that describes local responses to Nargis quotes an international aid worker saying, in September last year, "There is no civil society in Myanmar."

But the reality was the opposite, adds this study published in the Humanitarian Practice Network’s online magazine. "In the wake of Cyclone Nargis, the remarkable civil society response has clearly and undeniably proved that it is alive, and doing great things against all odds," said the December 2008 study. "More than 500 local (civil society groups) were supported in the Nargis response, albeit in an ad hoc and usually insufficient way."

"Given the constraints to direct implementation by INGO (international non-governmental organizations), Nargis was the perfect opportunity for agencies to change their way of working, even if on a small scale, by supporting local initiatives," added the report. "A number of small programs run by donors and INGOs provided grants, largely under US$ 5,000, to hundreds of self-help groups, spontaneously organized in response to the cyclone."

The social fabric in Burma is behind this trend. "The country has a strong cohesive society, and people look after one another," said Paul Sender, head of the British humanitarian agency Merlin’s office in Burma. "People who hadn’t suffered from the terrible events of Nargis came out to help."

"The people proved their capacity through such efforts," he told IPS. "At the height of our post-Nargis work, we had 12 expatriate staff and 350 national staff.

Over the last one and a half years, there has been a lot of transfer of skills to the local staff."

But in Burma, where politics has invaded most corners of life, even the work of local civil society groups helping Nargis victims required caution, "because the government feels threatened by high-profile efforts of individuals or civil society groups," explained Benjamin Zawacki, the Burma researcher for the global rights lobby Amnesty International. "The government feels that it should be helping and getting all the credit for its efforts."

"The critical role that civil society groups played providing critically needed assistance after Nargis has been done by many by maintaining a low profile," he said in an IPS interview. "They were the only consistent viable relief efforts to save lives soon after the cyclone—even at great risks to themselves."

Yet not all Burmese helping the Nargis victims have been fortunate. In late October the junta arrested 10 political activists and journalists "for accepting relief donations from abroad," Amnesty revealed this week. "Their whereabouts is unknown and it is not clear whether any charges have been brought against them."

They join the list of other Burmese civilians and political activists who have been imprisoned since June 2008 for forming ad hoc groups to provide relief to Nargis victims. Among the most famous is Zarganar, a popular comedian, who was slapped with a 59-year prison sentence for his humanitarian work.

By WAI MOE
November 25, 2009

International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) operating in Burma are likely to suspend their activities next May, according to NGO sources in Burma.

Although no official announcement has yet been made by the regime, some government officials warned that INGO work could be suspended from May until October because of the 2010 election, said INGO sources.

“We have heard from government officials that possibly because of the election, INGOs in the country will temporarily close project activities in the country,” said an INGO staffer in Rangoon, requesting anonymity. “No written order has yet been made by government ministries, however."

A veteran lawyer in Rangoon, Kyi Wynn, said a non-Burmese friend working for an INGO told him he had been informed by a government official that INGO activities would be halted during the election period.

The lack of any official confirmation is causing confusion among INGOs, who are asking whether the decision to suspend activities applies to all or just those aid groups which have been operating in the country since the Cyclone Nargis disaster in May 2008.

A backlog in granting visas for foreign relief workers has also arisen.

William Sabandar, special envoy of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations secretary-general for post-Nargis recovery in Burma, told The Irrawaddy in July: “There’s a backlog in the granting of more than 200 visas.” The delays were hampering work in the cyclone-hit region, he said. The backlog has not yet been cleared, according to INGO staff.

Burma's ruling generals often see INGOs that work in Burma as a "tool of neo-colonialism." Government officials have warned foreign NGOs to follow four basic principles—“non-political, non-religion, non-profit and non-governmental.”

In early 2008, the junta reduced INGO projects in Burma from five years to one year. INGOs must also renew their projects three to six months in advance.

The ruling junta hasn't yet announced a date for the election planned in 2010, although observers say it will be held either before or after the monsoon season. Both the 1990 general election and the 2008 referendum were held in May.

The 1990 election was announced about 15 months in advance. The electoral law allowed 90 days for campaigning.

The constitutional referendum in May 2008 was announced the previous February. The referendum went ahead despite Cyclone Nargis and the regime barred foreign aid workers while voting took place.

By SAW YAN NAING
November 24, 2009

In a statement released on Tuesday, Amnesty International (AI), the UK-based human rights watchdog, urged international donors meeting in Bangkok this week to pressure the Burmese military regime to “end harassment of activists trying to help survivors of Cyclone Nargis, and ensure sufficient aid reaches those affected.”

About ten political activists and journalists—seven are members of Lin Lat Kyei (Shining Star), a group founded in 2008 devoted to relief and social activism—were arrested by the Burmese authorities in late October, allegedly for accepting relief donations from abroad, according to sources in Rangoon.

The ten were among at least 41 dissidents arrested in October as part of a broader crackdown by the Burmese authorities, according to the AI statement.

The recently arrested aid workers and journalists are now in Burmese prisons, joining other imprisoned activists involved in helping cyclone victims, such as the famous comedian Zarganar and sports writer Zaw Thet Htwe.

The most recent crackdown precedes the 25 November meeting of the Tripartite Core Group (TCG) founded in May 2008. The group comprises high-level representatives from the Burmese government, the UN and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) who monitor, coordinate and facilitate international aid to Cyclone Nargis affected regions.

“Leaders meeting in Bangkok must ensure the required aid is forthcoming and reaches those who need it,” said Benjamin Zawacki, a researcher for Amnesty International on Burma affairs. “More than 18 months after the cyclone, the survivors still require critical support from the international community.

“The international community should increase its donations and demand transparency, accountability, and non-discrimination in the distribution of aid,” he said.

International aid agencies say additional financial support is still required to build new houses, shelters, livelihood programs, water and sanitation facilities, education facilities, and health services to hundreds of thousands of Cyclone survivors in affected areas.

The TCG's three-year project for post-cyclone recovery efforts has a projected cost of US$691 million, but only $125 million has been committed, according to the AI.

In October the US pledged to fund US $10 million through international nongovernmental organizations for Nargis-related recovery programs, and the EU committed to fund 35 million Euros (US $51.5 million) for the Livelihoods and Food Security Trust fund.

Cyclone Nargis slammed into Burma's Irrawaddy delta and Rangoon division on 2-3 May 2008, leaving 140,000 people dead or missing.

by Francis Wade
November 26, 2009

Regional aid for victims of Burma's cyclone Nargis will only cover 14 percent of vulnerable families in the country's southern Irrawaddy delta, with 178,000 people still without proper shelter.

The bleak assessment was announced yesterday by the United Nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at a Bangkok conference, where ASEAN revealed it had raised $US88 million for Nargis relief efforts.

Although it is 18 months since the cyclone ripped through the Irrawaddy delta, killing 140,000 and leaving 2.4 million destitute, the situation remains fragile.

Speaking to Reuters yesterday, Srinivasa Popuri, leader of a shelter aid group in Burma, said that thousands were still without adequate housing. "The materials have gone through two monsoons and they won't last another season," she warned.

Many are still living under tarpaulin roofs that were distributed shortly after the cyclone hit last May, with rescue efforts hampered by a government ban on foreign relief workers entering the affected areas.

"What is reflected here (with 17,800 new houses) is not what is needed. It is a much-reduced version of what may be possible to do between now and July [2010]," Bishow Parajuli, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Burma, told Reuters.

Estimates of the total cost of the three-year recovery plan have been put at $US690 million. The $US88 million announced by ASEAN yesterday falls short of the $US103 million target set for the coming year.

The EU also announced that it would inject a further $US21 million in aid to the region, while the Australian government last week pledged $US13.8 million for relief efforts.

Burma observers have however warned of the potential for misappropriation of aid by the Burmese regime, which ranked 178 out of 180 on Transparency International's annual Corruption Perceptions Index.

According to the Post-Nargis Recovery and Preparedness Plan, around 783,000 hectares of farmland were destroyed by the cyclone. Nearly 60 percent of families in the delta region are dependent on farming as their primary source of income.

The UN Food and Agricultural Office (FAO) has said that increasing rodent infestation in the delta is posing a danger to crop harvests.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Burmese government has instructed farmers to kill up to 15 rats per day, and submit their tails to local authorities, or risk being fined.

The Global Fund will return to Burma with a two-year US $110 million grant to fight three diseases: HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

In August 2005, the Global Fund, the world’s leading donor of grants to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, terminated its anti-AIDS program in Burma. The five-year program would have provided more than US $98 million.

At the time, the fund said that the military regime had placed prohibitive restrictions on the implementation of its aid.

Global Fund said the decision to terminate its projects was made in the light of “the [Burmese] government’s newly established clearance procedures restricting access of the principal recipient [the UN Development Programme], certain sub-recipients, as well as the staff of Global Fund and its agents, to grant-implementation areas.”
By LAWI WENG/The Irrawaddy
November 19, 2009

On Nov. 12, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Ethiopian health minister and chair of the Global Fund board, said in a press release: “This [new] grant is based on the country’s own needs and priorities, and it is therefore a particularly effective source of financing.”

Since 2006, the Three-Diseases (3-D) Fund— a project supported by the European Commission, Britain, the Netherlands, Norway and two organization in Sweden and Australia—has pledged $120 million to work in Burma over a five-year period. It has provided grants to support 42 NGO and UN projects.

The 3-D Fund has provided anti-retroviral treatments to 8, 865 people with HIV, 30,000 TB patients and 700,000 cases of malaria.

Denise Jeanmonod, the communication officer for the 3-D Fund in Rangoon, told The Irrawaddy that there are 75,000 people in Burma who need drugs to fight HIV/AIDS.

"However much more work needs to be done, particularly to bring lifesaving medicines in HIV and malaria, the Three Diseases Fund welcomes the decision of the Global Fund," she said.

Phyu Phyu Thin, a member of the National League for Democracy and a well-know HIV/AIDS activist in Rangoon, said it is essential that the government allows the aid to reach the people who need it most, especially in the countryside.

By Colin Hinshelwood/Chiang Mai

A spreading plague of rats has devoured crops in western Myanmar, giving rise to a famine that threatens hundreds of thousands in the country's remote Chin State. The lack of government assistance has driven a mounting number of people across the border into neighboring India and other countries, representing the latest human crisis to emanate from Myanmar's borders.

According to a recent report issued by the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO), at least 54 people have died from the effects of severe malnutrition. The rights group said in September that "no less than 100,000 people [20% of the Chin population] are in need of immediate food aid". Those numbers are expected to rise as rice stockpiles are exhausted and the cold season aggravates health problems related to malnutrition.

Transportation of aid into remote areas of Chin State is nearly impossible in the rainy season, and, to compound the crisis, farmers are facing a drastically low harvest in October-November. Rather than face starvation, thousands are migrating to neighboring countries, especially India, in search of food and employment.

Some have traveled for days to the Indian border to buy sacks of rice at subsidized prices and its unclear how many are staying in the border region rather than return to famine conditions at home. Sai Nai, a 70-year-old widow, currently lives alone because her children have left for India to find work.

"When we entered her house she hid what she was eating because she was ashamed," a CHRO consultant said. "In order to survive she had to sell her dog in exchange for some rice. She told us she has only one bucket of rice remaining for the rest of this year."

Myanmar's ruling junta continues to disallow international aid organizations from operating in the ethnically diverse region. Many aid groups have requested and been denied access to the area to help offset the impact of a plague of forest rats that has torn through the Chin State's highlands for the past two years, destroying according to some estimates between 75% and 82% of the area's crops. This year's harvest, due in November, is expected to be even lower than the previous two years, according to people monitoring the situation.

The catalyst for the rat infestation is an ecological phenomenon known locally as mautam, which translates loosely into English as "bamboo death". The phenomenon occurs approximately once every 50 years with the flowering of the melocanna baccifera bamboo species, whose nutritious fruit attracts and increases the fertility of rats.

After the fruit blossomed, an exponentially expanded population of rats was forced to forage elsewhere for food, ravaging rice, maize and sesame crops in the area. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) reported in March that the rat infestation had spread to the outskirts of the main town in Chin State, Hakha, where the rats had invaded tea plantations and tamarind orchards.

"I have never seen such a huge number of rats," a farmer from Matupi Township said. "I had thought we could easily drive out the rats and protect our crops. Just before the rice was ready to be harvested, the rats came and ate all the rice in the fields in just one night. We lost all our rice."

The rat infestation was predictable - or at least, it should have been. British colonialists recorded in the mid-19th century that the flowering of the bamboo fruit set off a deadly domino effect every 48 years. The last cycle, in 1958-9, led to the deaths of between 10,000 and 15,000 people in Chin State and the neighboring Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur, which are currently 30% covered in bamboo forest.

The Indian government put in place prevention plans as early as 2000, when it convened an emergency meeting of the National Planning Commission in anticipation of the impending crisis. The Mizoram state government then initiated a "Bamboo Flowering and Famine Combat Scheme" in 2004 with the help of the central government.

In the Manipur town of Churanchandpur, Indian government troops took time off in May 2006 from battling separatist rebels to hunt rats. Education programs on pest control were organized and community farms were set up to grow aromatic spices such as turmeric and ginger, which are ignored by the rats and are valuable as a cash crop. In neighboring Mizoram, an alternative crop of potatoes was planned and rat poison was distributed. The local authorities in both states initiated a rat-culling incentive program, offering 2 rupees (5 US cents) per rat's tail submitted to their offices.

Entrenched negligence
In comparison, in military-ruled Myanmar no official precautions were taken against the imminent bamboo death. Chin State, already considered by humanitarian agencies to be one of the most poverty-stricken areas of the country, has been caught completely unprepared.

The flowering of the bamboo fruit started in late 2006, predictably 48 years after its last cycle. Within 12 months the rat infestation was endemic and now the risk of a catastrophic famine is rising. Chin farmers defended themselves with only limited resources by laying traps, building protective fences and cutting the bamboo fruit and feeding it to pigs.

Families with cats were sometimes able to keep the rats away from their sleeping areas. But the farmers were reluctant to use rat poison because they quickly realized that without other sources of food they would likely have to eat the rats to survive. In one village in Thantlang Township near the Indian border, some 55,000 rats were reportedly trapped and killed in 2008.

Other farmers, however, were unable to camp out in their fields because they could not construct shelters because of the shortage of bamboo - which Chin villagers traditionally use to build makeshift huts - after the rats had destroyed the plants in the area. Many walk to their fields every evening with their families in tow carrying catapults and pots and spoons to their fields to create noise and try to kill the rats.

By this year, overwhelmed by the huge rat population, thousands of farmers gave up and migrated closer to border areas where food could be purchased. Because it is such a social taboo for Chin people to abandon their village and their community - "a disgrace", says one Chin expert - many left secretly in the middle of the night.

At least 4,000 Chin headed to Saiha, the largest town in Mizoram. Most have had to take menial jobs - carrying wood, working in rice fields or quarries, road construction, and other labor-intensive work that pays as little as 70 to 100 rupees ($1.50- $2.10) per day. Thousands more have left their homes to scavenge for food elsewhere in Myanmar - in areas where the plague of rats has not yet ravaged the crops.

In response, WFP and their local implementing partners have initiated a "Food for Work" program in Chin State, which, in some townships, has been expanded into a "Food plus Cash for Work" program, mainly based on road construction and land development schemes.

WFP, along with United Nations Development Program and a handful of other Yangon-based agencies, is permitted by the military junta to operate in the Chin region. Although initially dismissive of the CHRO findings, the WFP has now confirmed the reports of malnourishment in Chin State, estimating that 70,000 people in seven townships (Tonzang, Tiddim, Htanlang, Madupi, Paletwa, Falam, Hakha) have been "severely affected" by rat infestation.

As of July, cross-border aid from India has been strictly banned and the delivery of relief is often carried out clandestinely, including by Christian relief agencies. Only aid groups that play by the junta's rules, including the WFP and UNDP, are officially allowed to work in Chin state. "However, the rations each family received from the cross-border relief teams were only enough for one week or two," said CHRO program officer Za Uk.

Despite the WFP's efforts and the work of some government-approved agencies from Yangon, it is noteworthy that villagers generally choose to walk to the Indian border in search of assistance rather than toward central Myanmar. "The people vote with their feet," said an international aid worker with 20 years' experience in the region.

The crisis is having a mounting social impact. Enrollment rates at schools in the region are reportedly down 50% to 60%, as children are forced to help their parents forage for food - wild yam roots, edible leaves, shoots and tree bark - as their annual rice stocks run out. Some villagers have said that they fear reprisals if they speak out about the deteriorating situation, which, as with its initial handling of last year's Cyclone Nargis disaster, would highlight the government's poor crisis management.

"The situation has been made more acute by the ruling military regime's utter neglect of the suffering, compounded by policies and practices of abuse and repression against Chin civilians," said CHRO in its recent report. "As thousands struggle with hunger, starvation and disease, the SPDC [military government] continues practices of forced labor, extorting excessive amounts of money from villagers, confiscating people's land and property, in addition to other severe human-rights abuses."

Apart from those who have taken refuge in India, thousands more have migrated to Thailand and Malaysia where expatriate Chin communities have emerged over the years. With the crisis predicted to last for as long as five years, many wonder whether the emigration will be permanent.

A non-governmental organization consultant active along the India-Myanmar border said earlier this month that the plague of rats is moving northward into areas of Sagaing Division, east of Chin State. The rat infestation generally reaches its zenith five months after the flowering of the bamboo plant. "In some areas the bamboo has just begun bearing fruit now," he said. "So, the bamboo death will follow soon."

By Tim Johnston in Bangkok
October 20 2009

The European Union has announced an expansion of its aid programme to Burma, reinforcing a western trend towards engagement with the country.

The EU has pledged €35m towards a fund called LIFT – the Livelihoods and Food Security Trust fund – a sum they hope that other donors, including Britain, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark will eventually increase the total to some €100m.

For years, the west tried to isolate the Burmese regime in an attempt to force it to improve its dismal human rights record and move towards democracy, but the sanctions and the calls for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi created little change inside the country.

A hint earlier this year that the United States was rethinking its hard-line isolationism has provoked a cascade of new policies. The move gathered momentum last month when Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said that although they were leaving their sanctions regime in place, it would be accompanied by talks with the generals who run Burma.

The renewed willingness of the European Union to expand its assistance to Burma also marks a significant change. In August, when a Burmese court sentenced Ms Suu Kyi to a further 18 months of house arrest, the EU reinforced its sanctions.

The EU has been the major source of funding for recovery after Cyclone Nargis hit Burma in May 2008, providing some 60 per cent of the funds so far, but that money has been overwhelmingly concentrated in the worst-affected delta area, ignoring the terrible hardships that exist in other areas of one of the world’s poorest countries.

Excluding LIFT, which is to run for five years, the EU’s Burma aid budget for the year is $177m, down from $205m last year when aid was rushed out for cyclone victims.

David Lipman, the EU regional ambassador, who has just returned from a five-day visit where he met senior government and opposition figures, said he had detected a new mood among the generals.

“I think the government is being a lot more cooperative than in the past. They are basically engaged,” Mr Lipman told journalists on Tuesday.

The new fund will assist non-governmental organisations to expand the assistance they have been providing to victims of Cyclone Nargis which killed 140,000 people in the Irrawaddy delta.
“This covers more or less the whole country,” said Mr Lipman, including such sensitive areas as Rakhine, Shan, Kachin and Chin States.

He emphasised that under the strict regulations governing EU aid to Burma, none of the money would go directly to the government.

At $4 per head per year, Burma ranks alongside North Korea as the recipient of the smallest amount of aid in the developing world, according to the United Nations. Neighbouring Cambodia at $46 per head per year, and Laos at $68 per head per year receive substantially more despite concerns over their human rights records.

By Soe Lwin/Pyapon, Irrawaddy delta
The Irrawaddy
October 15, 2009

Tin Mya, 68, had a backyard poultry business. She managed to put away some money and gold. With her savings, she dreamed of having a comfortable life when she could no longer work.

Her dream became a nightmare when her gold and money—valued at the equivalent of US $500—disappeared when Cyclone Nargis pummeled Rangoon and the Irrawaddy Delta in May 2008.

"I tried to keep my plastic sack of gold and money with me until the flood waters reached to my waist,” Tin Mya recalled. “But when I was hit by a giant wave, the sack was washed away."

Since the storm, Tin Mya has relied on food aid to survive. When the aid stops, she doesn’t know how she will find food. She believes she will never be able to rebuild her backyard business.

The Category 4 storm—the worst natural disaster in Burma’s modern history—killed close to 140,000 people and affected more than 2 million.

Like Tin Mya, there are still thousands of vulnerable elderly people who now face even harder times, 17 months after Cyclone Nargis.

According to HelpAge International, of the 2.4 million people affected by the cyclone, an estimated 200,000 were 55 years or older at the time of the disaster.

Humanitarian aid workers say elderly people face greater challenges in terms of restoring livelihoods, earning incomes and living a healthy life, physically and mentally.

Many have forever lost the assets that they accumulated over their lifetime, and in many cases they have lost loved ones who they relied on for economic and physical support.

According to a HelpAge International report, 14 percent of the elderly said their life was more difficult now than before Nargis, while 21 percent said their life was back to normal.

In Burma, the elderly usually receive high respect within a community, which is a benefit for many old people, the aid agency said.

"Those who had no children particularly have been facing tough times,” said an official from the Myanmar [Burma] Red Cross Society. “The respect of their community is very helpful.”

In Thamainhtaw village in Pyapon Township, a 73-year old man who lost his wife in the cyclone said he does not how he would have survived without his neighbors help.

Three of his neighbors fetch potable water and cook for him, he said. At night, they come and sleep in his shelter.

“Now, food aid has stopped in our village,” he said. “But my neighbors are feeding me.”

According to aid agencies, many elderly without relatives are stranded in their makeshift houses and relying solely on food aid. Many are in need of psychological counseling and suffer from trauma and depression. Some elderly people still refuse to speak, say aid workers.

"The psychological well-being of older people is so much related to the material support given to them," said an official with HelpAge.

In the meanwhile, many elderly carry on, trying to carve out a new way of life.

In Pyapon, a small village, a man in his 80s who lost his wife and one grandson to the cyclone, stays in a shelter built by aid workers.

“At night, I sleep at my home, but during the day I go to the monastery where I can chat with people my age and do religious work,” he said. “If I’m hungry, the monk gives me food.”