UN Chief: Burma to Allow All Aid Workers

By JOHN HEILPRIN / AP WRITER / NAYPYIDAW
The Irrawaddy News

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says Burma's junta has agreed to allow "all aid workers" into the country to help cyclone survivors.

Ban's comments came after a crucial two-hour meeting Friday with the junta leader, Snr-Gen Than Shwe.

When asked if he thought the agreement was a breakthrough, Ban told reporters, "I think so."

UN chief Ban Ki-moon headed Friday to the crucial meeting of his Burma mission, hoping to persuade the country's inflexible junta leader to fully open up to international aid for 2.5 million cyclone survivors.

a pity, it would had been perfect if the real victims would had been interviewed -- JEG

Ban arrived at the remote capital of Naypyitaw after a flight from Rangoon, 250 miles (400 kilometers) to the south. He witnessed some of the cyclone's devastation during a carefully choreographed tour Thursday.

The UN chief was to meet with the most powerful man in the country, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, who had earlier refused to answer Ban's telephone calls or letters.

Highest on Ban's agenda is urging Than Shwe to allow an unimpeded influx of foreign aid and experts to reach survivors, most of them women and children, at growing risk of starvation, disease and exposure to monsoon rains.

By the military government's count, some 78,000 people were killed by the May 2-3 Cyclone Nargis, and another 56,000 are unaccounted for.

In his talks, Ban may also bring up the fate of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose latest period of detention expires Monday. A string of UN envoys have in the past failed to spring the democracy icon from house arrest, confronting a junta that has proved virtually impervious to outside pressure.

The 76-year-old Than Shwe—reclusive, superstitious and known as "the bulldog" for his stubbornness—has held virtually unassailable power since 1992.

Ban's firsthand look at the devastation wrought by the storm left the secretary-general shaken Thursday, even though the areas to which he was taken were far from the worst-hit.

"I'm very upset by what I've seen," Ban told reporters, after a walk through a makeshift relief camp where 500 people huddled in blue tents at Kyondah village in Dedaye township, about 75 kilometers (45 miles) southwest of Rangoon, Burma's largest city.

Burma's military regime have been keen to show it has the relief effort under control despite spurning the help of foreign disaster experts, and trotted out officials to give statistics-laden lectures to make their point.

But the UN says up to 2.5 million cyclone survivors face hunger, homelessness and potential outbreaks of deadly diseases, especially in the lower-lying areas of the Irrawaddy Delta close to the sea. It estimates that aid has reached only about 25 percent of them.

The places Ban visited, the Kyondah Relief Camp, and the town of Mawlamyinegyun, an aid distribution point, seemed orderly and well organized.

But the destruction in the areas around them was relatively mild compared to that further southwest in the townships of Labutta and Bogalay. Officials gave no explanation of why Ban was not taken to those areas, where the preponderance of dead and missing are reported.

The International Red Cross said rivers and ponds in Bogalay remained full of corpses, and that many people in remote areas had received no aid.

Kyondah—which has electricity and clean water—is somewhat of a showcase. The camp's inhabitants had cooking pots and blankets that appeared to be new. It was also selected for visits by senior junta members and representatives of foreign embassies and international aid organizations last week.

The storm's destruction was more obvious from the air.

The two helicopters carrying Ban's party flew over seemingly endless fields that had been flooded, villages with destroyed houses, rivers swollen past their banks, people huddled on rooftops, in tent villages or taking to boats.

UN officials traveling with Ban said they were discussing with Chinese authorities whether Ban could tour the earthquake zone in Sichuan directly after leaving Burma. The officials requested anonymity, citing protocol.

The trip, which has not been finalized, would give Ban the chance to compare the two countries' responses and urge China—Burma's biggest ally—to put its weight behind opening the flow of aid workers.

As Ban began his visit, foreign aid agencies stressed the need to quickly reach survivors suffering from disease, hunger and lack of shelter.

"In 30-plus years of humanitarian emergency work this is by far—by far—the largest case of emergency need we've ever seen," said Lionel Rosenblatt, president of US-based Refugees International.

Rangoon residents did not seem optimistic that Ban's visit would make a difference.

"Don't just talk, you must take action," said Eain Daw Bar Tha, abbot of a Buddhist monastery on Rangoon's outskirts. "The UN must directly help the people with helicopters to bring food, clothes and clean water to the really damaged places."

DVD News fro 21st and 22nd May'08

UN chief visits delta region

At least 11 NLD members arrested in Rangoon

NLD welcomes UN chief’s visit to Burma

Artists call for aid provision in remote areas

Supporters of Saffron Revolution denied electricity

Economist says junta flouts World Bank rules

Authorities clash with cyclone victims

KNU leader passes away

Refugees moved out to make way for polling station

Junta pays ‘fake refugees’ to pose as cyclone victims

Phyu Phyu Thin and team help remote villagers

Pakokku monks collect aid for cyclone victims

Cyclone victims suspect officials of switching aid

Chinese police trucks sent to Burma

May 22, 2008 (DVB)–Eight Chinese-made pickup trucks destined for Burma, including at least two intended for use by the police force, have arrived at the Chinese border town of Ruili, across from Muse in Burma.

A merchant in Muse told DVB the pickup trucks were seen in Ruili and were delivered into Burma on Sunday evening and two of them had the Burmese police force logo on the sides.

While locals have frequently seen military trucks being delivered from China into Burma through Ruili, they said it was the first time police vehicles had been sent along this route.

Sources also said that several Burmese police officers have been given police training at China's National Security University and at a police academy in Yunnan province.

Reporting by Htet Aung Kyaw

Face of tragedy in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis

Rangoon (Mizzima) - While various reports have emerged on the situation in the Irrawaddy delta and Rangoon division, the true extent of devastation and human loss still remains unconfirmed as the government continues to impose restrictions on entry into the region.

Several reports of the terrible hardships of refugees and cyclone victims have come in from the few aid workers, who were allowed by the government to go in and from local and international media persons, who sneaked into the region.

Mizzima's correspondent in Rangoon, who despite various restrictions and courting great risk, sneaked into the delta region, narrates what he saw and heard.

Over two weeks since Cyclone Nargis wrought havoc in Burma's delta region, the stories and images in villages, removed from now largely sanitized population centers, are a composite of increasing hardship and heightened despair.

Approximately two hours south of Laputta by boat, Betuit Village has confirmed 911 deaths out of a pre-cyclone population of 9,169; Myitpauk 4,649 out of 10,682; and Maungnge 1,247 out of 6,210 - including every primary school student.

A local volunteer observing a smaller tributary to the Irrawaddy on May 16, counted 27 bodies floating past in only three minutes. Five children and seven monks were among the victims. In Zeehyu Village, of a pre-cyclone kindergarten to grade 7 enrollments of 197 students, only 50 survived. Meanwhile in Siskone, 12 rotting bodies dotted the paddy fields inundated in saline water in the immediate vicinity of bamboo homes now scattered across the ground.

Another local, who managed to visit villages between Kunchankone and Dae Da Ye, reports similar tales of death, destruction and prolonged suffering. Visiting Kyetsinphyu on May 11, the person found only eight of over 100 residents had survived the killer cyclone. Remarkably, four of those spared were infants. They had been placed in one of the giant pots prevalent throughout the region; a pot that floated and kept them alive. They are now orphaned.

Continuing from Kyetsinphyu, the man proceeded to visit a remote school where he formerly taught, in "a village with no name." What he found was: "Nothing. No village, no houses." All that he encountered were "ghost voices" of former students rising from the debris. History will leave no remembrance for those that once lived in this remote location with no name.

These are the scenes in communities that international observers and organisations are not allowed to see, restricted only to main towns such as Dae Da Ye and Laputta. Meanwhile, the plight of the survivors of rural communities continues to grow.

Inexplicably, local volunteers speak of only being allowed access to such villages following the government's announcement that its May 10 (a week after the cyclone) constitutional referendum had passed - an event the communities in question did not even participate in and are widely said to have never even taken an interest. Now, iroically, there are reports of refugees in monasteries being told to return to their destroyed villages to cast votes in the May 24 polling for the cyclone hit regions - again, for a motion that has already announced to have passed the test.

Back in Betuit, increasing desperation combined with profiteering led three persons to start cutting off the fingers and ears of corpses for their jewelry. Two of them, subsequently reported to the authorities, were summarily executed. There is talk of the entire region being under undeclared martial law.

Without tablets to clean water, diarrhea is beginning to take on epidemic proportions in some parts, with villagers forced to drink out of the same stagnant pools of water in which carcasses lie rotting.

The absence of potable water is indicative of what is transpiring to be a grossly inadequate and incompetent distribution of relief material that is largely reliant upon patronage and private aid. The Oil and Gas Minister, having come from Kyoneda Village in the delta, has seen to it that Kyoneda is well taken care of. Yet just a short distance away, in a village with 194 of 200 village homes destroyed, but having suffered only 20 casualties, residents were granted enough construction material to assemble a single new home - without the tools to do so.

While potato crops damaged in Pyapon, due to the negligence of a navy sergeant, in Laputta, locals are paid to carry aid to a government storeroom - from where it may or may not move. Local representatives of the UN, WFP, JICA, MSF, MERLIN and Melteser International are said to be withholding aid from a desperate population as they instead involve themselves with meticulous and redundant documentation. In Laputta, individual observers place the number of internal refugees that have flocked to the town at a much higher number to that of the UNDP estimate.

And what of the long-term future for these hard hit farming communities? The people are said to want to return to their land, a land they say they love. But with damaged fields and, significantly, a devastated buffalo and cattle population, how can this be accomplished? The Minister of Agriculture has since given notice that by the end of the year there would be ample machines to replace animals lost, machines able to overcome all that has been swept away by Nargis' fury, and machines that no villager knows how to operate. For their part, farmers talk of the need for buffaloes.

What is also becoming increasingly clear is that there is very little central control over the entire process, with local officers concealing the true extent of the damage to senior officials as is exemplified in the clearing of private donor cars along the delta's main access road ahead of Senior General Than Shwe's visit this week - over two weeks after the disaster. Additionally, aid workers and media report that the situation on the ground varies greatly with the posturing of the individual or individuals in charge - reporting favourable views in some areas as to assistance with their work and stark obstructionism in other cases.

Much of delta village life currently stands obliterated. And without a drastic increase in aid and efficiency to match it, the situation is likely to worsen. The new fear now is that in three months time the region could be hit with widespread famine, piling ever more misery onto a decimated population.

Apprehension of UN chief being misled by junta

By Solomon

New Delhi (Mizzima) – Though a lot is expected from the UN Secretary General Mr. Ban Ki-moon's visit to Burma, local aid workers apprehend the world body chief might be taken for a ride by Burma's military rulers.

Local aid workers said cyclone victims and refugees, flocking on the road waiting for relief materials to arrive, have been driven away as a preparation for the visit of the world body chief.

Mr. Ban Ki-moon arrived in Rangoon on Thursday and left for the cyclone hit-area in the Irrawaddy delta after holding meetings with the Burmese Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister.

Ban said that his mission to Burma was an attempt at persuading the country's military rulers to allow more relief material and permit workers free access to devastated areas to help cyclone victims.

But local aid workers said they fear the UN Chief might receive the wrong message and get a wrong impression of the scenario in cyclone hit Burma, unless he is able to visit the right places and meet the right people.

"We really hope for some kind of development during his [UN Chief] visit to Burma. But if he only sees what the junta has to show then his mission will be a failure," a local aid worker, who has been distributing relief materials in the Irrawaddy region, said.

The aid worker said, tens of thousands of people in remote areas, where the cyclone hit the hardest, are still not receiving any support and are facing starvation and diseases.

"I have witnessed with my own eyes that there is no support for the survivors in these remote areas," he said. "I saw several children including minors suffering from diarrhea."

The aid worker said the UN chief will only be able to assess the situation if he gets to see such pathetic conditions and not those places where the junta takes him.

"If he [UN Chief] goes only to places where the junta takes him then it will be impossible for him to gauge the actual situation," a volunteer in Rangoon's suburbs said.

As a preparation for the visit of Ban Ki-moon, authorities have begun to drive away refugees, who have flocked along the road from Kun Chan Kone in Rangoon division to Dae Da Ye town in Irrawaddy delta waiting for aid supplies to come.

Eyewitnesses said cyclone victims usually line up along the roads as the little relief that comes to the areas could only be accessed from the road.

Local residents in Laputta town said, refugee camps have been rearranged and several cyclone victims have been driven away from monasteries.

Meanwhile, Ban Ki-moon in Thursday afternoon headed for the Irrawaddy delta to get a first hand view of the devastation after having met Burmese junta officials in Rangoon.

Ban will be going to Naypyitaw on Friday to meet Burma's military supremo Senior General Than Shwe. The world body chief will also preside over a pledging conference for cyclone victims to be held in Rangoon on Sunday.

Junta Offers Showcase Camps, but Most Burmese Lack Aid

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

HLINETHAYA RELIEF CAMP, Myanmar — The 68 blue tents are lined up in a row, with a brand-new water purifier and boxes of relief supplies, stacked neatly but as yet undelivered and not even opened. “If you don’t keep clean, you’ll be expelled from here,” a camp manager barked at families in some tents.

The moment, at what has been billed as a model camp for survivors of Cyclone Nargis, captured a common complaint among refugees and aid volunteers: that the military junta that rules Myanmar cares more about the appearance of providing aid than actually providing it.

As a result of heavy international pressure, the junta has embarked on a campaign to show itself as responsive and open to aid as China has been in the wake of the earthquake that killed tens of thousands in Sichuan Province. On Thursday, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, arrived in Myanmar, as United Nations officials said that, nearly three weeks after the cyclone that left 134,000 dead or missing, they were finally seeing some small improvement.

The first 10 helicopters loaded with supplies from the World Food Program arrived Thursday. But of the 2.4 million survivors, United Nations officials say, only 500,000 have received any aid to date.

Mr. Ban received guided tours of apparently well-run government camps like this one for survivors, presenting one vision of the junta’s response to its people and the outside world. But interviews with survivors and Burmese breaking rules to help them suggest a different story: of a government that seems to have assisted little and, at times, with startling callousness, has even expelled homeless refugees from shelters that the junta needs for other purposes.

This relief camp in the western outskirts of Yangon, the country’s main city, made headlines in Myanmar’s state-run press when the junta’s leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, showed up there on Sunday to inspect the government relief effort.

A few days after the general’s inspection, the camp’s tidy blue tents were still set up but bottles of cooking oil inside many of them remained in their boxes. Pots and pans still bore their brand-name stickers.

The camp’s sole “medical” tent, identified by a Red Cross flag, held neither patients nor medicine. Its desk was staffed by two teenagers in uniform. Police officers armed with rifles guarded the entrance, where a new water purification tank donated by a local company was on prominent display.

Just a short ride down a potholed road, a striking divide is evident, one between the model relief camp and the continuing plight of many victims.

In the village of Ar Pyin Padan, a few minutes’ walk from here and just an hour’s drive from the center of Yangon, 40 families who lost nearly everything they owned crowded a rundown two-story school building. They had pushed desks together to serve as makeshift beds.

Here, deliveries of relief supplies are so infrequent that the refugees say they draw lots to get a small share whenever a donation comes in. For drinking water, one said, the township authorities “threw some medicine” into a nearby pond and told the villagers to drink from it.

Now the authorities are allowing no more refugees into the school. Instead they are trying to evict those who are already there so that the building can be used as a balloting station on Saturday. Despite the devastation and misery left by the cyclone, the junta is pressing ahead with voting in the two hardest-hit administrative divisions, Yangon and the Irrawaddy Delta, to complete a referendum on a new Constitution intended to perpetuate military rule. The Constitution was already overwhelmingly approved in other parts of the country.

“They want us to move out,” said one man in the school shelter. “But we have nowhere to go. Maybe if I had four or five sticks of bamboo, I could rebuild my house and start over but they don’t even give us that. So please donate to us. We need urgent help.”

He called the blue tents a short distance away beyond the rice paddies a “V.I.P. camp” — hastily constructed and occupied by villagers tutored to receive visiting junta generals or envoys from the United Nations.

In the past week, the state-run news media have given lavish coverage to General Than Shwe and other generals visiting areas devastated by the storm. At the same time, some critics say the junta has been obstructing attempts by Burmese to deliver assistance to isolated villages.

“The government is not really interested in helping people,” said U Thura, a dissident comedian who has been jailed four times in the past two decades for his outspokenness. “What they want is to show to the rest of the country and the world that they have saved the people and now it’s time to go back to business as usual.”

Mr. Thura and other volunteers have been lugging relief goods into remote villages in the Irrawaddy Delta over the past two weeks.

“Only a very small percentage of the victims get help at government-run camps,” he said in an interview. “Those fortunate enough to live near roads and rivers also get help. But people in remote villages that are hard to reach don’t get anything. To make it worse, the people in the Irrawaddy Delta have traditionally been antigovernment, so the junta doesn’t like them.”

“Even if they die,” he said, “the generals won’t feel sorry for them.”

For these outlying villagers in the delta, occasional visits by people like Mr. Thura have been virtually the only help they could get. But even people like the ones much closer to Yangon, like Ar Pyin Padan, do not appear to be faring much better.

“If they don’t get help soon, so many of them will die,” said a 36-year-old Yangon resident who has made four private aid runs into villages near Hpayapon, a delta town. “It’s hot when the sun shines and cold when it rains. When you see the villages, you just wonder how these people sleep at night in the rain. They have no shelter to speak of.”

“They are still so stunned by what had happened to them that they show no emotion,” he said. “They don’t even thank us when we give them food. They just accept the help with no expression in their faces.”

He said that during their aid runs he and his friends saw people with pneumonia, cholera and diarrhea. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the private aid deliveries that his group conducts are prohibited.

Mr. Thura and other aid runners said they were hampered by reinforced military checkpoints as well as by roads washed away and streams clogged with storm debris. Those who reach towns with aid are told that such goods must be distributed through the authorities. Many groups like Mr. Thura’s break away and head deeper into the delta on their own.

“We usually drive from Yangon in five hours, switch to a boat and travel four more hours and then we carry whatever we can — rice, noodles, energy drinks, medicine, gaslights — on our backs and walk,” he said. “You really need helicopters and boats to help these people.”

One of his recent trips took him to a village called Mangay. The village, whose name means “gaze at” in Burmese, was a sorry sight, he said. Once a prosperous community of 1,000 families who supplied dried fish throughout Myanmar, Mangay was virtually wiped out: 700 families were left homeless and 500 people were reportedly dead or missing.

Mr. Thura said more than 400 people were making donations for his aid runs as a way of helping the victims directly. Still, his five teams of renegade aid runners, who often use Buddhist monks as scouts, could only manage to deliver 6.5 million kyats, about $6,500, of relief a day into 32 villages.

The aid runners are coming under increasing pressure from the government.

Twenty of Mr. Thura’s team members have received calls from the police warning that they will be punished if they continue their work. On Sunday, he said, his photographer, U Kyaw Swar Aung, was arrested and has not been heard from since. He had been traveling around the delta making videos of dead bodies, crying children and villagers who went insane after the storm and distributing them as DVDs.

Meanwhile, Mr. Thura said the government seemed less focused on aid than on making sure there were no more scenes like those to film. In one place, he said he saw a pile of floating bodies clogging the narrow mouth of a stream after they were dumped into the water by soldiers on a cleanup operation.

“Then the soldiers used dynamite to blow up the bodies into shreds,” he said.

Myanmar Leaders Tell UN Junta Can Handle Cyclone Aid Relief

By Ed Johnson and Bill Varner

May 23 (Bloomberg) -- Myanmar's military regime told the United Nations it can handle the cyclone relief effort, as Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the junta to stop blocking international aid for millions affected by the disaster.

General Thein Sein, the junta's prime minister, told Ban yesterday he ``believed the relief phase was over and it was now time for reconstruction,'' the UN said in a statement.

Ban yesterday flew over the flooded Irrawaddy River delta that was decimated by the May 2-3 cyclone and met some of the survivors. He will press the junta again to allow international relief workers into the area when he meets with its leader, Senior General Than Shwe, today in the capital, Naypyidaw.

``Don't lose your hope,'' Ban said yesterday, as he toured the Kyondah camp, 75 kilometers (46 miles) south of the former capital, Yangon, according to the UN. ``The whole world is trying to help Myanmar.''

More than 130,000 people are dead or missing after the cyclone swept through the southern rice-growing delta, sweeping away villages, livestock and crops. Myanmar's military, which has run the nation of 48 million people since 1962, has barred international workers from the worst-affected areas and rejected offers of helicopters, trucks and aid from U.S. warships anchored off the coast.

Junta's Response

Thein Sein yesterday took issue with Ban's statement that the disaster was too great for the junta to handle and that more aid was urgently needed, according to a UN statement.

Ban expressed frustration with ``the inability of the aid workers to bring assistance at the right time to the affected areas,'' according to the UN.

Three weeks after the cyclone hit the country formerly known as Burma, the first of 10 helicopters contracted by the UN World Food Program arrived in Yangon yesterday.

The Mi8T chopper, which can carry as much as 3 metric tons of food, arrived from Malaysia, the UN's news service IRIN reported. The other aircraft, donated by countries across the globe, are expected over the coming days to arrive in Bangkok in neighboring Thailand, where they will be reassembled and flown to Myanmar.

The junta estimates the cyclone may have caused $10.7 billion in damage to property and affected 5.5 million people, Ramesh Shrestha, the UN Children's Fund representative for Myanmar, said yesterday after meeting with U Soe Tha, the country's development minister.

Donor Conference

Delegates from 31 countries have registered to attend a May 25 donor conference in Yangon sponsored by the UN and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Shari Villarosa, the charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Yangon, will attend the conference, State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters yesterday in Washington.

The Bush administration has led international criticism of the junta for blocking the relief effort and rights abuses, including the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi.

The opposition leader, whose National League for Democracy won elections in 1990 that were rejected by the junta, has spent 12 of the past 18 years in detention and has been under house arrest at her home in Yangon since May 2003.

Pro-democracy campaigners are demanding that Suu Kyi, 62, be freed this month, saying the junta's legal authority to detain her expires. Under the State Protection Law, the regime can only hold someone deemed a security threat for five years without trial or charge, according to the Burma Campaign U.K.

Restore Democracy

``Ban Ki-moon must meet with Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD leaders whilst he is in Burma,'' said campaign director Mark Farmaner in a statement. ``The UN failed to take action that the people of Burma called for to help restore democracy. Now the regime they left in power is killing thousands more through the denial of aid.''

The junta holds a referendum on a draft constitution tomorrow in the areas worst hit by the cyclone, two weeks after the rest of the country voted. The charter was approved by 92.4 percent of voters on a 99 percent turnout on May 10, according to state media.

The junta says the referendum will pave the way for elections in 2010. The U.S. and opposition groups in Myanmar say the ballot is rigged and accuse the generals of trying to prolong their reign.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ed Johnson in Sydney at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net; Bill Varner at the United Nations at wvarner@bloomberg.net

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

GA/10711

Sixty-second General Assembly
Plenary
Thematic Debate on Human Security (AM & PM)

Myanmar , China Crises Underline Need to Bring Human Security to Fore, Even As World Ponders Issues of Responsibility, Sovereignty, Says Jordan’s Prince

Lasting results at the crossroads of security, development and human rights can only be achieved through collaboration –- with Governments, United Nations agencies and civil society working hand in hand –- to protect, engage and empower those in peril, General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim said today, opening the world body’s first-ever thematic debate on human security.

‘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.

The concept of human security went beyond mere ‘State security’ and called for a holistic approach that focused on people, their protection and empowerment, he continued, noting contemporary challenges ranging from hunger and poverty, to armed conflict, global warming, terrorism and human trafficking. Human security sought to protect people from such threats and to promote the goals endorsed by the Assembly’s 2005 World Summit: freedom from fear, freedom from want, and freedom to live in dignity.

‘As the global food crisis illustrates, a well-coordinated and integrated response by the international community is needed to address both the prevention stage as well as the full range of factors that affect people’s well-being,’ he said. Speedy and coherent action was needed to address the human security imperatives following two recent natural catastrophes: Cyclone Nargis, which struck Myanmar earlier this month; and the 7.9 magnitude earthquake, which rocked south-west regions of China just two weeks ago; events that had left untold numbers of people dead, missing and homeless in both countries.

He said such challenges must be tackled in their totality. The concept of human security could ‘provide the link, the glue, to bring our various approaches to these issues into a coherent effort’. There was an urgent need for Member States, international organizations, United Nations agencies, as well as civil society to embrace and enact principles of human security, with international law and multilateral cooperation, human rights, responsibility to protect, as well as environmental protection and sustainable development, he said.

In a wide-ranging keynote address, Prince El-Hassan bin Talal of Jordan passionately challenged the traditional notion of security, urging Governments to view the matter through a wider lens, which captured the full gamut of inter-personal, community-oriented, and culturally-founded relationships that took place between individuals and States. ‘I believe that, together, as a global citizenry, we must now confront the many problems that impact our lives across territorial boundaries, including matters of shared international concerns that Governments and markets are not equipped to address,’ he noted.

Moreover, the scale of the crises of the last few weeks in Myanmar and China had reminded us of our common vulnerability and shared humanity, while emphasizing the need to bring human security from the ‘conceptual to the practical’, even as the world community pondered critical questions of responsibility and sovereignty.

‘It would seem to me obvious that we must now frame the meaning of security within an expanded context, that human security must now contain the imperative of human survivability and resilience,’ he declared, adding that responsibility and authority must shift from Governments downwards to individuals, communities and civil society, and upwards to international organizations, regional mechanisms and networks. Cautioning against overestimating the importance of State and market security to human security, he said that, in his travels, he found that there were few foreign policy or commercial solutions that would ensure the common security of all humanity.

‘Strategic planning and cooperation for the future of the planet are desperately lacking,’ he said, adding that the real issue was that markets and States were not equipped to handle the myriad challenges that transcended national boarders, such as hunger, resource depletion, wealth disparity, global warming, infectious disease and cross-cultural conflicts. He called for a new balance between the common interest of States, markets and people, which was essential to economic and social development, environmental harmony and peace.

Among the more than 40 delegations taking the floor during the interactive debate, many echoed President Kerim’s sentiment that the United Nations, because of its global effort to advance security, development and human rights, was a particularly important nexus in furthering the notion of human security that put ‘positive peace’, and not the mere absence of conflict, at the heart of the understanding of security.

Other speakers emphasized that the concept of human security was not new. Indeed, food, shelter and physical security were ‘as old as humanity’, and the landmark 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights had underscored the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.

But Mongolia’s representative said what was new was globalization –- ‘the extent to which our fates have become so intertwined with those who previously would have remained isolated from us’. So, the concept of human security must encompass ‘borderless’ issues such as economic, food and environmental concerns, as well as balance the rights and responsibilities of States with those of individuals.

‘In the final analysis, human security is a child who didn’t die, a disease that did not spread, a job that wasn’t cut, an ethnic tension that did not explode into violence, a dissident who was not silenced,’ she said, quoting the 1994 Human Development Report.

Turkey’s representative stressed that human security was not only about protection but about empowerment, agreeing that the concept must be broadly interpreted to include protection from disease, hunger, natural disasters and environmental degradation, all of which caused more daily suffering than armed conflicts. He was also among those who said that coming to a broad-based consensus on the definition of human security required determining the ‘ownership of and responsibility for the concept’. Ensuring human security lay with individual States, and the wider global community should help countries build their capacities in the area.

But India’s representative warned delegations to beware of ‘conceptual overstretch’ as they sought to define –- and ultimately, implement -– human security. If the international community tacked ‘security’ onto everything, where was the net added value? Important topics like ‘women in armed conflict’ and ‘environmental degradation’ were being discussed in other forums. Wouldn’t expanding the concept of human security too broadly actually drain it of any real operational applicability? ‘If human security includes everything, then surely it includes nothing,’ he said.

At the same time, however, he understood the inherent dangers in limiting the concept to, say, violence between groups or by ruthless Governments, ‘especially in this climate of totally unreformed international, economic and political governance structures’. Such a narrowing would be so politically contested, that human security would enjoy no consensus and thus would be drained of meaning from another angle. So to him, it appeared that human security was a concept for the future; a time when multilateralism had come into its own and when global political and economic governance had been reformed to the point where it could be limited without danger of it being misused.

Furthering the debate, Brazil’s representative agreed that establishing the ‘basic contours’ of the concept of human security was a major challenge, but said that, while references had been made to rising food prices, gender violence, climate change and the Millennium Development Goals, he was not sure how evolving a concept of human security advanced efforts to tackle those issues. How would it make the United Nations more efficient in tackling those problems from a practical perspective? And while a possible answer could be that those challenges related to the individual as the subject of inalienable rights, that view begged the question of what value the concept of human security could add to the current regime of international human rights treaties.

The representative of Japan, participating as co-chair of the two-year old open-ended forum, Friends of Human Security, said that the panel, which met every six months or so, had realized that, rather than focusing on elaborating a definition of the concept, it was more important to move forward on the basis of a common understanding of human security as contained in the outcome document of the 2005 World Summit. On how the concept differed from the ‘responsibility to protect’, he said that human security was a human centred approach to global issues, consistent with the Charter, in promoting full respect of national sovereignty, and complementary to State security.

The representative of Mexico, the forum’s other co-chair, added that, under the human security approach, individuals would be protected against any threats, regardless the regime. Such protection comprised the rights inherent to every person and the means for their effective fulfilment. Further, human security’s preventive nature provided the added value, as it could keep threats from becoming crises. Highlighting some issues that required a human security approach, he said that both climate change and the current global food crisis required long-term, person centred strategies, allowing States to anticipate or mitigate against such threats and to act before catastrophe struck.

Egypt’s representative said that it was essential for the discussion on human security to include consideration of ensuring long-term development and the promotion and protection of human rights for all. He was also among those urging special attention to the needs of countries undergoing or emerging from conflict, as well as to ending economic blockades and collective punishment of peoples under occupation. ‘We should be careful not to confuse human security with the responsibility to protect to justify intervention into domestic affairs, particularly between Governments and their citizens,’ he said.

National Governments had the primary responsibility to provide security for their people, he said. The international community’s responsibility was to support that role and provide necessary assistance –- if requested and with the consent of the Government concerned –- to build national capacities in order to address immediate or impending challenges and threats. ‘Human security needs to become an arena that unites efforts, not one that becomes a cause for disagreement or conflict of interests,’ he said, adding that it should become a driving force for rebuilding confidence between the north and south.

China’s representative agreed, saying that, while outside forces could provide assistance, such action must respect the national integrity and immediate requirements of the country concerned. Outside actors must also respect the letter and spirit of the Charter. In the wake of the recent devastating earthquake that had struck his country, his Government was working hard to ensure that the victims and other survivors lived free from want and fear. China sincerely thanked all countries that had provided assistance over the past two weeks.

Stressing the 2005 World Summit’s emphasis on the ‘right of people to live in freedom and dignity […] free from poverty and despair,’ the representative of the Republic of Korea, said that it was all the more important that every man, woman and child have clean water, sufficient food, adequate shelter, basic health care, a decent education and protection from violence. ‘We believe that no one can dispute the validity of the basic concept,’ he said. It was time to focus on how to translate the call of ordinary people into reality and to ensure that the United Nations played an effective role in making that happen.

‘What’s in a name,’ said Prince Talal, wrapping up the day-long debate with a call for global solidarity as a way to better integrate the three pillars of security, development and human rights, whether it was called ‘human security’, ‘human solidarity’ or ‘new humanitarian order’. He urged Governments to set aside their own interests and listen to the voices of the ‘millions sitting in the margins of history while poverty, hunger and disease ravage the world’.

As the debate over the definition of human security was bound to continue, he suggested that perhaps regional human rights and social development centres could be established so that the matter could be decided at the community level and then communicated to the United Nations. Even though there were bound to be differences, the goal was for national Governments to propose policies that would improve the lives and livelihoods of their own people.

He added that, while he had wished delegations had talked ‘to’ rather than ‘at’ each other during the debate, and that civic actors had been involved, perhaps, if the ‘art of conversation ever makes a return to these halls […] peace and development can once again become everybody’s business’.

For information media • not an official record

Relief Web

UN chief flies to meet Myanmar's key decision maker after touring cyclone-hit delta

YANGON, Myanmar (IHT): U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon headed Friday to the crucial meeting of his Myanmar mission, hoping to persuade the country's inflexible junta leader to fully open up to international aid for 2.5 million cyclone survivors.

Ban flew to the remote capital of Naypyitaw, 250 miles (400 kilometers) north of Yangon, after witnessing some of the cyclone's devastation during a carefully choreographed tour Thursday.

The U.N. chief was to meet with the most powerful man in the country, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, who had earlier refused to answer Ban's telephone calls or letters.

Highest on Ban's agenda is urging Than Shwe to allow an unimpeded influx of foreign aid and experts to reach survivors, most of them women and children, at growing risk of starvation, disease and exposure to monsoon rains.

By the military government's count, some 78,000 people were killed by the May 2-3 Cyclone Nargis, and another 56,000 are unaccounted for.

In his talks, Ban may also bring up the fate of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose latest period of detention expires Monday. A string of U.N. envoys have in the past failed to spring the democracy icon from house arrest, confronting a junta that has proved virtually impervious to outside pressure.

The 76-year-old Than Shwe — reclusive, superstitious and known as "the bulldog" for his stubbornness — has held virtually unassailable power since 1992.

Ban's firsthand look at the devastation wrought by the storm left the secretary-general shaken Thursday, even though the areas to which he was taken were far from the worst-hit.

"I'm very upset by what I've seen," Ban told reporters, after a walk through a makeshift relief camp where 500 people huddled in blue tents at Kyondah village in Dedaye township, about 75 kilometers (45 miles) southwest of Yangon, Myanmar's largest city.

Myanmar's military regime have been keen to show it has the relief effort under control despite spurning the help of foreign disaster experts, and trotted out officials to give statistics-laden lectures to make their point.

But the U.N. says up to 2.5 million cyclone survivors face hunger, homelessness and potential outbreaks of deadly diseases, especially in the lower-lying areas of the Irrawaddy Delta close to the sea. It estimates that aid has reached only about 25 percent of them.

The places Ban visited, the Kyondah Relief Camp, and the town of Mawlamyinegyun, an aid distribution point, seemed orderly and well organized.

But the destruction in the areas around them was relatively mild compared to that further southwest in the townships of Labutta and Bogalay. Officials gave no explanation of why Ban was not taken to those areas, where the preponderance of dead and missing are reported.

The International Red Cross said rivers and ponds in Bogalay remained full of corpses, and that many people in remote areas had received no aid.

Kyondah — which has electricity and clean water — is somewhat of a showcase. The camp's inhabitants had cooking pots and blankets that appeared to be new. It was also selected for visits by senior junta members and representatives of foreign embassies and international aid organizations last week.

The storm's destruction was more obvious from the air.

The two helicopters carrying Ban's party flew over seemingly endless fields that had been flooded, villages with destroyed houses, rivers swollen past their banks, people huddled on rooftops, in tent villages or taking to boats.

U.N. officials traveling with Ban said they were discussing with Chinese authorities whether Ban could tour the earthquake zone in Sichuan directly after leaving Myanmar. The officials requested anonymity, citing protocol.

The trip, which has not been finalized, would give Ban the chance to compare the two countries' responses and urge China — Myanmar's biggest ally — to put its weight behind opening the flow of aid workers.

As Ban began his visit, foreign aid agencies stressed the need to quickly reach survivors suffering from disease, hunger and lack of shelter.

"In 30-plus years of humanitarian emergency work this is by far — by far — the largest case of emergency need we've ever seen," said Lionel Rosenblatt, president of U.S.-based Refugees International.

Yangon citizens did not seem optimistic that Ban's visit would make a difference.

"Don't just talk, you must take action," said Eain Daw Bar Tha, abbot of a Buddhist monastery on Yangon's outskirts. "The U.N. must directly help the people with helicopters to bring food, clothes and clean water to the really damaged places."