Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-21-Speech-3-301"
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"en.20080521.23.3-301"2
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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, first and foremost I wish to thank you for placing Burma on the agenda for this sitting.
There is one practical problem: this land ought to be sown to ensure a harvest in October. The timeline is therefore a maximum of three to four weeks. A number of people at the temporary camps, as they call them, do not wish to return to their own areas for all sorts of reasons, while others do wish to return, but need special kinds of seeds since all the soil has been salinated, and therefore they need much stronger plants, and also fertilisers. I thus attempted to engage in constructive, practical dialogue with the authorities on this matter. It was thought that the UNDP micro-credit scheme could be used as a finance mechanism. We are still discussing this at present. I must tell you it is no rapid process.
The Commission provided a rapid response, with an emergency decision of two million euros adopted on 5 May. As you know, I am authorised to release three million euros right away with no official procedures. Of course, since we had no identification, we began by releasing two million. We subsequently decided on an envelope of five million euros in food aid, and also an additional emergency envelope of ten million euros. We are, of course, willing to do more on the basis of needs assessments and assurances in terms of aid monitoring.
When I left after my two and a half hours of discussions with the authorities, I sent them a specific written note of the various requests I had made. My first request concerned visa extensions for those working temporarily on the mission, namely the Commission staff. We were given a two-week extension.
I also asked for final clarification, and for them to notify our local authorities that Burmese workers at our agencies and other operators no longer require official authorisation or a travel permit. This point has obviously been clarified.
I asked for multiple-entry visas for six months to allow the EU-financed NGOs working there to triple their international personnel. When I left Burma there were one hundred or so visa applications outstanding for UN agencies, and just over one hundred NGO applications. I asked to be informed regularly. Some have been issued since, but it is a far cry from what was requested.
I also requested visas and travel permits to visit the delta and to ensure that sufficient personnel could be mobilised. As I said, I then asked for permits to be issued rapidly to doctors in the area and local medical staff. It would appear they understood this point perfectly.
As for Pathein airport, which could have acted as a kind of redistribution hub for products arriving in planes sent by the international community, the answer here was an outright no. The reason was, according to them, that the control equipment and means were not in line with international standards, and that it was much easier to go via Rangoon. I doubt this because, when I was there, Rangoon was already overwhelmed and had a number of problems which were subsequently rectified to a certain extent. I am not sure that these were sorted out thanks to me. It was simply that they could not find a way to operate Rangoon airport either. I also feel that operations were handled in this manner for reasons relating to institutional comfort.
All in all, it was an extremely frustrating mission, I can tell you. I feel there is total distrust of the international community. There are some very deep-rooted
concerns in the country. One occasionally has the distinct impression that nobody is listening to anyone else. It is extremely difficult to reach the conscience and mindset of the person we are talking to. The talks went well because for two and a half hours we had a genuine discussion, all quite courteous but firm too, because one nagging question persists: why say no to the international personnel that is so necessary to assist with operations?
I also mentioned the responsibility to protect, in this way in particular, and even this led to a problem of principles. At that point I was told that certain questions required no answers. That was how the mission went. Obviously I was sad I had not secured anything more specific, but I cannot pretend I was not glad to return to Europe.
In view of the scale of the catastrophe caused by Cyclone Nargis on 2 May, we suggested the Presidency call an extraordinary meeting of the Council of EU Foreign Affairs Ministers. The Council meeting was convened as soon as possible by the Slovenian Presidency, who I wish to thank, and was held on 12 May.
At the meeting the EU called for increased cooperation by the Burmese authorities to allow access and distribution of international humanitarian aid. I decided to follow up the call directly by visiting Burma on 15 and 16 May. During my mission, which I made clear was strictly humanitarian and non-political, I was able to meet the Burmese authorities and the representatives of humanitarian organisations in Burma, and I made a visit on the ground to the areas affected around Yangon. I had two and a half hours of quite intense meetings and discussions with the Minister for Planning – who obviously held most authority and was certainly the most authoritarian of the three I met – the Minister for Social Welfare and the Minister for Health.
What emerged very clearly from my mission was that the Burmese authorities are still extremely reluctant to create the operational conditions normally required to provide an international humanitarian response to meet local needs. It is equally clear to me that an approach seeking to impose international humanitarian aid on the Burmese authorities, in due consideration of our current means, is doomed to failure and could even be counterproductive. All the humanitarian organisations in Burma told me this, and confirmed that the problem is obviously not the lack of organisations on the ground, or even a lack of funds, since a lack of means also certainly depends on access to international experts and professionals, but rather lack of access.
My mission certainly made a modest contribution to opening up a tiny window to gradually create a minimum humanitarian space for international humanitarian aid. The Burmese authorities provided a partial response to various specific demands: for example, visas for experts working for the Commission were extended by two weeks. They had been issued with three-day visas and these were extended for two weeks. We had requested one month.
We also clarified a situation that appeared genuinely serious. At certain locations, the local authorities were demanding a permit, and therefore written authorisation, even for local workers, meaning people employed by our agencies, by the UN or by NGOs, and in most cases this was of course impossible. This was clarified, and obviously no authorisation is required for local workers. Authorisation is also no longer required to enter the disaster areas, in particular Pathein airport. I also asked for a second airport to be opened up for planes arriving with equipment, in other words Pathein airport which is a military airport. I was told that this was not possible because the technical standards used by the control tower differed from international standards and, in any case, that this would not make the work any easier since the roads between Rangoon and the delta, the area worst affected, were in much better condition and much easier to use. Unfortunately I had no authorisation to check this kind of information for myself.
I feel it is important for international pressure to be maintained, both by neighbouring countries and by the international community as a whole. I ought to say that, in my discussions with the authorities, I also made a specific request – I made, in fact, five specific requests which I will tell you about in just a moment – that doctors and medical staff from neighbouring countries be allowed to deploy in the areas worst hit, and they obtained authorisation for this on the day I left. This means that 140 doctors were deployed and also medical staff from Laos, Cambodia, India, Bangladesh and Thailand. They were thus able to visit the areas worst hit. The role to be played by neighbouring countries is crucial, and I was also able to have quite a long discussion with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon while waiting for my plane to return to Bangkok. I passed on all this information to him, told him my feelings on the issue, and also how the mission had gone.
The UN Secretary-General agreed with this analysis, but had two specific suggestions to make himself: to deploy a joint UN/ASEAN humanitarian aid coordinator, and to quickly organise a donor conference co-presided by the UN and ASEAN on 24 and 25 May in Bangkok. Following on from the recent visit by the United Nations humanitarian aid coordinator John Holmes, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is visiting Burma tomorrow to discuss how to channel international aid.
In relation to needs, the humanitarian situation in Burma remains dramatic. There is a danger that the first catastrophe caused by the cyclone could be worsened by a second humanitarian disaster: the risk of famine, since harvests were destroyed, and also epidemics among survivors whose living conditions are deplorable. There is a risk of epidemics. When we were there, the World Health Organization did not see identify risk of cholera, but large numbers of children were suffering from diarrhoea and so on. This meant there was a risk of epidemic caused by water pollution. There is also a risk of famine. The region stockpiles large amounts of rice, and all food in storage has been destroyed."@en1
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