Myanmar cyclone disaster funding falls flat

Aug 1, 2008, 11:51 GMT

Yangon - While the 2004 tsunami that killed a quarter of a million people in Asia sparked a tidal wave of aid from the world community, so far Myanmar's Cyclone Nargis catastrophe has drawn only a trickle, Save the Children revealed Friday.

Save the Children, a non-governmental organization that has worked in Myanmar for years, said that three months after Cyclone Nargis smashed into Myanmar on May 2-3 leaving at least 138,000 dead or missing, the country is still on the cusp of another disaster if more funding is not forthcoming.

'Families' food stocks are running out. In a recent assessment, 55 per cent of families surveyed in 291 villages in the delta said they currently had less than one day of food left and had no stocks to fall back on,' warned Save The Children.

The agency warned that many farmers did not have sufficient rice seeds to plant their crops in the rainy season, following the devastation wrought by the cyclone, which also destroyed about 44 per cent of small boats in the Irrawaddy delta, the region hardest hit by the cyclone, dubbed the worst natural disaster in Myanmar's recent history.

The United Nations has put out flash appeals to the international community for about 500 million dollars in funding for ongoing emergency relief efforts, but the response has been luke warm when compared with the outpouring of funds that the December 26, 2004, tsunami elicited.

The tsunami, triggered by an earthquake and coming the day after Christmas, killed more than 250,000 people living or vacationing on the rim of the Indian Ocean. Many of the victims were foreign tourists.

'Japan gave 500 million dollars to the tsunami appeal and has so far contributed 11 million dollars to Cyclone Nargis,' noted Save the Children in a statement.

The United States, with a per capita income of 45,850 dollars, has so far pledged 29 million to aid victims of cyclone Nargis, while the Philippines, with a per capita of 3,730 dollars, has pledged 20 million, the agency noted.

'During the tsunami every person affected by the disaster received the equivalent of 1,249 dollars in aid. So far the survivors of Cyclone Nargis have received 213 dollars,' it added.

Raising money for Myanmar, a pariah state in the eyes of Western democracies for it atrocious human rights record and refusal to implement political reforms, is difficult.

It didn't help matters that the ruling junta initially stalled the international relief efforts for their own people by slowing the aid flow and refusing to grant visas to foreign aid experts.