http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4003&Itemid=214

radio report here - http://www.rte.ie/news/player.html?worldreport#programme=World%20Report

Lu Van Thinh at his bamboo farm in Thanh Hoa province (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Continuing growth is exceeded by stubborn inflation

HO CHI MINH CITY- With average per capital annual incomes of just over US$1,000, Vietnam is officially a lower-middle income country, and in Hanoi, the seat of government, and commercial capital Ho Chi Minh City – still popularly known as Saigon – property prices are on an upward curve and new building and property developments appear shoot up faster than new growth in Vietnam’s lush tropical rainforests.

The appearance is somewhat illusory. The country faces crushing inflation, forecast by Standard Chartered Bank at 19.7 percent in December, with an11.3 percent rise forecast for 2012. The dong is expected to continue to depreciate throughout the year given Vietnam’s US$8 billion current account deficit and low foreign currency reserves.

With the State Bank of Vietnam attempting to sop up liquidity, tight monetary policy is starting to put pressure on the banking sector with the result that some small banks have raised interest rates as high as 18 percent annually despite a central bank request to keep rates at 14 percent. That is placing considerable pressure on investment although loan rates have fallen considerably from their 2011 levels, which averaged 22-27 percent, according to the World Bank.

In particular the high interest rates, rising inflation and property oversupply have turned the boom to a bust and the urban areas are suffering from the hangover. In addition to curbing lending through monetary tightening, the government has categorized some property as high risk for commercial banks, making it difficult for state banks to extend loans for new projects. According to Marketresearch.com. developers are now seeking joint venture partners for financing because of the scarcity of bank loans.

Nonetheless, there is a sense of a country on the up, with continuing government announcements of overseas investments, new brand-name shop fronts and luxury cars cruising amid the endless din of tens of thousands of motorbikes careering along the streets of Hanoi and Saigon. Asean estimates suggest that Vietnam and Indonesia are the top two destinations for foreign direct investment in Southeast Asia, with FDI inflows for Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore increasing by 174 percent, 140 percent and 120 percent, respectively over 2011.

“When I first came here eight years ago, it was so different,” recalled one European investor who asked not to be named. “Even then, there were much fewer motorbikes, and big cars were rare, especially in Hanoi.”

Vietnam’s doi moi policy, or economic ‘opening-up’, has reduced poverty from 75 percent in the mid-1980s to 14.5 percent in 2008. Per capita income averaged around US$400 in 2000. Their doubling in a decade is the result of 7 percent annual per annum average economic growth. GDP growth was 6.5 percent in 2011, expected by the World Bank to fall to 5.5 percent in 2012.

Vietnam still has areas of raw poverty, particularly in rural areas where many the country’s 53 ethnic minorities live. All told, more than 80 percent of the population are Kinh, speaking Vietnamese, while the rest is made up of groups such as Khmer Krom and Hmong.

Rice paddies in Thanh Hoa, northern Vietnam (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

The decade of robust growth has generated an urgent need for efficient transportation networks and modern infrastructure of all kinds from electricity to transport, which has spurred the government to release US$7 billion for highway, rail and other transport infrastructure over the next two years through the end of 2014.

Nobody knows that better than Lu Van Thinh, an ethnic Thai bamboo farmer in Ngheo village, a three-hour drive from Hanoi through stunning karst mountain landscapes reminiscent of an inland Halong Bay, and along the old Ho Chi Minh trail. He has about 1,000 bamboo plants on his farm, but said that poor roads and lack of cash to purchase a truck limit his options to expand the business.

Over plates of fried chicken and noodles, washed down by eye-glazing toasts of rice wine, Ngheo residents said that the house-on-stilts dwellings were lit by power supplied by locally-made and installed water wheels. The village, whose name translates as “poor” in English (another village 5 miles away is called ‘Difficult”), lacks streetlights and is not yet connected to the national grid.

Such rural poverty provides the push to match the pull of urban growth and job prospects in Hanoi and Saigon. Internal migration ensues, and the Vietnamese government estimated in 2009 that there were 7 million migrants in Saigon and 26 million across the country, huge numbers in a country of 90 million people. As with most other Asian countries, the total fertility rate has been dropping sharply, from more than 2.5 live births per woman in 2000, to 1.9 today – below the 2.1 rate to maintain equilibrium. But with 25 percent of the population under the age of 14, even as the total fertility rate falls below replacement, the absolute number will continue to rise until those in the early baby boom generation age past their reproductive cycles.

In the endless industrial park suburbs ringing Saigon, a vast city of 12 to 14 million people that spills out into neighboring provinces, around 65 percent of the population are migrants. People on the move offer investors a low-cost and flexible labor supply, but sometimes this is not without trouble. “We tend to lose around 20 percent of our staff every year after Tet,” the Vietnamese New Year, said Kim Jung Hee, a factory manager in Binh Duong province, an hour’s drive from Saigon’s centre.

Kim’s Korean company, NB Blue, employs 1,000 workers in a clean and well-lit factory churning out hoodies and tee-shirts for well-known brand names. She said that she is ready for anticipated staffing losses when her factory – like most others in Vietnam – shuts for a week or more around the January 23 holiday. Seven weeks out, domestic flights and trains are already running close to booked-up, and Kim conceded that most her staff will head north for the break, some never to return. “They go back to their villages, and they hear about new jobs elsewhere so follow those rumors,” she said

NB Blue has signed up to Better Work Vietnam, an initiative backed by the International Labor Organization and the International Finance Corporation, aiming to clean up the country’s sweatshops. Kim Jung Hee said she is happy with this: otherwise NB Blue would lose its lucrative contracts with the likes of Gap, which has also subscribed to the Better Work project.

At work inside NB Blue (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

The mostly young, female, rural-origin workers earn an average of US$120 per month, in keeping with Vietnam’s minimum wage requirements. One of the few men in the factory, Nguyen Van Vu, 28, migrated to Saigon almost 10 years ago, and after numerous job changes, is now head of the ironing section. He said his salary has risen three times this year and added that “in general working in this factory is good”.

The raises are being eaten up by Vietnam stubborn inflation, which that could undermine progress and send some of the new “middle income” Vietnamese back into poverty. Food prices have doubled over the past year, meaning that in Vietnam, as in many other poorer countries where people spend a high proportion of their income on food, low-wage workers are struggling to make ends meet.

Vu remits some of his earnings to his parents, living on a farm in Quang Tri province, not far from the old Vietnamese imperial capital of Hue. He recently got married, and his wife is seven months pregnant. All told, even with the salary hikes, he is feeling the squeeze, as are those dependent on his earning power.

On top of everything else, his meager yet locally-competitive salary helps fund his sister’s studies in Danang, Vietnam’s fifth-biggest city and a former US marine airbase during the Indochina wars, and sitting about halfway between Hanoi and Saigon on Vietnam’s 2140 mile coastline. “Without my wages, she will have to quit,” he lamented.

- editing by John Berthelsen

Story republished by The Jakarta Globe
 

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/commentary/vietnams-rising-prosperity-ushers-in-a-new-era-of-problems-and-promise/482639

RTÉ radio report is a shorter version of the above, and featuring the following:

Last week, Ireland’s Minister of State for Trade and Development Jan O’Sullivan visited Vietnam, to see how Irish aid has contributed to growth and to launch a new five year programme costing 11 million euro a year.

The Minister said that Vietnam’s story shows that development assistance works, and that a rising Vietnam can offer commercial opportunities for Irish businesses seeking a low-cost foothold in the Asia-Pacific. “Ireland’s development work has created good will towards us in Vietnam”, she said.

Cork-based software developer Glandore Systems has made the move. Its Saigon-office is managed by James Galvin. He said he can achieve greater flexibility with lower costs in Vietnam, compared with Ireland.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22371

Flooding ensued after this breach in wall along Phra Khanong canal in inner Bangkok (Photo; Simon Roughneen)

Former Burmese migrant ‘broker’ unloads on shakedown of poor migrants fleeing Thailand floods

BANGKOK – “They are using the opportunity (provided by the floods) to exploit the workers”, says *Aung, slamming Thai immigration officials and Burmese brokers for extorting Burmese migrants who have been fleeing flooding Thailand. “I have never seen anything so bad as this”, said the man.

Aung used to work as a broker in Thailand, part of a sometimes-reviled network who, for an often substantial fee, help migrants find work and living quarters in Thailand, but often collude with traffickers in Burma and Thailand, and with brutally-exploitative employers in Thailand.

Leaked information from inside the immigration detention centre near Mae Sot, the main land border crossing between Thailand and Burma, suggests that 30,000 Burmese trying to head home have been detained at the centre during recent weeks, as floods close factories and inundate their often ramshackle homes.

Those with full official migrant worker accreditation in Thailand generally can do their border crossing without excessive trouble. However, for those whose ID only permits them live and work inside the area where their employment is based, or for those without documentation, fleeing the floods is an ordeal in itself.

“In Samut Sakhon (a fishing port 40 minutes southwest of Bangkok and home to tens of thousands of Burmese who work in the fisheries sector) brokers charge 2400 baht for Burmese who want to travel to Mae Sot”, said the ex-broker Aung.

“They then load 150 people onto a truck with room for no more than 50”, before making the 8-9 hour road trip to the border.

There, those without papers are detained by police and immigration officials, and can be “fined” for breaches of their work permits, before being deported overnight across the border into Burma, easy prey for traffickers such as the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), an Karen ethnic militia affiliated to the Burmese army.

However, it is not just the informal shakedowns that are irking Burmese migrants and those working to assist them. Aung says that all formal costs for migrants wanting to return home should be waived during the flood crisis, not only as a charitable gesture but as an additional preventive measure against traffickers and unscrupulous brokers.

“Removing all formal costs for migrants returning home, whether re-entry permit costs or travel costs, must be immediate. Otherwise migrants who have suffered once in this disaster will suffer again, at increased risk of trafficking and debt bondage”, he said.

Residents in swamped Pathum Thani, asking a truck driver for a lift to dry ground (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

The Burmese authorities have protected key gates during daytime, and have been providing food, water transport onward to Pa’an inside Burma, as well 4500kyat to the returning migrants, according to sources at the border.

However now it appears that deportations from the Thailand side at Mae Sot are taking place during night-time, according to separate anonymously-provided accounts from the border area provided to The Irrawaddy. “Night time deportations are dangerous, international standards dictate deportations should be taking place only in the day. Night time deportations have to stop.” said Andy Hall, a migration policy expert at Mahidol University in Bangkok.

In areas of flood-devastated Pathum Thani, a suburb on the northern outskirts of the vast Thailand capital, mafia figures are keeping Burmese migrants as virtual prisoners in waist-high water, now sitting stagnant and stinking for up to two weeks in places. “If they want to leave, they have to pay”, said another NGO worker who helps Burmese migrants in the area, where only 5-10% of the Burmese migrants usually living and working there now remain. “But many have no valid papers”, said the NGO staffer.

However it is not just shady mafia figures who are trying to take advantage of migrants desperation t make a quick flood-related buck. “One employer in Pathum Thani wanted 7500 baht from migrants who needed their passports back to try go home to Burma”, said the same source. Thai employers often hold their Burmese or other migrant staff passports as a means of control. “I spoke to this man on October 29-30, and he eventually agreed not to charge them for giving them their passports back”.

With 2-3 million Burmese migrants in Thailand, there are around 1 million living in the flood-affected areas, according to the Thailand Labour Ministry. “Nobody really knows how many migrants are affected by the floods”, says Hall. “Some say 200,000, some say at least double that”. There appears to be only one shelter for Burmese migrants affected by Thailand’s worst flooding in over a half-century however, with between 200-400 people taking refuge at the Wat Rai Khing in Nakhon Pathom outside Bangkok.

For Aung, the former broker, the situation is too much. “I am now about to cross the border and am heading back to Yangon”, he later told The Irrawaddy by phone.

Putting a flood barrier up at an entrance to Bangkok's Chatuchak market on Monday afternoon (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2011/1024/Bangkok-floodwaters-threaten-Thailand-s-economy

BANGKOK - Standing over the clanging hammers and ripping saws, Tinnakorn Rujinarong watched workmen bang together a yard-high barrier meant to keep looming floodwaters – which have killed over 350 people and swamped an area the size of Northern Ireland – out of one of the world’s biggest flea-markets and one of Thailand’s best-known attractions.

Most weekends, around 200,000 people sweat and haggle their way through the sauna-like narrow alleys running between Chatuchak Market’s 10,000 shops. “Around 100 million baht is spent here every weekend”, says Mr Tinnakorn, who is the market’s Deputy Director.

Across the city – which satellite images show to be a virtual island surrounded by floods to the north and the Gulf of Thailand to the south – shops are running out of drinking water and non-perishable food, with various chains saying that they are having difficulty in replenishing barren shelves as 10 million residents stock-up amid fears of a citywide deluge.

Barclays Capital estimates that the floods will shave almost 1% off Thailand’s economic growth for 2011, and whether Chatuchak opens next weekend is anyone’s guess. Walls were stood up at the market perimeter on Monday afternoon, after Bangkok city governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra told TV viewers last night that six additional city districts, including Chatuchak, should get ready to evacuate.

The waters threatening the market are now surging around the city’s old international airport, raising the ironic possibility that the temporary flood relief management centre set up there by the Thai Government will itself have to be evacuated.

There have been conflicting and contradictory messages coming from various officials and bodies, with flood relief officials issuing less-alarmist warnings than those

Sandbags down as the Chao Praya water goes up (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

coming from city authorities, and rumours abounding of a partisan row – always an alarm bell in politically-divided Thailand – over the flood management between the Bangkok governor, a member of the Democrat Party that lost the Thai elections in July 2011 – and the Peua Thai (For Thais)-led Government of Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of ousted former leader Thaksin.

Elsewhere, in places, residents sought to alter barriers to protect neighbourhoods, as word spread that canal openings and barriers were being deployed to save the capital’s main business centres, meaning that more suburban areas would likely be deluged as a consequence of attempts to divert a mass of water around the city centre and into the Gulf of Thailand.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said over the weekend that the waters could take six weeks to wash away, meaning it could be a long wait to see how much of the sprawling city, which accounts for 40% of Thailand’s economy, will succumb. Some northern suburbs are under knee-to -chest high waters, with nearby towns such as the old Siamese capital Ayutthaya already swamped and residents fearful of crocodiles and pythons lurking in the rising waters. Corporations such as Apple, Honda, Toyota and Western Digital have been forced to suspend operations, a likely disruption to global supply chains given Thailand’s role in sectors such as automobiles and computers.

Walling-up at coffeeshop on Charoen Nakhon road, close to the river (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Back in Bangkok alongside the Chao Praya river – now swelling precariously and seeping over barriers in places – multistory luxury hotels, postcard-standard temples and small businesses sit side-by-side, with fresh-mixed concrete being poured into shuttering nailed onto shopfronts.

Quickly mixing four of the large ice-coffees preferred by many Bangkokians, coffee-stall owner Yung, who preferred not to give her full name, said she is ready to keep her shop open even if the river flows into the Charoen Nakhon road outside, less than 100 yards from the river. Pointing at the new barrier nailed onto the small shop opening, she said “I hope the water does not come, and if it does, stays lower than this.”

At the nearby riverside Peninsula Hotel, the water lapped a foot below the wall, meaning that the below-the-water-line bottom floor of the complex looks safe – for now. Hotel staffer Aom Kanchanawarin said that her home in Pasicharoen district is vulnerable, however. “We will move to the second floor later,” she said, “and we have bought a small boat in case we need to move and we can help others”.

Flood relief fundraising at Holy Redeemer Church in Bangkok (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22221

View from the Thai side of the Mae Sot-Myawaddy border bridge, June 2011 (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

BANGKOK – Médecins Sans Frontières’ (MSF) decision to end its Thailand operation will hamper medics who cross from Thailand into war-torn areas of Burma where people have little or no access to medical treatment.

Denis Penoy, the organisation’s head in Thailand, told The Irrawaddy that MSF has a long history of working with mobile medical teams along the border, notably the Mon National Health Council based in Sangkhlaburi, across the border from Three Pagodas Pass inside Burma.

The Mon medics were supported by MSF in carrying out anti-malarial work inside Mon State, which Nai Hong Sar, head of the New Mon State Party (NSMP), described to The Irrawaddy as “very important for our people, as malaria was so much reduced, and otherwise it was hard to get medical treatment”.

The cross-border support was one component of MSF’s larger health programme in Thailand, which helped migrants living in the country. With an estimated 2-3 million Burmese migrant workers in Thailand, of which around half are thought to be working illegally and therefore unable to access Thai health services, the closure of the MSF facilities is a blow to many Burmese.

Penoy told The Irrawaddy that “our estimated catchment population for clinics is around 55,000 people”. As well as Sangkhlaburi, MSF ran clinics in Samut Sakhon, a fishing port west of Bangkok and home for tens of thousands of Burmese migrants.

Nai Hong Sar added that the MSF clinic in Sangkhlaburi was vital to many Burmese migrants living on the Thai side of the border. “These are people who have not got the money to go to hospital and many are afraid to go to official medical facilities”, he said.

For the past eighteen months, MSF has been negotiating with local health authorities to try re-open the clinics. “When we could not get agreement at local level, we tried central health authorities”, says Penoy, “but after eighteen months of talking, we concluded that we could no longer operate”.

Penoy says that MSF was permitted to continue with health education work, which he says is needed, but for Burmese migrants with health problems, education is secondary to immediate needs. “When you need a doctor you need a doctor”, says Penoy.

MSF has worked in Thailand – a country long-seen as a safe haven for refugees and other vulnerable people from neighbouring countries in southeast Asia – for over three decades. MSF first worked in Thailand helping Cambodians who fled the Khmer Rouge regime, which took power in Phnom Penh in 1975.

On Wednesday October 5, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra visited Burma, meeting with President Thein Sein. In a statement issued since the visit, the Thai PM revealed that she called for the Burmese Government to re-open the bridge linking Thailand’s Mae Sot to Myawaddy on the Burmese side.

The bridge has been closed by the Burmese authorities, since mid 2010, widely-believed to an attempt pressure on Thailand to restrict ethnic opposition groups based in or near Mae Sot and elsewhere along the border. The closure has impeded Thai businesses that export by land into Burma, and has made life difficult for Burmese migrants who cross into Thailand.

In her statement released Friday/today October 7, the Thai Prime Minister said that she “admired the democratic process in Myanmar”, adding that “Thailand would not allow anti-Myanmar government groups to use Thailand as their base to fight the Myanmar government.”

The previous Thai Government, a coalition led by the Democrat Party, along with local officials in border provinces, all made a number statements about repatriating Burmese dissidents and refugees. The Burmese Government has long regarded refugee populations in Thailand as synonymous with ethnic opposition groups.

Delegations representing the New Mon State Party (NMSP) and the Mon State government met on Thursday, but did not make any progress on peace talks. Nai Hing Sar is a lead representative of the United Nationalities Federation Council (UNFC), an umbrella group of ethnic militias that includes the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), which have both fought the Burmese army in recent months.

The area inside Mon State around Three Pagodas Pass has seen intermittent fighting in the months since Burma’s November 7 2010 parliamentary election, with thousands of refugees fleeing temporarily to Thailand. Asked whether he thought there was any link between Thai Government promises to restrict Burma’s ethnic opposition groups, and the difficulties faced by MSF in Thailand, Nai Hong Sar surmised “maybe, maybe”.

However, Mahn Mahn, head of the Backpack Health Workers Team, another group of mobile medics that crosses the border into Burma to deliver healthcare to Burmese in conflict zone, said that his organisation, which is based in Tak Province, close to the Mae Sot-Myawaddy bridge, says his organisation “has a good understanding with the local authorities”, and continues to work inside Burma.

http://the-diplomat.com/2011/09/29/aid-and-independence/

‘Goodbye conflict, welcome development’ runs the panglossian banner on the Timor-Leste Finance Ministry website, and after centuries of sleepy Portuguese colonialism followed by a quarter-century of scorched-earth Indonesian occupation that killed an estimated 1/4 – 1/3 of the population, the Timorese are due an option on optimism as much as anyone else.

Chinese-built Ministry of Defence building in Dili. Chinese aid to to Timor-Leste is difficult to measure, but appears to take the form of high-profile building projects such as this, employing mostly Chinese labour (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Making the slogan a reality is a different story, however, and independent Timor-Leste started from a low base, with most of the country’s infrastructure obliterated by the departing occupiers and their local militia proxies, after Timor-Leste voted for secession in 1999.

After a receiving an estimated US$6-8 billion in foreign assistance since 1999 and around the same in petroleum revenues since the mid-2000s, the numbers by themselves suggest Timor-Leste should be well-placed to make that leap the Finance Ministry aspires to.

However, early signs are mixed. Despite the black gold and Government spending boom of recent years – growth is around the 10% mark – Timor-Leste has nothing to sell to the world outside, aside from energy resources and coffee. Even then the latter leaves the country mostly unroasted and unprocessed, so the value gets added outside.

Sounds like a tough place to do business but one man giving it a go is Brendan Morias, a Singaporean who stayed on after working as Protestant missionary to open the popular RnR cafe not far from the UN Mission HQ. “Elsewhere your input costs might be around 20% for a café like this, but here in Dili it is closer to 40%”, he told The Diplomat

Import-reliant, even for basics like bottled water, Timor-Leste has a huge trade deficit, and despite the poverty of a country with a non-petroleum per capita average annual income of around US$400, living costs can be high, partly as most things in the shops are brought in from outside. “There is no such thing as buying wholesale here”, lamented Mr Morias, “everything is bought at in shops, and those goods are mostly imported”.

On the plus side, most of the country’s energy revenues go into a petroleum fund, set up to ensure that the country has savings in the bank once the wells run dry, which could come as soon as 2040 according to some estimates.

Signs for aid projects are a common sight around Timor-Leste (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

While the country’s leaders have been commended for being the first Asian country to meet standards set by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and for the establishment of the petroleum fund – the temptation to dip into the largesse has proven too much, it seems. 95% of Government spending comes from petroleum revenue, but the country’s self-imposed he rules say that limits the amount the Government can draw down each year to an “Estimated Sustainable Income”,which is calculated as 3% of the total value of the money in the country’s petroleum-based Sovereign Wealth Fund as wel as the expected future revenues from the oil and gas fields.

Nonetheless, the national budget has ballooned beyond the ESI limits, since big money revenues started to accrue in 2007, and the 2012 budget is marked up 35% from the 2011 spend. Surely no coincidence that elections are scheduled for mid 2012?

Coffee is one of Timor-Leste few currently-viable growth sectors, aside from petroleum. Inside the Elsaa Cafe coffee mill in Ermera, Timor-Leste (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

As expected, government officials talk up the benefits of the outlay, and dismiss notions of electioneering. Speaking on the sidelines of a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) ‘aid effectiveness’ seminar in Bangkok, Helder Da Costa of the Timor-Leste Ministry of Finance pointed out to The Diplomat that World Bank/IMF figures show poverty in Timor-Leste declining over the course of the current administration – a multiparty coalition headed by former resistance hero Xanana Gusmao

He contrasted his Government’s record with the predecessor Fretilin administration, which he claimed presided over “a doubling of poverty between 2003 and 2007”. Elections will take place in Timor-Leste next year, and the now-opposition Fretilin party is confident it can regain government, with opposition MP Jose Teixeira citing popular anger at corruption in the current Government, when The Diplomat interviewed him in late August.

The election will be supported by foreign donors and advisors, and Dr Da Costa said his country appreciated the overseas aid. He qualified that, however, by saying that “many estimates say that the aid money is spent in Timor but not on Timorese”. One such attempt to make sense of the figures – not an easy job by all accounts – was done by Lao Hamutuk, a NGO based in Dili that monitors development in Timor-Leste. It estimates that around US6billion has been spent in the country since 1999, but only around 10% of that has stayed in the country.

With beaches and sunsets such as this, tourism should become a major earner for Timor-Leste in future (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Getting a handle on aid numbers is difficult in most countries, and in the case of Timor-Leste, is addled by the diverse array of contributors and actors – from Cuban doctors, Chinese construction, Australian soldiers, World Bank consultants, Portuguese teachers and police, NGOs – with the diverse spread perhaps accounting for why so much of the aid money apparently went on staff costs, administration, consultancy fees and the like.

Ed Rees worked in Timor-Leste for Peace Dividend Trust, an initiative that sought to help boost small businesses and spark entrepreneurship in the new state. Weighing up the feeling on the ground about the international aid effort, he said “It is in many ways a self serving industry despite its altruistic imperative, and the Timorese frankly are annoyed with it, and with us.”

From time to time, Timorese politicians have taken to populist polemics against aid, in particular focusing the UN, which ran Timor-Leste as a protectorate from 1999-2002 and is currently in its fourth mission incarnation. The US agrees – in part at least – with a cable from the Embassy in Dili describing the UN presence in Timor-Leste as a “good case study of a serial UN peace operation that looks more like a complicated tango dance rather than a textbook continuum from peacemaking to peacekeeping and then peacebuilding.”

Some activists say that aid, while needed, has been misapplied, and in Timor-Leste there has been an over-emphasis on political and security related issues, rather than focusing on building a viable domestic economy. In an email to The Diplomat, Charles Scheiner of Lao Hamutuk took issue with with what he called “disproportionate donor attention to the ‘security sector’ in a country where homicide took 39 lives last year, while more than 2,000 children under 5 years old died from avoidable or curable conditions”.

Timor-Leste almost lapsed into civil war in 2006, and memories of that seem to live on. However, it could be worse, as Timor-Leste is at peace and is a warts and all democracy like any other. In a what wags might slate as an attempt to bankroll that country back to the Stone Age, war-wracked Afghanistan has received US$57billion in overseas assistance since 2002, according to estimates given by the country’s Finance Ministry at the same UNDP event where The Diplomat spoke with Helder da Costa.

For all it’s teething problems, Timor-Leste feels it has something to offer to the world outside – intellectual capital to offset the absent physical exports, perhaps. Da Costa will accompany Prime Minister Gusmao to another new state – South Sudan – in the coming weeks, as part of Timor-Leste’s leadership of the g7+ initiative, which is a brainstorming of post-conflict, aid recipient countries who are trying to get donors to listen to receiver’s side more when it comes to aid management. “We hope to share some do’s and don’t with the new South Sudan government”, said da Costa.

- Roughneen was in Timor-Leste in August

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/simon-roughneen/sudan-wars-seem-far-from-_b_953395.html

Renewed fighting in Blue Nile could undermine even small gains, such as this numeracy class run by GOAL near Kurmuk, in Blue Nile State (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

After a murderous almost-six decade forced-marriage with what is now the (relative to before) the rump state of ‘northern’ Sudan, the Republic of South Sudan (RoSS) was founded on July 9 2011, six months after the Texas-sized region voted to secede from what was Africa’s largest state.

The death-toll (over 2 million) and destruction (total) wrought on what is now RoSS during the fighting has been well-documented – if obscured somewhat in the years since 2003 when the Darfur war began. With RoSS taking 3/4′s of what was the old Sudan’s oil with it, independence and its aftermath was always likely to be a fraught affair, even if secession was mandated by a 2005 peace agreement.

There was fighting along the border in January – in the still-disputed Abyei region – as the referendum took place. Both the Khartoum Government and the Juba (then-regional) administration distanced themselves from those skirmishes, putting them down to long-standing local disputes between farmers and herders over grazing and passage rights.

Either side of the RoSS formal secession, there has been heavy fighting in the Nuba region of South Kordafan state, an area north of the (still-to-be-finalised) border, and more recently, in Blue Nile, east along the same undecided frontier and bordering Ethiopia.

Both states were on the brutal frontline during Sudan’s long north-south wars, with war-induced famine and displacement too extensive to catalogue here. Culturally and politically many of the people living in the states see themselves as closer to the south, but Khartoum remains determined to hold on to these frontier regions, and recently sent a letter to the UN Security Council accusing the RoSS of backing local southern-aligned militias and of supporting rebels in Darfur.

Both states were promised ‘Popular Consultations’ as an alternative to being allowed a say on whether they stay in Sudan or join the RoSS, but these have been postponed. It is hard to gauge whether the postponements have been a spark for the recent fighting (comments appreciated from people closer to the ground) – but, back in January, after I was in Juba for the start of the RoSS secession vote I then moved on Blue Nile, where the southern secession was seen – by some of those I spoke with – as bittersweet, with southern-leaning Blue Nile residents feeling left out – or left behind – by their soon-to-be de jure RoSS neighbours. Here is one story – with photos – that I filed from Blue Nile last January - http://www.simonroughneen.com/africa/sudan/voting-ends-in-southern-sudan-referendum-sunday-tribune/#more-4289

I interviewed people there who suffered greatly during the 1983-2005 war – with stories of family killed, homes destroyed, spending years as refugees in Ethiopia. 2005 was supposed to mean peace, and a chance to start again. However, a recent UN report says that over 1500 people have been killed and 73000 driven from their homes in the recent fighting, though the report does not cover Blue Nile, where an additional 50000 people could be displaced in fighting that started last Friday Sept 2. Sadly, odds are that some of those I met in Blue Nile last January are among the thousands affected by the latest fighting.

audio – http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2011/0821/worldreport.html#&autoplay=true

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-roughneen/time-for-risky-ventures-i_b_940371.html

Making tofu in Liquica (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Railaco, Timor-Leste – Up a winding, rock-strewn road through stunning mountain scenery an hour from the Timorese capital Dili, coffee farmer Bartolomeo de Deus shakes a basket of his arabica beans, ready for resale to Timor Global, one of three main coffee exporters in Timor Leste, also known as East Timor.

“I have 200 hectares under cultivation”, he says, making him one of the bigger farmers in a country where coffee grows naturally and could be a lucrative export. “There is potential here”, says Bill Tan, the Singaporean co-director of Timor Global. However he cautions that “farmers need to be shown how to nourish the crops and prune, for example”, to maximise their output.

On average, a Timorese coffee farm produces 150-200 kilogrammes per hectare, while in neighbouring Papua New Guinea, yields are closer to 800 kg, sometimes even 1 tonne per hectare, and some of the coffee there sells close to the top of global premiums, coveted by connoisseurs in Australia and beyond.

Bill Tan at Timor Global test plantation in Railaco (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Coffee and tourism could be major growth sectors for Timor-Leste, as it looks forward to its second decade of independence, which will come next year. While the country is physically-beautiful, with white sand beaches and untouched diving spots, it is expensive to get to by air and poor roads mean internal travel can be time-consuming.

Timor Leste’s economy has grown at around 10% per annum ‘since 2007 but this is fuelled, for want of a better word, by oil and gas. Bound by law to bank most of the US$7 billion revenue earned to date in a Norway-style fund, the idea is that the country will have money to draw on once the wells run dry.

Despite the recent growth, Timor Leste remains one of the poorest countries in the world. The country has received an estimated US$8billion in foreign aid since Indonesia’s often-brutal occupation ended in 1999, but outside the rundown colonial kitsch of the capital Dili, poverty is high, electricity and running water are intermittent, or unavailable, and jobs are scarce. Neither oil nor gas can be processed in Timor-Leste, so despite the boost to state coffers, there are few jobs for Timorese.

Rice paddy in Manatuto, near the north-central coast of Timor-Leste (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

To counter this, Irish Aid is working with the Timorese government and the International Labor Organisation to address unemployment and support small business developmetn. One woman who seems to get the entrepreneurial idea is Teresa Nunes Martins dos Santos, who like most Timorese has an almost-poetic Portuguese-style name, a legacy of the former coloniser.

Teresa and four colleagues in the western town of Liquica are making tasty tofu and tempe – affordable protein for rural Timorese who cannot afford to buy meat. The tofu-making team are trying to expand the business, and have commissioned a carpenter to make 4 extra wooden boxes needed to finish the soybean paste into tofu. “Every day we sell out almost straight away and make US$16.50” she says.

Fishing boats in Dili harbour (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Some other investors have bigger plans, however. Tony Jape is a fifth generation Chinese-Timorese, whose ancestors came to the half-island country from Guangdong province. He is the driving force behind Timor Plaza, a multi-storey office, shopping and hotel complex under construction – albeit more slowly than planned – near the Dili’s international airport.

He says he was partly-motivated by patriotism to take what he concedes is a risky venture. “If we Timorese do not invest in our own country, then we cannot complain when foreign investors are wary”, he says, amid the din of jackhammers and drills on the top floor of the complex.

Other things are slowly falling into place. Kathleen Goncalves is Vice President of the recently-formed Timor-Leste Chamber of Commerce. She acknowledges that progress will be slow for business development in the country, but says things have improved

“2 years ago setting up a business was a nightmare, with red tape, slow processing. That has changed somewhat, but we still have a problem with access to finance, as bank loans are difficult to get”

- For World Report, this is Simon Roughneen in Railaco, Timor-Leste

– reporting supported by the Simon Cumbers Media Fund

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21788

A refugee swap deal between Australia and Malaysia continues to attract criticism, even as both countries’ governments offer assurances that refugees’ rights will be respected.

BANGKOK — While a new refugee swap deal between Australia and Malaysia will offer hope to some of the tens of thousands of Burmese refugees in Malaysia, there are different views on whether the arrangement lives up to international standards.

The “Arrangement on Transfer and Resettlement” was signed in Kuala Lumpur on July 25 by Malaysia’s Home Affairs Minister Hishammuddin Hussein and Australia’s Immigration and Citizenship Minister Chris Bowen. It will transfer 4,000 refugees in Malaysia to Australia over the next four years, in return for Malaysia taking in 800 asylum-seekers arriving in Australia or interdicted at sea en route to Australia after July 25. Australia will pay for the deal, predicted to cost around US $325million over the current four-year implementation timetable, with Australia already saying the deal could be expanded.

As Burmese nationals make up an estimated 80-90 percent of refugees in Malaysia, the deal offers some hope to the small additional percentage that will benefit from the arrangement over the coming four years.

“We are happy that at least some of the people will get the opportunity to have a new life in Australia,” said Simon Sang Hre, who works with the Chin Refugee Committee in Malaysia, assisting what his organization estimates at 42,000 ethnic Chin refugees from Chin State in Burma, speaking to The Irrawaddy by telephone from Kuala Lumpur.

However, there are mixed feelings about the deal. Latheefa Koya, an adviser to Lawyers for Liberty, a Malaysian NGO, told The Irrawaddy that “the thousands of refugees, mostly Burmese, who have yet to be registered with the UN Refugee Agency cannot benefit.”

Of particular concern are Burmese Rohingya fleeing persecution in western Burma, where they are denied citizenship and although they can register as refugees in Malaysia, adds Latheefa Koya. “This deal is unlikely to benefit the Rohingya in Malaysia as they don’t fit the profile of those who are likely to be accepted by Australia. Many have been here for 10-20 years,” she said.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Malaysia, there are some 94,400 refugees and asylum-seekers registered with the organization. Of these “86,500 are from Myanmar [Burma], comprising some 35,600 Chins, 21,400 Rohingyas, 10,100 Myanmar Muslims, 3,800 Mon, 3,400 Kachins and other ethnicities from Myanmar.” UNCHR says that there are around 10,000 unregistered asylum-seekers or refugees in Malaysia, though some NGOs believe there are tens of thousands of unregistered refugees.

Others have criticized the deal as flawed due to Malaysia’s refusal to sign up to international refugee laws. In a statement issued in response to the signing of the Australia-Malaysia deal, Australia’s Human Rights Commission President Catherine Branson said that “while the Commission recognized the need for regional and international cooperation on asylum seekers and supported the resettling in Australia of an increased number of refugees,” she was “concerned that Malaysia was not a signatory to the Refugee Convention.”

According to Bill Frelick, refugee program director at Human Rights Watch, the deal should not have been signed, as “the gap in the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers between Australia and Malaysia remains enormous.”

A March 2011 survey of over 1,000 refugees in Malaysia by the Health Equity and Initiatives in March of this year found that 70 percent of the interviewees showed symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress as a result of human trafficking, forced labor and unemployment.

However, the Australian government claims the deal will not result in any abuses of the 800 to be sent to Malaysia. According to a July 25 press statement by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Minister Bowen, “The arrangement reaffirms Malaysia’s commitment that transferees will be treated with dignity and respect in accordance with human rights standards, that it will respect the principle of non-refoulement, the key tenet of the Refugee Convention, and that asylum claims will be considered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)”.

Yante Ismail, a spokesperson for UNHCR Malaysia, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that “UNHCR assesses that the final Arrangement and its implementing guidelines contain these safeguards, and are workable.”

However, even the positive aspects of the deal are being criticized for potentially creating a two-tier system. Once the 800 arrivals are processed, they will receive benefits that the the 94,400 registered refugees in Malaysia do not get, such as work rights and access to education and health care.

There are suggestions that refugees currently in Malaysia are considering paying smugglers to take them to Australia by sea, so they could avail of the deal and be returned to Malaysia under better conditions.

Australia’s government has touted the deal as an antidote to people smuggling and human trafficking. However, Australia’s opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the government had signed a flawed deal, adding that “no doubt more holes will emerge, as the deal was conceived in desperation and panic,” he said in comments to Australian Associated Press.

Thousands of refugees from Burma, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and other war-torn countries attempt the long and risky maritime journey to Australia every year. For the past decade, successive Australian governments, starting with the administration led by Morrison’s Liberals, have sought a “Pacific Solution” to the refugees arriving by sea, saying facilities in Australia are overloaded.

Australia’s Department of Immigration says that 134 boats carrying 6,535 people arrived in 2010, with more than 1,000 boat people arriving so far this year. Holding centers on the mainland and also the main center on Australia’s Christmas Island are full or nearly full, according to the Australian government. In 2010, Australia unsuccessfully approached Timor Leste about opening a processing center on the island for asylum seekers trying to reach Australia. Canberra is currently in talks with Papua New Guinea about re-opening another asylum-seekers holding center on Manus Island, off the north Papuan coast.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21550

Phongsavath at the COPE Centre (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

VIENTIANE – It should have been one of those rite-of-passage days for any teenager. On their way to school to collect exam results, Phongsavath and two friends noticed an unusual-looking round steel object in the grass nearby. “We picked it up and passed it among us, wondering what it was and looking close”, Phongsavath recalls, a wry half-smile belying the horror story to come.

“I tried to open it”, he says, half-laughing at what in retrospect he says was childish curiosity on the part of him and his school-pals. “We looked at it, we passed it around”, Phongsavath says. “ I tried to open it, but then It blew up”, he says again, losing his hold on his white cane as he speaks. “Now as you see, I have no hands”.

Laos is said to be the world’s most-bombed country on a per-capita basis, with unknown numbers of unexploded material littering the countryside, a legacy of the Indochina wars of the 1960s and 1970s. Laos, officially knows as the Lao Peoples’ Democratic Republic, experienced the heaviest aerial military bombardment in history when the US airforce flew 580,000 bombing runs over the country between 1964 and 1973, targeting the North Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh trail, which looped through Laos, as part of the perhaps-misnamed Vietnam War.

While NGOs and Government agencies are working to educate people about the devices and how to avoid the dangers presented, it seems that not everyone can be covered, so some do not recognise the deadly litter when they find it.

What Phongsavath and his friends found that morning was part of a cluster bomb. Cluster bombs can contain dozens or even hundreds of smaller bombs – known locally as bombies – around the size and shape of tennis balls or beer cans. These are scattered over a wide area, but the problem for Laos, and elsewhere, is that many do not go off. Hidden for years or decades in fields, under bushes, on roadsides, they can, however, be detonated of touched or handled. As Phongsavath found to his cost.

To get around, he grasps the white cane under one arm, the darkness of the eyes compounded by absent hands. Despite these limitations, he easily navigates his way around the COPE center, which hosts a compelling display highlighting Laos dubiously-unique status as the world’s most-bombed country.

COPE, which stands for Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise, was founded in 1997 and according to COPE CEO Bounlanh Phayboun, part of the COPE mission is to help those injured by explosions. Bounlanh says that “through our five Rehabilitation Centres, annually we assisted about 900 people”, much-needed help in a country where the total and exact numbers of people killed or maimed or injured by unexploded devices remains unknown.

Various Government surveys assess that there have been 50,000 civilian casualties from by cluster bombs, landmines and other unexploded ordnance since

Bombies similar to the one handled by Phongsavath one morning 4 years ago (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

1964. Of these, over 30000 died, and a total of 20000 of the deaths and injuries have taken place since the bombing ended in 1973.

However casualty numbers since 2008 are still being collected, and sadly, almost four decades after the bombing ended, the threat remains and casualty numbers will surely increase. The National Regulatory Authority (NRA), a Government agency, says that 10 of country’s 17 provinces are “severely contaminated”, affecting up to one-quarter of all villages.

Finding and removing all the bombies remains a huge challenge in Laos, as is stopping the use of the devices around the world. In 2008, representatives of over 100 countries gathered in Dublin to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), aiming for an immediate and unconditional ban on all cluster munitions which cause unacceptable harm to civilians.

A complete moratorium on the use of cluster bombs seems far off, though progress is being made. According to the Cluster Munitions Coalition, a transnational campaign “working to eradicate cluster munitions” 108 countries have joined the CCM , and 57 countries have ratified it. Spokesperson Kate Wiggans said in an email that the Coalition “calls on all remaining governments that have not joined the Convention to end the harm being done by cluster bombs and to join without delay.”

Phongsavath was taken in by COPE, which has a patient care department, after the organisation heard about his difficult life since the accident, which happened four years ago. Now 19, he scoffs at the idea of sympathy. “I’m a great breakdancer now”, he says. “Me and some others did an exhibition here (in Vientiane) last year, and we’re going to Bangkok and Phnom Penh soon to do more”.

Dance practice aside, these days Phongsavath devotes much of his time to learning English, by listening to tapes and CDs. “I never went back to school after the explosion”, he says, “and I cannot learn braille”, holding out his handless arms to emphasise the point.

Six months into his stay at COPE, he laments “but my family have not come here since I arrived.” He says he is not sure what he will do when he leaves the centre, but says he only plans to remain for another 3 months. “I want to be able to take care of myself”, he concludes, before making his way out of the visitor centre and across the yard to his room, to “more English” lessons, he shouts back.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21524

audio - http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2011/0619/worldreport.html#

Landmine victim Than Tin recuperating at Mae Tao clinic in Mae Sot. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

MAE SOT/MAE LA – Oblivious to the late afternoon downpour, six children chase around near the roadside fence at Mae La camp, the biggest of nine refugee camps along the Thailand-Burma frontier.

“Please, no photos of the people”, implores a man standing nearby, sheltering against the wall of one the thousands of timber huts running along the roadside. Three of the children are his, though he refuses to give his name, saying only that he crossed to Thailand from Burma’s Karen State “more than one year ago” and has been confined to the camp since.

Acting on the orders of Tak Provincial Governor Samart Loifah, Thai officials started a headcount in Mae La and in Umpiem Mai and Nu Pu, the two other camps in Tak province. The census is ongoing, with roughly 40% of the estimated total 140,000+ Burmese refugee population in Thailand unregistered.

The Thai government stopped screening and registering new arrivals in 2005, meaning that there are around 60,000 unregistered refugees from Burma currently inside Thailand, according to Sally Thompson of the Thailand-Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), a grouping of 12 NGOs that assists the Burmese refugees in the border camps

In total Thailand hosts just over 96,000 registered refugees, according to figures released by the United Nations refugee commission (UNHCR) in its 2010 Global Trends Report, which was published today to mark World Refugee Day. Worldwide, Pakistan, Iran, and Syria have the largest refugee populations at 1.9 million, 1.1 million, and 1 million respectively, numbers swollen due to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Overall, the 2010 Global Trends report says that “43.7 million people are now displaced worldwide – roughly equalling the entire populations of Colombia or South Korea, or of Scandinavia and Sri Lanka combined”. Of this total of displaced, 15.4 million are listed as refugees, 27.5 million people displaced internally by conflict, and nearly 850,000 are asylum-seekers, according to the new report.

Thailand has long been a refuge for Burmese affected by oppression and warfare at home, with the 140,000+ actual numbers of refugees, a number which includes unregistered refugees, joined by around 3 million Burmese economic migrants working in Thailand. In 2010, a total of 11,400 refugees in Thailand were resettled to third countries, mostly in the West, making Thailand the second-highest refugee resettlement staging point after Nepal. Of that total, 10,825 were from Burma, according UNCHR Asia spokesperson Kitty McKinsey.

Burma is listed as the world’s fifth-biggest source country for refugees, ranking close to Colombia and Sudan. As well as Burmese refugees in Thailand, the numbers, Burma’s total refugee output, given by UNHCR at 415700, “includes an estimated 200,000 un- registered people in Bangladesh”, mostly Muslim Rohingya from Arakan State in Burma’s west.

With the Tak camp census ongoing, comments from Governor Samart and from other senior Thai officials in recent months about sending refugees back to Burma have prompted consternation in the camps.

However, calls for the Burmese refugees to be repatriated are premature, according to people familiar with the situation on the ground in ethnic minority regions close to the Thailand border. “There is conflict between the SPDC (the name for the Burmese military dictatorship prior to the establishment of a new nominally-civilian Government earlier in 2011) and ethnic armed groups in many regions”, says Mahn Mahn, head of the Backpack Health Workers Team, which deploys almost 2,000 medics and associated personnel inside conflict-affected regions of Burma, places where existing health facilities are thin on the ground, or non-existent.

Mae La camp (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

The latest bout of fighting in the northerly Kachin State has forced around 10,000 people from their homes close to the Burma-China border, while in parts of Karen State, source of most of the refugees in adjacent Tak Province in Thailand, “the army has a shoot-on-sight policy, which affects civilians as well as militia fighters” according to Mahn Mahn.

Since the November 2010, when elections in Burma were accompanied by fighting in Karen State between the army and various Karen factions, over 30000 people have been displaced, according to Sally Thompson.

“Around 6000 of these are in temporary sites around the border”, she says, referring to new locations outside of the nine main camps.

Extensive de-mining in Karen State and in Burma’s other ethnic regions will be necessary before refugees could return to their homeland, says Saw Maw Kel, a former Karen rebel who lost part of his left leg in 1986 after standing on a landmine. He says the Karen rebels themselves plant landmines are used close to army locations, but that rebels tell civilians where the mines are located, in contrast to the army’s mines, which are laid indiscriminately, affecting villages and making it dangerous to farm or work in forests.

Saw Maw Kel now runs the prosthetics dept at the Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot, close to the Thailand-Burma border. “I have over two hundred referrals a year here”, he says, pointing to a whiteboard on the clinic wall, which shows the the majority of the caseload to be landmine victims from inside Burma.

Not all of the cases he deals with are Karen or from the country’s other ethnic minorities. Than Tin, an ethnic Burman from Pegu Division, is one of the latest landmine casualties to visit Mae Tao. He lost half his right leg last January. “I was lucky I had some friends with me”, he recounts. “One of them ties up my leg with a longyi and they all carried me to Myawaddy Hospital”. The improvised tourniquet likely saved Than Tin’s life, allowing him be carried across the border to Mae Sot for treatment.

Pointing down to his bandaged leg-stump, he says “it is not safe in many places across the border. I went out with colleagues for a day’s work, and have not been able to work since. I nearly died”, he concludes.