Energy Companies in Burma Urged to Disclose Payments – The Irrawaddy
April 27th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=18329
Section of the Yadana gas pipeline from Burma to Thailand. (Photo: The Irrawaddy)
Landmark legislation currently before the US Congress could force oil, gas and mining companies to disclose information about payments to governments of countries in which they invest around the world, including Burma.
If passed, the US Energy Security through Transparency Act will require all oil, gas and mining companies registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission to disclose data on payments made to foreign governments.
The NGO Earthrights International (ERI) said that “this will impact nearly every major oil and gas company around the world,” given that foreign companies must register with the SEC to do business in the US.
ERI’s Matthew Smith told a press conference in Bangkok today that this would also put pressure on Chinese and other Asian companies investing in Burma’s natural resources to comply.
Heightening pressure on Total, Chevron and Thailand’s PTTEP —three companies involved in the Yadana gas project and pipeline in Burma—an initiative launched on Tuesday in Bangkok called on the companies to reveal payments made to the Burmese military regime over the 18 years since Total signed a production sharing contract with Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE). The pending US legislation will not apply retrospectively, meaning that companies will only have to disclose payments going forward. (more…)
The Aid Debate: what’s the problem with helping? – The Casual Truth
April 26th, 2010
http://www.thecasualtruth.com/story/aid-debate-–-whats-problem-helping
On April 9th and 10th, seven of the world’s poorest countries met in Timor-Leste (East Timor) to discuss how wealthy aid donor countries are failing in their attempts to help.
Calling themselves the g7, in a takeoff of the better-known G7 comprising US, Japan and other wealthy countries, the group discussed how aid could be improved.
This ILO/Government public works project employed thousands of Timorese on a part-time basis and resulted in small-scale infrastructure upgrades, such as this road in Oecusse (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Timor-Leste’s President Jose Ramos-Horta slammed donors for believing they can do no wrong.
A study last year showed that over US$8billion in aid had been spent in his country – Asia’s poorest – since 1999. He joked that if this had gone to ordinary Timorese, everyone would have a PhD.
However, he did acknowledge that corruption has increased in Timor-Leste, hinting that aid failures cut both ways. (more…)
Rohingya Can Only Starve in Bangladesh – The Irrawaddy
February 18th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17842
Pressure is mounting on the Bangladesh Government to cease what European Parliamentarians and NGOs are calling “an unprecedented crackdown” on Rohingya refugees now settled outside the two official camps in Cox’s Bazaar District near the Burmese border.
A Rohingya woman stands with her child in front of makeshift huts in a refugee camp in Cox's Bazaar. (Photo: Reuters)
As Dhaka clamps down on Rohingya refugees, local anti-Rohingya sentiment—never far from the surface in a relatively-poor region of Bangladesh—has been whipped-up by the authorities and by local media.
The recent crackdown in Bangladesh risks creating a humanitarian crisis for tens of thousands of refugees who already face precarious living conditions.
“All they [Burmese Rohingya] can legally do is starve,” said Paul Critchley, mission head for Médecin Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Bangladesh.
Speaking at a press conference in Bangkok on Thursday, Critchley said women and girls have been raped leaving the camp to collect firewood, which they hope to sell and earn some meager resources for their families.
MSF said it is imperative the Government in Dhaka and the UNHCR do more to help the unregistered Rohingya, whose living conditions are getting worse as they are crowding into a crammed, unsanitary area without any support infrastructure.
MSF, which is operating a basic healthcare program at an unoffical camp at Kutapalong in Ukhia, said, “As camp numbers continue to swell, conditions pose a significant risk to people’s health.”
Around 30,000 Rohingya have flocked to the makeshift camp.
Of an estimated 230,000 Burmese Rohingya refugees thought to be in Bangladesh, only around 28,000 are registered as refugees and receive UNHCR-led assistance. The rest try to survive unaided and unprotected in villages and slums in south-eastern Bangladesh. (more…)
Australian Opposition ‘Deeply Concerned’ about Burma Policy – The Irrawaddy
February 11th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17786
Speaking to The Irrawaddy by telephone, Australia’s shadow foreign minister Julie Bishop said that she is “deeply concerned” about Australia’s participation alongside the Burmese regime in a multilateral naval exercise hosted by India. The naval exercise was undertaken just as Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith announced a 40 percent increase in Australian humanitarian assistance to Burma.
“The Australian government has not explained this at all,” she said, adding that Australia “should not be sending mixed messages to the Burma’s military government.” Julie Bishop is MP for Curtin in Western Australia and deputy leader of the opposition Liberal Party. (more…)
Safe for Refugees to Return: Thai Gov’t – The Irrawaddy
February 10th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17779
At a forum involving various Thai government ministries and agencies, along with representatives of the military and international organizations, a Thai Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesperson said that Karen refugees at Tha Song Yang camp have expressed a willingness to return to Burma.
Karens move out from their refugee camp in Tha Son Yang district, Tak province near the Thai-Burmese border on February 5. Thailand has suspended the forced repatriation of ethnic Karen refugees, heeding calls from US lawmakers and rights groups. (Photo: Reuters)
Today’s statements come despite the Thai authorities suspending plans to deport all the refugees, once numbering over 4500, back to Burma by February 15. However, no definitive answer was given on whether the group of refugees would stay in Thailand or not.
MOFA spokesperson Rachanan Thananand said that the area from which the refugees fled in June 2006 is clear of landmines, according to information received from the Burmese side of the border.
He said that there was no indication that the fighting between the junta-aligned Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) was going to resume anytime soon. His statements were seconded by Thai military representative Col. Phadoong Yingpibool, who said, “We speak the truth about recent events. We would never force people to go back.”
Col Padoong said that “although I wish I could give you more information about these issues, I have been busy with other matters recently.”
However, Guiseppe de Vicentis, the deputy regional representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said that there is ample evidence that there are landmines on the Burmese side.
He said that although the refugees would ultimately like to go home, they cannot do so if the situation in Burma “has not normalized,” concluding that the conditions for safe return have not yet materialized.
The Burmese regime has given ethnic militias until the end of February to comply with demands that they stand down and operate as a border guard force for the state security apparatus. The KNLA has not consented to this order, giving rise to fears that renewed fighting looms in Burma’s borderlands.
Going into more detail, a spokeswoman for the Thailand-Burma Border Consortium (TBBC) said that at least nine people have been injured or killed by landmines in the region since the refugees fled in June 2009. (more…)
Debating aid and Haiti – ISN
January 29th, 2010
All over Port-au-Prince, thousands of buildings will need to be razed and rebuilt (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=111942
Aid to Haiti has largely failed in the past, and now faced with the daunting task of rebuilding the capital from the bottom up, many wonder whether international development plans will be lost in the rubble, Simon Roughneen
writes for ISN Security Watch.
Much of Haiti’s capital lies in ruins after the devastating January 12 earthquake. Up to 200,000 people are thought to have died, many now buried in mass graves outside the city. Hundreds of thousands more are homeless, sleeping in the open or in makeshift camps cobbled together with whatever blankets or sheeting people could get hold of. Delivering sufficient quantities of emergency assistance to so many people is proving a logistical nightmare, with the already limited Haitian infrastructure pulverized by the disaster.
While the emergency phase is from over, already Haiti and interested parties such as the US and Canada are looking to the longer term, and trying to raise money and figure out ways to help the western hemisphere’s poorest country get back on its feet – if it ever was fully so – in the months and years ahead.
As memories of the disaster fade, this will be a tall order. Already various notions of a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Haiti have been floated, evoking the US-led public-private partnership that helped rebuild Europe after World War II. Moreover, the task at hand has reignited the debate over the utility of development aid, with some wondering just how effective such a scheme could be in a Haiti that has received around $9billion in foreign assistance in recent decades.
The aid failure
Garaudy Laguerre is head of the Institute for Advanced Political and Social Studies in Port-au-Prince. He told ISN Security Watch, “This earthquake has profoundly affected or destroyed the little state structure that existed, it has also exposed, in our view, the failure of international aid in the way it has been conducted and used in Haiti.” (more…)
Haiti Aid Response Far Better than Nargis – The Irrawaddy
January 25th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17652
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—The slow delivery of humanitarian aid to Haitians has become something of an embarrassment, if not a scandal. All last week, I encountered earthquake survivors who either had not received any relief such as food, water, basic shelter, or had not seen any aid workers in their part of the city. Still others said I was the first foreigner they had met, which in some cases was a week or more after the disaster.
It is possible to write some of this off as white lies, with people trying to clamor for attention by making the case that their street or block has been neglected, and therefore should be prioritized. However, the ubiquity of these complaints and pleas suggests that most are more likely to be true than not. (more…)
Doing good, not doing so good – The Sunday Tribune
January 24th, 2010
Simon Roughneen in Port-au-Prince – Rachel Voltaire shuffled disconsolately on a narrow, rubble-strewn lane, which runs alongside a camp set up to shelter 700 Haitian survivors of the January 12 earthquake.
The area is called Delmas, one of Port-au-Prince’s worst-hit suburbs. Buildings lie flattened, and the locals say that
Happy recipient of Canadian-donated hygiene kit in Turgeau, Port-au-Prince (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
many bodies remain underneath. Ms Voltaire’s story is a harsh mix of tragedy and Kafkaesque catch-22 that makes her downbeat demeanour all the more understandable.
“ I was kicked out of the US coz I didn’t have no green card”, she drawled. She arrived back in Haiti just days before the earthquake, her five children split between cousins in Georgia and an ex-husband in Miami.
“I ain’t got family left here, more than twenty were killed in the earthquake. My mom, my sisters, their kids, everyone.”
She has savings in Citibank, but all the branches in Port-au-Prince were destroyed. “My ex sent me fifty dollars, but the CMA (a Haitian version of Western Union) doesn’t have no cash, so I can’t get my fifty bucks”, she explains.
“What’m I gonna do?” she asks. “Are those guys gonna help?”, pointing at the GOAL volunteers pacing through the squalid camp to see what the people need, and how it can be delivered. Paul Kelly is a civil engineer from Louth. He tells the ‘community leaders’ to draw up a list of families staying at the camp as soon as possible, so the aid agency can allocate shelter, food and hygiene kit donated by the Irish and US Governments. (more…)
Haiti ends search for survivors – RTÉ World Report
January 24th, 2010
http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0124/worldreport.html
Even as a man is pulled alive from the rubble 11 days after the earthquake, the search for survivors is being called off. The focus moves onto the emergency relief operation.
“Why is there not enough for everybody”, said Clement, who walked a mile uphill on Port-au-Prince’s narrow, debris-strewn streets to get to one of the first aid deliveries to some of the estimated 3 million Haitians affected by the earthquake.
Moving around the stricken Caribbean capital last week, I met dozens of groups in different parts of the city who said that they had not received any aid one week after the disaster. Others told me I was the first foreigner they had met.
Destruction in Port-au-Prince. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Anger, frustration and confusion animated most of the Haitians I met last week. And tragedy, on a scale unimaginable. 10000 people a day are being buried in mass graves outside the city, over 100000 so far. Thousands more lie under the rubble.
At GOALs first aid distribution last Wednesday, an atmosphere of tension and anticipation filled the air. With hygiene, shelter and food relief donated by the Irish, American and Canadian Governments, there was enough for 300 families in this first run.
Not enough for everyone who showed up, waiting in the hot afternoon sun. Tensions grew as some people received aid, while others, who came from districts outside the area of the city where this consignment was to be delivered, were trying to access material aimed for others. (more…)
“I thought I was dead for sure” – The Irrawaddy/National Catholic Register
January 23rd, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17644&Submit=Submit
Lenas still traumatised and in severe pain, over a week after the earthquake (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Screaming as the doctor cleaned and dressed her leg, Lenas then lay back on the bed, drawing breath and, after a couple of minutes, regaining her composure.
“The ground shook for at least thirty seconds, I never knew anything like it,” she said, speaking in Haitian Creole.
“When it was over I was buried. The house was down around me, dust everywhere. I thought I was dead for sure.”
Lenas, 25, spent five hours under the rubble, her leg crushed. It was Jan. 18 when I caught up with her at the Medishare field hospital in a UN compound in Port-au-Prince.
She was receiving her first treatment since the disaster, her leg a nasty mix of bruising, swelling, bleeding and infection.
“I am in a lot of pain,” she said, holding back tears, as Madame Judy, a Haitian nurse who lives in Miami, comforted her.
“I flew home as soon as I heard about the disaster on the news,” Judy said. She arrived in Port-au-Prince late on Jan. 12, ahead of the posse of international aid workers who subsequently struggled to gain access to the country.
The tiny international airport has one runway, and when the US military took over operations there, some aid workers and relief material was held up. It took this correspondent two days to get to Port-au-Prince from Miami, after being diverted to Jamaica. (more…)
