http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/YSAR-7MGN9Q?OpenDocument
Source: United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Date: 19 Dec 2008
Full_Report (pdf* format - 101.9 Kbytes)
U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
BUREAU FOR DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT, AND HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE (DCHA)
OFFICE OF U.S. FOREIGN DISASTER ASSISTANCE (OFDA)
Note: The last fact sheet was dated November 17, 2008.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
The Tripartite Core Group (TCG), composed of representatives from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Government of Burma, and the U.N., is finalizing the first Periodic Review, a quarterly comprehensive assessment of the response to Cyclone Nargis. The Review is scheduled for release in Burma in late December and will focus on progress to date and ongoing humanitarian needs.
The TCG plans to launch the Post Nargis Recovery and Preparedness Plan (PONREPP) in January 2009. The PONREPP is designed to meet medium-term recovery needs in livelihoods, shelter, education and training, disaster risk reduction, environment, protection, health, and water, sanitation, and hygiene sectors.
As of December 12, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that the U.N. Revised Appeal for $477 million is currently funded at 64 percent, or $304 million.
On December 10, U.S. First Lady Laura Bush announced that the U.S. Government (USG), through USAID, will provide an additional $5 million in disaster assistance to communities devastated by Cyclone Nargis. The funding will support efforts of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to address clean water, shelter, and other critical needs in affected areas.
In FY 2008 and to date in FY 2009, the USG has provided or committed to provide nearly $74 million in cylone assistance to Burma, including almost $30 million in USAID/OFDA funding to support relief and early recovery activities among cyclone-affected populations.
ESTIMATED NUMBERS AT A GLANCE SOURCE
Total Dead 84,537 GOB – June 24, 2008
Total Missing 53,836 GOB – June 24, 2008
Total Number Affected 2.4 million OCHA – October 24, 2008
TOTAL FY 2008 HUMANITARIAN FUNDING USAID/OFDA
USAID/OFDA Assistance to Burma - $28,596,342
USAID/FFP(1) Assistance to Burma - $28,063,200
DOD(2) Assistance to Burma - $12,273,152
Additional USAID/OFDA Assistance Pledged to Burma - $5,000,000
Total USG Humanitarian Assistance to Burma - $73,932,694
CURRENT SITUATION
Seven months after Cyclone Nargis made landfall in Burma, humanitarian agencies assisted an estimated 2.4 million beneficiaries, primarily within the most-affected areas of Ayeyarwady and Rangoon divisions.
According to OCHA, to reflect the changing needs of the population, donors and NGOs are shifting from emergency activities to recovery efforts, including livelihood promotion interventions.
USAID/OFDA partners continue to implement livelihood recovery programs, including microfinance assistance and agricultural inputs, in Ayeyarwady and Rangoon divisions.
USAID/OFDA deployed an Emergency Disaster Response Coordinator (ERDC) is in Rangoon to conduct humanitarian assessments, monitor USG-funded programs, and coordinate with humanitarian organizations.
Full_Report (pdf* format - 101.9 Kbytes)
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Sunday, December 21, 2008
Burma: Cyclone Fact Sheet #2 (FY) 2009
Burma likely to announce 'Election Law' on Independence Day
http://www.mizzima.com/news/inside-burma/1476-burma-likely-to-announce-election-law-on-independence-day.html
by Mungpi
Friday, 19 December 2008 20:35
New Delhi (Mizzima) - As a step forward along the roadmap to democracy, Burma's military junta will soon announce an Election Law that will set guidelines and criteria for the formation of political parties to contest the upcoming 2010 general election, sources said.
According to Larry Jagan, a journalist based in Bangkok and a Burma affairs expert, the junta is likely to announce the Election Law in early January 2009 and most likely on Burma's Independence Day of January 4th.
Burma's military government had previously announced early this year that it wiould hold a general election in 2010 to elect representatives to a new government which is to include some civilian representatives.
In preparation for the election, sources close to the military said the junta has already prepared a set of rules and regulations for the formation of political parties, the document now pending to be made public as the country's paramount military figure, Senior General Than Shwe, is yet to have given his final approval.
"According to what I know [from my sources] the election law will be announced on January 4th," Jagan, a veteran journalist who has covered Burma for years, told Mizzima.
A source, who wished to remain unnamed, said the junta is likely to make public the Law in late December or early January, but in any scenario it is clear that the junta will only make such an announcement when it is confident they have done all the necessary groundwork to secure electoral victory.
Analysts, including Jagan, believe that the junta, making use of an Election Law, will ensure that it gets an upper hand in the upcoming election and will tie up any possible opposition at the polling booths, including that led of detained Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's party – National League for Democracy (NLD).
"It is likely that the NLD will be allowed to partake, if they are willing to contest by the established rules, but that does not mean there would be a free and fair process," said Jagan, adding that the junta will make sure the party is left handicapped.
The NLD, on its part, has so far not reached any decision on whether or not to contest the upcoming election.
"We will decide on it, but as of now we still think it is too early," Nyan Win, the NLD's spokesperson in Rangoon, told Mizzima. He said the NLD would love to see progress in the electoral process, including the announcement of the Election Law, so that an accurate assessment of the NLD's potential involvement could be formulated.
However, according to some, regardless of specifics it would be unwise for the NLD to remain out of the fold, encouraging the party to contest the poll.
Aye Lwin, leader of the 88 generation students (Union of Myanmar), a group backed by the junta, during an interview with Mizzima said it would be wiser for the NLD and other opposition elements to join the election process and accept a new government as a step forward to democratization.
"Democracy cannot be achieved overnight, so we have to build it slowly from the given the space," Aye Lwin said.
Aye Lwin admits that he and his group are now campaigning and intend to form a political party to contest the election, saying he believes that the election will be free and fair and that the result will bring Burma a step closer to democracy.
But unlike Aye Lwin, Jagan said the junta's priority is not to allow a repetition of the 1990 election, in which detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi led the NLD to a landslide victory.
"The NLD might be allowed to run in the election but it does not necessarily mean it is free and fair. It is more likely that they would be harassed and hindered, and the junta would likely arrest those they thought were problems," Jagan elaborated.
Human rights and state power
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/12/20/human_rights_and_state_power/
GLOBE EDITORIAL
December 20, 2008
IN A MAJOR turnabout, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said recently he had been wrong to press for a new post of minister of state for human rights within the foreign ministry. Kouchner co-founded the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders. But he has come to understand, he explained, that "there is a permanent contradiction between human rights and the foreign policy of a state, even in France."
Kouchner's change of heart originates in a parochial French squabble: President Nicolas Sarkozy has turned against his Senegal-born minister for human rights, Rama Yade, because she declined to leave her post and run for the European Parliament, as Sarkozy requested. But the issue has reverberations in many countries, including the United States.
Successive American administrations have been no less ambivalent than France about the proper role of human rights in government policy. President Gerald Ford and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, were initially reluctant to include a so-called human rights basket in the 1975 Helsinki Accords with the Soviet Union. But inclusion of that "soft" provision on human rights helped set off processes that led to the peaceful collapse of communism. This was a case of human rights serving US national interests - perhaps more effectively than the entire arsenal of nuclear warheads.
In the last few years, however, there have been several disturbing examples of the US national interest - as conventionally defined - standing in the way of actions to defend human rights. The ongoing genocide in Darfur is the most blatant example. China, as a major investor in Sudanese oil, protects the genocidal Sudanese regime at the UN Security Council. The United States and its European allies have gone only so far in trying to halt the Darfur genocide - or the current atrocities in eastern Congo, the Sri Lankan government's abuses of civilians in its counter-insurgency war against the Tamil Tigers, or the horrific rights violations by the military dictatorship in Burma.
There is now an assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, and President-elect Barack Obama is also expected to have someone in his National Security Council responsible for human rights. But the problem illuminated by Kouchner's candid remark is not really about bureaucratic posts. It is about how willing the governments of the world are to protect vulnerable populations from their own governments. We hope Obama will stretch the definition of the national interest to include a panoply of actions, short of war, to defend universal human rights.
© Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Burma to Try 19 North Korean Defectors
http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-12-20-voa12.cfm
By VOA News
20 December 2008
Authorities in Burma say they have arrested 19 North Korean defectors and will try them on charges of illegally entering the country.
The defectors were trying to make their way to South Korea via China and Southeast Asia when they were captured after entering Burmese territory early this month. There is no information on how long they had been in China.
Burmese immigration authorities have moved the group from a detention center to a prison, where they await a trial expected to open next week.
North Koreans fleeing the impoverished and repressive Stalinist state are increasingly choosing Southeast Asia as a destination after passing through China, in hopes they can eventually resettle in South Korea.
China repatriates North Korean defectors it captures as economic migrants.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP.
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