23 April 2009
Survivors weather the storm
Bodies lay strewn across the flattened landscape. In the worst hit places, not even remnants of houses were visible. “The village looked like a cemetery,” says Win Teingi, a young teacher from Ye-Dwin-Gone in the eastern delta. “Everything was quiet. No one knew what to do”.
Win Teingi, 20, is a survivor of the terrible cyclone which struck Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta on May 2 2008, killing 140,000 people leaving millions more bereaved and displaced. Some 450,000 houses were destroyed including 60% of schools and 75% of health facilities.
One year on, after Nargis swept away loved ones, destroyed homes and flooded paddy fields with salt water, people are still rebuilding their lives – with resilience, hard work and help from the international community.
The UK has been one of the largest donors to the relief effort. Its £45 million contribution has helped more than a million survivors.
Unfettered access
Those who remember the early days of the cyclone response will recall the international community’s outrage as Burma's military rulers, highly suspicious of external motives, refused access to foreign aid workers.
Not until 25 May did the regime allow unfettered access to the disaster zone after the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Douglas Alexander, and other donor ministers called for a step-change in its response to Nargis at a crisis conference in Rangoon.
Then came the creation of the Tripartite Core Group, comprising the Burmese government, the Association of South East Asian Nations and the United Nations, which helped to build trust, coordinate the aid, and provide a way to overcome obstacles, such as visa handling for humanitarian workers.
Further disaster averted
In those first days, traumatised survivors were left to search for clean water and food, and to bury the bodies of family members and friends. A quarter of the 1,000 inhabitants of Win Teingi’s village were killed – a scenario repeated hundreds of times across the Delta.
Ordinary Burmese citizens, the unsung heroes of this crisis, filled up cars and trucks with supplies in the former capital Rangoon and drove them down to the Delta. “Hundreds of people were there just there to help,” says Sue Wardell, the DFID director for Burma.
“They would work round and through politics. The Burmese people – individuals, private companies and local groups – made huge efforts to get aid through. Because of that, more people didn’t die.”
The UK government, as one of the few donor countries with a presence on the ground, was among the first to respond. Within weeks, 22 UK flights had landed in Rangoon bringing essential supplies. By 8 May, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) had made the then single largest funding commitment to the response, getting much-needed assistance quickly to those who needed it most.
International NGOs already on the ground in Burma, such as DFID partner Save the Children, also moved quickly, procuring relief items in-country and distributing them via Burmese staff.
“Within two weeks of the disaster, 40% of villages surveyed had received assistance despite difficult terrain and circumstances,” said a World Bank social impact monitoring report, published in January 2009. “Within a month, 80% of the villages had received support. In the end, all villages – even the most remote ones – had been reached.”
Clean water
Water has been a particular focus of the aid effort. Cyclone Nargis shattered traditional earthenware jars in which people stored water for the dry season. The cyclone’s three to four metre high storm surge contaminated storage ponds with sea water.
Aid agencies supported by DFID, such as Save the Children, have cleaned ponds, built temporary water containers to capture the last of the monsoon rains, and brought in water treatment machines to remove salt and bacteria from brackish water, leaving clean drinking water.
“We are delivering clean, fresh water that we've made from dirty salt water to 60,000 people at the height of the dry season. That is saving lives,” says Andrew Kirkwood, country director for Save the Children in Burma.
Changing threats
Despite these achievements, many survivors of Nargis are living in very vulnerable conditions.
“The gains made in quick, life-saving assistance are looking vulnerable to retreat in some parts - especially as the monsoon season approaches,” says Matt Maguire, DFID’s cyclone recovery coordinator in Burma.
Roughly 140,000 families are in need of renewed emergency shelter before the monsoon rains return later this May. Tens of thousands of smallholder farmers also need support to plant paddy fields before the deluge – a diminished paddy harvest later in the summer will lead to a severe income and food shortage for rural communities.
The global downturn has dealt further blows to future prospects in Burma. Prices for agricultural exports have slumped and there is no credit for already indebted farmers to buy seeds or fertilisers, or pay labourers to work the land.
Elsewhere in Burma, humanitarian concerns continue. Chin State has experienced a plague of rats eating crops, and many people are suffering the effects of continued conflict in eastern Burma.
What next?
In the months ahead, as the Burmese government presses ahead with planned elections, it will be even more important for the international community to remain vigilant to the needs of the Burmese people.
DFID announced in March that it will increase humanitarian aid to Burma by £10 million in each of the next two financial years (totalling a £25 million programme for 2009-10 and a £28 million programme for 2010-11). DFID and its partners are looking at urgent pre-monsoon needs, specifically funding emergency shelter for the most vulnerable and agricultural resources for smallholder farming families.
Much of DFID’s funding in cyclone-affected areas will be aimed at restoring people’s livelihoods. DFID has also increased its support for food aid in Chin State. More funds will be channelled to the Three Diseases Fund to combat tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS. And DFID’s support for Burmese refugees in Thailand, and others affected by conflict, is also expanding.
The response to Nargis, and the progress of the other DFID-funded projects across the country, have shown that aid can be delivered effectively in Burma. DFID is now encouraging other donors to follow its lead by pledging more funds to help the people of one of the world’s poorest and least aided countries.
“We don’t want aid in any way to get into the hands of the regime, but neither do we want to penalise the poor,” says Wardell. “Emergencies attract a lot of publicity at the time but then people move on. We need to focus on the fact there’s still work to be done.”
Key facts
- DFID has helped to fund Save the Children’s response to Nargis with some £2.5 million of grants, a significant part of which has been used to provide potable water, and to improve the health of villagers through education on water, hygiene and sanitation issues.
- For the relief effort, DFID has provided a total of £17 million to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including Save the Children.
- DFID announced in March that it will increase humanitarian aid to Burma by £20 million over the next two financial years (totalling a £25 million programme for 2009-10 and a £28 million programme for 2010-11).
- DFID and its partners continue to respond to the situation in the Delta and is assessing how best to respond to the needs of smallholder farmers in the run-up to the 2009 monsoon planting season.
- The UK has been one of the largest donors to the Cyclone Nargis relief effort. Its £45 million contribution has helped more than a million survivors.