Community-based assessment of human rights in a complex humanitarian emergency: the Emergency Assistance Teams-Burma and Cyclone Nargis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Cyclone Nargis hit Burma on May 2, 2008, killing over 138,000 and affecting at least 2.4 million people. The Burmese military junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), initially blocked international aid to storm victims, forcing community-based organizations such as the Emergency Assistance Teams-Burma (EAT) to fill the void, helping with cyclone relief and long-term reconstruction. Recognizing the need for independent monitoring of the human rights situation in cyclone-affected areas, particularly given censorship over storm relief coverage, EAT initiated such documentation efforts.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A human rights investigation was conducted to document selected human rights abuses that had initially been reported to volunteers providing relief services in cyclone affected areas. Using participatory research methods and qualitative, semi-structured interviews, EAT volunteers collected 103 testimonies from August 2008 to June 2009; 42 from relief workers and 61 from storm survivors.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>One year after the storm, basic necessities such as food, potable water, and shelter remained insufficient for many, a situation exacerbated by lack of support to help rebuild livelihoods and worsening household debt. This precluded many survivors from being able to access healthcare services, which were inadequate even before Cyclone Nargis. Aid efforts continued to be met with government restrictions and harassment, and relief workers continued to face threats and fear of arrest. Abuses, including land confiscation and misappropriation of aid, were reported during reconstruction, and tight government control over communication and information exchange continued.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Basic needs of many cyclone survivors in the Irrawaddy Delta remained unmet over a year following Cyclone Nargis. Official impediments to delivery of aid to storm survivors continued, including human rights abrogations experienced by civilians during reconstruction efforts. Such issues remain unaddressed in official assessments conducted in partnership with the SPDC. Private, community-based relief organizations like EAT are well positioned and able to independently assess human rights conditions in response to complex humanitarian emergencies such as Cyclone Nargis; efforts of this nature must be encouraged, particularly in settings where human rights abuses have been documented and censorship is widespread.</p

Post-Disaster Reconstruction Models: The Governance of Urban Disasters in China, Iran and Myanmar

A preponderance of the world’s population is expected to live in urban environments by 2050 (ADB, Asia 2050: realizing the Asian century. ADB, Manila, 2011). Cities as sites of vulnerability for disasters originating from both natural and man-made causes are attracting considerable research on understanding the crosscultural and governance dynamics associated with large-scale mortalities (Paton and Jang, Disaster resilience: exploring all-hazards and cross-cultural perspectives. In: Miller D, Rivera J (eds) Community disaster recovery ad resiliency: exploring global opportunities and challenges (pp 81–100). Taylor and Francis, Oxford, 2011;Paton and Violanti, Working in high risk environments: developing sustained resilience . Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Illinois, 2012; Pelling, Vulnerability of cities: natural disasters and social resilience. Earthscan, London, 2003, Adaptation to climate change: from resilience to transformation. Routledge, London/New York, 2011). Disaster risk reduction policies of various Asian regional governments are currently exploring pragmatic approaches to recover and reconstruct lives, families and livelihoods of those affected. Examination of adaptation to trauma arising from large-scale losses in various cross-cultural contexts and different governance regimes presents the possibility of deriving new insights into practical disaster reconstruction models and policies. As such, this paper highlights the fundamental contributions of specific sociocultural and governance frameworks in disaster reconstruction policy. In so doing, the chapter investigates various urban disaster sites—namely, Bam and Tabriz (Iran), Pyapon, Bogale and Labutta (Myanmar) and Beichuan and Yingxue (People’s Republic of China, PRC)—where large-scale mortalities arising from earthquakes and a cyclone warrant attention by those researching on disaster resilience, recovery and reconstruction. Based on the fieldwork in the aforementioned disaster sites, this chapter suggests that while the physical reconstruction of a livable habitat is important, the sociocultural factors in enabling disaster-impacted communities to reconstruct peoples’ daily lives are of greater importance in the long-term recovery. Through the lens of civil society, difficulties in adapting to new realities around an engaged future are highlighted

Interrogating scarcity : how to think about ‘resource-scarce settings’

The idea of resource scarcity permeates health ethics and health policy analysis in various contexts. However, health ethics inquiry seldom asks—as it should—why some settings are ‘resource-scarce’ and others not. In this article I describe interrogating scarcity as a strategy for inquiry into questions of resource allocation within a single political jurisdiction and, in particular, as an approach to the issue of global health justice in an interconnected world. I demonstrate its relevance to the situation of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) with brief descriptions of four elements of contemporary globalization: trade agreements; the worldwide financial marketplace and capital flight; structural adjustment; imperial geopolitics and foreign policy. This demonstration involves not only health care, but also social determinants of health. Finally, I argue that interrogating scarcity provides the basis for a new, critical approach to health policy at the interface of ethics and the social sciences, with specific reference to market fundamentalism as the value system underlying contemporary globalization