PRESS CONFERENCE ON MYANMAR HUMANITARIAN APPEAL

 

Donors had responded to a flash appeal to assist victims of Cyclone Nargis, which hit Myanmar earlier in the week, with pledges and assistance totalling about $77 million, John Holmes, United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator and Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference today.

Mr. Holmes, briefing after the launch of the appeal, said the amount included pledges that had been made today and other pledges of which the United Nations was aware.  It included some bilateral assistance and assistance through the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

The appeal had been launched for a total of $187 million to cover at least 1.5 million people for the next six months, with food as a very important element, he continued.  The need for food was expected to grow.

The lead donors at the moment were Japan and the United Kingdom, which had pledged $10 million each, he said.  In addition, $20 million was being allocated immediately from the Central Emergency Response Fund to projects included the flash appeal.  The amount would be allocated in the next day or two, to make sure that the most urgent life-saving needs could be addressed quickly.

He described the response to the appeal as generous, pointing out that the pledges had been made despite the fact that the countries had not had time to study the appeal, which had been issued only a few hours before the launch.

Mr. Holmes said a number of things had been made clear at the conclusion of the appeal, including the huge sympathy of the international community for the victims of the cyclone and an awareness of on the part of everybody about the sheer scale of the disaster that was still unfolding, with the casualty figure still rising.  In addition, there was a generous readiness to respond and a warm welcome for the statement by the Permanent Representative of Myanmar to the United Nations that help was welcome from any quarter, as evidenced by the landing of a United States C-130 Hercules at Yangon Airport on Monday.

The final thing, he added, was a very strong hope that the cooperation necessary between the international community and the authorities in Myanmar would be as forthcoming, as flexible and as rapid as possible to make sure that relief material and goods, as well as humanitarian aid workers, could get in.  The Permanent Representative had made it clear at the launch that he fully registered the messages and would pass them on to the authorities.

On the death toll, Mr. Holmes said it could be between 63,000 and 100,000, or even higher, adding that the 63,000 figure had been arrived at by adding the official figures for the dead and missing.  The higher figure came from the strong impression of those on the ground that the 63,000 might be an underestimate.  The United Nations did not have the information or the complete universal coverage about that figure, but it looked reasonable to those on the ground that the 63,000 was an underestimate.

Continuing, he said the rhythm of aid delivery in Myanmar was picking up, though not as much as the United Nations would like.  The challenge was not just to get the aid to the airport in Yangon, but to get it onwards into the Irrawaddy delta and to the people in need.  One of the problems was that a lot of the transport in the delta relied on local networks of boats, 80 per cent of which had been destroyed or washed away in the cyclone.

Myanmar’s neighbours could play an important role in the relief effort, and were already doing so, he said.  The United Nations would like to work closely with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and with its individual members to make sure that the right logistical setup was in place to get aid in.

It had been disappointing to see the statement by the Myanmar authorities that they were not ready to receive foreign aid workers, he continued.  He hoped that meant that they were not ready at the moment, but would be in the future.  A few visas had been granted to aid workers and, as such, there was obviously not a blanket ban.  The United Nations hoped that the authorities would have an “open house” for international humanitarian aid workers, whether from the United Nations or elsewhere, as quickly as they could, because that could make a real difference.

In response to a question on how much the aid effort would have progressed without the delays caused by the Government, he said it was always very difficult to get an aid effort going for the first four or five days.  It was, therefore, not completely unprecedented to have a rather slow start.  In the Myanmar case, though, the situation had not been helped by the bureaucratic constraints and other problems.

Responding to another question, he said it was not impossible or unusual for a Government to be involved in the distribution of humanitarian assistance.  There was no absolute blanket principle that the United Nations did not allow Governments to be involved in distribution.  Medical aid from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) was currently being distributed by the Myanmar Ministry of Health through its health system, and that was perfectly normal.  The current argument was really about the degree of control and monitoring possible for the distribution.  That was where there was a need to negotiate and, hopefully, reach agreement quickly, as the important thing was to get the aid on the ground quickly.

Mr. Holmes told correspondents that any person or entity could contribute to the flash appeal, not just countries.

On the situation of the emergency response team members, two of whom had gotten into Myanmar while two had been turned away, he said that the two that had been turned away were now back in Bangkok.

Asked for his opinion on possible Security Council action to pressure the Myanmar authorities, he said that constructive pressure could be helpful, but needed to be applied in the right way to persuade them to be more accommodating.

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For information media • not an official record