emergencies

I had the chance today to attend a speech by ASEAN's (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Secretary General, Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, right after he had met with the Bank's President Bob Zoellick. He told us they discussed ways to increase the cooperation between the two organizations, but the most interesting and pressing aspect of it all is that they talked about specific ways in which the Bank will be helping out the victims of Cyclone Nargis through ASEAN. ASEAN had announced on May 13 that it was setting up a "Coalition of Mercy" for the Myanmar relief effort, and today Zoellick offered to have Bank experts assess the devastation and plan for the country's recovery. The key point here is that ASEAN is the organization with best access to Myanmar right now --it has already secured entry visas for its emergency team--, so this collaboration between the Bank and ASEAN can start being effective really quickly, which is what the people of Myanmar need.

The U.N. announced it was suspending relief supplies to Myanmar on Friday after the Government seized the food and aid material that had been flown into the country. Find reports from the New York Times, BBC News, and updates at ReliefWeb.

Update as of 1:00 p.m.: the World Food Programme, a U.S. agency, says it will send in two more relief planes tomorrow, as planned. Again, I encourage you to keep updated by checking a news aggregator like Google News or other online media.

As advanced in an earlier post, here's a short list to the webpages for online donations of international NGOs that have a large presence in the country and so are likely to be most effective under the difficult circumstances:

• International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent - Donations
• Save the Children - Donations
• CARE - Donations
• Malteser International (This is a German medical NGO which was able to send in supplies within a couple of days after the cyclone). - Website with info on donations
• Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières - Donations

The New York Times reports that some aid has begun flowing into Myanmar, but it looks like the mobilization for major relief operations is still underway and not clearly defined. However, you can keep track of what's going on in this regard by visiting the site that ReliefWeb has set up for the disaster caused by cyclone Nargis in Myanmar.

ReliefWeb, administered by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), is the main gateway to information --including news, documents and maps-- on humanitarian emergencies and disasters. It's targeted to the international humanitarian community that works on delivering emergency assistance, so you can hardly find a better site for up-to-date, reliable information on all aspects of this emergency.

Incidentally, there's also a site on the effects of the floods caused by Nargis in neighboring Thailand.

As for individual donations, it still seems too early to know how or where to contribute. I'll try to post this information later as it becomes available.