Burma
Six Months After Nargis
Jonathan Lindsley
In this political
season, it seems everyone is willing to
criticize the media. Not to be outdone,
I offer my own critique here.
In the last month
I have heard more about Joe the Plumber’s
tax returns than I have heard about nearly everything else. Included in the ‘everything else’ category
are potential humanitarian crises around the world.
As of October 23 of this year, only 50% of
the requested flash aid for Burma
following Nargis has arrived, according to the Inter Press Service. This, according to the article “is expected
to hamper plans to meet the humanitarian needs of millions of victims…” Food insecurity will likely be at record
levels this year, and the vastly larger rate of impoverishment in the
country
has left the population, according to the International Crisis Group
“acutely
vulnerable to economic shocks or natural disasters… [which] could
eventually
escalate into a major humanitarian crisis.” This is not a secret. It
just isn’t reported by mainstream media.
Exacerbating the
problem, writes the South African Times, “Myanmar
only received $2.9 of foreign aid per
person in 2005… compared to more than $38 per person in nearby Cambodia and nearly $50 in Laos.” Though this figure is from 2005, it is
telling of the ineffectual influence the international community has
had on improving
the situation in Burma. Donor governments do not end up giving all of
the money they’ve pledged because of strict regulations set forth by
the Junta. I’m not blaming the international community
here, the bureaucratic hoops of the Burmese Junta make donations
unwieldy and
unreliable. When Nargis hit, the Burmese
were already a severely disadvantaged population, susceptible to a host
of
disasters. When Nargis hit, it was big
news for a long time. But the situation
now is still terrible, and it isn’t in the news.
I recall hearing
in the news in the midst of the Georgia
and Russia
conflict that a big part of
the conflict was the way in which it was going to be sold to the
international
press. I don’t know enough about the
conflict to take a definitive side here, although I remember hearing
about Russia
complaining that Georgia
had sanitized the conflict
and planned it to happen in a way that would make the world more
sympathetic to
them. It seems as if humanitarian crises
need to be marketed as well. Something
that a military Junta is not good at.
The humanitarian
situation in Burma,
not even six months after
Nargis, isn’t sexy enough to make it into the newspaper, the television
news,
or any other mainstream media. And the
Junta isn’t good at marketing it. Until
we learn to prioritize what is important, massive humanitarian crises,
like
this, will go unnoticed by one of the largest pools of international
donors in
the world.