BRUSSELS - France, Britain and Germany called on Tuesday for the world to deliver aid to cyclone victims in Myanmar if necessary without the military junta's permission, France's junior minister for human rights said."We have called for the 'responsibility to protect' to be applied in the case of Burma," Rama Yade told reporters as EU development ministers' met to discuss emergency aid for Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. The little-used U.N. principle could allow the delivery of aid without the accord of the government if the military rulers continue to bar foreign aid teams from entering the country. Yade said France, backed by the two other major EU powers, would put the proposal to the U.N. Security Council, but she acknowledged it did not have unanimous support among the 27 EU member states. The European Union development ministers urged Myanmar's military junta on Tuesday to allow "free and unfettered" access for aid workers and take urgent action to allow the free flow of aid, an EU diplomat said. The statement agreed by EU development ministers supported other initiatives that could be taken in the U.N. framework, but stopped short of endorsing France's call for the world to deliver aid without the junta's agreement, diplomats said.
BRUSSELS - France, Britain and Germany called on Tuesday for the world to deliver aid to cyclone victims in Myanmar if necessary without the military junta's permission, France's junior minister for human rights said.
"We have called for the 'responsibility to protect' to be applied in the case of Burma," Rama Yade told reporters as EU development ministers' met to discuss emergency aid for Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. The little-used U.N. principle could allow the delivery of aid without the accord of the government if the military rulers continue to bar foreign aid teams from entering the country. Yade said France, backed by the two other major EU powers, would put the proposal to the U.N. Security Council, but she acknowledged it did not have unanimous support among the 27 EU member states. The European Union development ministers urged Myanmar's military junta on Tuesday to allow "free and unfettered" access for aid workers and take urgent action to allow the free flow of aid, an EU diplomat said. The statement agreed by EU development ministers supported other initiatives that could be taken in the U.N. framework, but stopped short of endorsing France's call for the world to deliver aid without the junta's agreement, diplomats said.
"We have called for the 'responsibility to protect' to be applied in the case of Burma," Rama Yade told reporters as EU development ministers' met to discuss emergency aid for Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
The little-used U.N. principle could allow the delivery of aid without the accord of the government if the military rulers continue to bar foreign aid teams from entering the country.
Yade said France, backed by the two other major EU powers, would put the proposal to the U.N. Security Council, but she acknowledged it did not have unanimous support among the 27 EU member states.
The European Union development ministers urged Myanmar's military junta on Tuesday to allow "free and unfettered" access for aid workers and take urgent action to allow the free flow of aid, an EU diplomat said.
The statement agreed by EU development ministers supported other initiatives that could be taken in the U.N. framework, but stopped short of endorsing France's call for the world to deliver aid without the junta's agreement, diplomats said.
Myanmar's military rulers appear to be digging in their heels in the face of mounting international pressure to allow more aid into the country. John Holmes, the leading UN humanitarian affairs official, is waiting for visa approval to visit Myanmar so he can urge the military government to open up to a full-scale international relief effort. But a state-run newspaper says Myanmar can rebuild without outside help, even though there is little evidence of that on the ground.
Even so - for all of the horror, Katrina was still a more modest disaster than the one in Burma.
Didn't hear from wchurchill about it again.
The Responsibility to Protect means that no state can hide behind the concept of sovereignty while it conducts-or permits- widespread harm to its population. Nor can states turn a blind eye when these events extend beyond their borders, nor because action does not suit their narrowly-defined national interests.
But responsibility to protect also entails responsibility to protect from social chaos:
Have France, Germany and Britain thought through what "imposing aid" on Myanmar might mean?
It seems like a simple moral decision: help the survivors of the cyclone. But liberating Iraq from an Arab Stalin also seemed simple and moral. (And it might have been, had we planned for the aftermath.) Sending in marines and sailors is the easy part; but make no mistake, the very act of our invasion could land us with the responsibility for fixing Burma afterward. <...> Because a humanitarian invasion could ultimately lead to the regime's collapse, we would have to accept significant responsibility for the aftermath. And just as the collapse of the Berlin Wall was not supposed to lead to ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, and the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein was not supposed to lead to civil war, the fall of the junta would not be meant to lead to the collapse of the Burmese state. But it might. Aid at the Point of a Gun - New York Times
<...>
Because a humanitarian invasion could ultimately lead to the regime's collapse, we would have to accept significant responsibility for the aftermath. And just as the collapse of the Berlin Wall was not supposed to lead to ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, and the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein was not supposed to lead to civil war, the fall of the junta would not be meant to lead to the collapse of the Burmese state. But it might.
Aid at the Point of a Gun - New York Times
On the other hand,
By just threatening intervention, the United States puts pressure on Beijing, New Delhi and Bangkok to, in turn, pressure the Burmese generals to open their country to a full-fledged foreign relief effort. We could do a lot of good merely by holding out the possibility of an invasion.
Guardian - Naomi Klein - In the wake of catastrophe comes the whiff of unrest
The cyclone, meanwhile, has presented the junta with one last, vast business opportunity: by blocking aid from reaching the highly fertile Irrawaddy delta, hundreds of thousands of mostly ethnic Karen rice farmers are being sentenced to death. According to Farmaner, "that land can be handed over to the generals' business cronies". This isn't incompetence, or even madness. It's laissez-faire ethnic cleansing.
