The document discusses the humanitarian response to Cyclone Nargis, which struck Burma in 2008. It notes that while the scale of damage approached the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the international response to Cyclone Nargis was more limited due to the Burmese regime restricting access. The regime refused most visas for international aid workers and limited access to the hard-hit Irrawaddy Delta region. Much of the initial response came from local organizations, NGOs, and communities. The document evaluates the strengths and limitations of the local, national, and international response.

1. Rapid Response: does it undermin
resilience?
The humanitarian response to
Cyclone Nargis, Burma (3 May 200
Marianne Jago-Bassingthwaight
marianne.jagobassingthwaighte@jcu.edu.au
.

2. Questions
• How much, and what kind, of rapid response is
enough? At what point does it overwhelm local
coping strategies and undermine community
resilience, networking and skilling?
• What does this case study of Burma tell us about
the responsibility to protect (R2P)?
• How should the international political and
humanitarian communities respond to aid refusal?

3. What Happened
• Cyclone Nargis made landfall in Burma on 2-3 May
2008
• Category 4+ - Winds up to 240km hour
• Tidal surge of 3.4 metres over very low-lying Delta
• 140,000 dead or missing, disproportionately women,
children, elderly
• Of estimated 7.35m people in affected areas, one
third suffered severe loss.

4. The Delta under water

5. What happened…
• Many millions displaced
• 450,000 houses destroyed
• Severe physical and emotional trauma, and
heightened vulnerability
• USD 1 billion direct material damage:
foodstocks, livelihoods, infrastructure
• Longer term losses: human and social capital,
personal savings, access to affordable credit

7. Junta Refuses Aid
• Generals say they have the situation in hand
• Regime restricts dissemination of photographs
and footage of Nargis destruction
• Regime refuses entry visas to most internat’l
aid workers, restricts delta access
• UN orgs / INGOs with existing presence
allowed to stay
– Save the Children note that they are soon allowed
to travel unaccompanied to Delta

11. The Political Fall-Out
• “Myanmar Cyclone: Burma junta may be
prosecuted over aid block” (The Telegraph)
• Debate in the UN Security Council: British and
French particularly adamant that force should
be used if necessary to delivery aid to needy
• The spectre of humanitarian intervention
(Chapter VII) raised in the push for a rapid
humanitarian response

12. Standing up to Regime Bullies

13. The Response
• Scale of Nargis’s impact approached that of
the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004.
• But in Burma there were fewer than half the
200 or so aid actors that “poured into”
Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka & other regions
affected by the Tsunami. (Islamic Relief)
• Actual amount of aid hard to quantify noting
regime’s information given late and not
reliable

14. The Early Response
• Conflicting accounts of the international
response:
– Andrew Kirkwood, Save the Children, Burma; and
Richard Werly, journalist.
• Local response was large-scale and
spontaneous
– monastic, private sector, civil society orgs

16. Rapid Response
• Example: Save the Children less than two
weeks after the cyclone, reached more than
120,000 people forced out of their homes by
the cyclone, including around 50,000 children
- 90,000 people around Yangon and 30,000 in
the Irrawaddy delta. And reaching around
15,000 more people each day. Much of this
was delivered by local staff, and through
partnering with local organisations.

17. The Response – International
• 7 May: UN cluster system is established, issues
a Flash Appeal for USD187m.
• 19 May: ASEAN FMs Meeting established
ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force (Nargis)
• 25 May: ASEAN-UN International Pledging
Conference in Rangoon
• Burma then agrees to Chair Tri-Partite Core
Group (TCG: ASEAN, UN, Burma)
• Donors insist on access, and assessments

19. Rapid Response
• ASEAN Emergency Response Assessment
Team (ERAT) 9-18 May 2008 was begun within
5 days of disaster
• Almost all villages had some assistance within
2-3 weeks; remoter areas - a month
• Post-Nargis Joint Assessment (PONJA),
released 21 July 2008
– 32 Village Tract Assessments (VTA)
– 8 Damage and Loss Assessments (DALA)

20. Evaluating the Response
• Immediate Official Response weak and badly
handled
• Bulk of immediate assistance was local (NGOs,
local INGO staff, diaspora links; civic, private
sector)
• Donor, INGO and UN agencies already present
mobilised
• Others arrived later (SIDA, Oxfam, UNOCHA)

21. Evaluating the Response
• UNOCHA RealTime Evaluation found that the
response had gone well not because of the
international response but because of local
efforts and a unique Burmese “culture of
sharing”. It also found that no-one had died as
a result of the poor regime response – local
effort had compensated
• Johns Hopkins University Report found that
the regime had stolen aid and thousands had
died because of regime negligence

22. What’s missing in this picture?
• How much humanitarian aid did Burma
receive?
• To what extent does the UN appeals process
take into account local contribution?
• To what extent does the international
humanitarian community protect and
privilege local response efforts?
• Aid refusal – what if it’s a despot in a very
poor country that we’d like to get rid of?

23. Observations
• ODI Report finding (2012):
– The structures we have set up have moved us, as
international aid actors, more and more away
from the people...They have made the response
not nimble enough, more risk averse, more
constrained and less able to engage with the
specificity of the local situation, where there may
be initiatives which we could strengthen.
Lesson: work with savvy local actors as much as
possible