Responsibility to Protect - Again Denied
Yes, there was that United Nations resolution that there would be times when intervention by the world body and its associated members might be feasible. When a totalitarian government or a tyrannical ruler failing to live up to obligations to that country's citizens would require humanitarian intervention. When violations of human rights were so depraved in their nature as to lift normal international caution in intervening in the affairs of independent states.We can see where the best of intentions have led in the instance of the Sudanese government dealing with Darfur. The United Nations' hand-wringing and desperate pleas to the government of Sudan has not resulted in any relief for Sudan's black farming communities. The African Union troops have been ineffectual, and despite a tenuous agreement to allow UN peacekeepers into the country, the final assent hasn't been received from Khartoum and Darfurians continue to suffer.
There are certain sensitivities at play here. Desperate people who continue to be preyed upon are left to their miserable fate because to launch a UN or Western-based coalition of troops to protect them against the sovereign will of the government of Sudan would open them up to accusations of racist or imperialistic hubris. Political correctness is of utmost importance; it trumps the forcible cessation of carnage wrought on helpless people.
The people of Zimbabwe face a hopeless future. They lack food, medicines, employment, security. An unheard-of inflation rate has driven people to desperation; they can afford no staples of life. A food shortage caused by the insane policies of an egomaniacal despot who claims entitlement to ruin that already-devastated country ad nauseum, is further complicated by Mugabe-supporting thugs destroying crops as a message to Zimbabwe's farmers looking for an alternative to his destructive rule.
Ban ki-Moon is supportive of Morgan Zvangerai as the winner of the election, despite that it took five weeks post-election for the Zimbabwe Election Commission to post figures showing a slight majority of votes for the opposition, but the country's African neighbours are unwilling to exert their opprobrium at the corrupt and ruinous government. South Africa, that beacon of African liberation from Apartheid under Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu, remains supportive of the brutal Mugabe.
And then, of course, there is the situation in Burma. Where the ruling military junta of the country's generals remain adamant that they will not permit entry into that country of foreign disaster relief specialists. They finally agreed to receive emergency food and medicine and water and shelter to aid their desperate people, but those only. Starving and water-parched survivors of the catastrophic cyclone desperately await help, but little is forthcoming.
Burma's military, which should be delivering vital food aid to the cyclone's survivors were diverted to assist with the referendum on a new constitution. The forced vote resulted in an "overwhelming turnout" to ensure the ruling junta will remain in power, thus causing much celebration in the corridors of Burma's power elite. The desperate plight of the cyclone's survivors? Well, that'll be attended to, eventually. Just a matter of setting priorities.
The survivors are bereft of food, clean water, shelter and medical supplies. They, it would appear, are expendable. Nature left her calling card and it wasn't dreadfully appreciated, but that's life, after all. The country is simply not yet prepared to permit foreign aid workers into its secretive borders. "With each passing day, we come closer to a massive health disaster and a second wave of deaths that is potentially larger than the first" warned the International Rescue Committee emergency co-ordinator in Rangoon.
Aid supplies and food are there, sitting in warehouses in Rangoon. Some of these items were handed out to the needy by government representatives, to give the impression that the emergency supplies were courtesy of the government, not foreign aid. Other emergency supplies have been left in the warehouses, to be distributed at such time as the government considers it to be required, to those of their choice.
Dead bodies float down the canals of the Irrawaddy Delta, and although fish are to be had in the canals, starving villagers will not eat them, believing the water to have been contaminated. And they're perfectly correct. That contamination will inevitably - unless expert aid and burial and reconstruction begins soon - lead to dread waterborne diseases.
And then the count of the dead will increase exponentially.
Labels: Environment, Societal Failures, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Monday, May 12, 2008
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