New Mandala

A September 15 article on the New Era website reports that UNICEF-funded kindergartens in cyclone affected areas of Myanmar’s delta are empty. The Kale Pyaw Neya (literally, Happy Children Place) kindergartens have no kids in them, Aung Kyaw Moe writes, because parents can’t afford to pay for carers. He quotes an INGO staff person working [...]

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Tragedies such as last year’s cyclone and this spring’s sham trial inevitably draw the world’s eyes to Burma. We should maintain our gaze. Given that the United Nations is aware of the scale and severity of rights abuses in Burma, it is incumbent on the Security Council to authorize a commission of inquiry into crimes [...]

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On 2 May 2009, countries around the world marked the one year anniversary of Cyclone Nargis, which killed at least 140,000 people and devastated the lives and livelihoods of an estimated 2.4 million survivors. On this sad occasion, the international press was swamped with appraisals of humanitarian efforts to date in the Irrawaddy Delta.
Much of [...]

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Burma’s Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD) has severely restricted Rangoon weekly journals publishing reports marking the anniversary of Cyclone Nargis, which devastated the southwest of the country on May 2-3 last year, leaving about 140,000 people dead in its wake. According to several editors and reporters, the notoriously draconian censorship board did not allow [...]

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One year on from Cyclone Nargis and the figures are pretty disturbing: half a million people without proper housing, 350,000 still requiring food aid from the World Food Program and incomes down about 50 percent on pre-cyclone figures. The first anniversary of Nargis, which killed almost 140,000 people in the Ayeyarwady Delta last year, also [...]

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As the one-year anniversary of Cyclone Nargis passed, there was much to contemplate. The international media and the Burmese-run journals have printed memorials and analyses of the political situation in Myanmar one year post-Nargis. Up until now, the international media has painted a predisposed and regrettably misleading portrait of relief and humanitarian assistance in the Irawaddy Delta [...]

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Immediately after the cyclone, Burmese civil society groups, Buddhist monks, Christian charity organizations, and local staff from international agencies already operating in Burma responded in affected areas, often having to circumvent official restrictions on movement and access under extremely difficult circumstances. Without their work, the disaster response would have cost many more lives. The government’s [...]

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Over the weekend I was made aware of a very worthwhile project to get books into the Burmese libraries devastated by Cyclone Nargis.  All of the details are available here:
Despite its poverty, Myanmar has more than 30,000 community libraries in addition to 150 college and university libraries. Burmese have a value for reading which is [...]

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Two groups last month released new assessments of relief efforts in Myanmar after Nargis. In contrast to the two reports previously reviewed for New Mandala, people directly involved in the work there wrote for these publications. One is the first official periodic review conducted since the cyclone struck on May 2. The other consists of [...]

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Two new reports released this month examine relief efforts after Cyclone Nargis. One, by the International Crisis Group, proposes the normalizing of aid relations with Myanmar. The other, by a conglomerate of groups based over the border, critiques the work of the United Nations and international agencies in responding to the disaster. Neither achieves what [...]

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