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Asian Quake Aid
There has been so little discussion of this in the U.S., it's sad.
From today's NYTimes:
Musharraf Appeals for $5.2B in Quake Aid
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan's president appealed Wednesday for more than $5 billion in aid to rebuild the earthquake-ravaged north, but said his country will fend for itself if the world doesn't deliver.
The appeal came as the United Nations warned again that thousands could die from cold, disease and hunger in the quake zone this winter and announced that Secretary-General Kofi Annan will tour the destruction ahead of a key donors conference Saturday in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said that Pakistan had so far received ''negligible'' funds from donors, but expressed confidence it could raise the $5.2 billion needed ''for relief and reconstruction and sustainable rehabilitation.''
''We hope the international community assists us in this hour of need,'' he told reporters in Rawalpindi, near the capital. ''We should be able to raise this amount. I have spoken to world leaders, and their responses have been very positive.''
The magnitude-7.6 quake on Oct. 8 destroyed the homes of about 3 million people, leaving hundreds of thousands living in tents while an unknown number have no shelter at all.
Most of the more than 87,000 deaths were in Pakistani territory. About 1,350 died in India's portion of Kashmir, which is divided between the two countries but claimed in its entirety by both.
Musharraf said that if the funds he sought were not forthcoming, it would affect Pakistan's development, particularly the social sector.
''We will do it ourselves if the world community does not help us,'' he said, but added that the world should assist Pakistan as it did nations hit by last year's tsunami in Asia, and Hurricane Katrina in the United States.
He said Pakistan would complete its planned distribution of $335 million to quake survivors within 15 days.
The U.N. is stressing the need for more financial support to sustain its emergency relief effort through the winter. It has so far received only $119 million and another $40 million in pledges out of $550 million it has been seeking since last month to finance emergency relief over six months.
****
When One Tragedy Gets More Sympathy Than Another
Crunching the numbers on human despair is an undignified exercise. But here it is.
The death toll from the Oct. 8 earthquake stands at just over 73,000, concentrated in two of Pakistan's northern provinces. A month into the disaster, donor nations had pledged slightly more than a fourth of the $550 million that the United Nations says it needs to deliver emergency relief.
By contrast, the Indian Ocean tsunami less than a year ago left a trail of 200,000 dead. A month into that disaster, the world had pledged 99 percent of the United Nations' emergency appeal.
Private donations by Americans totaled $13.1 million for earthquake victims, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy. In comparison, Americans doled out $1.3 billion for the tsunami victims and roughly $2 billion for their own after Hurricane Katrina.
The response to the South Asian earthquake has raised a troubling question: In the face of such calamity, why is the world not doing more?
George Rupp, president of the International Rescue Committee, rejects the easiest theory, donor fatigue. "I think Westerners identified with the first photos that came in," he said, referring to images from the tsunami. "I don't think it is donor fatigue. I think it is donor identification."
As evidence, he pointed to far graver relief crises - the war in Congo, for instance, which has killed 3.8 million people since 1998 - that were underfinanced long before the recent disasters.
The South Asian earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.6, struck a patch of earth as stunning as it is bloodstained, and it shook the mountains that divide the disputed Himalayan province of Kashmir. With a series of aftershocks and hundreds of landslides, it cracked mountains, washed away roads, broke bridges and marooned villagers who live close to the clouds.
The earthquake left three million people homeless, three times the numbers displaced by the tsunami. The estimate of injured, as doctors painstakingly reach them, stands around 128,000.
Delivering aid there is particularly expensive. In parts of the earthquake zone, food, blankets and doctors must be ferried by helicopters. The four Bell/Agusta AB139's donated by the Aga Khan Foundation cost $2,000 an hour to operate. As of last week, they had flown 438 hours, evacuated 1,036 wounded and conveyed 436.2 metric tons of supplies.
The price of tents has gone up, as relief agencies try to procure a half-billion of them in time for winter. Nature's clock makes everything urgent: by Dec. 1, wintry weather will come and much of the higher reaches of the earthquake zone will fall beyond reach even by helicopter.
How many people who have died from injuries because there were not enough helicopters to get them to a hospital remains unknown. The bigger mystery is how many may not survive the winter because of hunger, cold or disease.
Many theories besides Mr. Rupp's are offered for the meager donor response. Jan Egeland, the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, offers two.
First, he says, the world did not see television images of how the houses came tumbling down on people, and did not understand the scope of the disaster.
Second, he says, donor nations were at the end of their budget cycles when the earthquake hit; the tsunami, because it struck on Dec. 26 last year, came at the front end of the 2005 budget cycle.
"We peaked, in a way, during the tsunami, when half of the world's nations became donors, and 500 international relief groups participated," Mr. Egeland said. "Now maybe there is a danger that we will compare everything to the tsunami, which was unique."
Never mind the other calamities - whether created by humans or nature - that United Nations aid workers have faced this year, with even less largess: an agricultural crisis that blew up into famine in West Africa, more than two million displaced by civil war in the Darfur region of Sudan and a food crisis in southern Africa.
In the succession of emergencies, it has fallen on Mr. Egeland to range across the world's rich nations with a begging bowl in one hand and a moral whipping stick in the other.
"Too many times I've had to use big words to awaken the world this year," he said recently in a telephone interview from Copenhagen. "But it has simply been a year of megadisasters, and each one being huge in its challenges and unique in the number of people whose lives have been at stake."
It is why he has been pleading for the creation of a United Nations emergency relief fund, through which emergencies of various sorts can be met swiftly. The United Nations envisions a fund of roughly $500 million, though aid agencies like Oxfam say it should be double that amount.
The United States has not pledged a contribution to such a fund; Britain has.
"There should be predictability in the right to getting life-saving relief," Mr. Egeland said. "It should not be a lottery."
Some aid groups diverted post-tsunami money to other, equally pressing crises; the United Nations is not allowed to use money that is earmarked for one purpose for another. What difference can money make on the ground?
Action Against Hunger, an international relief group, raised $27,000 two weeks after the earthquake, compared with $400,000 in the same period after the tsunami. The group could have gotten tents immediately, but instead it had to wait nearly three weeks, until money came through. Catholic Relief Services, which raised less than $3 million for the earthquake, compared with $64 million for the tsunami, would have reached many more villages.
There are less charitable theories as to why South Asian earthquake survivors have not fared well on what Mr. Egeland calls the relief lottery. Dr. Hina Chaudhry, a cardiologist at Columbia University and a Pakistani by descent, said that the tsunami struck beach areas that were familiar to "supermodels on vacation." Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, where 30,000 people died, was not such a destination.
"It's absolutely shocking to me how the world has basically ignored it," she said.
Stacy Palmer, editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, said that holiday-season magnanimity helped tsunami fund-raising. Because the disaster struck the day after Christmas, Americans, Europeans and others were glued to the television, with family at their side.
"It was hard not to pay attention to it," she said. "A lot of it has to do with timing."
****
If you want to improve the world and make it a more peaceful, more free place, it seems to me that providing help to those who are in desperate need is a better way than invading countries and starting wars for nebulous reasons, especially when you go into a war with a strategic plan built of cotton candy and self-delusion.
I'm not sitting around just wringing my hands on this, but I wish more people would take a look at this horrible disaster and see the genuine chance to do something good for human beings who are not just suffering, but are in real mortal danger.
From today's NYTimes:
Musharraf Appeals for $5.2B in Quake Aid
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan's president appealed Wednesday for more than $5 billion in aid to rebuild the earthquake-ravaged north, but said his country will fend for itself if the world doesn't deliver.
The appeal came as the United Nations warned again that thousands could die from cold, disease and hunger in the quake zone this winter and announced that Secretary-General Kofi Annan will tour the destruction ahead of a key donors conference Saturday in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said that Pakistan had so far received ''negligible'' funds from donors, but expressed confidence it could raise the $5.2 billion needed ''for relief and reconstruction and sustainable rehabilitation.''
''We hope the international community assists us in this hour of need,'' he told reporters in Rawalpindi, near the capital. ''We should be able to raise this amount. I have spoken to world leaders, and their responses have been very positive.''
The magnitude-7.6 quake on Oct. 8 destroyed the homes of about 3 million people, leaving hundreds of thousands living in tents while an unknown number have no shelter at all.
Most of the more than 87,000 deaths were in Pakistani territory. About 1,350 died in India's portion of Kashmir, which is divided between the two countries but claimed in its entirety by both.
Musharraf said that if the funds he sought were not forthcoming, it would affect Pakistan's development, particularly the social sector.
''We will do it ourselves if the world community does not help us,'' he said, but added that the world should assist Pakistan as it did nations hit by last year's tsunami in Asia, and Hurricane Katrina in the United States.
He said Pakistan would complete its planned distribution of $335 million to quake survivors within 15 days.
The U.N. is stressing the need for more financial support to sustain its emergency relief effort through the winter. It has so far received only $119 million and another $40 million in pledges out of $550 million it has been seeking since last month to finance emergency relief over six months.
****
When One Tragedy Gets More Sympathy Than Another
Crunching the numbers on human despair is an undignified exercise. But here it is.
The death toll from the Oct. 8 earthquake stands at just over 73,000, concentrated in two of Pakistan's northern provinces. A month into the disaster, donor nations had pledged slightly more than a fourth of the $550 million that the United Nations says it needs to deliver emergency relief.
By contrast, the Indian Ocean tsunami less than a year ago left a trail of 200,000 dead. A month into that disaster, the world had pledged 99 percent of the United Nations' emergency appeal.
Private donations by Americans totaled $13.1 million for earthquake victims, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy. In comparison, Americans doled out $1.3 billion for the tsunami victims and roughly $2 billion for their own after Hurricane Katrina.
The response to the South Asian earthquake has raised a troubling question: In the face of such calamity, why is the world not doing more?
George Rupp, president of the International Rescue Committee, rejects the easiest theory, donor fatigue. "I think Westerners identified with the first photos that came in," he said, referring to images from the tsunami. "I don't think it is donor fatigue. I think it is donor identification."
As evidence, he pointed to far graver relief crises - the war in Congo, for instance, which has killed 3.8 million people since 1998 - that were underfinanced long before the recent disasters.
The South Asian earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.6, struck a patch of earth as stunning as it is bloodstained, and it shook the mountains that divide the disputed Himalayan province of Kashmir. With a series of aftershocks and hundreds of landslides, it cracked mountains, washed away roads, broke bridges and marooned villagers who live close to the clouds.
The earthquake left three million people homeless, three times the numbers displaced by the tsunami. The estimate of injured, as doctors painstakingly reach them, stands around 128,000.
Delivering aid there is particularly expensive. In parts of the earthquake zone, food, blankets and doctors must be ferried by helicopters. The four Bell/Agusta AB139's donated by the Aga Khan Foundation cost $2,000 an hour to operate. As of last week, they had flown 438 hours, evacuated 1,036 wounded and conveyed 436.2 metric tons of supplies.
The price of tents has gone up, as relief agencies try to procure a half-billion of them in time for winter. Nature's clock makes everything urgent: by Dec. 1, wintry weather will come and much of the higher reaches of the earthquake zone will fall beyond reach even by helicopter.
How many people who have died from injuries because there were not enough helicopters to get them to a hospital remains unknown. The bigger mystery is how many may not survive the winter because of hunger, cold or disease.
Many theories besides Mr. Rupp's are offered for the meager donor response. Jan Egeland, the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, offers two.
First, he says, the world did not see television images of how the houses came tumbling down on people, and did not understand the scope of the disaster.
Second, he says, donor nations were at the end of their budget cycles when the earthquake hit; the tsunami, because it struck on Dec. 26 last year, came at the front end of the 2005 budget cycle.
"We peaked, in a way, during the tsunami, when half of the world's nations became donors, and 500 international relief groups participated," Mr. Egeland said. "Now maybe there is a danger that we will compare everything to the tsunami, which was unique."
Never mind the other calamities - whether created by humans or nature - that United Nations aid workers have faced this year, with even less largess: an agricultural crisis that blew up into famine in West Africa, more than two million displaced by civil war in the Darfur region of Sudan and a food crisis in southern Africa.
In the succession of emergencies, it has fallen on Mr. Egeland to range across the world's rich nations with a begging bowl in one hand and a moral whipping stick in the other.
"Too many times I've had to use big words to awaken the world this year," he said recently in a telephone interview from Copenhagen. "But it has simply been a year of megadisasters, and each one being huge in its challenges and unique in the number of people whose lives have been at stake."
It is why he has been pleading for the creation of a United Nations emergency relief fund, through which emergencies of various sorts can be met swiftly. The United Nations envisions a fund of roughly $500 million, though aid agencies like Oxfam say it should be double that amount.
The United States has not pledged a contribution to such a fund; Britain has.
"There should be predictability in the right to getting life-saving relief," Mr. Egeland said. "It should not be a lottery."
Some aid groups diverted post-tsunami money to other, equally pressing crises; the United Nations is not allowed to use money that is earmarked for one purpose for another. What difference can money make on the ground?
Action Against Hunger, an international relief group, raised $27,000 two weeks after the earthquake, compared with $400,000 in the same period after the tsunami. The group could have gotten tents immediately, but instead it had to wait nearly three weeks, until money came through. Catholic Relief Services, which raised less than $3 million for the earthquake, compared with $64 million for the tsunami, would have reached many more villages.
There are less charitable theories as to why South Asian earthquake survivors have not fared well on what Mr. Egeland calls the relief lottery. Dr. Hina Chaudhry, a cardiologist at Columbia University and a Pakistani by descent, said that the tsunami struck beach areas that were familiar to "supermodels on vacation." Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, where 30,000 people died, was not such a destination.
"It's absolutely shocking to me how the world has basically ignored it," she said.
Stacy Palmer, editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, said that holiday-season magnanimity helped tsunami fund-raising. Because the disaster struck the day after Christmas, Americans, Europeans and others were glued to the television, with family at their side.
"It was hard not to pay attention to it," she said. "A lot of it has to do with timing."
****
If you want to improve the world and make it a more peaceful, more free place, it seems to me that providing help to those who are in desperate need is a better way than invading countries and starting wars for nebulous reasons, especially when you go into a war with a strategic plan built of cotton candy and self-delusion.
I'm not sitting around just wringing my hands on this, but I wish more people would take a look at this horrible disaster and see the genuine chance to do something good for human beings who are not just suffering, but are in real mortal danger.