TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/052791/0527002.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6KB | 114 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 33

DISASTERS

There Must Be a Better Way


With famine, floods and refugees demanding attention, providers
of emergency aid think the time is ripe for change

By JAMES WALSH -- Reported by Anne Constable/London and Farah
Nayeri/Paris, with other bureaus


    A few days after the latest cyclone ravaged Bangladesh,
Mother Teresa arrived from Calcutta with 1,600 lbs. of relief
supplies. It took a day for officials in Dhaka to decide how to
deal with her. Since the Nobel Peace laureate had flown in on
a commercial flight, some officials argued that the materials
needed to go through customs. About a month earlier, when Iraqi
Kurds began fleeing en masse from Saddam Hussein's soldiers, the
Iranian army struggled to cope with thousands of dying children.
They were treated with antibiotics instead of rehydration
salts, a more effective means of staving off life-threatening
diarrhea.

    Improvements in communications and transportation have
made the world's disasters no easier to handle. Even with
better warning systems, reactions can be snail-paced,
ill-considered and futile. The first days following a
catastrophe are the most critical for survivors. The demand for
speed, however, is precisely what the world's complex
disaster-relief network is not geared to meet. Says Nicholas
Hinton, director general of Britain's Save the Children Fund:
"Disaster relief is proving to be inadequate and ineffective.
It should be reformed as a matter of urgency.''

    But how? Major powers such as the U.S. are reluctant to
take on the duty, let alone the cost, of intervening
unilaterally. Should the United Nations assume the chore? In the
wake of more than 30,000 Kurdish deaths and perhaps as many as
140,000 killed in Bangladesh's April 30 storm, many reformers
pin their hopes on the organization. "Only the U.N. has the
power and resources to mobilize the international community, but
too often it has been hamstrung by a lack of clear leadership
and coordination," argues Lynda Chalker, the British Minister
for Overseas Development. Britain hopes to win agreement on the
need for a U.N. agency with clout at the July Group of Seven
economic summit in London.

    Even though the U.N. is theoretically above politics,
reformers are far from unanimous about using it. The track
record is not encouraging. Notes Francois Dumaine, a logistics
expert for the French volunteer medical team Medecins sans
Frontieres: "It takes the U.N. a month and sometimes longer to
organize rescue operations." Adds Serge Telle, a technical
adviser to France's Secretary of State for Humanitarian Affairs,
Bernard Kouchner: "The U.N. relief agencies are plagued with
chronic financial difficulties because of the West's
indifference. On the one hand, we say everything has to go
through the U.N.; on the other, we settle everything at the
bilateral level."

    The U.N. already has agencies dedicated to handling
emergencies: the High Commissioner for Refugees, for instance,
and the Disaster Relief Coordinator's office. But the criteria
of the former confine it to aiding persecution victims who cross
borders, while the latter commands few resources and little
authority. Officials in afflicted nations often bypass the U.N.
and appeal directly to foreign governments and private charities
such as Britain's Oxfam.

    Help at this level can be generous, and aid-giving
countries have notably eased some disasters. Andrew Natsios,
director of foreign disaster assistance for the U.S. Agency for
International Development, says as many as 350,000 Bangladeshis
were saved this time, thanks to a U.S.-built cyclone-warning
system. Natsios also points to U.S.-supplied volcano and
earthquake monitors and a Chilean tidal-wave-alert network. With
satellite analysis of African vegetation, he adds, Washington
pre-positioned 30,000 tons of supplies before the famine last
year in the Sudan.

    But the U.S. budgeted just $10 million for disaster
detection and preparation this year, while private charities are
being whipsawed by conflicting demands. Says Marcus Thompson,
Oxfam's emergencies director: "We are going flat out
everywhere." What about a multinational force independent of the
U.N.? The belated but effective intervention in Bangladesh by
12,000 U.S. soldiers suggests that a military-style operation
might be the answer. In the Washington Post, columnist Jim
Hoagland called on the U.S. to use its armed forces for other
emergencies in the future. Yet developing countries often balk
at U.S. intervention. On the other hand, a reserve multinational
rapid-deployment force headed by Japan and with standby units
in other nations might be more acceptable.

    Some Japanese officials are leaning toward using their
military in disaster relief. Says Foreign Minister Taro
Nakayama: "The Ground Self-Defense Force has many transport
helicopters available, as well as technical units trained in
disaster recovery operations. We should debate this." Yoshiaki
Nemoto, a Japanese Red Cross official, agrees that the military,
if forbidden to wage war abroad, could be used to better
purpose. "The gulf war provided a rare chance for the Japanese
to face the issue and make a step forward," says Nemoto. At
present Tokyo tends to resist the idea as unrealistic. When the
world is not overwhelmed by calamities, it seems, it is drowning
in unrealistic ideas.