Description:
HIGHLIGHTS:
1. An ASEAN-UN International Pledging Conference on Cyclone Nargis was held on Sunday 25
May in Yangon. Fifty-one countries were represented at the meeting, where there was
universal recognition of the unprecedented magnitude of the disaster for Myanmar. There
was unanimous agreement on the need to scale up urgently and very significantly the current
relief efforts to ensure that those in desperate need are reached quickly and with adequate
life-saving relief supplies, and that an effective flow of these supplies is maintained for as long
as necessary. There was strong agreement that a major extra effort would be needed from all
quarters to achieve the immediate objective of preventing further unnecessary deaths.
There was strong support for the decision reached at the Special ASEAN Foreign Ministers
Meeting held on 19 May 2008 in Singapore to establish an ASEAN-led coordinating
mechanism. To realize this, an ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force for the Victims of Cyclone
Nargis has been established, composed of senior officials and experts from ASEAN
countries, and led by the Secretary General of ASEAN. There was a warm welcome for the
proposed creation of a Yangon-based Tripartite Core Group comprising representatives from
the Government of Myanmar, ASEAN and UN as a working mechanism for coordinating,
facilitating, and monitoring the flow of international assistance into the country. This should
begin its work immediately to ensure full information exchange, close coordination of relief
and recovery efforts, and resolution of any problems that may arise.
For the longer term, the Government of Myanmar focused on the scale of rehabilitation,
reconstruction and recovery efforts likely to be needed, and the immediate requirement to
ensure that farming and fishing activities could be resumed as soon as possible. The
international community was ready to consider helping the Government of Myanmar in these
and other areas. For these purposes, a comprehensive rapid joint assessment of recovery
needs, and development of a shared post-disaster recovery and reconstruction plan are
indispensable steps....
2. The Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mr John Holmes, reminded the conference that the crisis
was still clearly in the emergency relief phase and that an effective relief supply operation will
be needed for many months to come. Flights are currently arriving at the rate of around 10-15
per day, and these still need to be stepped up further to meet the need. The crucial question
remains how many people of those in urgent need of major assistance have not been
reached at all. It is clear that delivery needs to be scaled up at the far end of the chain as fast
as possible in these areas to avert the risk of extra and unnecessary deaths due to diseases
and nutritional deficiency. The critical danger remains of a potential second wave of deaths
among those not so far reached or only reached with small amounts of assistance. Forced
returns of any kind are completely unacceptable. He concluded by reiterating that the only
test at the end of the day is whether lives have been saved, more unnecessary deaths have
been avoided, and those still in desperate need have been helped....
3. Two interagency teams comprising UN, INGO and national NGOs returned from an
assessment mission to Bogale and Labutta Districts, visiting a number of townships to assess
the current status of coordination. The two groups presented their findings in Yangon today,
including recommendations. These findings will feed into current planning to operationalize
five coordination centres in Labutta, Bogale, Pyapon, Mawlamyinegyun, and Pathein. In the
same vein, the Humanitarian Coordinator requested Cluster Leads to identify counterparts in
these five locations, stressing that these counterparts need not be from the lead agency. The
Humanitarian Coordinator advised leads to identify in particular national and international
NGO counterparts with appropriate operational capacity in these locations....
4. Identifying the need to further strengthen the participation and information sharing with NGOs
in the clusters, the Humanitarian Coordinator and Cluster Leads agreed to identify NGO focal
points for each cluster....
5. The Humanitarian Coordinator advised Cluster Leads today that dedicated coordination and
information management capacity for each cluster was a priority. The Humanitarian
Coordinator agreed to request support from Global Cluster Leads where required....
6. There has been no update to the official figures for dead and missing since 16 May. 77,738
are reported dead and 55,917 missing.
Source/publisher:
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Date of Publication:
2008-05-26
Date of entry:
2008-06-03
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- Individual Documents
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Language:
English
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pdf
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