Natural disasters and international action

There has been a spate of natural disasters in recent months which have caused massive loss of life, including:

* The Asian Tsunami
* Floods in China
* Hurricanes Katrina and Stan
* Earthquake in Pakistan
* Drought in Malawi

The effectiveness of the UN and 'international community' in responding to these has been variable. Perhaps there is scope to address this through the Simultaneous Policy - SP (http://www.simpol.org.uk/).

Disasters on such a scale need a global response. It has been said that the number of winter tents needed for people made homeless by the Pakistan earthquake is greater than the number known to exist in the world.

While the 'international community' is sometimes quick to respond, as in the case of the Asian Tsunami when aid agencies said they had received sufficient donations and didn't want any more, in others the response is woeful.

The case of Malawi is particularly troubling to me as I lived and worked there for four years in the 1990s and still have friends in the country (see article below). One of my friends lives in a small village where there is literally no food and people are starving to death. His best friend died last week. While there are UN systems to deal with such situations they are inadequate. An appeal has been made for donations to provide food to the 5 million people at risk of malnutrition in Malawi and very little has been provided by governments or the public.

An emergency fund which could be called upon for such situations could be the solution. There have been suggestions of creating funds for development from a tax on currency transactions - the Tobin Tax. There could be other solutions. The member states of the UN have committed to provide 0.7% of GDP towards development, but virtually none have reached this target. The US uses its contributions to UN bodies as a political weapon, holding back funds when it objects to policy lines developed through the pseudo-democratic decision making bodies of organisations such as the World Health Organisation. If it has been agreed, should there be some way of ensuring it is gathered? Within the European Union, for example, Value Added Tax is used as the principle way that governments make their contributions to the EU budget.

A few years ago the World Development Movement highlighted how privatization policies forced on the country by the IMF had reduced food security and exacerbated the hunger problem (there is more on this in the article below).

When thinking of lasting solutions to poverty, aid is usually seen as a sticking plaster and we should really devote our energies to sustainable development. Yet if even the US has to call on international help to cope with a natural disaster, perhaps we have to re-think how we deal with aid and include some form of safety net within the SP policy package to ensure that help is not dependent on the whim of politicians, the media and the public, but a right of all.

I plan to keep this Malawi blog going for a while and have asked friends in Malawi to also contribute information about their experiences. Though their immediate priority is staying alive and helping their neighbours stay alive, this may also help to bring them into the SP campaign and we certainly need greater involvement from people in southern countries.

Your comments are also welcome.

If you are interested in attending a public meeting to discuss these issues further - while helping to raise some money for disaster relief in Malawi - please see http://www.pledgebank.com/dealwithdisaster/ to indicate your interest and to receive an invitation when the event is organised.