Experts call for urgent removal of "sanction" (Burma)

Don Pathan
The Nation

All nine heads of the United Nations relief agencies in Burma have made a collective plea to their respective organisations and the international community to urgently lift sanctions against the junta on humanitarian grounds.

With more than 500,000 people HIV-positive and a high maternal mortality ratio ranging between 230-580 per 100,000 live births, Burma is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis, they said in a letter sent to all chiefs of UN agencies operating in the country.

The groups include the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Unicef and the World Health Organisation.

The letter said half of the maternal deaths in Burma were due to unsafe abortions, while about 25 percent of new-born babies were underweight. One in three of all Burmese children would be malnourished by the time they reached the age of five.

"This is compounded by the fact that about 3.6 million children and 1.1 million pregnant women live in areas considered to be at high or moderate risk for malaria transmission," according to the letter.

The nine UN representatives said humanitarian assistance to Burma was a moral and ethical necessity and to deny the country the aid would cause unnecessary suffering.

They called for a dramatic overhaul of budget allocation to Burma, as well as a cohesive approach between the activities of the UN organisations operating in Burma and the political initiatives launched from within the UN system.

Moreover, said the representatives, delayed assistance may also have an escalating effect on the illicit drug business, resulting in a negative impact on the region as a whole in a wide range of other areas - including human trafficking, illegal migration and population displacements.

"The current peripheral or piecemeal assistance provided to Myanmar [Burma] is not 

adequate to reverse or even slow down certain negative trends," the letter said. Burma receives about US$1 (Bt45) per capita annually, compared with $35 for Cambodia and $68 for Laos. 

The representatives pointed out HIV/Aids, illicit drugs and food security as the top three areas that needed utmost attention.

Although the representatives agreed that a common humanitarian approach towards Burma must be viewed in the context of the country's political environment, they said: "the nature and magnitude of the humanitarian situation does not permit delaying until the political situation evolves". 

The statement from the nine UN agency heads came amid ongoing secret talks between the ruling junta and the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner whose National League for Democracy won a landslide general election in 1990 but was denied the fruit of victory by the army.