Cyclone Nargis hit Burma's Irrawaddy Delta on May 2, 2008 (Figure 1), killing over 138,000 and directly affecting at least 2.4 million more[1, 2]. A storm of this magnitude poses challenges to any government; however, Cyclone Nargis hit Burma (also known as Myanmar), a country impoverished under decades of military rule and with decimated health and education sectors, and collectively rendered this ill-prepared country unable to recover after a crisis of this scale [3–5]. Following the cyclone, a humanitarian crisis ensued, one which arguably became a complex humanitarian emergency (CHE), defined as "a humanitarian crisis in a country, region, or society where there is total or considerable breakdown of authority resulting from internal or external conflict and which requires an international response that goes beyond the mandate or capacity of any single and/or ongoing UN country program" [6–8]. The Burmese regime, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), initially refused international aid; refused to lift visa restrictions for humanitarian workers; and used state resources, including troops, to support a scheduled referendum on a military-backed constitution [9–13].
As international pressure mounted, the regime began to allow some access by international aid agencies, particularly following an unprecedented visit to Burma by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on May 22-23rd[14]. Concurrently, the Tripartite Core Group (TCG), composed of the UN, ASEAN, and the SPDC, was formed and became the lead entity for the Nargis Response[15].
The Emergency Assistance Teams Burma
While most international efforts to aid storm survivors were stalled, local community-based organizations and individuals were often the first-responders[16]. Within three days of the storm's landfall, the Emergency Assistance Teams-Burma (EAT), a community-based network of organizations and individuals, was formed and began providing relief to cyclone survivors. EAT volunteers, mostly cyclone survivors themselves and unaffiliated with the regime, received aid donated by communities living along the Thai-Burma border (in Burma or Thailand), as well as through international organizations that sent aid through Thailand. Members of the relief teams, eventually totaling 44 teams of several volunteers per team, also received training in Thailand on emergency response, food and water distribution, and basic first aid provision, and with donated supplies were able to quickly provide assistance to some of the hardest-hit communities in the Irrawaddy, Rangoon, and Pegu Divisions. Within the first three months, EAT delivered aid to over 180,000 survivors living in 87 villages of 17 townships, providing essential assistance such as clean water and food, clothing, and shelter; assisting in proper disposal of corpses; facilitating family reunification; and providing emergency healthcare. In the second phase of the EAT response, from August 1, 2008, to January 31, 2009, the teams continued to provide water and food aid, but also focused on rehabilitation efforts, including the rebuilding of homes and aiding in the re-establishment of livelihoods, education, and health infrastructure.
Widespread violations of fundamental freedoms and human rights perpetrated by the SPDC have been well-documented [17–19]. Within weeks of the storm, independent organizations [20–22] and the media began to report human rights abuses in cyclone-affected areas, including forced relocation of survivors, restrictions on humanitarian aid, and confiscation and diversion of aid[12, 23–26]. Official assessments, including those conducted with the SPDC, generally did not address these concerns[16, 27]. This reality convinced EAT and its partners that an independent assessment of the human rights situation in the affected areas was needed; information vital both for informing comprehensive program planning and policy but also for community empowerment and freedom to participate in reconstruction efforts.
In February 2009, EAT and its partners released a report "After the Storm: Voices from the Delta," documenting human rights violations in the wake of Cyclone Nargis[28]. The report generated significant controversy, particularly with respect to the nature of the assessment itself. EAT had performed a human rights assessment using qualitative human rights methods, that included in-depth interviews with relief workers and cyclone survivors. However, the report was widely viewed as an assessment of the overall humanitarian response, for which the methods used would have been inappropriate. EAT members were misconstrued as being from the Thai-Burma border areas or otherwise not recruited, as they had been, from affected Delta communities. And the report was represented as a call to limit humanitarian assistance, although no such call was made in the report or its recommendations[28].
The Later Phases of the Response
Human rights abuses continued to be reported during the latter phases of the Nargis response. Independent relief workers continued to be arrested and imprisoned, including an additional five independent donors and ten relief workers, detained in September-October 2009 [29–31]. Meanwhile, the regime's contribution to relief and rebuilding efforts continued to remain limited. In September, 2009, the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) estimated that some 450,000 people in the Delta were still in dire need of shelter 18 months after the storm; the junta had constructed some 10,000 houses[32], international donors built some 25,000 houses, while the Burmese people themselves had built 209,000[32, 33]. Towards the end of 2009, while the SPDC spent over $570 million on advanced fighter jets from Russia [34, 35], the TCG appealed for $103 million for priority reconstruction initiatives, of which only $88 million was pledged by the international community [36–38].
Starting in May, 2009, EAT conducted an additional round of interviews with relief workers and cyclone survivors to assess the human rights situation during the later phases of the relief effort, one year after the storm. The findings presented here include personal accounts from interviews conducted during the earlier phases of the response and from later rounds of data collection, accounts not included in "After the Storm."