Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
MR BENEDICT
ROGERS AND
MR MARK
FARMANER
7 JUNE 2007
Chairman: Thank you for coming in. I
will ask you just to introduce yourselves, but before I do, John
Bercow.
John Bercow: Thank you, Chairman. Can
I just declare an interest; I went to the Thai-Burmese border,
courtesy of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, in the company of
Ben Rogers and others in April 2004. I have made the point before
but I just thought I should put it formally on the record in the
proceedings of the Committee.
Q1 Chairman: Thank you for that.
As I said, thank you for coming in. As you know, we visited the
Thailand-Burma border, went to refugee camps and met with a whole
variety of agencies involved in providing support to refugees
and to people displaced inside Burma on the other side of the
border. It was a fascinating visit, obviously very short, and
we are not claiming that two or three days of that gives a deep
insight and knowledge, but at least it gives us some kind of feel
and we were able to talk directly to people and hear their experiences—which
were pretty miserable experiences in many cases. Obviously, your
coming here now is an opportunity for us to explore a little bit
more with you. Perhaps you could just briefly for the record introduce
yourselves and then we can move into more formal evidence.
Mr Rogers: My name is Ben Rogers,
I am the Advocacy Officer for South Asia of Christian Solidarity
Worldwide. It is worth just mentioning that I have made a total
of 18 visits to the Burma region and its borders.
Mr Farmaner: My name is Mark Farmaner,
I am an Acting Director of the Burma Campaign UK and we advocate
for human rights and democracy in Burma and for development as
well.
Q2 Chairman: Thank you for that.
We obviously had an opportunity to talk to your counterparts on
the ground and a lot of other agencies, as well as talking with
DFID's country officers and, as I said earlier, the people directly
affected. In the period from our deciding that we were going to
visit to our being there the Department reviewed its policy and
decided that having previously said they would not provide any
funds that might provide cross-border assistance, they would now
be prepared to allow funds to go in that direction. Perhaps the
first question I would ask you both is whether you have seen any
noticeable effects from that change of policy, any practical or
discernible impact of that change in policy by the Department
for International Development.
Mr Rogers: We very warmly welcome
the decision to lift the restriction on the use of funds, and
that is a very important and symbolic step forward that is very
helpful, but there has been no meaningful change on the ground
because it has not resulted in any increase in funds. The Thailand
Burma Border Consortium, whilst they are allowed to use DFID funds
now, there are no extra funds and they have to use funds in other
areas, particularly for the refugee camps, so there is no immediate
impact on the ground yet.
Q3 Chairman: Do you discern from
that that this is a cosmetic change, or is it just that they have
not yet got to the point of determining whether something should
happen? Is there any sense that it means something and that at
some point or other you would expect to see a practical effect?
Mr Farmaner: From what DFID have
been saying they have no plans to increase funding for cross-border
aid, so although it is a very significant move that they have
dropped their opposition to cross-border aid, the fact that they
are not actually providing any funding means that the outcome
will be effectively a cosmetic one.
Q4 Chairman: One of the things that
came across to us quite explicitly—and I am sure we want
to explore this a bit more—is that DFID's argument to us
was that whilst they were happy to support, as they have done,
the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, they had put most of their
programmes in in-country activities that they believed had given
them some degree of comparative advantage, namely that DFID was
operating inside Burma and the only other countries doing this
were Australia, Japan and South Korea—I do not know whether
that is true or not, but that is what our brief was telling us—and
that they believed that they were reaching people that others
were not reaching and this was beneficial. The implication was
that they felt somehow that they were good at that, other people
were doing cross-border work and therefore DFID were saying that
is fine but we do not think we have got anything to add to bring
to the party, any extra value to add, and, by implication, were
concerned that they might compromise the work they were doing
in-country by doing so. What is your comment on that, how do you
take DFID's analysis of that?
Mr Farmaner: This does touch on
a whole range of issues relating to DFID's operations in Burma.
The argument that there is a comparative advantage in their working
inside and others are working from outside would depend on there
being donor co-ordination, which there is not. There is no division
of labour, nor do we think that there is an either/or. One of
the problems with Burma is that no one is looking at the whole
of the country, the needs of the country, and then seeing who
needs aid where and what mechanisms can be used to deliver it.
The regime places a lot of restrictions on humanitarian assistance
so there are ways that you can deliver aid inside the country
and we support and encourage those, but there are large parts
of the country—particularly parts of the country with some
of the highest levels of poverty—which cannot be reached
through in-country schemes, so you need to find alternative mechanisms
to do that. The argument that DFID tries to make in terms of it
having a comparative advantage in its working inside would only
hold up if there was a co-ordinated division of labour where other
governments were showing that aid was reaching parts of, particularly,
Eastern Burma, but that has not happened to any degree at all.
Q5 Chairman: I suppose, to be fair,
DFID has always tried to promote co-ordination and I take your
point that it has not happened.
Mr Farmaner: I would not agree
that they have tried to promote co-ordination; I do not think
the United Nations, DFID or other governments have tried to promote
co-ordination.
Q6 Chairman: We might come back to
that point. The specific initiative that they boast to us about,
one or two interesting comments that were made to us were that
not only were they reaching people effectively, they believed,
but they were having—and this is the sensitive bit—an
engagement with people in the Burma regime that was in their view
constructive in as much as some of them were becoming aware of
the scale of the problem, the need to deal with it and the mechanisms
for doing so. Clearly, the concern always is in the process of
having an engagment are you supporting the regime or are you helping
the people, and I just wonder whether you feel that there is a
compromise there or that that is a fair take. What they would
argue is that they are engaging at a practical level to deliver
to needy people effectively and that in so doing they are not
giving any comfort to the regime politically. That is their contention,
how do you respond to that?
Mr Rogers: It is important to
emphasise that from Christian Solidarity Worldwide's point of
view it is not a question of either/or; we certainly support the
principle of in-country aid provided it is not being used by the
regime. One of the weaknesses of the Three Diseases Fund is that
it is not reaching the most vulnerable people who are in the border
areas who have the highest rates of malaria, some of the highest
rates of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, and so some kind of complementary
assistance for the most vulnerable people who are the internally
displaced is needed.
Mr Farmaner: We welcome the 3D
Fund, it is desperately needed, but it is still suffering from
the same approach that DFID and the UN have had which is looking
solely at ways of working in Burma and getting co-operation from
the SPDC[1],
which means in effect you accept that the regime decides who gets
aid and who does not. The Three Diseases Fund has a memorandum
of understanding and requires any recipients to have a memorandum
of understanding with the regime which means that the regime is
dictating which parts of the country do and do not get Three Diseases
aid. That would be fine if the only way to get aid to large parts
of the population of Burma was making that compromise, but at
the same time you then need to think the Three Diseases Fund is
only going to be reaching certain parts of the country, how do
we reach the rest of the country? That is mostly done by cross-border
mechanisms, but no attempt was made to set up an alternative fund
or look at alternative mechanisms to reach those people that the
3D Fund cannot reach, and that is symptomatic of the wider problem,
that there is this insistence so far to just work where the regime
wants people to work.
Chairman: That is extremely helpful.
I can see John Bercow out of the corner of my eye and I was about
to call Richard Burden. John Bercow, have you got a particular
point on that?
John Bercow: Yes.
Chairman: Then come in now and
then I will call Richard Burden.
Q7 John Bercow: Thank you, Chairman.
For the avoidance of doubt can you confirm then to the Committee
that at no stage, to your knowledge, has DFID asked either the
Burma Campaign, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, the TBBC or any
other reputable body with knowledge and expertise whether it believes
that such an alternative fund is required? Are you saying that
no approach has been made by DFID from Bangkok to discuss how
many people additionally could and should be reached and by what
means, or have they approached you, heard your arguments and disagreed?
Is it seriously the case that no approach has been made on this
matter?
Mr Farmaner: Not as far as I am
aware, certainly not to the Burma Campaign. The way that the news
came out—people had assumed that the Three Diseases Fund
would be operating and funding projects that would deliver aid
cross-border because it is widely accepted that that is the only
way that you can reach hundreds of thousands of people in Eastern
Burma who have some of the highest levels of the three diseases,
and the 3D Fund had given guarantees over and over again that
the SPDC would not be able to dictate who receives aid but that
it would be done on the basis of need. People were assuming this
and some organisations were gearing up to apply to the Three Diseases
Fund for cross-border projects, but then the news slipped out
and it was more a rumour that there was this requirement for a
memorandum of understanding, there was no formal announcement
about it at first, it was a rumour that came out that you had
to have an MoU if you were going to get Three Diseases funds.
We approached UN officials, the Three Diseases Fund people, and
asked them, is there a requirement for an MoU and they consistently
refused to answer, they basically tried to fob us off with answers
saying "We are very committed to alleviating poverty in Burma."
We said "We know that, we are very grateful for that, but
can you answer the question?" It was only in the eighth email
that they finally said, "Yes, there is an MoU and we have
never tried to hide it."
Q8 John Bercow: Forgive me, but I
confess that this is new to me, particularly this level of detail.
If it were necessary to provide to the Committee the email trail
so to speak to underline the sequence of events and the mood music
of the exchanges, could that be provided?
Mr Farmaner: It can be, yes[2].
It is consistent with an attitude that we have found with some
DFID officials and with the UN. It is very hard to get information
out of them; they do not seem to want to provide any information
about what their programmes are, they do not seem happy about
being accountable and they sometimes seem to use the difficult
operating environment in Burma as an excuse, to say "We cannot
because it would put people in danger", but with the Burma
Campaign we have people throughout the country providing us with
information and they risk their lives doing so, so we are well
aware of those restrictions and what excuses DFID and the UN make
and we know that they are not justified.
Chairman: Thank you for that.
DFID of course are about to reorganise the way they deliver aid
to Burma with increasing cross-border support; Richard Burden,
could you pursue that?
Q9 Richard Burden: Yes. DFID are
talking about increasing staff in their Rangoon office; what assessment
have you made and have you any thoughts about what the likely
impact of that change would be on the communication issues in
particular?
Mr Rogers: In my view it has the
potential to be very detrimental to communications because my
understanding is that they are going to centre all of their Burma
work in Rangoon and no longer in Thailand, and if they have no
staff in Thailand to contact and keep in touch with the groups
doing cross-border aid that is indicative of an attitude that
does not take the cross-border aid issue seriously enough. I am
very concerned that it would be all centred in Rangoon.
Mr Farmaner: On the one hand it
is good that they are increasing capacity, there are general operating
procedures that DFID has in terms of keeping their admin costs
down which limit the amount of staff they have working in specific
countries on some occasions, but in a complex environment like
Burma they need more capacity. However, the fact that they will
all be based in Rangoon is a concern. If I can just read you a
quote from the National League for Democracy who wrote a letter
to the United Nations expressing their concern, and it was leaked
to the media, where they say: "Our experience is that those
who have served in this country for some time in any capacity
become conditioned to move within the framework of thought and
action of the SPDC." That is certainly something that we
have seen in our experiences, it is a very tight, closed little
environment and community in Rangoon, it is very isolated from
what is going on in the world and what is happening in most of
the country. The regime limits DFID officials and they have to
apply weeks in advance to go outside the capital and they are
accompanied by regime officials wherever they go, so it will place
restrictions on DFID to operate freely and it would be better
if there were still people based in Bangkok who would be able
to provide a different perspective.
Q10 Richard Burden: There are kind
of two issues here, are there not? One is in a sense the latter
point about whether if you are too reliant on a base in Rangoon
you effectively become institutionalised—I paraphrase what
you are saying—but the other issue is the question of communication,
and that raises a question about what communication is like now,
because you were saying that if they were based in Rangoon you
would not be able to have the contact you should be able to have
if they were based in Thailand. They are based in Thailand at
the moment so what is the communication now with DFID that you
would be losing if they went to Rangoon?
Mr Rogers: You have hit on one
of the key problems which is that communication at the moment
is very bad and I fear it would be even worse if it was all moved
to Rangoon. There is a huge lack of consultation and communication
with the Burmese ethnic groups and the cross-border aid groups
in Thailand, there is a significant mistrust on both sides and
a fundamental lack of communication. I made reference to the question
on the 3D Fund: Christian Solidarity Worldwide, like the Burma
Campaign, was not consulted at all and, to my knowledge, none
of the groups that we work with on the ground was consulted, so
there is a big problem with communication.
Q11 Richard Burden: You identify
a problem with communication from DFID coming to you; does it
work both ways? Quite often problems of communication are not
down to one side not communicating, sometimes they are down to
two sides not communicating. You have a criticism about the issue
of the changed policy on cross-border aid; when you heard that
did you phone someone up and say "What is happening here,
can we have a meeting?" and was the request for a meeting
refused, or did you just grumble about it with each other, that
they are not talking to you, without actually talking to them?
It just seems to me a little odd that if there is a problem of
communication going on there, that people were complaining about
the problem of communication rather than doing anything about
it.
Mr Rogers: In our experience,
in Christian Solidarity Worldwide, to be fair to DFID communications
have improved in the last year, largely as a result of our efforts
to raise the profile and as a result DFID has responded and we
have had a number of meetings and correspondence with them, but
I think on the ground the groups in Thailand—there is a
basic mistrust on their part, they feel DFID is not with them,
is not sympathetic to them, is not reaching out to them; as a
result they do not approach DFID enough. So you are right, it
is two ways, but it is caused by DFID's original lack of communication
with them.
Richard Burden: The groups that
feel that, do they feel that about donor countries, do they feel
it about the UK or do they feel it about DFID or all of those,
because they are different are they not? For instance, in the
structure of our government departments, because of the split
between the Foreign Office role and DFID's role, which does not
exist in other countries, arguably some of the communication with
groups in Thailand could actually be a Foreign Office responsibility.
Chairman: We found out that to
some extent it was, and that there had been some Foreign Office
meetings.
Q12 Richard Burden: I am just trying
to get a sense of where the problem is; are people worried about
the fact that our split of government departmental responsibilities,
whilst there are huge strengths in many ways, is not working quite
right in Thailand? Is it something perhaps that DFID specifically
is doing or is it actually the way people feel about foreign donors
generally, that they are not really listening and not really talking
to them?
Mr Farmaner: It is not just between
FCO and DFID, it is more divided, I think. Many of the Burmese
organisations, particularly those placed on the border, see the
British foreign policy as being one of the most vocal supporters
of the promotion of human rights and democracy in the world. They
see the embassy in Bangkok as something they have a very small
amount of interaction with compared to many European governments
who often have people there to visit them and who might be available
for any assistance in terms of when the Thai authorities are cracking
down on migrant workers or refugees. The British embassy in Bangkok
does not engage in that sort of advocacy on their behalf compared
with some of the other European embassies, and then we have DFID
which they see as actively hostile to them. DFID's view was critical
of cross-border aid, saying it was unaccountable and that there
were lots of problems with it, so they have seen DFID as being
hostile to the kind of work they do. Whether the organisation
is one involved in pro-democracy, human rights or humanitarian
assistance, everything they are doing is cross-border and so there
is that division three ways, I think, particularly because DFID
does not support any work promoting human rights and democracy
and it does not provide any cross-border aid. DFID does not seem
interested in meeting with them and discussing their concerns
and so over the years this hostility has built up.
Q13 Richard Burden: Have you raised
that issue because—and I am just speculating—there
could be a big misunderstanding. It could be a big misunderstanding,
it could be that DFID is saying actually they think their comparative
advantage is in-country work rather than cross-border. I may be
right or I maybe wrong about that, but it could be that that is
what they want to do, and it is of itself no more hostile to cross-border
aid than you saying "Therefore, we are hostile to work in-country",
which you say you are not. DFID might say it the other way round,
but if people think that that is the case and you have picked
that up, you have presumably put that to DFID. What response have
you had and if you say things are now improving, how are they
improving?
Mr Farmaner: DFID has now started
meeting with some border organisations, which actually is very
welcome. We found, going to some of the Burmese organisations
on the border, when we said we have been talking to DFID and it
is worth talking to them, some of them, because of the bad history,
are saying "We are struggling to survive, we have limited
capacity, what is the point of going to people who are not interested
in us." Yes, we are trying to bring the two sides together
to some degree but the fact is that DFID has a policy now where
DFID has made it clear that they are not going to fund any of
these organisations at the moment so their guys say what is the
point in meeting with them?
Q14 John Bercow: Some of us were
a bit taken aback on our visit to learn both of the intended relocation
of the office exclusively to Rangoon, and of the apparently firm
plan heavily to ratchet up the number of staff in Rangoon. Some
people, if they were even a bit sceptical about DFID and certainly
if they were fairly cynical, might think that these judgments
and plans have been made with a view to try and fairly quickly
shift the facts on the ground in terms of the balance of support.
If I think that it is at least in part fuelled by my knowledge
that DFID officials privately were very reluctant to countenance
the change in policy on cross-border aid. What I am really asking
you, Mark and Ben, is this: do you think the rather quiet decision
of which we were not told, we picked it up anecdotally, to ratchet
up staff and to shift the offices, try to make these things happen
rather more quickly, might be designed to foreclose the option
of boosting cross-border aid?
Mr Farmaner: It is certainly possible.
When DFID were conducting their recent review of policy on cross-border
aid and refugees we felt from the moment it began that the conclusions
had been decided and they were going through the motions, and
we wrote to Gareth Thomas about those concerns. Certainly there
are certain staff within DFID who are very committed to this policy
of just working in-country, almost to an evangelical degree, and
they are doing everything they can to ensure that that is what
happens.
Chairman: That actually leads quite well
to Ann McKechin.
Q15 Ann McKechin: Yes. You talked
quite a lot, Mr Farmaner, in your written submission about the
term of "comparative advantage". I think we could perhaps
agree that DFID does not have a comparative advantage in cross-border
work or refugee work, is that correct? Would that be your analysis,
that it does not have any comparative advantage at all?
Mr Farmaner: I do not accept it
has a comparative advantage.
Q16 Ann McKechin: But it does not
seem to be from your fairly vociferous criticism, that it really
is actually working. I suppose if you were to compare it, there
are two ways of arguing: one is to try and fix it or, alternatively,
given that DFID's contribution only represents 4% of the total
funding to refugee work, you simply decide to withdraw. That is
one argument that could be presented because clearly there has
been a breakdown in communication, you have certainly outlined
that very clearly this morning, but it is really whether or not,
given the fact that you have both agreed that working in-country
also has very important value—I mean, there are 34 million
people there—there is clearly a lot of work that requires
to be done and I think as you have said in your own submission
it is not being done at the moment and there is still not enough
money going into the rest of the Burmese population, even if we
do not talk about the IDPs. Would you both agree with that?
Mr Farmaner: The basic principle
of delivering humanitarian assistance has always been you deliver
aid on the basis of need, reaching the most vulnerable, and those
should be your guidelines. It is generally agreed that the most
vulnerable and disadvantaged in Burma are in Eastern Burma.
Q17 Ann McKechin: Can I just go back,
there is in fact a huge percentage of the population of Burma
who are highly vulnerable and a lot of them are not IDPs, would
you agree with that analysis?
Mr Farmaner: Yes, there are many
that are not IDPs, and that is another issue which there is a
whole debate on: that cross-border aid needs to be broadened because
it is not just about IDPs, there are millions of people in Eastern
Burma who are not being reached by aid because of restrictions
put in place by the regime. So far the focus has mainly been on
IDPs but it should not just be on IDPs, there are millions of
poor people in Eastern and Northern Burma who are getting no international
assistance at all and who are among some of the poorest and most
vulnerable in the world, yet they are not receiving assistance.
Q18 Ann McKechin: And they are people
who the existing cross-border groups cannot reach either presumably.
Mr Farmaner: Most of them can
be reached cross-border and we would say that in terms of IDPs
alone there are probably 150,000 more that could be reached if
there was financial assistance available.
Q19 Ann McKechin: I am just trying
to get the numbers here because you have talked about hundreds
of thousands and now you are talking about concerns for nearly
a million, so it is important to try and work out what proportion
of the aid budget is needed. Coming on to the issue that the UN
office has now appointed a humanitarian co-ordinator for Burma,
just what is the scale of the problem we should be tackling—it
seems to be millions—and what section of say 30 million
people would cross-border work be able to reach and could that
be co-ordinated better by the UN?
Mr Farmaner: No one knows the
exact figures and this is another one of the problems. DFID, the
United Nations, nobody has conducted a proper needs assessment
of what is going on and in many cases it is very difficult to
do so, but there are mechanisms in place. The information is coming
out of large parts of Eastern Burma now, as outlined in a report
Chronic Emergency that came out last year and is incredibly
detailed, but again they are stymied by a lack of resources to
conduct those sorts of things.[3]
For DFID to say there is a comparative advantage implies that
they have done an overall assessment of where poor people are,
what needs to be done and implies that there is a division of
labour, so we will do this bit and then someone else will do the
other bit. That kind of thing has not happened, there is no division
of labour, there has been no proper needs assessment.
1 State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). Back
2
Evidence subsequently submitted to the Committee in confidence. Back
3
Back Pack Health Worker Team, Chronic Emergency: Health and
Human Rights in Eastern Burma, September 2006 Back
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