Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MR BENEDICT
ROGERS AND
MR MARK
FARMANER
7 JUNE 2007
Q20 Ann McKechin: Would you agree that
that really should be a role for the UN to co-ordinate, given
the fact that there are quite a number of donors?
Mr Farmaner: It should be, but
the UN has not been performing that function and so that has not
happened.
Q21 Ann McKechin: Would you not say
then it should be the EU as the next largest donor, or the USA?
These are the largest donors, that is why I am getting back to
this figure. Four per cent is what DFID actually gives in terms
of refugee work; it gives a much larger percentage in-country
but the biggest people of all are the UN, the EU and the US so
I am trying to find out—you have said there are failures
at the UN but what are the failures of the EU and what are the
failures, for example, of the US?
Mr Farmaner: There is failure
in the international community generally not to provide the amount
of aid that is needed for the refugee crisis, the 3D crisis and
humanitarian assistance generally. The TBBC which runs the refugee
camps is already facing a very significant funding shortfall this
year, which is running into millions of dollars, so if the UK
were to further cut its assistance then the consequence of that
will be that people will die because of the lack of assistance.
Q22 Ann McKechin: Although they have
been increasing their assistance, I understand, to TBBC consistently
over the last two years.
Mr Farmaner: But as a percentage
it has been reducing as well.
Q23 Ann McKechin: A percentage of
what?
Mr Farmaner: A percentage of TBBC's
budget.
Q24 Ann McKechin: Its budget has
been increasing?
Mr Farmaner: No, DFID's contribution
to TBBC's budget is smaller as a percentage than it was five years
ago.
Q25 Ann McKechin: But it has been
increasing over the last three years so does that mean the TBBC
budget has been increasing?
Mr Farmaner: Yes, because the
scale of the crisis is increasing as well. There are tens of thousands
of new refugees every year so there are more and more vulnerable
people and the money that is being provided is not enough to compensate
for the increase in numbers.
Q26 Ann McKechin: When we actually
visited the refugee camps they said that over the last year there
had not been a huge surge of refugees. I am just trying to find
out why the budget needs to be increased because there does not
seem to be an escalation. I accept there has been on-going military
activity but there has not been an escalation in the last couple
of years.
Mr Farmaner: There has been a
significant escalation in the number of refugees in the last year
because of a new military offensive by the regime and at the same
time there is an increased number of IDPs.
John Bercow: There is a slight
problem with the evidence session so far, if I may say so. I know
there has been a cursory reference to the escalation of the war
and the incidence of human rights abuses, but I just wonder whether
our witnesses might want to put this in context. The situation
is not stable, is it? I was under the impression that there had
been a massive military offensive in Karen state, for example,
as a consequence of which very significant numbers of additional
refugees and in some cases IDPs result. The situation is not a
constant mass that we are trying to attend to—I thought
the situation was one of considerable escalation, but we ought
to know the facts, know the context within which the aid budget
applies.
Chairman: We need to reconcile
those two points.
Q27 Ann McKechin: I am just trying
to find maybe where the budget—obviously there is an increasing
budget. For example, have other donors been increasing their contributions
or have they all been guilty of the same result in terms of funding?
I am just trying to see whether it is systemic over, say, all
the EU donors that are present or is DFID out on its own and a
particular problem? That is what I am trying to clarify.
Mr Rogers: Can I just respond
both to your point and to Mr Bercow's point. In terms of the overall
context, the fact that there are not so many new refugees in the
camps in Thailand does not indicate a change of situation inside.
It is because of the Thai policy of restricting access to the
camps. But in the last year 86,000 people in Eastern Burma as
a whole were displaced, in just one year alone more than 27,000
were displaced in Karen state and there were horrific violations,
that I am sure you have already heard about—the destruction
of villages, rape, torture and some of the worst violations in
the world. That is the context. Three thousand or maybe slightly
more have made it to an IDP camp right on the border with Thailand
but on the Burma side. They have comparative safety there compared
to deeper inside, but they have not been allowed into Thailand
so that is the reason that there are not new numbers in the camps
in Thailand, but the situation inside is desperate. In terms of
capacity for reaching the IDPs and other vulnerable people through
cross-border initiatives, I have been informed by the Thailand
Burma Border Consortium that in Karenni areas alone if they have
extra funding they would be able to reach an additional 48,000
people through their networks, and that is just TBBC, there are
other organisations like the Back Pack medics who can also reach
people, but that gives you an idea of the potential.
Ann McKechin: Thank you, that
is helpful.
Q28 John Battle: I want to come at
this from a different angle and that is how to challenge the injustice
in Burma. I am a great fan of a footballer, a Brazilian called
Ronaldinho, and if you go on YouTube there is an unofficial video
of him in training. It shows him on his own, on a football pitch
with a set of goals, kicking the ball from the edge of the penalty
box against the bar and it coming back and him putting it back
on the bar 17 times. After the European Cup he was on the television
and he said that "Quite often people who cannot even kick
a ball criticise me for not being creative enough, they demand
the practically impossible. I sometimes talk to people who seem
to think I should have been born with three feet." I thought
that was a really deep comment on politics really, what is practically
achievable, and I sometimes think we use this word "creative"—"we
are not being creative enough", which means that perhaps
we ought to act completely disembodied and fly down from some
other regime somewhere and alter reality. In the NGO paper on
Burma, Pro-aid, Pro-sanctions, Pro-engagement, I could
do a kind of severe critique and say how do you blend sanctions
and engagement together, but it does say there: "We encourage
all agencies to creatively"—that key word—"explore
opportunities for supporting the promotion of democracy both directly
and across their projects."[4]
I just wonder if I could ask you, what positively do you think
DFID should be engaged in to express that creativity?
Mr Farmaner: As the Burma Campaign
was the lead author of that report we were kind of deliberately
vague there because we did not want to specify publicly the kind
of things in-country that organisations could be doing. DFID has
publicly talked about the civil society capacity building that
they are doing in-country to some degree. There is a division
of labour that needs to happen in terms of some of the NGOs and
what we have said is that you need to tackle the symptoms of the
regime in terms of delivering humanitarian assistance and look
at opportunities for supporting civil society in the process of
doing that, but then at the same time governments and the United
Nations also have a responsibility to look at tackling the causes
of poverty in Burma, which is the regime, and that is in terms
of promoting human rights and democracy and they have the freedom
to do so much more openly.
Q29 John Battle: Forgive me, it is
easy to switch and say tackle the cause which is poverty, but
sometimes when we look at Africa, as we do, there is poverty but
there are also problems of governance and democracy. Take Latin
America where in the Eighties the whole continent was snuffed
out by military dictatorship, not unlike some of what is going
on in Burma, and there were real efforts to subvert it—to
use that word positively—and bring about political change.
There are tactics and ideas and I just wonder when you say you
leave it vague, what kind of strategies do you imagine because
I think they have to be brought a little bit further forward frankly?
Mr Rogers: Perhaps I could pick
up on that point. There are organisations who are sometimes termed
"exiled organisations" but actually that is a mistake
because they are going back and forth, in and out of the country,
gathering absolutely crucial information and turning that into
reports that are then used to inform the international community
of what is happening, predominantly Thai-based but also India-based
and based on some of the other borders. Extra funding, or new
funding for them because they do not receive any funding from
the UK at the moment, would be extremely valuable, in terms of
gathering the information, human rights education that they are
involved in, educating their own people on human rights issues
and the Burmese language media broadcasting back into the country.
Q30 John Battle: To give a practical
example then, as well as perhaps things achieved quietly, would
you envisage, as in Brazil in the Seventies and Eighties, or in
Chile in the Seventies and Eighties, the local contacts funding
human rights workers, the setting up of workshops in both the
communities and villages—who would you expect to be participants
in doing it? It cannot be run from without, as we all know, that
is usually part of the problem, frankly. Would you see DFID being
involved in that or NGOs being involved in that? I am not asking
them to put their names up on a billboard and announce them of
course, but do you see that going on already, do you see signs
of possibilities of that in Burma?
Mr Farmaner: You say that it cannot
be done from exile, I would say pretty much the only way it can
be done is from exile and, again, like Ben says, there is this
exile myth, the organisations in exile are actually operating
throughout the country in Burma, although they cannot be based
and have an office in Burma for obvious reasons. If you are an
NGO or a government operating in-country then you are going to
be very closely watched and monitored and so, for example, an
aid agency that is there, if they tried to organise a human rights
workshop their humanitarian programmes might be put at risk, if
you are doing something that overt. If you are funding via indirect
mechanisms some of the exiled organisations they have training
that goes on in neighbouring countries and then people go across
the border and throughout the country, in underground networks,
and they are delivering training and education on a whole range
of subjects. At the moment they are desperately short of resources
for doing that kind of basic information and training work, but
the capacity to expand that is limitless and there are a great
many opportunities. I returned from Burma and Thailand last month
where I met with so many organisations there; I met with people
there who had gone throughout the country distributing information.
They cannot print it in-country, they have to go to neighbouring
countries, get information and newsletters printed in other countries—
Q31 John Battle: This is not new;
the whole history of Latin America for 20 years was the same,
Eastern Europe was the same, some would say Ireland was the same
in terms of solidarity movement and what can happen when people
are closely monitored. I am just trying to tease out whether there
is a broader solidarity front really and I am looking at other
experiences to try and find ways of prising open the situation
from within rather than, as in some situations, exiled leaders
from without saying how the country will be run when we come back,
which I think is always dangerous.
Mr Rogers: There are some things
that can be done in-country, but cannot really be spoken about
in an open forum like this. There is a combination of some initiatives
that can be taken and indeed are going on in-country, combined
with the groups on the border areas who are engaged in the kind
of things that we have spoken of.
Mr Farmaner: As well you are talking
about that traditional solidarity work, and as someone who has
been involved in anti-apartheid campaigns, in East Timor, Indonesia,
many campaigns over the years, I have never been involved in a
solidarity movement in terms of supporting people on the ground
who have so little resources and so little support. Burma does
not have, like South Africa did, frontline states that are sympathetic,
providing shelter and resources, it does not have the international
network that South Africa and other countries have had to provide
support. The people who are trying to promote human rights and
democracy in Burma are doing so on a shoestring, and this is in
a country that has human rights abuses that are 10 times worse
than anything that happened under apartheid in South Africa.
Q32 John Battle: If I put it in more
general terms, are you saying, as I suspect myself, that this
particular historical circumstance, political circumstance, is
the most difficult nut to crack in the world at the present time,
even on past experiences, whether it be East Timor or Latin American
experiences or former Soviet Union countries? Are you hopeful
about possibilities of change or despairing at the way things
are going at the moment? Do you see any real grounds for hope?
In a way, in other situations, it maybe takes 10 years, it maybe
takes 20 years, but you could see that the people on the ground
were beginning to open up, find some space—yes, they were
being murdered for doing it and taken out for doing it, but in
the end they would win through. What is your view at this stage
in 2007 of the future for the people of Burma to get a grip on
their own circumstances, and that does include tackling poverty
with help from the international community?
Mr Rogers: Personally I do believe
things will change and, if I did not, it would be very hard to
do the kind of work that I do, but one thing I am absolutely certain
about is that there is no sign of change from the regime itself—in
fact it is the opposite, things are getting worse and worse. What
gives me hope is the ability, the courage, the commitment of the
people, both in the country and around the border areas. Given
more support from the international community I am certain that
things will change.
Mr Farmaner: I would echo that
as well. Having been involved in many similar struggles over the
years I am more optimistic about Burma, despite the situation
there, than other countries because there is so much potential
there, if the resources were given to Burmese people so that they
could have some of the training and advice and capacity that they
need to organise. This regime is a very vulnerable one and there
is a perception that there has been pressure for years and sanctions
and they have not worked; it is not the case, there has not been
a strong sanctions regime internationally, there has been no international
consensus on Burma. Burma was only first discussed by the Security
Council just over a year and a half ago so it is only in the last
three or four years that we have really seen the international
community stepping up their criticism, so the potential is there
if the international community does unify and if support is given
to Burmese democrats there is an enormous potential there and
so that makes me more hopeful. That is why it is so critical that
DFID, which has an international reputation and plays a leading
role and has significant resources compared to many other countries'
agencies, contributes to supporting those. There is no way we
are going to tackle the humanitarian crisis in Burma with the
regime there; we can try and tackle some of the symptoms but at
the end of the day as Hilary Benn himself has said, this regime
is the problem and we have got to get rid of the regime to deal
with the humanitarian problems.
Chairman: May I just remind colleagues
that we are three-quarters of the way through the time and only
halfway through the questions. John Bercow.
Q33 John Bercow: My impression has
been for years that the regime is extremely neurotic and very
nervy about being focused on and criticised, and I confess I personally
have also been struck both by the plethora of pathetically inadequate
and vulnerable organisations campaigning against the regime and
by their quite extraordinary stoicism and courage. A number of
them of course are women's organisations, which is not something
one finds everywhere one goes, and I was certainly very struck
by the Shan Women's Action Network and have been struck also by
the Karenni Women's Organisation. It is certainly invidious for
you to have to say who you would fund and support, but are those
organisations amongst those that you think would be worthy of
some funding and would you be able, if you were challenged, to
offer some reassurance that they are reasonably transparent organisations
that would be accountable?
Mr Rogers: Both the organisations
that you have referred to and a number of others, both along the
Thai border and on Burma's other borders I think would be extremely
worthy recipients of funding. The Women's League of Chinland on
the India-Burma border is one example, also the Burman political
or human rights groups like the Assistance Association for Political
Prisoners. Those are some examples and those are all groups that
I know personally very well. Some of them we work with and have
funded on one-off occasions and I am very confident of their transparency
and accountability.
Mr Farmaner: Many of the organisations
on the border receive very small grants and they have to do an
enormous amount of paperwork to receive them because they do receive
some small grants from a handful of other European governments,
and so over the years they have become used to the requirements
that the international community has in terms of accountability
and transparency and making sure that accounts are audited. I
would add to the list particularly the trade union movement in
Burma; they have underground networks there and that is one that
particularly deserves support, and also just to think that there
is a government in exile and there are MPs. There was an election
in 1990 but the MPs were never allowed to take their seats in
Parliament, many of them were thrown into jail and tortured and
forced to flee the country. Many of those MPs have been desperate
to try and do something for their people from exile to raise awareness
about the situation, to try and develop policies for the country
if there is a transition into democracy. Again, they have just
been struggling with virtually no resources or support at all
and they are now spread out all over the world as refugees. Many
of them cannot travel, they have no resources to do any kind of
work at all, so there are a great many opportunities there to
support organisations that can really do good work and are certainly
accountable, there is no question of that.
Q34 Mr Davies: Your organisation
has been extraordinarily critical of both DFID and the UN, and
indeed the UN resident co-ordinator tried to provide you with
some of your written evidence to us. "Neither DFID nor the
UN has made any commitment to undertake a comprehensive review
to tackle what is one of the most serious humanitarian crises
in the world ... The UN Resident Coordinator has clearly failed
to take the necessary measures to tackle this crisis, both in
terms of assessing needs and ensuring delivery of assistance where
needed and addressing the root causes of the IDP crisis, namely,
in large part, the regime's deliberate targeting of civilian ethnic
minorities".[5]
That is very severe criticism; I cannot remember actually ever
coming across NGOs who used such harsh words, either about DFID
or about the United Nations local representative. Do you stand
by those criticisms, do you want to enlarge on them at all this
morning?
Mr Farmaner: I would say in 20
years of working on human rights and development issues I have
never come across such a bizarre politicised situation as I found
in Burma regarding the UN and DFID; I found it extraordinary.
The Burma Campaign UK has really only been focusing on the humanitarian
side of issues in recent years as our capacity has expanded and
as we have started working on that I have been shocked over and
over again by the situation there—as we touched on earlier—the
mindset of operating within how the SPDC works. That certainly
seems to be the culture of the United Nations and I suppose more
generally the UN's mandate in terms of development issues and
humanitarian assistance is to work with governments, but when
it comes to Burma the way that they are working with governments
and criticising alternative methods of aid delivery such as cross-border
aid just creates a lot of antagonism and makes a difficult situation
more difficult.
Q35 Mr Davies: It is the mindset
of the organisation, the culture as you call it, rather than the
failings of an individual that you are concerned about.
Mr Farmaner: I am afraid that
I think the UN Resident Coordinator has become a very polarising
and controversial figure. He has hired people who have been well-known
critics of sanctions as consultants to the United Nations and
he has in a subtle way briefed against things such as the United
Nations Security Council Resolution which included a requirement
for—
Q36 Mr Davies: He has briefed against
the Security Council Resolution.
Mr Farmaner: Yes, that is the
information we have.
Q37 Mr Davies: Can you actually verify
that?
Mr Farmaner: There was one Financial
Times article earlier this year where he talked about the
concern that the Resolution could make humanitarian assistance
delivery more difficult in the country.[6]
Q38 Mr Bercow: But this was at a time
when the British Government was pressing for the resolution.
Mr Farmaner: Yes.
Q39 Mr Davies: What is this guy's
name by the way?
Mr Farmaner: Charles Petrie.
4 The Burma Campaign UK, Pro-Aid, Pro-Sanctions,
Pro-Engagement, July 2006 Back
5
Ev 67 Back
6
Financial Times, Both despots and dissidents put politics
into the business of aid, November 2006 Back
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