What Assistance can the UK offer to Bangladesh & the Rohingya Refugees?
As of this writing, over 450,000 Rohingya muslims from Myanmar (also called Burma) have fled violence and their burned-out villages to land across the border in Bangladesh, and after all the appropriate hand-wringing by political leaders and the media it appears that not one bit of international assistance has been rendered to help the refugees, nor to help Bangladesh afford all the costs of hosting such huge refugee numbers.
The Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheik Hasina, is a wonderful lady and seems to want to help the Rohingya people.
But her idea is for diplomacy and negotiations to solve Burma’s domestic strife. And in a normal situation that’s the first step of a long process.
However, the Rohingya are a tiny minority in the country (2.2 million remain in Burma) and every day, tens of thousands race for their lives to the Bangladeshi border. By the time diplomacy and negotiations get rolling there won’t be a single Rohingya muslim left alive in the country — they’ll either have fled to Bangladesh or they’ll have been killed by Buddhists who don’t want them in Burma, period. Full stop.
Because the situation in Burma is so toxic, there is absolutely zero chance that any Rohingya that remains in Burma won’t be killed by Buddhist mobs or (purportedly) by the Burmese military. Therefore, my respectful advice to PM Sheik Hasina is to begin preparations TODAY, to house, feed, and employ, the remaining 2.2 million Rohingya that will surely arrive in the coming weeks.
The question is; What assistance have the UK, The Commonwealth, or the United Nations offered to Bangladesh where 450,000 people have shown up with only the clothes on their backs, and another 2.2 million following over the next few weeks? The silence is deafening.
On the Ground in Burma
Due to high levels of harassment, intimidation and conflict deaths in Myanmar (also called Burma) that is openly carried out by hostile Buddhists and (purportedly) by Burmese government troops, almost half a million Rohingya muslims have fled in recent days to neighbouring Bangladesh.
The refugees are arriving in southern Bangladesh tired, afraid, hungry and disoriented as they flee their burning villages. Sixty per cent of those are women and children.
In Burma 4.3 per cent of the country are Muslim (about 2.6 million in total) while 88 per cent (46 million) are Buddhist and 6 per cent are Christian.
What’s different for the Muslims in Burma is that due to arcane Burmese law, they aren’t allowed to own real estate (land or buildings) because they aren’t recognized as citizens due to the fact they can’t prove their ancestors lived there prior to 1823. The Rohingya are… human beings without a country.
In recent decades over 100,000 have fled to nearby countries to work or to ask for refugee status. Most of them didn’t qualify for Burmese citizenship in the first place — and therefore arrived in a totally new country with no birth certificate, passport, other reliable identification, or even a family address. Intolerable, doesn’t begin to describe it.
Which is why hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas have landed across the border in Bangladesh since August 25th. Up to 2.3 million more may arrive in the coming months if all Burmese muslims flee the country.
If the present situation is any indication, it looks like all of them will leave Burma.
Why Not Just Go Back?
Burmese Rohingyas have nothing to return to, only burned out villages and increasingly hostile citizens. And once having crossed over into Bangladesh, they can’t cross back into the country in which they were born because they have no legal identification to show to Burmese border guards other than a long-distance telephone calling card (if they’re lucky) and no family address recognized by Burmese authorities.
Myanmar laying landmines on Bangladesh border (Al Jazeera) (so the Rohingya can’t return)
Bangladesh: The Promised Land for the Rohingya
For decades, the Rohingya have been leaving Burma for Bangladesh and other southeast Asian nations, seeking employment and a chance at a new life.
In those places, if they can find employment they can eventually apply for citizenship and become an actual citizen, with an actual street address, and be a person with an actual job and a real life. If you’re a factory owner that hires a Rohingya, you know they are highly motivated to succeed and that they will be the least problematic of your workers.
However, even a successful economy like Bangladesh can’t accept millions of refugees in a matter of weeks. The country is doing relatively well for a developing nation and continues to improve its infrastructure and the lives of its citizens every year.
Bangladesh is ranked surprisingly highly by development agencies, and is often referred to ‘one of the next-11’ countries after the G20 countries.
An interesting note about Bangladesh is that they are the largest contributor in the world to UN peacekeeping missions — providing tough, fully trained troops for many UN operations. (The UN pays the wages of the Bangladesh soldiers while under its command and supplies many of the tanks and APC’s that Bangla soldiers use while on UN peacekeeping missions, which is a standard practice of the United Nations)
What Will it Take to Help the Rohingya?
- Plenty of international aid money
- Acceptance by Bangladesh citizens
In the southern region of Bangladesh, 450,000 Rohingya are being held in camps stretching along the border with Burma. While 60 per cent of the refugees are women and children, Bangladeshis worry about young Rohingya males who may have been exposed to extremist thought and could conceivably at least, act against Bangladesh citizens in the future. So far, nothing like that has been reported.
However, keeping hundreds of thousands of refugees in miserable and makeshift camps in hot and humid weather isn’t going to help anyone’s mood.
Even if the Rohingyas arrived there never having imagined a terrorist thought in their life, a year of living under those conditions won’t help to keep violent acts out of the minds of young men, who, like young men everywhere, are prone to acting on a perceived problem without properly thinking it through.
‘No words’ to describe Bangladesh camps, Red Cross says (abc.au)
If Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina can convince UN donors to generously fund the effort, her country has a good chance of accommodating the sudden flood of refugees; Assisting them to find jobs, homes, and helping to build the strong sort of communities that are an asset to any country — but if it doesn’t happen in this manner, that region of Bangladesh is on the same path as the extremely hurtful (to all sides) Israeli/Palestinian conflict was at its very beginning. Nobody wants that.
Or do they? We’ll see what the response is after UN General Assembly meets this week in New York.
What Jobs Can the Rohingya Do?
If Bangladesh elects to help the Rohingya fleeing persecution in Burma, the best way forward is to employ them as farm labourers in the southern part of the country. Many of these people have lived in rustic conditions and it will take some time before they will be getting jobs as CEO’s, airline pilots, or automobile designers. But that’s not to say they can’t make a valuable contribution to the Bangladesh economy — they can!
Starting the Rohingyas working in the fields will allow them to acclimatize to the new country and cement their place as valuable workers in Bangla society.
The most important thing for the Bangladeshi authorities to remember after taking care of food, shelter and medicine for the new refugees is to provide a sense of community.
Just dumping these people on a hunk of land and feeding them every day isn’t going to solve anything, but the eventual result will be a social crisis on the scale of what we’re witnessing in the Philippines today.
What Kind of Housing for Working Rohingya Families?
Refugees that want to work should have access to temporary living quarters. You simply can’t get any sleep in a refugee camp (you know this if you’ve ever visited one!) and therefore, you won’t keep your job very long. Therefore, it’s important to relocate Rohingya workers to suitable accommodations for workers until they can save enough money to purchase their own dwelling.
There are thousands of used portable offices and portable crew quarters in the world available at any time. Not only that, but the UN could purchase thousands of new ATCO-type portable trailers to house Rohingya workers and ship them to southern Bangladesh.
In that way, the Rohingya that are able and willing to work will have appropriate accommodation. The benefit of these portable buildings is that they are prewired for electricity, and stoves and heat are provided by natural gas tanks located on the exterior of the unit.
One point to remember about this kind of living quarters is that they can be lifted via crane and placed on top of solid stilts — this is important in Bangladesh as many areas of the country are prone to flooding during the annual monsoon season. Many Bangla homes are placed on stilts to avoid being flooded or carried away in the floodwaters.
It seems Shaikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh sincerely wants to assist the Rohingya refugees and that’s admirable.
However, it’s going to take a few billion dollars just to meet the needs of these desperate people until the end of the year. After that, rather than allowing the miserable conditions of the refugee camps to become the fuel for conflict, the Rohingya must be urged to find local work on the many farms in the region. It’s really the only option in this case.
Getting refugees employed is almost as important as sheltering and feeding them as they stream across the Bangladesh border.
Related Articles:
- ‘The scale is just vast’: Authorities, aid workers in Bangladesh overwhelmed by Rohingya refugees (CBC)
- Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina, Speech At UNGA United Nations | Sept 21, 2017 (YouTube)
- Aung San Suu Kyi invites international help for Rakhine crisis
(Frontier Myanmar) - Bangladesh restricts Rohingya refugees, starts immunization
(National Post) - Rohingya Muslims are being wiped off Myanmar’s map
(National Post) - Myanmar accused of crimes against humanity (CBC)
- Myanmar’s front lines of horror (Globe and Mail)
Latest:
- Indian Army strikes Naga insurgents along India-Myanmar border (LiveMint)
Hurricane Irma: When Disaster Strikes, the UK Must Respond
In the aftermath of hurricane Irma, the people of Anguilla, Turks and Caicos and the British Virgin Islands have complained that emergency aid from the UK was late in arriving.
Indeed, while the UK was still formulating its response, French President Emmanuel Macron had already visited the French overseas territories of St. Martin and St. Barts, staying overnight and sleeping on a camp cot in a military tent after promising islanders their communities will not only be rebuilt — but will be rebuilt better than before.
Nearing the end of a sweeping visit to assess the devastation wrought by Hurricane Irma, French President Emmanuel Macron has promised to rebuild the wrecked island of St. Martin and diversify its economy away from tourism.
“What we have seen today are people determined to rebuild and return to a normal life,” Macron said Tuesday in a news conference. “They are impatient for answers and some are very, very angry. The anger is legitimate because it is a result of the fear they have faced and of being very fatigued. It is certain that some want to leave, and we will help them in that effort.”
He said France was bringing in air-conditioned tents so children can start classes again soon, and that a center would be established by Monday to begin processing requests for financial help.
Macron pledged to rebuild St. Martin as a “model island” that would be a “showcase of French excellence” in terms of its ability to withstand storms. “I don’t want to rebuild St. Martin as it was,” he said. “We have seen there are many homes that were built too precariously, with fragile infrastructure. The geography of the homes was not adapted to the risks.”
‘I don’t want to rebuild St. Martin as it was’: French president vows help for Irma’s damage in Caribbean (Business Insider)
As the French President toured the French islands destroyed by Irma, 1000 British troops arrived in the British Virgin Islands and Anguilla to help residents who rode out the storm.
Like President Emmanuel Macron the day before, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson also faced criticism from islanders who said that too little emergency assistance had been rendered too late.
OECD Rules Miss the Mark on Emergency Aid and Development Assistance
Complicating British, French and Dutch emergency assistance efforts are regulations by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that prevent countries from rendering aid to wealthy or developed nations in an attempt to keep much-needed aid flows going towards developing nations.
However, and even with the best of intentions, those OECD rulings have caused at least two European countries to miss the mark on emergency aid, post-Irma.
In the British case, removed from the OECD’s Official Development Assistance list were Anguilla (2014) Turks and Caicos (2008) and the British Virgin Islands in 2000.
One wonders what could have prompted OECD officials to create regulations that (de facto) prevent assistance to wealthy island nations ravaged by hurricane in this case. Aren’t they aware that hurricanes occur every year in the Caribbean?
When You Know You’re Right – ACT!
It seems appropriate in these situations that UK (and French, and Dutch) governments should simply ignore regulations by any regulatory body (in this case, it was the powerful and usually brilliant OECD) and just go ahead and do what needs doing — taking care of the needs of traumatized, injured, and suddenly homeless residents. The OECD has no military; It can’t enforce the regulations in situ.
When your people need help in an emergency, the onus is on leaders to ignore deficient regulations/legislation and do the right thing.
Certainly, leaders like Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill, or Helmut Kohl wouldn’t have been deterred from sending generous amounts of aid to hurricane-ravaged islanders, accompanied by a convincing naval task force if necessary, in case anyone had any idea of stopping their aid convoy. I can easily imagine Maggie supervising the entire emergency aid operation and God help anyone who got in her way, including the OECD or even God himself!
Yet, Theresa May could have the best long-term plan of all — changing the OECD rules!
Hurricane Irma: UK seeks foreign aid overhaul to help British victims (Sky News)
In the long-term, Prime Minister Theresa May is right. Now is the time to fight the existing regulations because next week everyone will have forgotten about Irma and several destroyed Caribbean islands and will be talking about the Kardashians instead.
Theresa May will have a fight on her hands because, as anyone who has ever tried to get anything changed knows, change is almost impossible to accomplish.
This week, some attention-seeking British MP’s called her out for ‘grandstanding’ for seeking to change the obviously well-intentioned but misguided OECD regulations on allowing aid to wealthy or developed nations. Let’s hope that the Prime Minister succeeds at the OECD and that attention-seeking MP’s are put in their place.
But more than all of that, I hope PM Theresa May comes to the same conclusion as French President Macron and declares that the hurricane damaged islands will be rebuilt even better than before and able to withstand the forces of nature in the Caribbean’s hurricane alley.
Concrete Plans
In this situation, and in regards to other weather events, it’s blatantly obvious that the only structures undamaged by extreme weather are made from concrete.
Rather than rebuild wood frame houses and businesses every five or ten years, the obvious conclusion is to build them from concrete, only once!
By paying the cost of emergency aid now, and by covering the cost differential between new concrete structures and what building owners receive from their insurance company to rebuild their wood construction building, fewer lives will be lost to hurricanes, storm surges, tsunamis and earthquakes in the future, insurance rates won’t skyrocket every decade, and entire islands won’t need to be rebuilt only to be destroyed at the next major hurricane. And saving tens of millions of pounds sterling in future emergency aid funding in the process.
Instead of fighting for market share, it’s time to grow the global market!
A sea-change is upon the United Kingdom whether some have come to that full realization or not
The relationship between the UK and the rest of the world is beginning to change as the UK exits the European Union. Not only that, but the relationship between the UK and the other Commonwealth countries is changing. And while all of that is occurring, it is also a time of change in the postwar international order.
These changes are coming and we have no ability to stop them. What we do have though, is the ability to choose whether these changes are ultimately negative or positive for Britain.
The days of ‘Win-Lose’ politics are over
When every second country (seemingly) has WMD weapons, suddenly Win-Lose doesn’t work anymore. Do we really want to solve every issue between nations with nuclear weapons? Because eventually, that’s what it will come to.
It’s great if you ‘Win’. But then you ‘Lose’ because the fallout from large nuclear explosions travel around the Earth a few times per season and nuclear particles continue to exist in the environment for decades (some isotopes linger for 20,000 years) and as everyone needs to breathe the air, eventually you will inhale and, well, (do I really have to tell you this?) your lungs will filter the radioactive isotopes out of the air.
The ‘Winners’ of a WMD conflict will also become ‘Losers’ of that conflict within months. It’s nonsensical to consider nuclear war in the 21st-century.
All of which means, that in the final analysis, international hot points must henceforth be solved by the cool hand of diplomacy.
The days of fighting for Market Share are over
More than any other country, fighting for market share no longer makes economic sense for the UK, because every other country/corporation is likewise fighting for market share.
Larger countries with serious export expertise and fully developed and long-term foreign client relationships have a distinct advantage over a born-again United Kingdom re-entering the exporting world. Fighting for market share against far superior marketing superpowers like Germany and China is like paddling upriver in a hurricane, and good luck with that.
Rather than fighting for Britain’s slice of the pie, the UK should be the one country in the world that works to make the pie bigger for everyone! wherever free markets exist.
In that way, whatever global growth occurs will benefit all exporters equally — including Britain’s born-again export economy, because the UK will have as good a chance as any to capture some of that growing pie — as opposed to fighting companies well entrenched in foreign markets and trying to steal tiny percentages of their total market share. See the difference?
“Don’t fight a battle if you don’t gain anything by winning.” — Erwin Rommel
Rommel was right. And to adapt his truth to Britain’s new place in the world, fighting for market share in countries that are already well-served by European and Chinese exporters will gain British exporters very little and could create trade frictions between Britain and the European Union which is still the UK’s largest trading partner in the 21st-century. We don’t want that.
‘Win-Win and Growing the Market vs. ‘Win-Lose’ and fighting for Market Share
Win-Win political thinking and growing the global market is the best prescription for Britain’s economic future.
Countries with rapidly growing economies like the BRICS countries and many Commonwealth nations are the best places for Britain to concentrate its export efforts. By helping those countries to succeed more than they would have without the UK’s assistance, Britain can grow its export base by selling to people in rapidly growing developing nations enjoying their newfound discretionary income.
It’s all about rising Disposable Income in Developing Nations
The example of India is most poignant, because in that country the average discretionary income of citizens is doubling every five years; All Britain’s leaders must do now, is to work respectfully with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ministers to the end that British exports to India are welcome and that Indian exports to the UK are just as welcome. (It helps if both countries aren’t manufacturing and selling the same items, of course) If India sells toasters in both countries then Britain should sell kettles in both countries, if you take my meaning. The less overlap, the better.
A few years from now, when a larger percentage of India’s 1.5 billion population can afford to buy a new car, perhaps Indian companies will offer tuk-tuks, small cars and farm trucks for sale in India and the UK, while the UK sells family sedans and Landrovers in India and the UK.
Any other method of working to each country’s strengths — without stepping on each other’s toes — would also be profitable for companies of both countries. What matters is that whatever method is chosen works for companies in both countries.
With the right approach to rapidly growing countries and some standardized and respectful trade rules, the UK could help to grow the global pie, dramatically increase its own exports, keep good relations with exporting superpowers in Europe, China, and America, and be seen as a ‘White Knight’ to developing nations by playing a pivotal and ongoing role in helping them to build their economies.
That future is so much better than bickering over fractions of market share with other (and economically superior) exporting nations — the very countries that Britain depends upon in many ways.
Here’s to ‘Win-Win’ paradigms and growing the global economic pie; A plan that will work for the United Kingdom more than almost any other country — while preventing harm to Britain’s present and important trade relationships.
The world wants quality UK goods and services. The demand is out there. You should be too. Image courtesy of HM Government.
Letter to Britain 