When tragedy trumps borders

When tragedy trumps borders

Ramesh Thakur, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Tokyo

The challenge posed by the catastrophic earthquake and the
tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004, is a vivid reminder of the advantages
of considering security within the broader framework of human
security. The natural disaster caused incalculable loss of life
in many countries around the perimeter of the Indian Ocean.

The death toll quickly climbed to 150,000, with warnings that
it could almost double due to unaccounted-for persons, disease,
and malnutrition. Behind the statistics are the grim human costs
of the tragedy.

Mother nature did not discriminate between Muslim and
Christian, Tamil and Sinhalese, poor and rich, native and
foreigner.

The revolution in information technology provides immediate
access to information worldwide, makes global communications
instantaneous, and has heightened awareness of conflicts and
disasters, wherever they occur, with compelling visual images of
the resultant suffering.

It also makes it possible to mobilize humanitarian assistance
for rescue, relief, assistance, and reconstruction in real time.
The United Nations can deploy physically to humanitarian
emergencies anywhere in the world within 24 hours, barring any
political or bureaucratic hurdles.

Geographical unity has been psychologically reinforced with
the force of the tsunami that spread so speedily and powerfully
the length and breadth of the Indian Ocean, all the way across to
the east coast of Africa.

The tragedy is proof that development and security are two
sides of the same coin. It offers a rare chance for smaller
nations to think of large and powerful neighbors as helpful
friends, not threatening bullies.

The distinctive geography of South and Southeast Asia gives
India a major commercial and geostrategic location astride the
sea-lanes of communication between the Middle East and East Asia.
India redirected well-meaning foreign emergency aid workers to
worse hit Indonesia and Sri Lanka instead, saying it was fully
capable of meeting its own needs.

The ability to handle massive death and destruction while at
the same time helping Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives was
welcomed by Indians as a sign of self-sufficiency, self-
confidence, status, and strength. With the most powerful navy in
the Indian Ocean, India converted three survey ships to floating
hospitals and dispatched them to its own far-flung Andaman and
Nicobar Islands, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka.

The last two years were among the UN's worst. The tsunami has
the potential to showcase the UN at its best. The politics of
competitive nationalism has given way to the economics of
"competitive compassionism" as countries and people try to outbid
each other in offering aid.

At the donor summit in Jakarta on Jan. 6, many, including most
of the afflicted countries, urged the UN to take the leading
role. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, the worst-
hit nation, said, "We must ensure that we benefit from the
experience of the United Nations in establishing and managing
special emergency funds and relief efforts." U.S. Secretary of
State Colin Powell confirmed that the four-nation core group to
coordinate tsunami relief (Australia, India, Japan, and the
United States) would be disbanded and folded into broader UN
operations.

The Jakarta summit also decided to set up a tsunami warning
system around the Indian Ocean, similar to the one already in
existence around the Pacific. No doubt there will be efforts to
set up a worldwide system. This offers an excellent opportunity
for Japan to export its cutting-edge science and early warning
systems to Asian neighbors.

It remains to be seen how much of the pledged aid will
actually materialize, and when. Of course, there were ulterior
political motives in the background of some of the pledges.
Australia and the United States were keen to demonstrate their
compassionate side after their self-inflicted isolation over Iraq
and the alienation of most Muslim and world sentiment.

U.S. military assets in Asia -- size, mobility, and
flexibility -- proved very helpful in their deployment for
humanitarian disaster rescue and relief operations. Japan was
keen to offset its image as a one-dimensional power limited to
checkbook diplomacy.

But these were background, not primary, motivators. The
overriding reaction among Westerners -- who responded with
astonishing generosity based on distress shared from a distance
-- was one of sympathy and the desire to do something, anything,
to help. The opening of hearts and wallets was so spontaneous and
generous that Doctors Without Borders urged donors to stop
sending it money for tsunami victims, saying it had enough funds
to manage relief efforts in the region.

The actual tsunami was a transient phenomenon. Will the
tsunami of human solidarity prove to be ephemeral or have lasting
significance? It offers the potential to mobilize the world for
the "war on want." The UN is devoting 2005 to taking stock of the
Millennium Development Goals which offer concrete, measurable
targets for when and how the war on want can be won. The tragedy
offers an opportunity to heal the rift between the United States
and the UN and bridge the Atlantic divide.

We live in the age of an internationalized human conscience.
More foreign travel by growing numbers of people has shrunk the
mental and emotional distance between countries: It could have
been any one of us, our family on the warm and welcoming beaches
of southern Asia over the festive season.

The United Nations is the embodiment of the international
community and the custodian of world conscience. It is also an
international bureaucracy with many failings and flaws, and a
forum often used and abused by governments -- who control it, not
the other way round -for finger pointing, not problem solving.
Too often, the UN has been shown to be proof against occasions of
the larger kind.

But more than these attributes of bureaucratic rigidity,
institutional timidity, and intergovernmental trench warfare, the
United Nations is the one body that houses the divided fragments
of humanity. It is an idea, a symbol of an "imagined community"
of strangers. It exists to bring about a world where fear is
changed to hope, want gives way to dignity, and apprehensions are
turned into aspirations. The tsunami disaster was a powerful
reminder of this reality.

The writer is senior vice rector of United Nations University
in Tokyo (Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations) and
author of The United Nations and the Changing Peace and Security
Agenda, to be published by Cambridge University Press. These are
his personal views.