In October 2008, the United Nations commissioned a team of humanitarian response experts to undertake an “Inter Agency Real Time Evaluation” of the response to Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar. The report of its findings was published on December 17th.
Among the topics of the team’s report was humanitarian access. It concludes that “it is safe to assume” that restrictions the authorities placed on the entry of international humanitarian actors prolonged the suffering in some communities. On the other hand, it also notes that necessity had helped to build local capacity and leadership among civil society actors and that they had been able to make an impressive impact on the massive humanitarian needs generated by the cyclone.
The team thus called for “a balance that provides adequate, and timely, access to professional responders but does not open the doors to all.” It held up the IDRL Guidelines as an example of how this balance could be formulated, with states on the one hand being exhorted to seek international assistance where Photo courtesy of Aishah Amin a disaster “exceeds national coping capacities”, while on the other hand retaining the “sovereign right to coordinate, regulate and monitor disaster relief and recovery assistance” in a manner consistent with international law.