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Journalism of Courage
Extensive deaths and destruction caused by the Asian tsunami have imparted urgency to devise measures to prevent such tragedies. A recent UN report, ‘Reducing Disaster Risk: A Challenge for Development’, after analysing global data from the past two decades concludes that better planning backed by systematic risk analysis could avert natural disaster deaths in poor developing countries if they did more to anticipate and reduce the risks from natural disasters by better preparedness.
The report’s newly developed Disaster Risk Index provides clear evidence of the link between poverty and vulnerability to such disasters. Indeed the central premise of the report is that there is nothing natural about these disasters and ‘‘the real killer is poverty, not the forces of nature’’. Only 11 per cent of the people exposed to natural hazards live in poor countries, but they account for more than 53 per cent of the total recorded deaths. According to the report, during the past two decades, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea had the highest annual per capita death rate from disasters (606 per million) followed by Mozambique (328), Armenia (324), Sudan (275) and Ethiopia (273). The study urges governments to use the best available risk analysis, incorporate such risks in regulatory procedures and include risk assessment in development planning.
Interestingly the report of the Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues, published as the book Winning the Human Race, was submitted to the UN General Assembly in 1987. The aim of the report, one of whose co-authors was Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan, was laudable. It was to make the poor and the powerless visible and audible and to articulate a humanitarian perspective to cope with the vicissitudes of an increasingly complex global society. The report rightly stressed that economic growth is worthwhile only if it is accompanied by adequate social development.
The report contained some worthwhile recommendations, one of which was that the UN should elaborate a code of conduct to regulate the management of disasters. Another important recommendation was that humanitarian criteria ought to prevail over any political or sovereignty constraints during the limited period of the emergency. Other significant recommendations were that governments, humanitarian organisations and the international community should promote the progressive development of international law whereby countries were obligated to prepare for disaster relief within their own territory and to take preventive measures to minimise suffering resulting from disasters; to accept relief for their people from the international community if their own resources were inadequate; and also to make efforts in good faith to assist another country in the event of a disaster. The report emphasised the necessity of avoiding programmes which were inappropriate to the culture of the affected people. Recently there was a difficulty in Aceh, Indonesia, where a well-meaning Catholic priest accidentally ran up against local conservative Islamic leaders who mistakenly feared that he was seeking Christian converts. Such attitudes would be greater tragedies and could be avoided if disaster management programmes were devised by insiders at the local level so as to obtain maximum efficiency. It is a pity that many recommendations of the report published 14 years ago remain unimplemented.
Charles Lamb and musicians
Charles Lamb is my favourite essayist mainly because of the tenderness and amiability which pervade his writings. This characteristic is amply exemplified in Lamb’s letter to his friend Robert Lloyd, who complained in his letter to Lamb that ‘‘the world was drained of all its sweets’’. In reply Lamb gently chided the plaintive Lloyd and reminded him that ‘‘Meats and drinks, sweet sights and sweet smells, a country walk, spring and autumn, follies and repentance, quarrels and reconcilements, have all a sweetness by turns. Good humour and good nature, friends at home that love you, and friends abroad that miss you—you possess all these things, and more innumerable, and these are all sweet things. You may extract honey from everything’’.
I was surprised that the affable Lamb was rather harsh on musicians: ‘‘Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart, Just as the whim bites; for my part, I do not care a farthing candle; For either of them, or for Handel…The devil, with his foot so cloven, For aught I care, make take Beethoven; And, if the bargain does not suit, I’ll throw him Weber in to boot…I would not go four miles to visit, Sebastian Bach; No more I would for Bononcini. As for Novello, or Rossini, I shall not say a word to grieve ’em, Because they’re living; so I leave ’em’’.
Wonder what Lamb would have said about Count Basie and Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, and of course, the great John Coltrane. I dare not guess.
