PROFESSIONALS IN humanitarian relief say the third week after a disaster like Cyclone Nargis, which struck Burma on May 2nd, is potentially the most dangerous time, when providing aid can make the crucial difference between life and death for hundreds of thousands of people.
Only about one quarter of the estimated 2.4 million people affected are currently receiving the clean water, food, shelter, latrines and medicine they desperately need. The Burmese junta has refused to accept international aid from western powers, including helicopters and other emergency transport. Without it there is now a grave danger of mass deaths from communicable diseases like cholera, typhoid, and from starvation, especially among women and children.
This pitiless response by Burma's rulers is driven by their fear that international relief involvement could become a vehicle to overthrow them. Their notoriously isolated regime has proved incapable of mobilising the effort required; voluntary effort within the country cannot fill the gap. This week's initiative by the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) to become a channel for international aid could improve matters. But Asean's deep-rooted norm of non- interference in state sovereignty makes it subject to systematic delays and vetoes just when emergency flexibility is most needed.
This makes today's visit to Rangoon by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon especially important. The military junta leader Gen Than Shwe refused to take calls from Mr Ban after he criticised its foot-dragging on aid. UN and other diplomats say Burmese ministers deny there is a humanitarian crisis and want to switch the focus to reconstruction aid, for which they say huge sums are needed.
Mr Ban will have to insist on proper validation of these claims. He should also remind his hosts that in 2005 a new UN doctrine committed the international community to a "responsibility to protect" doctrine. It would have to intervene "should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity". If the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of people is not such a crime, what is?
Realistically, there seems no prospect that the UN Security Council would endorse an intervention, because China and Russia would veto it. But there has rarely been a more instructive contrast in how to handle such an emergency than that between Cyclone Nargis which devastated the Irrawaddy coast of Burma and the Sichuan earthquake in China.
Since the Burmese junta is incapable of responding to its own people's needs it must be hoped that the disaster will rekindle their rebellious spirit against such callous disregard.