$3 Billion Raised - How Will Be Spent?

[Pie Boy]

The bbc are reporting that so far a staggering $3 billion has been raised for the affected areas.My question is who decides how this money is spent ? How will local people be affected etc?

Also I saw Brother Bush and Colin Powell doing the rounds of the affected areas , how has this been reported in Thailand and other areas.Presumably they were their under invite from the respective governments.

Whilst I comend all those ordinary people who have given money to help those ordinary people whose lifes have been so dramatically altered I am deeply cynical about the roles that will be played by the politicians who may see this is a great PR machine or in fact a business case for imperialism.(Just my opinion)

May I also take this opportunity to speak of my respect for those who clubbed together and volunteered their help out in many different ways during such a difficult time.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4149439.stm

[aaaaaa]

who decides ?

that's the point!

surely not you and me and those victims !

let's hope some money will reach the real needy people... in time

[Rinrada]

Tsunami aid pledges top $3bn (BBC)

About 500,000 survivors have been left homeless in Indonesia alone, while the total across affected countries has been estimated at five million.

Assuming we are talking about a US. Billions ie. 1K x 1 mill. and not 1 mil x 1mil it works out that the international doners have contributed @ $600 for each person affected.

and to quote from earlier.......Not cynicism... reality

Why not just give each person affected the dosh?...and let them get on with it.?

I refer to my previous earlier posting about the 2 old ladies whos only requests were for a couple of frying pans or in their case -Woks...

but have no doubt the Merc. salemen will beat them to it.

[Pie Boy]

Tsunami aid pledges top $3bn (BBC)

About 500,000 survivors have been left homeless in Indonesia alone, while the total across affected countries has been estimated at five million.

Assuming we are talking about a US. Billions ie. 1K x 1 mill. and not 1 mil x 1mil it works out that the international doners have contributed @ $600 for each person affected.

and to quote from earlier.......Not cynicism... reality

Why not just give  each person affected the dosh?...and let them get on with it.?

I refer to my previous earlier posting about the 2 old ladies whos only requests were for a couple of frying pans or in their case -Woks...

but have no doubt the Merc. salemen will beat them to it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Great thought, Why don't they ?

It's too simple .There is no glory for our wonderful western governments.

[The_Eye_Of_Sauron]

If you send money to, say Red Cross, it will presumably not end up in Thailand, by virtue of the fact that Thailand isn't accepting foreign aid.

Obviously a vast proportion of cash aid that is sent to Indonesia will be stolen by kleptocrats. 70% plus at an estimate.

Cataclysm in Aceh merely saves them money they would have otherwise spent on bullets.

A win-win situation for Jakarta - troublesome Aceh off the map and foreign cash for shopping.

(I bet China wishes Tibet was over a fault line).

[kat]

Pieboy, I hate to be the one to break this news to you, but nearly all of the governments that have contributed have done so for equal reasons: humanitarian relief, global peer pressure, and yes, public relations. You don't really think that the the states are the only country to do so, do you? If so, me thinks you need to do a bit more thinking.

[Boon Mee]

Let's hope it doesn't end up in the pockets of Kofi Annan's henchmen's or his son's (got my Mojo working) pocket.

We all know how corrupt the UN is...

For a full run-down on what the UN has been up to and how the Yanks & Aussies are working together check out UNbearable . .

Edited January 8, 2005 by Boon Mee

[gburns57au]

Most aid organisations will have assessment teams on the ground in different areas, they will then request what is required for that area.

Approximately 80-90% of funds raised will be used for direct aid to the victims, the rest will be used for running costs and admin.

This is far too big an event for the usually corrupt fatcats to exploit,

Why dont they give the dosh direct to the victims....for some of these people, that $600 equates to 3 months or more wages, apart from the problems with rip offs and theft, a lot of it would be wasted on non necessary items. You have to remember that these people are among the worlds poorest, to suddenly give them a largte amount of money is not a good idea.

[Mr Red]

If you send money to, say Red Cross, it will presumably not end up in Thailand, by virtue of the fact that Thailand isn't accepting foreign aid.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think Thailand did not accept the offer to forgive part of its foreign debt. I do think they are accepting Red Cross-type aid, through many organizations.

I am also cynical about the money inflow, but I also think this is something we cannot really control. I have great faith in the Thai people to make the best with what they have or receive in aid, less faith in the Indonesians and Sri Lankans, but perhaps only because I have no insight into their culture. Sometimes all you can ask is that as much as possible of the aid gets there -- the reality is it will never be 100%.

[stumonster]

remember the majority of the money in the figures proudly proclaimed is not actually cash or food aid - its letting the govt's of these countries off the interest accrued from loans previously needed to buy last years mercedes.

[gburns57au]

Most aid organisations will have assessment teams on the ground in different areas, they will then request what is required for that area.

Approximately 80-90% of funds raised will be used for direct aid to the victims, the rest will be used for running costs and admin.

This is far too big an event for the usually corrupt fatcats to exploit,

Why dont they give the dosh direct to the victims....for some of these people, that $600 equates to 3 months or more wages, apart from the problems with rip offs and theft, a lot of it would be wasted on non necessary items. You have to remember that these people are among the worlds poorest, to suddenly give them a largte amount of money is not a good idea.

Hate to burst your bubble... but if 10% gets to the victims they will be 'extremely' lucky!

And it is 'never' to big an event for the corupt fatcasts to take thier spoils.... The more money there is, the more money to exploit.

Also, money 'pledged' is not money 'given'. Where is all this 'pledged' money right now? 80% of it is still being 'pledged'.

We are all watching the game of Politics is all... save for the individuals who have given on a personal basis.

Should have clarified that a bit more, the head of World Vision here stated that 30% would go to emergency aid and 50% for the rebuilding of the infrastructure, I lumped them together. Similar satements have been made by the heads of other organisations.

The figures I was working on was figures mentioned in a previous post. It is unfortunate that money pledged is not money given.....$20M AUD was pledged by Aussies at a concert/telethon last night....even if half that was actually raised it is still a good effort.....the telethon ran for 3 hours and $15m was pledged in that time, a further $5m was pledged afterwards. 90% of the money raised has been promised to the victims in emergency aid or assistance in rebuilding.

I think it less likely that the corrupt fatcats would exploit something of this magnitude as there are too many people watching what is happening.

I do agree that there are governments and people making political mileage out of this, but as long as they honour their promises, then what does that matter ?

[Erwin1011]

From my time in Africa, I figured out that about 15-30 % goes in "administration" cost of the organisation. Another 30-50 % is skimmed of at the Higher Local levels. Another 15-20 % at local lower levels. so of every 100$ donated about 25$ arrives where it should go.

Ravisher , that's not far away from your 10 %.

We worked around that by finding a sponsor community for a specific goal.

Say you need a fishing boat. Find a community to support this. Buy or order the boat locally ( in this case you may have to go a bit farther out) Have the future owners involved in the construction or the supervision of the building. Make sure the future owners are kind of share holding structure. (cooperatives type) Bring the boat over start fishing. while the boat is being build, start working on the infrastructure needed.

covered market, refrigirators etc maybe a small processing plant.. start the next boat.

have everything supervised by the sponsoring community volunteer on a rotation basis.

we worked something like that in bukavu and were able to get roughly 80 % of the donations converted in direct measurable auditable solid results. 15 % were used for admin and accomodation. 5% we lost somewhere on the road on kickbacks mostly at lower authority levels to smooth some things out..

The result: a fairly autonomous rahter thriving fishing community in about 1 year.

then we were chased out ... some high level bugger wanted to have all.

[aaaaaa]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4163655.stm

Tuesday, 11 January, 2005, 13:09 GMT

Nations urged to contribute more

The UN official coordinating aid for survivors of the tsunami has called for a new level of international compassion in response to it and other crises.

Jan Egeland was speaking in Geneva at the start of an international donors meeting which will focus on the disaster in the Indian Ocean.

The UN is to tell delegates that billions of dollars of aid must be sent swiftly to help survivors.

Mr Egeland said the response so far had showed "humanity at its very best".

But the UN's emergency relief co-ordinator also called for a new standard of compassion in which all humanitarian crises receive the funding they need.

The Geneva meeting comes five days after UN Secretary General Kofi Annan chaired a donor conference in Jakarta, Indonesia, where he issued a call for almost $1bn in urgent aid.

'Crunch time'

Mr Egeland, who is chairing the meeting, listed at least a dozen regions where UN agencies are struggling to meet the basic needs of millions of people.

He pointed out that the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 1,000 people die daily of preventable diseases or because of the conflict there, suffered the equivalent of a tsunami every five months.

Each year, Mr Egeland said, the UN launches an appeal for aid work but actual funds always fall well short of pledges.

Phil Bloomer, head of UK-based charity Oxfam, said this was "crunch time" to make sure the pledges were realised.

"This is not the time for empty rhetoric," he said, quoted by AFP news agency. "The eyes of the world are on this meeting and we want guarantees that the aid will not be diverted from other disasters and other suffering people."

Accountants

Tuesday's conference will discuss a practical timetable for delivering aid to the region.

Delegates representing governments and aid agencies are attending, including US aid chief Andrew Natsios, EU development commissioner Louis Michel and senior ministers from Britain, France and Germany.

Up to $6bn in relief has been pledged to help five million people affected.The BBC's Bridget Kendall says the Geneva meeting will examine the fine print of the global relief effort, including:

Is money being diverted from other countries also desperately in need of help?

How much is going to international organisations and aid agencies, not tied to bilateral deals?

How much can be delivered right now in cash instead of in loans, or staggered over several years?

The scale of the global response has prompted the UN to hire one of the world's leading accounting firms to help track donations.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers will also be asked to investigate any allegations of fraud, waste or abuse.

]UN officials believe the aid process is transparent but many remain mindful of criticism over alleged mismanagement of the oil-for-food programme in Iraq.

[aaaaaa]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...ssroadsfortheun

A crossroads for the U.N.

Mon Jan 10, 5:11 PM ET

By Thomas Omestad

Kofi Annan (news - web sites) was once known as the "Teflon secretary general" of the United Nations (news - web sites), because nothing bad seemed to stick to him. But that was then. These days, pretty much everything seems to be sticking to the 66-year-old Ghanaian diplomat.

For Annan, 2004 devolved into what he called an " annus horribilis ." No fewer than eight investigations were initiated into corruption allegations within the U.N.'s former "oil-for-food" program in Iraq (news - web sites). Among those stung by the allegations was Annan's son Kojo, who was paid by a Swiss firm that held a U.N. food contract. Some in Congress called on Annan to resign. At the same time, tensions with President Bush (news - web sites) grew over the U.N.'s reluctance to play a larger role in Iraq and over U.S. assertions that Annan was meddling in American politics. U.N. diplomats felt Bush allowed Annan to twist in the wind before reaffirming administration support in December. U.N. peacekeepers in Congo, meanwhile, were accused of raping young women. And back at headquarters, U.N. staffers were enraged over Annan's purportedly dismissive handling of misconduct allegations against his senior aides.

Year's end, of course, brought unthinkable horrors--and a fresh set of challenges. On December 26, a tsunami laid waste to parts of south Asia, killing some 150,000 people. The capricious assaults of nature, it seems, have conspired to put Annan and the U.N. on the spot at the very moment they are most beleaguered. Amid all the distractions, the U.N. will now have to coordinate disaster relief in the largest, most complex operation in its nearly 60-year history. And the world will be watching. "We're on the hot seat, not only on disaster relief but across the board," says a senior U.N. official. "This is a time of trial."

That Annan should be under such pressure from the U.S. government is more than a bit ironic. He was, after all, America's preference when he took over the secretary general's job in January 1997. Annan studied economics at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., and earned a master's degree in management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (news - web sites). He was even vacationing in Wyoming when the tsunami hit.

Friction. But his views on Iraq have not sat well with Washington. Some administration officials contend that he has dragged his heels on bolstering U.N. participation because of his opposition to the U.S.-led war. Annan only recently raised the number of U.N. specialists in Iraq to a maximum of 64, about 20 of whom are advising the Iraqi commission running the January 30 national election. Annan is under intense pressure from U.N. employees who have wanted to stay clear of Iraq since the August 2003 suicide bombing of the U.N. compound in Baghdad. Insurgent violence has prevented a more visible U.N. presence, he has said.

Equally galling, say some U.S. officials, were Annan's comments during the presidential campaign; he called the invasion of Iraq "illegal." Bush administration officials also suspected the U.N. was behind pre-Election Day disclosures of missing high explosives in Iraq. "It was pretty clear that Annan . . . and others had a clear favorite in our election," says one administration official.

The distance grew wider as conservatives zeroed in on evidence of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s cheating in the U.N. food program. The program allowed Iraq to sell embargoed oil to buy food and medicine; a Security Council panel was supposed to ensure that the cash was not used to rearm Iraq. But Saddam is believed to have used kickbacks and bribes, allegedly involving one U.N. official, to rake in perhaps billions of dollars. A U.N.-sponsored inquiry led by former Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Chairman Paul Volcker is due to issue its first report later this month. While the Volcker report is not expected to link Annan personally to any wrongdoing, Sen. Norm Coleman (news, bio, voting record), a Minnesota Republican, has already demanded Annan's resignation. "The most extensive fraud in the history of the United Nations occurred on his watch," says Coleman. Annan vows to stay, and his defenders say he has been unfairly targeted. "There has been a coordinated effort by the anti-U.N. right to distort information and turn it into a personal attack on the secretary general," says William Luers, a former American ambassador and head of the United Nations Association of the United States of America.

Tough love. Regardless of who's correct, there's little doubt that Annan is at a crossroads. Last month Annan sat down for a frank chat with a group of American friends at former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Richard Holbrooke's apartment in New York, as first reported in the New York Times. They told him to patch up relations with the Bush team. "The briefings he got from us were very hard," recalls one participant, Les Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. "He looked glum."

But in the wake of the tsunami, Annan has a chance to show that the United Nations can do valuable work. Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites), a friend of Annan's, said the U.N. had "clicked" in the days after the waves smashed ashore. Certainly Annan's early appeals for money have been heeded: As Asian leaders gathered at a tsunami summit in Jakarta last week, official pledges hit $4 billion, and Annan asked for nearly $1 billion more. "An unprecedented global catastrophe," he said, "requires an unprecedented global response." Annan in effect won a vote of confidence, too, as Powell announced that a U.S.-founded "core group" to rev up disaster relief that had included Australia, India, and Japan would be folded into the U.N. effort. Some observers had questioned whether the group's formation signaled doubts about the U.N.'s abilities--a view denied by Powell but volunteered by another Bush administration official. "They're very slow," he complained. "They have to be pushed."

Even friends have told Annan he was inattentive to the gathering storm over oil for food and responsible for missteps with the Bush administration. With only two years left in his term, he has apparently taken the advice to heart. "He's going to attempt to shake things up," says an aide. That started last week with the naming of a new chief of staff, Mark Malloch Brown, a Briton known for smooth relations with Washington. More high-level changes are planned, and Annan hopes to lead a U.N. reform effort through 2005 with an eye, associates say, on his historical legacy--a legacy they hope will bury the memories of 2004.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=index2&cid=1010

Top Stories - World Audio/Video - NPR

World Bank Considers $1.5 Billion in Tsunami Relief

at NPR - Thu Jan 13, 1:12 PM ET

The president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, returns to the United States after a nine-day tour of tsunami-devastated areas in Asia. Wolfensohn says the World Bank is still assessing the damage, but could pledge up to $1.5 billion in reconstruction funds. NPR's Kathleen Schalch reports.

[aaaaaa]

surely I can and could - as you could see in my last post, which was even few posts before yours.

I was told to paste full articles.

alright - I'll try to "condence" as you say. let's see how it will work... personally I also prefer the summirised points from articles. but it is not my rule - but of those who moderates this Forum.

[aaaaaa]

World Bank to launch tsunami rebuild with 660 million dollars

Thu Feb 3, 2:20 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The World Bank (news - web sites) said it expected to provide 660 million dollars to Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives under the first phase of its support for the reconstruction of tsunami-hit areas. ...

The December 26 tsunami killed more than 290,000 people and left 1.5 million people homeless across a dozen countries along the Indian Ocean coast.

Wolfensohn had said previously the bank's commitment could spiral up to one billion dollars to 1.5 billion dollars.

The bank said recently rebuilding costs for Indonesia, whose Aceh province in the northern tip of Sumatra was the worst hit, could range as high as 5.0 billion dollars.

Sri Lanka's tsunami damage is estimated at one billion dollars but the island needs 1.5 billion dollars to recover, the bank and other international lenders had said.

The bank said Wednesday its funds would mainly be provided through the International Development Association, its financing arm for the poorest countries.

The World Bank management has presented a paper to the Board of Executive Directors this week outlining a plan for working with the tsunami-affected countries, primarily Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. ...