US embassy cable - 03RANGOON1606

UNCLAS RANGOON 001606 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
STATE PASS AID/ANE 
STATE FOR EAP/BCLTV, EB, AND IO 
BANGKOK FOR AID 
USPACOM FOR FPA 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: EAID, SOCI, ECON, PGOV, BM, Human Rights 
SUBJECT: UN TRIES AGAIN TO MAP BURMA'S PROBLEMS 
 
REF: RANGOON 194 
 
1. (SBU) Summary: A new UN resident representative for Burma 
is attempting to complete a humanitarian needs assessment and 
strategy report that his predecessor failed to extract from 
the UN bureaucracy.  The report is intended to come alongside 
an ambitious data collection project, which should help focus 
limited international aid in the most vulnerable areas. 
While we welcome the UN's renewed effort, and hope to be 
pleasantly surprised, we are skeptical that these important 
reports will be produced on schedule and as planned.  End 
summary. 
 
Once More, With Feeling! 
 
2. (SBU) The new UN country team (UNCT) in Burma is trying 
again to issue a humanitarian needs assessment paper.  This 
paper, which is supposed to lay out an honest appraisal of 
the country's vulnerabilities and offer some proposed 
stakeholder responses, has been delayed for months reportedly 
due to UN internal bureaucratic wrangling. 
 
3. (SBU) An early draft of the second attempt at this report 
is quite similar to the last effort outlined in reftel and at 
the February Informal Consultative Group meeting on Burma. 
According to UNDP in Rangoon, when this draft is complete it 
will be used as a starting point for consultations with the 
GOB, NGOs, and donors.  After a background section, the 
report will look at the UN's current country operations, 
highlighting successes and also obstacles to efficiently 
providing assistance.  Next, for each of four broad areas of 
concern (poverty, social services, crime, and regional 
disparities), the report will outline the key systemic 
barriers to progress and suggest several, general, project 
proposals.  Finally, the report will address ways that the UN 
apparatus in Burma could work smarter; by bolstering internal 
and external coordination, expanding partnerships, and 
improving accountability and monitoring. 
 
4. (SBU) We've learned from UN sources here that to help 
focus international efforts based on the humanitarian 
strategy paper the UNCT is also launching an ambitious, and 
long overdue, effort to accurately map socio-economic 
vulnerability throughout the country.  The consultants hired 
for this project will first review, with the assistance of 
NGOs and embassies, all existing data for standard indicators 
now used by UNDP to assess a country's humanitarian 
condition.  After the review, the UN will seek to fill data 
holes and upgrade any existing information that has not been 
verified.  The UNDP tells us this entire project should be 
complete by the end of February.  However, considering the 
lack of reliable data, and the UN's determination to do this 
work without soliciting GOB assistance, this may be wishful 
thinking. 
 
Needed: More Spine 
 
5. (SBU) We are skeptical that the new UNCT's plans and 
timetables will be as easily achieved as expected.  Accurate 
data collection will be difficult and time consuming without 
using government health, education, and agricultural 
officials around the country.  However, if asked to help, 
these officials will be reluctant at best to help collect 
information that would contradict the GOB's claims of a 
poverty-free, healthy, and well-fed and educated nation. 
Second, the UN here, apart from UNHCR, has a reputation for 
knuckling to GOB pressure and being reluctant to publish 
anything too brutally honest.  This reputation will have to 
be surmounted if any resulting report is to be credibly 
received and become the basis for any expanded international 
humanitarian efforts. 
McMullen