Burma and the responsibility to protect: First, do more good than harm

Paranoid and mistrustful of the outside world, Burma’s generals were criminally tardy in permitting emergency humanitarian supplies and personnel to come into the country after a devastating cyclone in early May. More than 100,000 may have been killed and over 2 million displaced and made homeless by the cyclone. Casualty figures should always be treated with caution in such contexts as they are easily inflated or downsized for partisan purposes, and already the indications are that the consequences were less grim than initially feared.

Related Subject(s): Human Rights and Refugees