Taken from whatilearnd

Not only has the Burmese government been refusing foreign aid for the recent cyclone, it has been reported that it has been seizing and selling the donated supplies on the black market!

The cyclone hit Yangon, one of Myanmar’s main cities and former capital, on May 2. Interesting side-note –- in 2005, the government decided to move Myanmar’s capital from Yangon, the country’s biggest city, to Naypyidaw, a remote mountain area. Nobody quite understood the reason for this, but rumor has it that fortune-tellers foresaw revolt and disaster in Yangon (Nov 2007 saw revolt, May 2008 saw disaster).

The cyclone is estimated to have killed 130,000 (78,000 dead and 56,000 missing) and left 2.5 million refugees. Many countries have attempted to provide aid, but the junta initially denied it. They have slowly been allowing more and more aid, per the urging of the UN, China, and ASEAN (the Association of South-East Asian Nations), but likely many lives have been lost due to the delay. What aid has been allowed may not be getting to the right place, as allegations have emerged that the Burmese officials were selling the aid supplies including donations of rice, cooking oil and diesel on the black market. Yangon residents have found packs of Thai salt in markets that they assume were meant to be distributed freely (Thailand was first to send aid). One local even recounted the time when drugs from UNICEF were available for purchase in the markets.

So why can’t we (or anyone) just intervene? In cases where governments fail their own people, shouldn’t other countries have a right of humanitarian intervention? Well no, because the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years’ War (Germany) & Eighty Years’ War (Spain), allows sovereign states to do what they want in their own borders. And the UN Charter of 1945, seconds that in article 2(7) which states “nothing should authorize intervention in matters essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.”