INTERNATIONAL obser-vers have applauded the Australian government for a shift in aid policy that will see funding to Myanmar almost double over the next three years.
Australia’s aid budget for Myanmar is set to increase from its present level of AU$29 million (US$25.75 million) to AU$50 million ($44.4 million), Foreign Minister Stephen Smith announced in a ministerial statement released on February 8.
Mr Smith said the increase was recognition of the immense task faced by current and future gener-ations of Myanmar people.
“At some stage into the future, Myanmar will have a civilian government which will face great challenges,” Mr Smith said. “The inter-national community needs to start the rebuilding now.”
Among the initiatives unveiled was a new emphasis on the “rebuilding of Myanmar’s economic and social structures”.
“Myanmar’s capacity cannot be allowed to comp-letely atrophy to the ultimate disadvantage and cost of its people,” Mr Smith said.
United Nations Resident Humanitarian Coordinator Mr Bishow Parajuli described the increase as “fantastic” news but reiterated that there was still a need for further international assistance.
“We still need more donors because there are only very few players in this country,” Mr Parajuli said.
At about US$4 per capita a year, international aid to Myanmar is less than a tenth of that provided to Cambodia and a sixteenth given to neighbouring Laos.
However, the shift in policy that will see Australia offer scholarships and provide funding for development projects – an approach shunned by donors such as the United States and United Kingdom – is considered just as significant as the extra funding.
One commentator on Southeast Asia-focused academic blog New Mandala, run by the Australian National University, said the “most significant changes … are subtle, but worthy of attention”.
“There has been a revision of how Australia’s develop-ment aid can be adminis-tered,” the commentator wrote. “[It] is a step in the right direction, one that other donors such as USAID have not yet been willing to take.”
“If there is such a thing as constructive engagement, this is what its foundations look like. Australia has just discreetly announced some nuanced changes to their Myanmar policy and they appear to be much stronger and concrete changes than what have come out so far from the US policy review.”
Mr Derek Tonkin, a former British ambassador to Thailand and Vietnam and chairman of Network Myanmar, said Australia’s position on Myanmar was “more humanistic” than other Western nations, whose policies were “indiscriminate” and “flawed”.
“You cannot hope to influence the country through isolation and ostracism,” Mr Tonkin told The Myanmar Times. “But it is a slow process, and the immediate need is to recognise the humanitarian imperative of providing assistance to the popula-tion.”
He said the increase in aid reflected wider moves within the international community to reassess policy towards Myanmar.
“The substantial planned increase in aid [from Australia] shows how the sanctions in place since 1989 against bilateral and multilateral aid programs are already fraying at the edges.”
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