From Miss Elizabeth O'Kelly
Sir, As someone who has worked in developing countries for 20 years, two of them as an executive officer of a refugee organization in Vietnam, may I be allowed to comment on the assistance now being sent to India which seems to me to repeat the mistakes we made in Biafra and in East Pakistan — not the least being the alienation of the governments we are trying to assist?

The frequently reported difficulties with customs officials are as much due to a wrong approach on our side as to bureaucratic inefficiency. A first essential after every disaster, whether manmade or natural, is to build up the confidence of the survivors and their will to live. They and their government must be made to feel that it is a situation with which they can cope. When the country has the necessary trained personnel, as India has, not only is it essential for the national pride that these persons are fully utilized, they will be far more effective than volunteers from outside, however dedicated, who have no knowledge of the language or the customs of the people whom they are trying to help.

Undoubtedly they will not handle the situation as we might do but their methods will be almost certainly better suited to the country. It is significant that Mother Teresa, who, by now, surely thinks as an Indian does, solved a situation in four hours which had defeated a team from outside.

We have a lot to learn about the type of assistance given. In Vietnam, after the attacks on Saigon, we were sent many bales of thick winter clothing in a country where the temperature rarely falls below 85 degrees Fahrenheit. In any case, no self-respecting Vietnamese woman would wear castoff European clothing, and for the cost of shipping the bales out from Europe we could have purchased cloth locally and had it made up by the local tailors, many of whom were unemployed as a result of the attacks.

Similarly with food, we ourselves, as a nation, have notorious prejudices in this respect yet we expect refugees, in a state of shock, to adapt themselves immediately to an often drastic change of diet.

Adults who are not accustomed to it do not take readily to powdered milk yet the type sent is often unsuitable for the babies for whom it is essential. Bulgar wheat is highly nutritious but useless if the women do not know how to prepare it. Rice cannot be eaten nor water boiled unless cooking pots are available and where firewood is scarce simple oil-stoves and kerosene will also be required. Iron cooking pots of the type required can be purchased easily in any market in Asia (and Africa for that matter) and such assistance could be supplied far more rapidly than it can be sent out from here. Polythene sheeting, such as is used by market gardeners, is as effective as tarpaulins or groundsheets for temporary protection against the monsoon rains and the plastic sacks in which cement is stored, when slit up the side, make effective rain capes. Refugees are far better at adapting such things for their use than we are and show great ingenuity when doing so.

If the United Nations Organization is intending to set up a disaster corps may we hope that it will concentrate first of all on the provision of trained supply officers capable of assessing the needs of a situation and of consigning aid quickly and correctly to the scene of the disaster?
Yours truly.
ELIZABETH O’KELLY,
3 Cumberland Gardens.
Lloyd Square. WO.1.



From Mr Martin Ennals and others
Sir, Both Dr Elfan Rees and Mr Louis Heren are right. India, perhaps, has just woken up; but so has the world woken up to the fact that genocide can be committed while the sensitivity of governments is respected at the United Nations more than human rights. Gross violations of the most basic human rights, some very much like genocide, have persisted over many years — not in Pakistan and in Southern Africa alone about which much is rightly said and done — but in many countries. These violations continue unabated, and even un-debated despite, in some cases, the ratification of relevant conventions by the governments concerned because it is argued that these are the domestic affairs of sovereign states.

The many conventions on human rights are admirable as far as they go but some, like the UN Supplementary Convention on Slavery, 1956, ratified by 72 member states, lack machinery to implement them.

Despite whatever obvious need, all efforts to establish machinery are blocked by a conspiracy of interested parties having an overall voting majority in every body of the United Nations which considers human rights, including the General Assembly.

It is true of course that in some countries life is cheap and the “human rights” of the poor are minimal if any. It is often said of these countries that one should not interfere with their customs, which suit their people and have stood the test of time. Some of these “customs” are violations of conventions, others of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They suit the few who are articulate. They will continue to stand the test of time so long as articulacy is the privilege of the few.

May the tragedy in East Pakistan arouse such world-wide indignation as will induce a majority of governments to insist at the United Nations on the establishment of standing machinery headed by persons of universally accepted impartiality and prestige and equipped with the authority and the means to enter any sovereign state at short notice in order to assess a situation and to report. A proposal of this kind, the appointment of a High Commissioner for Human Rights, has already been under discussion at the United Nations for many years with no result. What greater tragedy than the present one must we await before action is taken?
Yours faithfully,
MARTIN ENNALS, Secretary General. Amnesty International.
PATRICK MONTGOMERY. Secretary, Anti-Slavery Society.
BEN WHITAKER Director. Minority Rights Group.
49 Denison House, 296 Vauxhall Bridge Road. SW1.