A Moral Obligation

Asian workers at a refinery in Middle East

Tsunami survivors rushing for relief

The death toll from an earthquake off Indonesia and the tsunamis that it unleashed is reaching over 100,000 in seven countries in southern and southeastern Asia. The Arab and Islamic countries of the Middle East and North Africa should not just follow this terrible drama on television. They should move quickly and generously to establish an emergency relief fund to provide basic assistance and reconstruction aid to Asian communities that have been the mostly badly hurt.

This proposal does not stem only from a sense of moral obligation to fellow Muslims, Christians and human beings of other faiths. It would also be an appropriate act of historical moral and material compensation for these now devastated societies that have sent millions of their citizens to live and work throughout the Middle East and North Africa in the past three decades.

It would be a mere fiscal footnote for Arab and Islamic oil-producing nations to set up a fund of, say, $3 billion to provide immediate aid to families and communities that have been badly hurt by Sunday's phenomenon. The money would represent a small fraction of the windfall income that oil producers are reaping this year from the high price of crude oil. The fund's efficient management could be handled jointly by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the International Red Cross emergency services unit, or some combination of UN agencies working with counterparts from Arab and Islamic countries.

Most important of all, though would be the compelling motive for such a gesture. Many countries in South and Southeast Asia provided the manpower that built, and continues to build, the leading economies in the Middle East. The workers from Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh and other lands earn their rightful salaries, to be sure; but perhaps we owe them an added gesture that acknowledges our appreciation for their role in contributing to our national development. When our region needed technical expertise along with the skilled and manual workers to apply it, these Asian societies responded generously. Now that some of them have suffered a national and human calamity due to purely natural causes, it is our turn to respond to their needs with equal generosity and speed, rather than merely watch the process on television as detached spectators. We are not detached spectators when it comes to South and Southeast Asia, and we should act accordingly. 

Source: The Daily Star

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