Why do so many offers of help go unheeded? Despite the extent of the destruction and the still high number of victims of the earthquake in Morocco on the night of Friday, September 8th to Saturday, September 9th, in which almost 3,000 people died, only a few teams were deployed Allowed to participate in relief efforts. Many others are still waiting for approval from Rabat.
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“The Moroccan authorities are in the process of specifically addressing local needs. In the message we were asked to answer specific questions, especially about what human and material potential we can contribute. We have responded and are waiting for their green light,” Dominique Angeloni, head of the “Saviors Without Borders” team preparing for the departure, told Le Monde on Sunday. The French NGO finally gave up the next day. Arnaud Fraisse, founder and communications director, explains why.
Why did you give up intervening in Morocco?
Arnaud Fraisse: We warned the Moroccan embassy last night that we would abandon our proposal because our task is to intervene in an extremely urgent situation and find survivors, but we expect that after four days, given the habitat of this guy and of the earthquake, there is little chance that we will find any.
Our mission is not to extract lifeless bodies, which requires respect for local habits, customs and beliefs. Moroccan rescuers do it much better than we do. That’s why we prefer to let them do it. Our job is to search for people who were buried alive, with dogs or material resources. This makes us sad because we know that we could have saved lives in the first 48 hours.
Why didn’t you get permission to play this role?
There are certainly many. I don’t know which is the most plausible. We have certainly paid the price for the Franco-Moroccan dispute. NGOs are often faced with such a situation. Either the country asks for international humanitarian assistance, as was the case in Turkey after the earthquake in February, or we use the diplomatic route by submitting a proposal to the embassy of the country in question, which it may or may not accept. At the same time, we are contacting the French Foreign Ministry to inform them and obtain their general position on the event.
Many others are in the same situation as us. Around a hundred rescue teams offered their help and the Moroccan authorities made their decision. It’s a shame, but we have to accept it.
Do you often face such a situation?
We have sometimes experienced rejections, for example after the 1988 earthquake in Armenia. Yerevan rejected help from NGOs but accepted it from states. Therefore, French civil security was able to send a contingent. The reverse occurred after the Latur earthquake in 1993 In India, the authorities accepted our help, but not that of civil security.
During the May 2003 earthquake in Boumerdès, Algeria, all relief teams present were thanked after three days and asked to leave the country quickly. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika did not want us to witness popular discontent. We are somewhat dependent on the diplomatic situation. Unfortunately we have to accept it.
Do you think your help was necessary in the Morocco case?
We are told that some villages have not yet seen rescue teams. I can’t verify it. The need will probably be met by the teams accepted. As terrible as it is, this earthquake is not as powerful as the one that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey this winter.
Presumably the Moroccan authorities wanted to avoid an aid backlog like the one that occurred during the Al Hoceima earthquake on the night of February 23rd to 24th, 2004.
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If all the teams reporting to the United Nations had been accepted, 3,000 to 3,500 people would have had to travel there overnight, but it is clear that Marrakech airport did not have the capacity to accommodate so many planes so quickly to record. In addition, many trucks would have been needed to transport all these rescuers to the affected villages, which are a three-hour drive from Marrakesh. It is of course very complicated, but I think that the Moroccan authorities could have accepted a little more help from European countries a few hours after the earthquake.
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