Talk:Humanitarian response to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake

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Macedonia

The Macedonian government, organizations, and private donors delivered aid to the affected countries worth more than € 1.5 million. [1] Why is it not in the list? --Bonina 15:36, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done --Selket ^Talk 15:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

These figures are outdated

They should be updated with the real donations, not simply pledges of January, which are meaningless. France has donated 155.5M USD and 322M in private donations for example according to Reuters. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L23033234.htm

Russia

Some quotes from [2]

Russia, which was among the first countries to airlift supplies and medical personnel to Asian countries devastated by the tsunami, is contributing $2 million to the global relief effort.

President Vladimir Putin said the same day that the amount of aid is not necessarily as important as how quickly it is delivered -- in a reference to the fact that Russia was the first country to fly aid and medical personnel to Sri Lanka.

Moscow, meanwhile, has been working around the clock with its relief effort. Two military cargo planes, Il-76 and An-124 jets, returned to Moscow on Monday after delivering almost 100 tons of aid to Indonesia and Thailand. But the relatively small amount of Russia's contribution is drawing criticism from some Western politicians. "A country like Russia, which derives enormous profits from high oil and gas prices, cannot stand aside," senior German lawmaker Gernot Erler told the Berliner Zeitung daily, The Associated Press reported.

Misc

Why has the "Permille of GNP" and "Total" been removed in "Contributing countries and supra-national organizations" ? It is a good column - someone please revert it.

Why has the order of the table in the section "Contributing countries and supra-national organizations" changed from amount of donation to alphabetical order? The first order made more sense. -- Joolz

why not change it in the order of "Permille of GNP"?

Splitting this from the main article 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, was a practical measure needed to cope with the rapid rate of editing a very large article in the face of multiple edits per minute (with occasional vandalism sprees and reversions all happening simultaneously with legitimte new edits).

The split was done in accordance with a vote at Talk:2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, and was supported by a number of people who had previously opposed such a split in an earlier vote.

Please do not unsplit (at least not for the time being) without a vote at the parent page talk page. If you are an admin, please help promptly block any vandals of this and the parent page. -- Curps 08:24, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The table "Main Contributors" is misleading, innaccurate and unneccessary.Because of this it is potentially offensive. Australia and Sweden have both promised more aid than many of the countries listed in this table. I suggest removing the table or updating it.

The Commonwealth has also set up a relief scheme. This should be noted as five of the top seven most affected are members of this organisation. -- jal2

Canada has revised its donation figure to CAD$40 million: http://www.canada.com/national/story.html?id=851d29d3-acae-473f-9b5a-7ced646b4ae8 and as of 02 Jan 2005 has further increased its contribution to $CAN80 Million and will deploy its DART team to Ampara in Sri Lanka: http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/01/02/martin-meeting050102.html

Sweden has increased its donation figure to SEK 500 million: http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/4823/a/36245 (press message in swedish from the department of foreign affairs) -- coma28

Just to point out that my decision was not accidental. First I created separate section for Russia because it's situated partly in Europe and partly in Asia. After that someone moved it to Europe, I think it's OK too. Cmapm 12:59, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Is the aid provided by countries a loan or a grant (would it have to be paid back)? Mir 22:36, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Aid is given in a bunch of different ways: no-strings-attached aid, low interest loans, no interest loans, forgiveness of foreign debt, supplies, money for reconstruction that must be spent hiring companies from the country that gave the money, etc. It's important to specify the terms of the aid. BanyanTree 20:03, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There really ought to be a column giving the magnatude of the contribution of each country per capita. kgaughan 15:25, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

personal donation?

Should significant individual's donations be listed here? I heard on CNN News that Li Ka Shing from Hong Kong has donated $3M for the relief fund. I assume CNN uses USD as monetary unit. Such personal donation is more than the government of China donated. It seems wrong to not list them. See [3] for the news release. Kowloonese 10:52, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)

Would adding a line in the China box be sufficient? That would be one way to recognize very large donations, and keep the table from becoming incredibly long(er). BanyanTree 11:03, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Why not split the table into two - Nations/Countries and Organisations/Individuals? It's already getting a bit confusing having countries and charities in one list...--Beeglebug 16:07, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I also think it should be split into Asia, Australasia, Africa, Americas lists, to prevent the page to be too long. --Brandnewbrain 16:12, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If we're acknowledging single individuals giving large sums, why not large groups of individuals giving small sums? For example: As of right now, nearly US$2,500,000 has been donated to the American Red Cross through Amazon.com. [4] --Theodore Kloba 21:14, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)

I think both are worth acknowledging, but significant individual donations seems like a different catagory. There is already a table on Donations for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake with a link to the Amazon.com page. A column could be added with donation information if people thought it is critical information at this stage (although organizations are likely too busy trying to collect money/distribute aid to keep updating the world on the amounts). Personally I think it would be more relavent number once the crisis has passed.

I do think it is a good idea to break the list so the organizations and the countries are in different lists. They do all seem to run together at the moment. --Ahc 21:25, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Definitely the details of collected contributions could wait until after the crisis has passed.--Theodore Kloba 21:29, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)

Corporate Donations

The Wiki article noted that Amazon has donated $4 million. This is incorrect. Amazon is just offering people a virtual donation box. I haven't been able to find any evidence that Amazon has made a donation. The Amazon donations should be considered personal donations. Moreover, in comparison to the efforts of other corporations, Amazon probably does not deserve such prominent recognition, if corporations are to be recognized for their donations. An article in Bloomberg ([5]) shows other corporations are actually expending money to support the relief effort. Companies actually making cash or in-kind donations include Starbucks, Kimberly-Clark, FedEx, Coke, Pfizer, Citigroup, Abbott Laboratories, Cisco (some from employees), Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Wells Fargo, Computer Associates, First Data, and Symbol Technologies. In sharp contrast, Amazon, Yahoo, MSN, Google, and AOL just put links to donation boxes, which might be considered a donation of advertising. --Westendgirl 17:27, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Amazon.com's donation is not in cash or merely advertising but in services: They are not charging any fees to The American Red Cross for processing all those credit card transactions. The redcross.org servers would probably have choked on that volume of donations in such a short time.--Theodore Kloba 19:11, 2004 Dec 30 (UTC)

Yes, but this comes down to a virtual donation box and bandwidth. Their donation should be explained in those terms, as opposed to $5 million. For example, if they have a 1% transaction cost per $1 of donations, then Amazon has made an in-kind donation worth $50,000, not $5 million.--Westendgirl 23:13, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The figures in the "Contributing Corporations" board are expressed in U.S. dollars, right? This should be made clearer. We cannot take for granted that a "$" in front of a figure means it's US currency, since "$" is a recognized symbol for money (any money). Ideally, there should also be a link to the U.S. dollar article, like I've done in this comment. Although an automatic association between "$" and US money might look obvious for people in the U.S. and maybe understandable for some, it is not that obvious for many, many others. Regards, Redux 02:00, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree that the figures should be expressed in a standard currency and identified as such. Can anyone cross-reference the figures? Most of them aren't footnoted, so it's hard to tell what the amounts are or where the info came from. I cited a Bloomberg article in this "Talk" page, but I don't know if that's what the main article uses.--Westendgirl 07:32, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Portugal

Hi there,

In Portugal the government also sent some financial help, do you have any official figures? best regards.

I've done a quick research, but so far have been unable to find out anything other than that Portugal has set up an account to receive donations from the people who want to contribute with the Portuguese Red Cross. It is usually easier for a Portuguese native to find out such information and add it to the website. First, there's the issue of the language: most of the people here do not speak Portuguese and thus can't read the online newspapers from Portugal that might contain the information. Second, even if someone not from Portugal who speaks Portuguese decides to reseach, there's the issue of knowing where to look. I am ashamed to admit I don't know any of the Portuguese leading newspapers, so even though I speak the language, it's tougher for me to look for it. Regards, Redux 02:11, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Portuguese figures added

CNN has reported Portuguese figures on aid relief at http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/12/30/tsunami.spain/

Macau

Is Macau's figure included in Portugal? There are two reported deaths and three missings from Macau, who hold Portuguese passport to travel, according to news.tom.com.

Bangladesh Donation

Is Bangladesh Donation being mentioned? http://www.thedailystar.net/2004/12/30/d41230011010.htm

Regarding American logistical contribution

I saw a photo of a U.S. C-5 Galaxy ferrying relief vehicles into the destruction zone, but I don't know where or when this occurred. That implies a significantly larger airlift contribution than the listed contribution of 10 × C-130 Hercules transports. Anyone know anything further? —Joseph/N328KF (Talk) 01:21, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

Located. They're operating out of Travis Air Force Base into Thailand. This is probably a minimum.[6][7] —Joseph/N328KF (Talk) 01:28, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

Tallies for non-Currency Contributions

Should the contributions be tallied on liquid funds or broken down on combined tallies of everything contributed. I ask because Canada's debt moratorium would raise Canada to the top of the list, and forthcoming potential debt moratoriums (as from the EU) could likewise do the same for other contributor countries. I stress this because according to several ministers from affected countries, this is one of their preferred methods of relief. Also, similar to the drug company donations of drugs of a monetary value (such as the $25M USD contribution) should all donations be tallied to include known materiel? (such as the above C-5 Galaxy question, or fuel and other such things) -Professor Ninja

How do we account for a debt moratorium? Indonesia may owe Canada >$500 million, but does the moratorium only mean an interest-free grace period during which no payments are due? Certainly, interest is huge, but I wonder how we account for it. I live in Canada, but haven't seen the moratorium quantified in news articles.--Westendgirl 21:40, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My understanding is, it is an indefinite suspension of debt, as well as interest accrual, for "the foreseeable future", meaning that indebted countries have their coffers freed to act on the efforts themselves, without concern to long-term effects to the economy - which is why they enjoy this form of debt relief, as reaching into debt money can ruin their credit rating, and ergo their economy. Giving somebody a debt relief of a straight $1M donation versus a moratorium on $1M debt can mean the difference between a $1M-worth of recovery and a stagnant, crippled economy as opposed to a $1M-worth of recovery and an economy that can bounce back. With Canada's moratorium, as well as pending Euro countries' moratoriums, and a possible one from the U.S., it might raise the total relief considerably. Canada's relatively minor status as an international creditor shows just how -- the total amount of Canada's contribution of government, private (individual and NGO) and debt cancellation is about $1,068,870,000.00CAD (or $890,167,659.89USD / €657,113,542.93). How much would it affect other country's contributions is well worth considering, as well. --Professor Ninja 00:00, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I found a Globe & Mail article [8] that indicates the individual and total amount of debt ($1B) covered by the moratorium. The Globe says this means Canada is essentially contributing CAD $30-$40M annually, not including actual payments on the debt. I'm not sure how long the amortization on the loans is, but Canada is freeing up considerable cash for many of the tsunami countries. However, a CNN article says that some of the countries haven't been making payments for a few years anyway -- although I don't think Myanmar (Burma) is conforming to any international demands these days.[9] --Westendgirl 03:41, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Indeed. I think the explanation is that it is $40M of our own money annually to repay our own economy the cancelled debt, not equivalent to us giving $40M each year to these countries so-affected. "This totals close to $1-billion. Most of the debt is earning interest at 3 per cent or 4 per cent a year, which will be forgiven during the moratorium at a cost to Canada of $30-million to $40-million annually." [10] I think we should definitely include these moratoriums and other forms of aid in the table (perhaps seperated into cells indicating total, immediate or monetary, and other. Professor Ninja 15:52, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I updated the Canadian contribution to CAD 164.2m. This includes $80m from the feds, $17.9m from the provinces, a debt moratorium worth $30m+ (I only included one year), plus matching the current level of private donations from Canadians (currently $36.3m). I also updated the NGO/private/business contributions. As noted, I only included $30m for one year of debt moratorium. Is there a better way to quantify this? I am not sure what the future value of the moratorium will be. --Westendgirl 07:21, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Right, I was going to say, the contribution matching is good, but should we wait till the call-up date? (Is it the 15th or the 11th? I can't remember). Also, quantififying the moratorium may best be done in toto, accompanied by a footnote explaining how much of the total relief is from the moratorium at the bottom of the section or page. Similarly, other countries' should be looked at by somebody.Professor Ninja 16:04, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I updated the Canadian figures to include the matching. (CIDA says $200M qualifies for matching -- see footnote in article.) It would be good if someone could check my GNP and GDP calculations. Also, there is still no valuation for the debt moratorium -- has anyone got details? --Westendgirl 22:05, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This would affect also Italy's figure. The $95m is the total sum indicated by our FM, but many newspapers haven't yet understood if debts moratorium is included or not, leading to the situation where some - even this page until recently - still report the initial $3.9m, and some others what has been declared by the minister. --Balubino 17:14, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Nias (Indonesia) and other islands ignored?

Visitors to Nias Island.com alledges that Nias is not getting enough relief attention (here and here). Most Indonesian relief (understandably) goes to Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (Aceh), since apparently that's where most of the deaths are. Perhaps other small islands and areas in Northern Sumatra are getting the same treatment (or lack of treatment). Can anyone else find any other source for confirmation? And if so write in the proper paragraph into the Indonesia section? And perhaps this more appropriately belongs in Wikinews (here or here)?
--Lemi4 15:22, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Charity cricket match?

I think the ICC XI / Asia XI cricket match should be mentioned somewhere, since cricket is a major sport in India and Sri Lanka and the match itself is expected to generate millions of dollars for aid. Thoughts? --Plattopus 17:57, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps the total money raised by the game should been included, after it takes place. Until then, it should be mentioned on the 'how to donate', with detail on how to purchase tickets.--Cyberjunkie 11:16, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Proposition

The article is becoming unnecessarily large. I move to remove the "Contributions of Individuals and Philthropists" table from the page. It is not particulary insightful information, and could be easily integrated with appropriate sections - if necessary. The donations of a select few members of the public are no more important than the donations of the rest, and as such, should be included in 'total private donations'. --Cyberjunkie 16:21, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yea?

--Cyberjunkie 16:21, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Nay?

--I think we should revisit this later. Right now, some of the individual contributions are higher than those of certain countries or NGOs. Perhaps we could set a minimum contribution for recognition of an individual, though. --Westendgirl 19:06, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
--As the section is right now, I don't see the need to remove any of the contributors. They have all donated significant sums of money and/or were featured in newsarticles, so they are all worty of inclusion. saturnight 19:18, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

Country Totals

Government and NGO donations should be footnoted. Although I'm able to find news stories in Google for speculations about Germany's donation, I haven't been able to find them for other countries, such as Australia. Also, if countries are using debt moratorium to provide relief, we need to find a way to value this. --Westendgirl 06:39, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Where on the page are Government and NGO donations being confused?--Cyberjunkie 11:12, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

They're not being confused. I meant that, as separate items, they should be footnoted. Otherwise, no one can check the figures. --Westendgirl 18:30, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Amounts as % of GDP vs.US ?

Is this section entirely necessary? It is reducing the international reflief effort for an overwhelming tragedy to a competition with the United States. The only purpose (that I can see) of this section is to highlight the US's supposed lack of assistance. Or perhaps I'm being blind - is it just representative of the supremacy of their economy? Anyone else hold concerns?--Cyberjunkie 16:09, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about it, some of those donations per GDP make alot of countries look bad. I think it's to assuage people that these poorer or developing nations are "cheap" and a way to remind people that relatively speaking, they're giving quite a bit. I think in the still-strong post 9/11 hysteria people are going to be utterly convinced that Muslim nations are giving to look good instead of to be humanitarian and it may be beneficial to show that they're not giving a token "celebrity sum." Professor Ninja 17:34, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think the list itself is okay. But the hidden agenda behind what are chosen to be listed is not. If these agenda are spelled out explicitly in the section before the table, they will be blown away on NPOV ground. I can see the list to be used for the following purposes.

1. highlight the countries/people who gave more than their fair share as an appreciation regardless of the insignificant absolute amount.

2. compare the world leaders against other small fish.

3. highlight how Muslim countries are helping muslim people. Indonesia is largely a muslim country, i.e. a great majority of people needing help are muslims.

So if these are the goals, then the listing criteria should be explicit in the article. Restrict the list to the top 5 GNP%, the top 5 world leading countries, the top 5 muslim countries. Incuding all countries seem to be redundent to the other tables. Kowloonese 22:07, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

I'm a little suspicious of the motivation behind the table, and I don't think reducing this to a spitting contest is appropriate (somewhat mitigated now by removing the specific reference to the USA). But I'm more concerned about comparing Jan 2005 donated dollars against 2003 or 2002 GDP dollars. Note the performance of the USD against (for example) the AUD, the NOK, or the EUR. Is this a fair comparison? Sluj 22:49, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I vote to remove it. violet/riga (t) 22:57, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Remove. Wow, the "does not include military costs" disclaimer on top is ridiculous. They should certainly be included if you're looking at government contributions. And if you're going to include a "per capita" figure then you should include individual and corporate contributions, which would make the US look a lot better. Add in the various gifts in kind (such as food and medical supplies), low to no interest lines of credits, debt forgiveness, openness to immigration and ease and amount of remittances to affected countries by family members, etc etc and that list looks almost misleading. Some sort of section analyzing comparative contributions would be interesting, but this section is a horse race. BanyanTree 23:33, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Having done a fair amount of work to tidy up the table, cite the GDPs, and calculate the numbers correctly (there were some major errors), I'm loath to see it go. I've no idea what the original criteria were for choosing the original countries - I've simply added the 'most generous' in per GDP terms, plus India (which is providing aid to Sri Lanka and the Maldives), and Singapore. I didn't do all the countries due to lack of time (I'm not the fastest editor in the world). I think the table provides a useful comparator function, which many people will be working out for themselves if it were not there. Why the original table creator chose GDP instead of GNP as in the main table in the article is anyone's guess. I used the citeable GDP statistics as a convenient reference - if there is a better source of more up to date stats elsewhere, feel free to modify, with citation. If I were designing a comparator table from scratch I'd either (a) add a column to the article main tables or (b) list the 10 most generous (in GDP/GNP terms) donors + the top 10 GDP/GNP countries in the world to avoid a assumption being made that a muslim/non-muslim or rest-of-world vs. USA point was being made. The hard bit is quantifying what counts as aid, the soft loans package from Australia being a case in point, as is whether to count in the cost of the use of various nations' military resources - some argue the military would have to be paid for anyway, and this is an excellent training exercise and test of logistics. Anyway - be bold. If someone deletes it, I won't revert it back, but I wouldn't vote for it's deletion. 195.10.16.71 23:35, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the time and effort you've put into this. I can see the idea behind it and it certainly has merit but I think that the GDP is not a particularly good indicator of the amount of money a country has available to donate to such tragic events. At least, I think the main perception will be that it's seen as a competition and that governments of countries with a poor percentage are obviously not nice enough to offer the support they ought. violet/riga (t) 23:41, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Rather than a table, which implies an authority that is simply lacking on such an ambiguous issue, would it be possible to make a paragraph that mentions some numbers while discussing the difficulty of interpreting the numbers? That is something that is certainly lacking from the number competition that CNN is reporting. BanyanTree 00:38, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I like to read tables more than paragraphs. But I support the idea of adding a paragraph to explain what the table is about. Even though religions has nothing to do with natural disasters. But religion does play a role in generosity. Don't you think Buddhists are usually more generous in giving? Kowloonese 01:38, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

Not to be picky, but I think debt moratorium values should be included, where reasonable estimates are available -- perhaps for one year. The lost interest can be valued, even if the opportunity cost of deferred payments cannot. For example, there was a citation for the estimate used for Canada, but it's gone now and the figure has not been included in recent recalculations. Other countries may be in similar situations.--Westendgirl 07:39, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thankyou to the wikipedeans who turned this originally concerning table into something useful and informative. As it was, the table only served to distract from the genuine information so far contributed, and the motives behind the creation of the table (in its first form) are suspicious and still concern me.--Cyberjunkie 15:01, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Please stop being so paranoid - if you don't think GDP is the best way to measure contributions, add more tables but DON'T delete this one. I added a 'per capita' table before reading this discussion, just because I think they're easier numbers for the public to understand. I'm also adding additional 'disclaimers'. 6 Jan 2005

Frankly I think the list is completely useless as a measurement of the "generousity" of the listed countries. To make it useful a column showing the previous years international aid for each country should be listed. Adding that number in would keep it from being a "spitting contest" and more of an accurate representation of a country's "generousity." Most of those numbers can be reached @ http://www.oecd.org. Only with those numbers in place and perhaps even the Financial Aid intake numbers per country will the list serve to create a valid measurement from which an educated understanding of a country's "generousity" can be derived. There should also be research and findings about previous moments of international aid for disasters etc. much has been made in the international press about countries pledging but not producing aid in the past... those numbers would also server a representative purpose at this point. - 9 Jan 2005

regarding the table of contributions, US is listed as 950 mill, as opposed to the oft quoted 350 mill figure. The reference points to an article ref #83, [11] but this article doesn't say that an extra 600 million has been approved, it says it is in congress. Does anyone know if this was approved? Looking on govtrack, have found the following items that could relate to this: [12] [13] Could someone who knows something about congress have a look at these? the first bill hasn't been voted on, and looks like it was introduced after the bbc news article anyway, and the second one which has been approved seems to specifically allow the funds to be re-allocated to the war in iraq if necessary, but (please don't flame me) i don't speak legalese, so if someone who does could check this out, great.

Opportunity cost of the US military assets deployed to aid victims

The real way to value the US military contribution is to consider the opportunity costs, what the naval and air power could be doing during the time it is saving thousands of lives in the hardest hit areas that no amount of other aid could save. An example of the valuable alternative activity would be capturing oil reserves from weak oil producing nations, and is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Note, that a foreign policy focused on oil would just capture those oil reserves in sparsely populated and poorly defended areas such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and not bother with liberating the people, stablizing their societies, engaging in risky urban operations or even protecting any of their oil infrastructure not necessary for export. The invaluable US contribution, enabled by decades of sacrifice and investment, should be valued at a significant percentage of the world GDP, and at whatever those lives are worth that nobody else is positioned to save.--Silverback 13:27, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I fully agree that the USA's militery contribution is hugh. It is simply invaluable. Without the USA logistical support during this crisis, little of the aid of other countries could reach much of the affected areas - and of course the US could be using its militery in other areas - yes there is an opertunity cost - but the US militery contribution is already documented in the section on the USA -it does not warrent a valuation (particularly in the table of donors). The table of donors is about financial aid - not militery aid, if that were so many many other countries would be entitled to a revaluation of there aid (such as Russia) and that could cause a huge amount of controversy and argument. There is no way that a slice of world GDP could be added to the US figure - it would be an incrediable mistake. CGorman 16:10, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

For the rich nations to be called stingy, whatever they give, neglects the hard work they did to become rich, especially a country like the United States which did not plunder a colonial empire for its wealth and whose trade is in a large part responsible for the wealth of Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand and India which have enabled them to contribute or weather the disaster better than their poorer neighbors. Evidently the UN has more respect for the "sovereignty" of dictators than that of free democracies to give what they will or not out of charity. If poor nations want the rich to give more, they should throw off their corrupt governments and do the necessary work to become rich themselves.--Silverback 06:28, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You might want to review the histories of American native peoples, Texas, Hawaii, Peurto Rico, Guam, The Phillipines, Samoa, the Virgin Islands, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Northern Mariana Islands and Palau. You might also weigh containment policies, the Marshall Plan, and American neocolonialism in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East (some very recent examples there).

Unsigned one, all these except the phillipines are part of the territory of the United States. Those that just have territory status are not sources of wealth for the United states, but instead retain their relationship with the US for their own economic benefit, whether it is lower trade barriers or the benefit to the economy of military bases. --Silverback 13:58, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Good job

I just wanted to congratulate you all on this article. Everytime I come back to it, it gets better and better. Today I came back and was too impressed by it to say nothing. It was an actual palpable feeling, I was very impressed. I just want to let you know that it's really appreciated. --Clngre 15:50, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Percentage / permille

Should the percentage or permille figures be splited with separate figures for donations government and donations from the public? -- 202.61.117.189 18:59, January 6, 2005, UTC.

Per head

Should there be a figure showing how much the public has donated per head (population)? -- 202.61.117.189 19:01, January 6, 2005, UTC.

That would be 'per capita' and I added the table (using the same aid contribution figures as in the GNP table) before reading this. Great minds think alike. :-) I do think it gives a clearer picture for the general public to get their mind around. Do double-check the calculations. Jan 6.

The Taiwan issue

It is a convention on Wikipedia to refer to the political entity that currently control the islands of Taiwan, Pescadores, Quemoy, Matsu, Pratas, etc. by "Republic of China" instead of "Taiwan". In fact the Taiwan article on wikipedia refers to the island, and the Republic of China article refers to the government / political entity. -- 202.61.117.189 19:07, January 6, 2005, UTC.

Total monetary commitment

Is there a reason the pledged donations had not been totaled? I know it was before, is it a currency conversion issue? If so, put it in Euros, USD, british pounds, etc. It is better to have too much information than not enough.

Good job overall though. You guys are up to the second with updates.

Exchange rates?

UK section: £100M (USD 145M) Yet some people say [14] that the exchange rate is £1 = $1.8. Are we using some special exchange rate, or was one of those numbers edited without changing the other? Ojw 21:01, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)\

The dollar has strenghten significantly in the last few days (particularly against the euro) so older figures have greater value compared to newly added ones. I'll update all the converted figures in the totals table now. Unfortunately this task will have to be done again if the rate changes significantly again :(. CGorman 13:25, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'll put a note saying something like exchange rates as of Saturday 8/1/05, $1 = €0.766, £0.534.... etc. For your info, im using xe.com's fantastic calculator. CGorman 13:29, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have been using the International Currency Converter, which updates exchange rates frequently, and consider it to be fairly authoritive. Perhaps we should designate a particular currency converter service to be used for the sake of consistency. Cyberjunkie 15:37, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well xe.com, iccfx.com, and x-rates will all produce the same figures, the problem is to convert all figures at the same rate/time - at present fridays (7/1/05) closing figures are in use. Perhaps for the next few weeks we should update the figures every Friday (or Saturday/Sunday) and only use those figures for the rest of the week (e.g. if someone adds a new figure for France on Wednesday they should use last fridays closing figure to calculate the USD amount) this would ensure 100% consistancy and accuracy. The rates are posted at the top of the list of major donors. CGorman 15:54, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I added public donations from Japan and did the currency conversion with "105 yen = 1 USD" to get slightly over 80 million USD. This figure is from adding together major organizations collecting donations listed at Japanese Wikipedia, so it should be fairly complete. If anyone wants the exact number in yen, I would provide it here (Why did I trash the memo before writing here :( ) Revth 05:18, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Stingy Misinterpretation

Regarding the line:

"On December 27, UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland reportedly categorized the response of rich countries to the disaster as "stingy" [4] (http://washingtontimes.com/national/20041228-122330-7268r.htm), but later claimed to have been "misinterpreted" [5] (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/international/worldspecial4/29aid.html).

Unfortunately he continues to be misinterpreted *here*. . . He was not referring to "stingy" in regard to *this* response, but in general *prior* to this event.

The Average

I'm removing the Average from both tables, because it's only averaging the totals from the top donors, not all donors. Missing from the list of donors are such countries as Turkey, Iran, South Korea, Luxembourg, Monaco, Nepal, Estonia and several others. The reason they are missing is because they are not major donors, as the first table indicates. Just adding the totals from the few countries that I listed would adjust the average completely in both tables. Also, you cannot do an average without including such countries as North Korea that has given no money at all. This would additionally change the average and would drop it lower than where it's at, even if we include the all the countries that have donated money. For this reason, I'm removing the Average line from both tables.Lokifer 21:26, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Table formatting

I've just tested vertically aligning the titles of countries in the left cells of the tables, and it makes the tables look more presentable. I see it's not currently possible to use colgroups and col tags within a wikified table, and that using the vertical-align attribute in the style tags, even with !important, does not affect the presentation. We could put valign="top" in each td in the left columns. –– Constafrequent ^{(talk page)} 05:47, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Unless there are objections to my suggestion, I will go ahead and make the change after 05:47, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC). –– Constafrequent ^{(talk page)} 15:10, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Done. I put valign="top" in the appropriate table cells. –– Constafrequent ^{(talk page)} 08:15, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Split

This article is now in excess of 91kb - in what way might we look to split it? One article for countries and one for other organisation/events? violet/riga (t) 12:19, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm not usually in favour of splitting articles, but this might be appropriate. Or, at the risk of sounding deletionist, how about removing the "contributing corporations" table, and incorporating their donantions into countries private donations. I really don't see much point for this table, other than to better the perception of some companies, which is not the aim of Wikipedia. The "contributing NGO's" section could probably be shortened and made succinct, and thus, not need to be moved.--Cyberjunkie 03:04, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

How about changing "contributing NGO's" to a list of participating NGO's, with a combined total of their donations.--Cyberjunkie 03:08, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No need for a split, the page is well organized and easy to scan and find information of interest, it carries its 91kb well.--Silverback 11:49, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Humanitarian Situation

Whoever indicated in the Humanitarian Situation that there have been no deaths confirmed from disease is incorrect. As a physician in the tsunami-affected portions of northern Sumatra, I myself had a patient die from a tetanus infection as a result of tsunami-related wounds. We were unfortunately unable to get her to a hospital fast enough. I find it hard to believe that somehow I managed to find the only fatality in the region from disease. --JS in DC

Australia

I noticed previously the Australian per capita of GDP entries just had ? marks, probably to make sure we weren't the leader, well the fact is, Australia was the leader in the relief effort, and I have added the per capita's which has put us in a clear lead, which is how it should be.

Please, in matters as tragic as this, it is grossly inappropriate to be competitive or arrogant. Though, yes, Australia is, per capita, the leading donor, hubris is un-necessary. When I last updated the amount donated by Australia, I didn’t have the figures (or confidence in my own mathematical abilities to calculate them) to update the per capita statistics. Thankyou for doing so.--Cyberjunkie 09:12, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

past tense

all of this article needs to be put into past tense --86.136.97.132 18:33, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Totaly ?

Totaly, how many US$ were sent to the area (as donation only), and to how many people ? Yug (talk) 11:14, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What has the world become?

Why has the donor business turned into a competition? Every country did their part to help the victims of the tsunami. Now the bureaucratic/technocratic consumerists of the web and the modern world are turning compassion into competiton? Why? 124.177.67.87 05:25, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to note...

What about all of the websites of those filthy, jerks, those stupid, evil, cruel scammers...Sorry, I want to cuss out loud here since I despise jerks...anyway, there were a lot of websites set up online as "donations to tsunami" and those filthy scammers stole money from the people who could really use that money(ahem, to live maybe?). What about that occurence? shoudln't that be mentioned(sorry, can't control grammar around the thought of jekrs). --Heero Kirashami 01:47, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

DumZiBoT and deadlinks

I was wondering why DumZiBoT was taking so long to process that page. Now that I see how many references there are, I understand better. However, most of the references that are now untitled are 404 - Page not found. I believe that there is a lot of cleaning to do: A reference with a dead link is useless. NicDumZ ~ 21:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delivered Donations

Does anyone have information on the actual amount of aid that was delivered. The criticism section is full of vague concerns, but I would imagine that there should at least be some sort of tentative conclusion by this point.Ricree101 (talk) 16:35, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

about the list of donor,Permille of GNP

AFAI,in 2004 the GNP of Japan and Germany are generally the same,and the two counties contributed about 500m-600m USD.But the Permille of GNP of the two are largely differentiated from 0.27(G),0.115(J) .I just wonder how these figures are calculated.--Ksyrie(Talkie talkie) 00:24, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Currencies

Why is every stated currency followed by the equivalent American currency exchange rate? Either these must be removed or the exchange rates of other countries must be added, to offset American-centric bias. NorthernThunder (talk) 09:43, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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