Now that the rest of the world is so intensely and sympathetically aware of the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster, along with its consequences for the multiples of thousands who have died and the millions wounded or dispossessed, this week will see vital decisions made about using the great flow of aid effectively.
A conference tomorrow in Indonesia will consider how best to co-ordinate rescue and relief activities and plan ahead. Experience shows these efforts often fail at this level. Aid all too frequently does not reach those who need it most. Public and private, national and international approaches must be combined in this work. There is a genuine opportunity to turn the crisis to long term advantage for the benefit of humanity as a whole.
The Government yesterday decided to send a military and logistical group to assess immediate needs and how best Irish aid can meet them. It approved in principle sending Irish troops for humanitarian relief. There is no need to invoke the "triple lock" mechanism agreed to give legal sanction for using Irish troops in United Nations peacekeeping operations, since this is a humanitarian disaster, not a political or military one. The troops can be used in the most practical ways, to provide transport, logistics, lifting and shifting, and medical and disease control facilities. Training and preparedness for UN and European Union tasks have developed their skills in recent years and they have a real enthusiasm to use them.
The best umbrella organisation to co-ordinate these tasks remains the United Nations, despite its imperfections. Improving its capacity to respond rapidly to natural and human disasters will ensure they are more effectively dealt with in future. Recent changes in UN policy have made it more ready to work with regional organisations such as the EU and ad hoc groups such as the one initiated by the United States, Indonesia, India and Japan in the Indian Ocean relief effort.
Such coalitions are welcome, but should not become, for political reasons, the focus of competition arising from suspicions best resolved elsewhere, such as that between the Bush administration and the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan.
The US has announced an ambitious aid programme for the region with a high profile leadership. It has much to gain from what will be its largest deployment in south Asia since the Vietnam war, notably by improving its profile in the world's most numerous Muslim nation, which has been badly affected by Iraq and Middle East policies. An unseemly row over delivering the relief would undermine such goodwill.
Indonesia and India themselves have large armed forces which should be able to do much of the work required. Indonesians have nevertheless welcomed US naval vessels and helicopters, since only the best equipped forces have such facilities readily available. Indonesia and the Sri Lankan rebel provinces have been most affected by the disaster. Relieving them is a crucial test of humanitarian effectiveness in this crisis.