Barnes in Common

the magazine of Churches Together in Barnes
March/April 2005

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After the Tsunami

by John Owen-Davies

As traumatised communities in Southeast Asia, India and Sri Lanka grapple with uncertain futures following the devastating Boxing Day earthquake and tsunamis that killed nearly 300,000 people, attention is turning to how cash generated by a massive international response to the disaster can be spent effectively.

In some countries desperate for relief aid there is a growing concern that corruption – a "filtering mechanism" as one Sri Lankan doctor put it recently – will siphon off large amounts of donated cash. But corruption, especially in countries ruled by authoritarian governments, is nothing new in this context.

Elsewhere, a major international aid organisation said some agencies working in tsunami disaster zones did not have the necessary skills. But, on the brighter side, post-tsunami experiences have triggered a long-awaited debate on best ways to disperse aid in future.

There have been reports, some difficult to verify, of malpractice. One from Thailand said that Thai relief aid went much faster to Buddhist villages in the south of the country, where Phuket is situated, than to those mainly inhabited by the country's Moslem minority.

Also in Thailand, one Phuket resident said Christian aid organisations had behaved "less than honourably". In a few cases, Buddhist survivors "complained that some eager members of Western evangelical aid bodies sought to convert them to Christianity, in contravention of accepted rules governing disaster relief work".

But what is not in doubt is the response to appeals for donations. More than $7 billion has been pledged by governments, government agencies, international organisations and individuals to aid and other agencies. Even North Korea has pledged cash for the aid effort, as have some of the world's poorest countries such as Mozambique.

The scale of devastation was vast. What made it different from other such tragedies, including a storm surge in Bangladesh which killed more than 300,000 people in 1970, was so many different countries affected simultaneously, leaving many people facing acute health risks.

Constructing shelter and basic infrastructure, as well as the treatment of physical and psychological damage, are seen as core areas for action. Experts have said that up to nine out of 10 Tsunami survivors are likely to suffer from psychological trauma. For many, the psychological impact will probably be the tsunami's overwhelming legacy.

Relief doctors working in Sri Lanka described one form of severe injury in which the force of water injected particles of often infected sand and debris deeply into tissues opened by lacerations.

"This was almost in some cases a flaying effect. But the worst cases were those in which the overlying tissues remained intact and deep penetration of infection occurred," one doctor said.

Most doctors in the disaster zones said there had been a lack of equipment, especially for orthopaedic surgery. It had been washed away.

In general a feature of the aid industry has been an almost interminable number of conferences dealing with issues ranging from "How Can We Do It Better?" to working alongside armies in war and other danger zones.

Now, it appears, a legacy of the tsunami is likely to be a major rethink on dispersing relief aid. A recent study showed that there had been a growing amount of experience with cash and voucher approaches to distributing aid, rather than providing people with items such as food, shelter and other essentials – the latter is often regarded as short-term "band aid" by many people.

The Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute says arguments favouring cash-based approaches include cost and time effectiveness, giving recipients greater choice and dignity, and providing beneficial knock-on effects for local economies.

The other side of the coin is that giving people cash could create additional risks relating to "insecurity and corruption".

In India, Mihir Bhatt, director of the influential Ahmedabad-based Disaster Mitigation Institute, has called for disaster mitigation to be an integral part of the relief and rehabilitation package. Mitigation is a cornerstone of emergency management.

"Providing immediate relief, even when it is ineffective, slow, unaccountable and expensive, is commonly accepted and widely promoted. But risk mitigation, which would reduce the need for immediate relief, is not on the political agenda," Bhatt said.

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