Patrick Worsnip, PlanetArk 27 Apr 09;
UNITED NATIONS - Distribution of billions of dollars in aid after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami often ignored victims of conflicts raging in Sri Lanka and Indonesia at the time, a report on the lessons of the disaster said on Friday.
The report, commissioned by a consortium of five of the hardest-hit countries -- Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives -- said this was due in part to restrictions by aid donors on how their money could be spent.
The Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami, caused by an undersea earthquake, killed more than 228,000 people and provoked a huge international response, with some $13.5 billion pledged worldwide to fund recovery.
But the 105-page report, "The Tsunami Legacy: Innovations, Breakthroughs and Change," said that in Sri Lanka and Indonesia's Aceh region, both hard hit, there was a need to aid the victims of conflicts as well as those of the tsunami.
"However, most post-tsunami organizations largely ignored the post-conflict context, in part due to donor-stipulated restrictions on how they could use their funds," said the report. This led to local grievances over perceived inequalities in aid provision.
"If conflict sensitivity had been more widespread and funds not restricted to tsunami victims only, building back better could have been more equitable all along," the report said.
The report was presented to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and former US President Bill Clinton, former UN special envoy for tsunami recovery, at a conference at UN headquarters.
Commissioned by the Tsunami Global Lessons Learned project, the report also faulted authorities throughout the tsunami-hit area for other forms of discrimination, because it said the need to deliver aid fast outweighed the need for equity.
"Many tsunami-affected communities were still unable to adequately access assistance immediately after the disaster because of barriers associated with their gender, ethnicity, age, class, religion or occupation," it said.
LITTLE CORRUPTION
The report, however, also found much to praise in the aid operation, including a willingness by governments to delegate the task to local organizations and a determination to combat corruption.
"Despite the influx of billions of dollars in tsunami-affected countries, corruption levels across the board were kept remarkably low," it said.
"Key to this success was a commitment to view corruption, not as a nuisance or unfortunate side effect of the recovery, but as a core threat to the reconstruction effort as a whole."
Since the tsunami, governments and international agencies have set about creating national and regional early-warning systems, with 24 early detection buoys placed in the Indian Ocean.
In addition, 250,000 new permanent houses and more than 100 air and seaports have been built, 3,000 schools constructed and hundreds of hospitals rehabilitated.
Ban and Clinton told the conference lessons from the tsunami were important because the number and intensity of weather-related disasters were increasing.
Experience with the tsunami reinforces the importance of sealing a deal at a Copenhagen climate change conference in December aimed at setting new targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the UN chief said.
(Editing by Xavier Briand)
