People first
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COMMENTS 
The response to the Indian Ocean tsunami has been unprecedented. But how relevant has it been to the affected communities?
The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004 has been described as the worst disaster in recent times, 'unprecedented' in its dimensions. The response it evoked has been 'unprecedented' too. One year on, while humanitarian agencies and the world's media take stock of the response initiatives -- billions of dollars in monetary terms besides the generosity and sense of responsibility shown by the richer parts of the world -- we need to ask to what extent humanitarian efforts have addressed the real needs of the people.
While the tsunami destroyed the lives, livelihoods and environments of some of the poorest and/or most marginal people in the world, the response, though quick, generous and efficient, tended to be largely selective. It had little connection to the lives of the tsunami-affected.
For one, there has been only limited recognition of local capacities and initiatives, political and socio-economic realities and the need for long-term vulnerability reduction and development needs. In many cases, even humanitarian agencies that swear by the Humanitarian Code of Conduct and Sphere standards seem to have put the book back in their international headquarters before venturing out into the field.
There have been exceptions, of course. The traditional shelters promoted by Oxfam in Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu, India, fire-proof, spacious thatched huts of the Construction Workers' Union -- sponsored by ActionAid -- in Nagapattinam, coordination and resource pooling efforts promoted by Cordaid in Kanyakumari and Pulicat, a rights-based approach promoted by a whole spectrum of INGOs in Tamil Nadu, and some imaginative livelihood regeneration measures.
But the general hazy picture is best symbolised by the Kargil Nagar camp of 1,600-plus unlivable temporary shelters outside Chennai in Thiruvallur district. The families that lived in Kargil Nagar have been relocated to yet another unfinished cluster a few kilometres away without proper sanitation. This new cluster got flooded in the recent rains and over 500 families were shifted again to their relatives' homes or tents. This is literally a floating population -- displaced by the tsunami, spending two months on the street-side near Marina beach, spending the summer in oven-like box shelters, living in tents again after the fire and then in unfinished homes and then tents again.
Building on local strengths
It is evident that wherever local initiatives are encouraged the results are promising. A close reading of relief phase surveys in India and Sri Lanka indicates that people tend to be happier and more satisfied with relief efforts when local authorities and agencies take responsibility for work, rather than operations run by expatriates. Specialised operations do need highly trained humanitarian professionals, but they can at best complement, not replace, local systems of coping with disasters. What is needed is a systematic training of local personnel.
Even in the rescue stage it is the local communities that act first and most effectively, even if in an untrained, ad hoc manner. For instance, after the Bam earthquake in Iran on December 26,
2003, 34 search and rescue teams from 27 countries flew in and saved 22 lives. Iranian Red Crescent volunteers rescued 157 people alive from the rubble.
The problem with the current operations is that while humanitarian agency teams move on, no local system is put in place to continue their good work. Disaster response becomes a one-time affair with little impact at the last mile where it matters most.
People and politics
The different responses to the unprecedented impact of this massive disaster in a set of countries with distinct social, economic and political realities have posed a major challenge to the humanitarian community. No humanitarian effort, whether amateur or professional, local or international, can escape local realities. But there has been little effort to understand these complexities while planning recovery and rehabilitation measures across the tsunami-affected places. Humanitarian experts were paradropped, and those living and working in the community with all its complexities had little say in the scheme of things.
"(B)etween the natural disaster and pre-existing complex humanitarian emergencies, many tsunami survivors have had to negotiate a range of constraints," argues Oxford University researcher Eva-Lotta Hedman. While Hedman gives the examples of the counter-insurgency campaign in Thailand, and denial of the rights of Burmese migrant workers, closer home dalits, tribal people and migrant fisherpeople were often discriminated against in aid operations, worsening their marginal status. Worse, certain humanitarian agencies with their sectarian agendas -- read Catholic, high-caste Hindu or even exclusively dalit -- fuelled the problem. Often on the coast it became a competition amongst several marginal groups for finite resources.
Humanitarian agencies often failed to show the moral courage to take a strong pro-people stand in the above divisive circumstances. It often became a question of access v/s principles.
Reducing vulnerabilities
The tsunami has exposed the risk of hazards for hundreds of thousands of people living in coastal Asia -- some of the most densely-populated places in the world. They have been living with disasters before and after the tsunami. Storms, sea erosion, accidents, fires, epidemics, malnutrition and drowning have been frequent features in many coastal communities of South Asia.
Communities here have taken accidents, risk, and periodic damage to their houses as part of their lives. Any rehabilitation effort should cut down these vulnerabilities of the coastal -- not only fishing -- communities. Vulnerabilities can be of different kinds -- social, political, economic, environmental, psychological. Disaster response cannot work in watertight compartments of relief, rehabilitation, and development work, but in an overarching framework aimed at vulnerability reduction, dovetailing elements of disaster preparedness and response with the long-term development process of affected communities.
The socio-economic realities of the coast, especially fishing communities, are ignored by the inland people who dominate policymaking, humanitarian and academic circles. Firstly, fisherfolk live facing the sea, turning their backs on cities and towns, sticking to their own norms and customs. This distinctive nature of fishing communities was often ignored by agencies that rushed in 'alternative' livelihood options. It is not that fisherfolk do not diversify into other trades -- but it is a slow, complex process. Ideally, interventions should make the lives of fisherpeople more safe and secure. The answer is not necessarily more boats as is widely perceived, but safer boats. Not more fishing, but better markets for fish.
Another aspect that should require careful attention is the right of fisherpeople over the sea and coast. Commercial interests such as intensive aquaculture farms and hotels and resorts have been trying hard to grab prime coastal areas. At the same time governments in Thailand, India and Sri Lanka have been trying to evict fisherpeople -- sometimes forcibly -- from the coasts, citing environmental and safety reasons, but people are still not convinced about the genuine nature of such actions.
In this context it is imperative that rehabilitation activities along coasts should take into account the larger realities there. The stress should be on identifying the multiple hazards -- including commercial onslaught hastened by globalisation -- and reducing the vulnerabilities of people exposed to them. That would mean a shift of emphasis from overselling boats, nets and houses to making boats, nets and houses safer to handle and secure in the hands of those who use them. There should be stress on community infrastructure and disaster warning and dissemination systems. Otherwise mega-doses of aid will only contribute to duplication and wastage of resources and some element of dependency in people who receive it. The positive impacts will be ephemeral.
Following a disaster, aid should be used to prevent vulnerability to future disasters of all kind.
Back to the book
The answer to the complex set of problems listed above lies in an honest and earnest approach to humanitarian aid. There must be transparency about resources and their utilisation, and accountability to the people who contribute the resources and those who receive them. One problem that plagues the post-tsunami response scenario is precisely on this count. At present there is a critical information gap about the nature of resources available to the tsunami-affected and their pattern of utilisation.
Aid agencies would do well to stick to the Sphere standards and the Humanitarian Code of Conduct. The Humanitarian charter defines the roles and responsibilities of agencies and governments and reiterates commitment to the minimum standards. These minimum standards include targeting, initial assessment, participation, supervision, management and support of personnel, aid worker competencies and responsibilities, evaluation and monitoring. Sphere offers specific standards on shelters, water and sanitation, health services, food security and nutrition. The point is that humanitarian aid is a right, not charity.
The next crucial step is to make aid relevant. It is meaningless to send rations and tents after every disaster as is happening in Kargil Nagar. The effort should be to break the cycle of disaster vulnerability and make communities resilient. And to put people first.
(Max Martin is the editor of indiadisasters.org)
InfoChange News & Features, December 2005