Tsunami Recovery Aid Still Hasn't Reached Many Victims

by Thalif Deen

(IPS) UNITED NATIONS -- Tsunami recovery efforts in five countries -- Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and the Maldives -- remain hampered by incompetence, corruption, discrimination and lack of public accountability, according to a new report released here.

"Tsunami survivors, like many victims of Hurricane Katrina (in the United States), are angry and frustrated," according to Laurel Fletcher, co-author of the study, titled "After the Tsunami: Human Rights of Vulnerable Populations," released by the University of California's Berkeley Human Rights Center.

"Months have passed, and they are still living in displacement camps where they have virtually no say in how their communities will be rebuilt," said Fletcher, a clinical law professor at Berkeley's School of Law.

The Asian tsunami, which mostly hit five countries in the Indian Ocean region last December, killed a staggering 224,495 people.

Fletcher told IPS: "Our study found that some NGO representatives on the ground as well as survivors complained that there was an apparent disparity between the amount of funds some groups had raised and how much aid was delivered."

There is a lack of transparency and accountability in relief efforts which compounds misperceptions and feeds rumors, she said.

"With no mechanism to resolve complaints of misappropriation of funds, inequity in benefits distributed, or inappropriate or substandard goods or services provided, individual survivors are left without recourse," Fletcher added.

And last week's South Asian earthquake is the latest in a year of some of the worst disasters ever seen, "yet governments have failed to respond adequately and lives have been lost as a result," says Oxfam International, in a second report released here.

The thrust of the Oxfam report, titled "2005: Year of Disasters," is that the number of people affected by natural disasters has climbed dramatically over the last decade, with tens of millions of people affected in the past year alone.

The report says the response to these emergencies has been characterized by an uneven, often late and sometimes inefficient international humanitarian performance that has been undermined by inadequate funding for the UN's vital appeals.

In its briefing paper, Oxfam says that humanitarian assistance still does not cover all needs, often arrives too late, and is too often determined more by media profile or political criteria than humanitarian need. It concludes that these failings are condemning thousands of people to unnecessary suffering and death.

The Berkeley study, produced in collaboration with the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, said that governments in all five tsunami-affected countries failed to establish effective mechanisms to respond to complaints of abuses, and international humanitarian agencies often failed to report abuses.

"A lack of coordination on the part of aid agencies, coupled with a lack of oversight, also led to inequities in aid distribution," the joint study added.

The study also says that government agencies and aid organizations often failed to consult people in affected communities about aid distribution and reconstruction. "Without that consensus, charges of cronyism and corruption florished," it notes.

At a World Bank meeting of the "Global Consortium on Tsunami Recovery," chaired by UN Special Envoy Bill Clinton, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga complained last month that humanitarian organizations and relief agencies received "vast amounts of funds for reconstruction from concerned citizens throughout the world."

But she regretted that the procurement procedures in place among some of the donor agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were delaying the reconstruction process, "while others are yet to channel funds to Sri Lanka."

Kumaratunga appealed to these organizations to complete the projects they had undertaken because "the people of Sri Lanka were questioning what had happened to the contributions made by the caring people of the world, who channeled large quantities of money to help tsunami victims."

Similarly, Fletcher of Berkeley said many survivors complained that government-sponsored aid programs were not administered equitably.

"The Sri Lankan president's remark is similar to complaints of tsunami survivors throughout the region who asserted that public authorities did not ensure fair distribution of aid, either because of incompetence, mismanagement, corruption, or discrimination," she noted.

To address these concerns, and to strengthen public confidence, "we recommend that a survey of aid distribution be conducted to determine whether there are inequities and to take appropriate steps to remedy any irregularities," Fletcher noted.

Responding to Kumaratunga's complaints, Paulette Song, Tsunami Press Officer at Oxfam America, told IPS: "Oxfam is highly committed to accounting for how we're spending the money we raised for our tsunami response and to ensuring that the money we spend reaches people on the ground."

She said that Oxfam's deputy director of humanitarian response, Emilie Parry, returned recently from Sri Lanka and reported that Oxfam projects are playing a crucial role in rebuilding the lives of people there.

"Coordination is bound to be a problem initially with any disaster on this huge scale that hits without warning. Those issues have now largely been resolved, however, and it's important to remember that despite the challenges the aid effort succeeded in its most important goal of saving lives," Song said.

The fact that following the tsunami there was not a second spate of deaths from dehydration, disease and lack of sanitation is testament to how much Oxfam's tsunami aid did achieve, she added.

Meanwhile, the Oxfam study also said that while governments responded generously to the tsunami, and look set to do so following the Asian earthquake, they virtually ignored less visible crises in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Malawi and Niger.

As a first step, Oxfam proposed, governments must commit an additional $1 billion to a UN emergency fund on top of their existing humanitarian aid levels to ensure an immediate response to crises.

This would be a rapid response emergency fund that would help end the delays that have cost so many lives and make sure all crises get funding, not just the most newsworthy.

Reforming the existing UN Central Emergency Revolving Fund is a vital first step that governments must agree on when they meet to review humanitarian action at the UN General Assembly in November, the study said.