Tsunami 2004: yesterday, today, tomorrow


Corporate breakfast Sydney July 2006 26th Denis Viénot, President of Caritas Internationalis

18 MONTHS AFTER THE TSUNAMI, Progress and Challenges


• CI a network of 162 catholic organizations throughout the world. One of its main tasks is the coordination in situation of emergencies, the other ones being social and medical activities, development, peace and reconciliation, advocacy such as Colombia or trade presently..
• After the tsunami, end of 2004, quickly sharing of tasks as we always do
   o Global coordination: team of a few persons in Rome
   o Support partners in each country to work with the Caritas or the Church:
    - Sri Lanka: the French arm
    - India and Thailand : the German arm
    - Indonesia: the American arm
   o This method is the usual one: presently Caritas Australia for East Timor or the British one for Darfur in Sudan


• This is presently a critical time for our work in the tsunami-affected areas.
• Many of the multitude of smaller voluntary organisations have left the areas, noticeably in Aceh and Sri Lanka – as their funding has been used up.
• Local people and survivors have passed through their initial shock and severe trauma and are eager and demanding of more participation in building new lives and communities.
• Governments are more involved, engaged in the longer term political, economic and social considerations for the tsunami affected communities.
• It is a time when the Caritas organisations involved in tsunami programmes in India, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia have reviewed what we have done to date.
• It is a time when we are moving to linking our continuing recovery and reconstruction programmes in tsunami areas with development goals to reduce poverty and inequity within and between communities where we are working.

Caritas program as planned presently

• 65 000 / 70 000 houses
• Water supply, sanitation, schools, clinics, social centres,
• Livelihood: boats, nets, agriculture, credit unions and micro finances, cooperatives of fishermen, trainings
• Trauma counselling

Caritas is a “First Response” Agency after a Disaster

• What makes Caritas such a unique actor in the first hours after a disaster is that we are not an organisation that jets in – as an agency of the Catholic Church, the local Caritas has many volunteers, health and education professionals that are available to start working, giving assistance, moral support and other care roles. It is the case presently in Lebanon.
• We are a part of the local community, living amongst those affected, speaking their language and therefore the local Caritas has a very ‘frontline’ role in the disaster response.
• Together in 2005, our Caritas network of agencies together with the people of the tsunami affected countries of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India, were part of an unprecedented global effort to restore lives, rebuild communities and renew hope .

Emergency “First Aid” and Supporting Local/National Capacity

• The initial activities after a major disaster are to meet the immediate needs of the injured and the survivors in terms of medical assistance, food, shelter, health conditions.
• In ‘scaling up’ our local Caritas staff/offices to meet the enormous task after the tsunami, we have had the support of seconded international personnel from other Caritas agencies. New professional competencies are required in particular fields like building construction and in Aceh and Sri Lanka.
• Perhaps it is something to remember about the tsunami devastation: how many of the professionals (teachers, nurses, local midwives) and local government officials were killed and injured by the tsunami force in Aceh and Sri Lanka in particular. This also slowed down the restoration of public services in the early months.
• Very early on the displaced men and women in the tsunami-affected communities, were concerned to re-start income generating activities and return to their local trading, fishing, market gardening, salt harvesting. The restoration of livelihoods is an important part of restoring community and household life and also the dignity of those affected by disaster.

Linking Recovery and Development Goals – Taking the ‘Long Look’ in our emergency work

• Caritas is a unique humanitarian actor because of the importance that we place on linking our relief efforts after a disaster with the longer term issues of reducing poverty and inequity within countries and between communities. This focus is of course regardless of the gender, race or beliefs of those with whom we work.
• Funds collected at the time of the emergency are not just for meeting the basic needs of affected populations – with food and non-food household items, shelter, social services, loans to re-start small businesses or buy tools for employment, engaging local boat-builders to make replacement fishing boats – but are for follow-on activities for two to three years or even more.
• Some of the challenges in our work in the past year lead on from our work in meeting the basic needs of shelter, livelihoods and employment. We cannot build permanent houses if we do not address safe water supply and sanitation issues in the coastal areas.
• Re-locating communities in houses away from unsuitable coastal land for environmental or ecological reasons, requires other infrastructure – roads, schools and medical centres, marketing outlets and jobs.
• The land issue has been and still is a very difficult problem. Many victims have no title, are unable to prove their ownership of the land. In Aceh there is no legal mechanism. And often the poorest were just settled on a place, just like that.
• To realise all the development options, harmony in our work with other not affected people or less affected is important. Inequity in aid can cause severe strain and open tension in a community (for example in Sri Lanka in north and north-east people with houses damaged or destroyed by 25 years of war next to those damaged or destroyed by the tsunami.)

Linking Disaster Response to Disaster Preparedness and Risk Management

• All the countries affected by the tsunami are also vulnerable to other disasters so the response activities need to be aware of environmental and seasonal factors.
• Work has been done with re-vegetating coastal ecologies like mangrove areas in Thailand, cleaning lagoons in Sri Lanka and India, planting coastal trees – some of which were removed in coastal land clearances for development of tourist infrastructure.
• Creating the natural barriers for tidal surges is one thing but we need to create community-based responses based on communications, training of children and community members, raising awareness of the risks and planning how the community will prepare and respond.
• Situation of war which is in way of resolution in Indonesia, lets hope! But in big awful evolution in Sri lanka.

Too much funding?

• The public perceives humanitarian NGOs as key implementers in disaster response because of the advantages that we mobilise quickly, are cost effective and transparent.
• Caritas has received over half a billion USD and committed these funds to programmes in four countries. We have been open to the public and governments from the start, that the funds raised after the tsunami would be used for communities for as long as it takes to rebuild communities, restore lives, renew hope.
• Shelter and permanent houses are the most expensive unit items of our tsunami programmes – the cost of materials, transport, labour, technical advice.
• The areas of livelihoods and psycho-social assistance still need some special focus and reflection.

Involving the poorest and marginalised in relief responses

• What we know from our work in communities from before a disaster is that the most vulnerable after a disaster are often the same or more so – because they have even less resources: skills, assets, education, health to participate in the early recovery activities ….
• One examples of a group in Sri Lanka – those who were renting or boarding in a house, usually close to the coast, that was destroyed by tsunami waves. In our massive building programmes after the tsunami, when houses are being built for those with proof of ownership, we are challenged to meet the long-term housing needs of the single-headed households, the widows, the disabled.
• In Thailand, this is the ‘sea gypsy’ minorities and Burmese workers. But certainly the widows, single-parent households or grandparent-headed households particularly with the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, orphans or children who are vulnerable to exploitation both physical and sexual. Those that were vulnerable before the tsunami or any major disaster are vulnerable now and sometimes more so.
• In India, the tsunami created an opportunity for Caritas India and diocesan partner organisations to work with the government, to link government programmes of assistance with low castes such as Dalits who provide day labouring work on fishing boats, and the Backward Castes to which the fisher folk belong. Caritas India and its diocesan partner organisations reach all communities in all areas of India through one coordinated network.
• Another issue is the indirect victims of the tsunami. The local population not directly victim of the waves, the merchants for instance whose income is affected. Caritas hold a deep practice of this type of situation for instance with refugee camps: it is the compulsory to sustain the local population also in order to avoid tensions

Issues arising from the TEC Synthesis ReportTsunami Evaluation Coalition – Synthesis Report (14 July 2006)

Joint Evaluation of the International Response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami There are four main recommendations to international actors:

1. The international humanitarian community needs a fundamental reorientation from supplying aid to supporting and facilitating communities’ own relief and recovery priorities. With this CI agrees absolutely. Most of our programs are based on animation processes, building of groups at the levels of the local communities, such as Basic ecclesial communities in the Philippines or in Latin America, many types of loans groups, women groups, villages groups, all often involved in processes of cooperation, of development or even of advocacy or of exercising the voting rights as it should be the case next week end in the Democratic republic of Congo.

2. All actors should strive to increase their disaster response capacities and to improve the linkages and coherence between themselves and other actors in the international disaster response system, including those from the affected countries themselves. This is very important. We are cooperating with the biggest network regularly on standards, norms, policies and guidelines.

3. The international relief system should establish an accreditation and certification system to distinguish agencies that work to a professional standard in a particular sector. This is a very good idea which is already implemented at the national levels in the fields of social services, health services, or ability to get taxes advantages from the private donors. An international mechanism would be welcome, certification or accreditation to be entitled to work. But the authorities of the country where the activity takes place must be involved.

4. All actors need to make the current funding system impartial, and more efficient, flexible, transparent and better aligned with principles of good donor ship. This is a difficult issue. The advantage of a network such as Caritas is to benefit from a variety of good willingness. Australia keen to support a Pacific island, France to support Lebanon, Spain to support Venezuela or Argentina, for instance.

DV