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Global lessons from a tragedy
Quentin Peel
1/3/2005
THE full scale of the catastrophe around the shores of the Indian Ocean is only slowly emerging. The death toll rises by tens of thousands each day, with the prospect that it could redouble if epidemics of typhoid, cholera and hepatitis take hold. Indonesia alone may have suffered 80,000 dead, if the latest estimates are accurate. It marks a ghastly end to a grim year.
Of course, it was not preventable, or even predictable. Perhaps an early-warning system might have been able to reduce the death toll by a few thousands, but it would not have prevented the devastation of homes, infrastructure and livelihoods in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and all the other countries that saw their coastlines wrecked by tidal waves.
At least it was not a man-made disaster. The human race can still not quite match the awesome power of nature, even if we try our damnedest. But now it is up to humanity to attempt to repair the damage. That means making a clear analysis of what has happened.
The first lesson we need to learn, at least in the wealthy western world, is that instant information can easily distort reality. The first pictures came in from the tourist resorts of Thailand, and then Sri Lanka, where digital cameras and mobile phones could provide terrifying immediacy. The media focused predictably, but wrongly, on the plight of tourists.
It is clear now that the worst devastation has been in the war-torn Indonesian province of Aceh, at the northern tip of Sumatra, where martial law has prevented access for international aid workers for two years. So we still have no precise picture of the damage. The worst-affected was the last to report. It will also be the most difficult place to bring emergency aid to, thanks to politics as much as poverty.
The overall death toll is dreadful, and dominates the headlines. Every single loss of life is a tragedy to the family that has lost a loved one. Yet for those who have survived, the lasting threat is the utter destruction of their homes and means of livelihood.
The second lesson is that, as ever, it is the poorest who lose the most. The middle classes may have insurance policies, savings and relatives to whom they can turn in an emergency. The poor have no safety net. While the shores of the Indian Ocean may be an exotic location for tourist hotels, they are also a great attraction for those who can just eke out an existence from fishing. Hence the proliferation of shanty homes that were ripped apart by the giant waves.
Why are they so poor and unprotected? Partly because they live in regions exposed to natural disasters, although none has matched this one in living memory. But far more could be done by their governments. Too often, earthquakes have proved more destructive than they would otherwise have been because of shoddy building work carried out by corrupt contractors: Armenia in the former USSR, the last Turkish earthquake outside Istanbul, and Gujarat in India spring to mind. Will this be different?
The third lesson is that emergency relief is only the first step in a huge aid effort that is needed to revive these smashed communities. The first frantic phase, while all the world watches, is the search for and recovery of the victims, and the effort to prevent the death toll rising: providing clean water, food, shelter and medicines.
The second phase is to ensure that the relief is sustainable, getting teams on the ground to support those who have lost their homes and families until they can provide for themselves. The next task is reconstruction: rebuilding roads and bridges and electricity and water supplies. In some ways, that should be the most straightforward.
But the really challenging phase is to provide the survivors -- whose existence was in many cases desperate before the disaster -- with new livelihoods. It means tackling the underlying causes of poverty, providing health and schooling and ending political discrimination against minority groups and the poor.
Governments are often not so good at that. Nor are potential donors in the richer nations. Emergency relief is so much more popular than long-term reconstruction. Public attention will have moved on to other crises long before the final phase is under way. Christmas charity donations will be forgotten.
The biggest source of funding for any massive relief effort, however, will come from the richest governments: from the US, Europe and Japan. But will they promise new money, or simply transfer cash from one disaster to another? From Africa to Aceh, for example? That is what happened last year, when $1.6bn was raised for relief in Iraq, largely at the expense of less glamorous crises in Africa. There is also a tendency for donors to make high-profile promises, and then to fail to deliver the full amount when public attention moves on.
Finance is one challenge. Co-ordination is another. There is an obvious need to prevent all the aid agencies falling over each other, and overwhelming the administrative capacity of the crisis-hit country. The United Nations is the only organisation capable of the co-ordination task, whatever conservative critics in Washington may say. It takes a huge crisis to make that clear. The UN and its agencies may not be perfect, but they are the best we have got. No national agency, such as USAid or Britain's Department for International Development, can hope to match their range and resources. But they will only be as effective as their funding allows.
The other task for the UN is to ensure that aid goes to the neediest groups, not just those favoured by the local government. There is a hope that this huge disaster will bring the warring factions together in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. But the signs are mixed: in Sri Lanka, the government and the rebel Tamil Tigers refuse to co-operate. In Aceh, at least, the rebel Free Aceh Movement has ordered a ceasefire. The UN must ensure that aid remains neutral.
Undoubtedly, the countries of Asia can do more themselves. In the long term, they need to pay for early-warning systems and provide more joint protection against the worst disasters. But when there is a catastrophe of this magnitude, it is right that the whole world joins forces to give relief, and not just for a matter of months. The headlines will fade. The effort must not.
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Source: Internet, exclusive to FE
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