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TSUNAMI IMPACT: Shocks Reach Far Beyond Indian Ocean

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Jan 6 2005 (IPS) - As donations for the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster continue to rise, development experts are hoping that the generosity shown by governments and citizens will mark a "new beginning" in the fight against poverty.

In a year when poverty reduction is set to dominate the international agenda, they are also urging that such generosity is not reserved for the tsunami crisis alone.

To date more than 3 billion dollars has been pledged for victims of the tsunami which rocked the Indian Ocean coastlines Dec. 26, killing 150,000 and leaving millions without food or housing.

Just days after the disaster Japan led the donations with a massive 500 million dollar commitment.

Other governments were initially slow to make pledges, but after realising the enormity of the disaster they have been tripping over themselves to increase their donations.

Germany pledged 674 million dollars Wednesday. The United States has pledged 350 million dollars, the World Bank 250 million dollars and the European Union (EU) 31million dollars..

Official donations have been matched, and in some countries exceeded, by an unprecedented outpouring of public generosity from citizens who have been touched by graphic images of suffering.

By Wednesday afternoon the German public had donated an estimated 130 million dollars, the British 146 million dollars, and the Swedes 60 million dollars.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and development experts welcome what has been achieved so far, but they are urging both governments and the public to maintain the momentum for the tsunami disaster and also for other humanitarian crises.

The tsunami disaster has "proved beyond doubt that people can and do care about others thousands of miles away across the globe," Jo Leadbeater, head of Oxfam International’s EU advocacy office told IPS.

"Ordinary people have donated to appeals such as Oxfam’s at an unprecedented rate," she said. "Their generosity has inspired – and pushed – governments to step up to the mark."

The tsunami may go down in history books as one of the world’s most tragic natural disasters, but the "global wave of compassion and solidarity" that has followed will be equally historic, she said.

"We want the beginning of 2005 to be remembered as the moment when people around the world decided that abject poverty and suffering do not have to – and must not – exist," Leadbeater said.

"Not just in Tsunami affected areas," she added, "but for all those whose lives are blighted by poverty the world over: the hundreds of thousands of survivors of ethnic cleansing in the camps of Darfur and Chad, the brutalised child soldiers hoping for a new life in Liberia, or the millions across Africa affected by HIV/AIDS." Sven Grimm, research fellow at the London-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI), a leading think-tank on international development and humanitarian issues, told IPS that the "massive public response across all of Europe to the disaster in Asia will rather prove the willingness of the public to engage and assist other regions in times of trouble."

But despite such optimism development experts are concerned that the outpouring of money and sympathy over the tsunami disaster may divert attention from other humanitarian crises around the world. The point to the crisis in the western Sudanese region Darfur where mortality far exceeds that caused by the tsunami, and to the lethal conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo).

The actions of the Sudanese regime and its Janjaweed militia allies have displaced an estimated two million people in Darfur since early 2003. More than 400,000 civilians have died in the violence.

U.S. emergency assistance to Darfur has totalled 373 million dollars since 2003. The EU offered Sudan more than 540 million dollars Sunday (Jan. 2) in development aid over the next three years.

In the DR Congo the situation is worse. The New York-based International Rescue Committee (IRC) reported last month that 3.8 million people have died in eastern Congo since 1998, and that about 31,000 continue to die each month in the continuing conflict.

The study showed that international humanitarian aid for Congo in 2004 was 188 million dollars.

United Nations emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland has made several pleas over the past few days for those in need in other parts of the world.

Egeland says "lack of money" was one of the reasons behind the UN’s failure to stop the killing in large parts of Africa last year. He said the UN had a smaller aid fund last year than in 2003 and 2002 "even though its capability to reach those in need had improved."

Experts say there are many reasons why the tsunami has provoked such a huge international response, both in terms of donations and media coverage.

"People have been moved by the scale, speed and impact on local communities," Simon Stocker, director of the Brussels-based development network Eurostep told IPS. "For the media the story came at an ‘opportune’ moment – what is there to cover on the day after Christmas?"

The subsequent donor race is political, he said. "It would also seem that official donors are in competition over the scale of their response, even if they deny it."

Grimm says the huge public response is humanitarian.

"Natural disasters are immediate and everybody can identify with the victims," he said. "They are not man-made; immediate human needs are identifiable."

But while the suffering in areas such Darfur and the DR Congo is largely a result of civil war, people there too are in need of urgent attention. "Man-made problems need different answers; they should not leave us indifferent, ever the more so because they are man-made," he said. "I do not believe that we can ignore the situation in other regions because of the tsunami; if we intend to follow a sustainable path, we need to do both disaster relief and assistance to development. And I would believe that we have the capacity to do so."

Stocker too is concerned that the Indian Ocean region may detract attention from crises elsewhere.

"In term of private donations this is probably true," he said. "If there was a new crisis in a couple of months time how would people react? How would the media react? For ongoing crises the current focus on the tsunami overshadows them, and it is likely that private donations will certainly suffer in the short term."

Official aid is difficult to predict, he said. "Official donors stress that what they are giving to the tsunami crisis is additional. Is this true? To a large extent, probably. However for other crises around the world the lack of media and public attention means there is less impetus for donors to respond financially."

Leadbeater says "the urgent need to respond to the tsunami should not distract the world’s attention from people in conflict in more than 70 countries, and the challenges of implementing the Millennium Development Goals." The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a set of eight development goals agreed in 2000, including a commitment to halving the number living in poverty by 2015.

Grimm said "common sense would make us think that there could be a negative effect" of the tsunami crisis on the attainment of the goals.

"However, research shows that as a general rule, macro-economic effects of natural disasters tend to be short-lived," he said. "We should keep in mind that even without natural disaster, large parts of sub-Saharan Africa are not making the necessary progress in attaining most of these goals, so extra efforts will have to be made depending on region and countries anyway."

Stocker says the disaster may have a positive impact on development spending.

"In the short term we might see aid levels rise as a result," he said. "So Official Development Assistance targets may seem easier to achieve. However, current pledges do not mean expenditure follows quickly."