By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 7 2005 (IPS)

Women and children continue to be victims of violence and sexual abuse nearly six months after the massive tsunami devastation in the Indian Ocean region, according to an international team of researchers.

In surveys of tsunami survivors and aid workers in five countries – India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Thailand – researchers found that abuses are being caused by a lack of protection for individuals who lost their homes and now living in displacement camps.

”In all the countries surveyed, cramped living conditions in temporary housing have surfaced such problems as sexual violence, alcohol abuse and physical violence," the study said. "These living conditions deprive people of their dignity.”

Despite the massive influx of aid, it concludes, little has changed for many survivors since the tsunami.

"Aid distribution is often lacking or discriminatory because of corruption, favouritism and poor management," researchers concluded.

In Sri Lanka, reconstruction has proceeded at different rates depending upon political influence. In the Maldives, response to survivors may depend on the whims of a particular island chief.

The study, ‘After the Tsunami: Human Rights and Vulnerable Populations,’ was co-sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley’s Human Rights Centre; the University of Hawaii’s Globalisation Research Centre; and the East-West Centre, an internationally recognised research and education organisation based in Hawaii.

Kate Pattison of the London-based international relief agency Oxfam told IPS that last December’s tsunami affected different people in different ways.

For example, she said, in some cases the main breadwinner was killed (often the father), and in many cases it was the caregiver (often the mother).

"Good relief and reconstruction programmes have to respond appropriately to the differential needs of women and men and with people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds," she added.

Oxfam is working to ensure that all these groups are able to participate in its programmes, Pattison added.

The study says that abuses perpetrated on tsunami victims were in contravention of the U.N.’s Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and other international human rights agreements.

In the Maldives, security at IDP (internally displaced) camps is deficient, making women and children fearful of attacks by drug abusers.

Soon after the tsunami, the study said, Burmese migrant workers in Thailand went into hiding because they feared being arrested and deported by the authorities.

In Sri Lanka, children are at risk of recruitment or abduction by the Tamil Tigers to become child soldiers. And in both Aceh, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, adults are living in fear among warring groups.

The study also points out that there has been inequity in aid distribution.

"Our research teams found disparities in the distribution of aid by governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to survivors in every country they visited. These disparities, largely resulting from corruption, favouritism and poor management, have caused ruptures in communities that, in some cases, have erupted in violence."

In Sri Lanka, India and Thailand, it is not uncommon to find that fishermen in one village have received aid to rebuild their damaged boats, while fishermen in a nearby village have received no assistance.

In Indonesia, the military has threatened to withhold aid from some villagers who wish to return to their home communities.

The researchers also found a lack of community participation in the tsunami reconstruction process currently underway.

In Sri Lanka, there have street demonstrations against local authorities. Many tsunami survivors in Aceh, where an armed conflict is ongoing, have expressed fears reporting their concerns to the police and military authorities because of past human rights abuses.

Thai survivors criticised what they called the government’s "cash response approach," which sought to give survivors a meagre one-off payment rather than engaging them in the long-term process of rebuilding their communities.

While applauding the relief efforts by humanitarian organisations, the study said that "no amount of aid, however generous, can mask the fact that natural disasters, similar to armed conflicts, tend to make vulnerable populations even more vulnerable." In a letter to former U.S. President Bill Clinton, currently the U.N. Special Envoy for Tsunami Reconstruction, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) expressed concern about reconstruction efforts in three countries he visited recently: India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

Historically marginalised groups suffered discrimination, and government relief efforts failed to adequately consult with local communities about relocation and compensation for loss of livelihood and property, said Brad Adams, Asia director for HRW.

"Whether its higher-caste groups and developers in India, or the military and armed groups in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, the powerful have tried to take advantage of the scramble for rebuilding and recovery at the expense of the basic rights of vulnerable groups," Adams said.

While praising India for its positive overall response to the tsunami, HRW found that government recovery efforts did not adequately take into account the needs of different vulnerable segments of the affected population, particularly women, children, the disabled, Dalits (so-called untouchables) and tribal groups.

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