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TSUNAMI IMPACT: EU Pledges Ongoing Support

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Dec 20 2005 (IPS) - Almost one year after the devastating earthquake and mammoth ocean waves that hit coastal areas of 13 countries, the European Union says tsunami survivors are still living in dire conditions.

The Indonesian and Sri Lankan governments in particular are stretched to their limit, says the European Union (EU) in a progress report, adding that it will continue to support reconstruction in the affected countries as long as it is needed, and acknowledges there have been challenges over the past 12 months.

The tsunami Dec. 26 last year killed at least 200,000 people in 13 countries, and displaced millions.

Approximately 10.7 billion euros (13 billion dollars) was pledged in aid from around the world to rebuild the lives and livelihoods of the survivors.

EU officials, UN and World Bank representatives, and aid organisations including the Red Cross, met in Brussels Tuesday (Dec. 20) to take stock of achievements in tsunami relief and rehabilitation, and consider the needs ahead.

”Humanitarian aid will continue to be required throughout next year and perhaps beyond,” Benita Ferrero-Waldner, EU commissioner for external relations and European neighbourhood policy, told media representatives shortly after the meeting.

”For reconstruction, 2006 will be a decisive year. The Commission will be completing our pledge of 350 million euros. Projects started this year should be able to accelerate and we aim to be able to balance the current focus on immediate needs with bigger infrastructure and housing projects,” she added.

Ferrero-Waldner said one of the biggest challenges over the past 12 months had been coordination between donors.

”Generosity needs to be matched by efficiency. That is why we are strongly involved in boosting that co-ordination. In Indonesia, the Commission is co-chairing the multi-donor trust fund, which is helping to make coherent planning and contacts with the government of Indonesia possible,” she said.

Ferrero-Waldner said the EU will work on improving its internal procedures and its co-operation with international partners to boost the effectiveness of help in future disasters.

”I am determined that we will continue to seek ways of improving our internal procedures and our co-operation with others to ensure that we perform even better in response to future disasters,” she said.

The Commissioner said another factor which threatened to hold up reconstruction efforts a year ago had been the continuing conflicts in Aceh and in Sri Lanka.

The EU says it has played a significant role in addressing political factors hampering reconstruction efforts in those areas.

”We have been very active in seeking conflict resolution in both areas, and our contribution to the peace settlement in Aceh is a real political achievement. Without a sustainable peace, meaningful reconstruction would be impossible,” said Ferrero-Waldner.

At the Jakarta donors’ conference in January, the Commission and EU member states together pledged more than 2 billion euros (2.3 billion dollars) for tsunami affected countries.

To date, the Commission says around 80 per cent of the 566 million euros (659.4 million dollars) earmarked for humanitarian aid has been spent, and of the 1.5 billion euros (1.77 billion dollars) set aside for reconstruction, 902 million euros (1,069 million dollars) has been committed and 367 million euros (435 million dollars) invested.

A total of 123 million euros (145.8 million dollars) in humanitarian aid has been committed, which has been spent on food, shelter, health services, water and sanitation, as well as on fishing gear and on building and repairing boats.

The EU has allocated 95 million euros (112.6 million dollars) to regenerate the countries’ communities, restart livelihoods and repair economic infrastructure.

The European Union and the UN are also currently developing a global disaster alert and coordination system (GDACS) to give early warnings and coordinate relief efforts in future disasters.

The Commission says the mechanism can send out an alert to emergency services by SMS and email within 30 minutes.

However, the British-base non-governmental organisation (NGO) ActionAid is concerned that some tsunami region governments have linked compensation money to the displacement of communities, and that the EU has backed some of these projects which will remove poor people from their land and livelihoods.

”The European Commission has supported such projects which will displace poor people from their land and livelihood. Donors have committed little money for building infrastructure which has potential to directly benefit the poor by generating opportunities for local livelihood,” it said in a statement Tuesday.

ActionAid says long-term recovery from the impact of the tsunami remains the greatest challenge and warns that three major challenges remain in the post-tsunami reconstruction process.

The group says the country-wise needs assessment done for tsunami- affected countries by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and UNDP (UN Development Programme) has so far failed to deal with ”pre-existing inequalities” related to caste, gender, ethnicity, nationality, conflict, and access to basic services and resources.

It fears that as a result, discrimination and exclusion have become ”a norm” in the recovery process.

ActionAid says the recovery phase should use aid in an ”empowering way” – – promoting decentralised and participatory decision-making, participation of local bodies of governance, strengthening of local economies and social procurement.

The group says its own field experience has shown that local elected bodies or traditional community organisations have almost always been sidelined by the national and provincial governments from the relief and rehabilitation activities.

”Unless the money revolves locally and generates a multiplier effect by promoting local employment and local livelihood, the aid will not produce sustainable impact on the lives of the tsunami-affected,” Pushpendra Kumar Singh, ActionAid’s international tsunami policy coordinator, said Tuesday.

”Tsunami may have been a natural disaster, but the recovery process is essentially political. The humanitarian organisations must deal with these three sets of challenges in order to build the lives better of the tsunami-affected poor communities,” she added.