Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 18 2005 (IPS) — The halting flow of cash from international donors and lack of coordination among non-governmental organisations (NGOs) could slow down reconstruction efforts of countries devastated by last December’s Indian Ocean tsunami, said senior U.N. officials and relief agencies.

Some 700 NGOs ply their trade in Sri Lanka and another 500 or so in Aceh province in Indonesia, two countries badly devastated by the disaster, which claimed more than 300,000 lives throughout the region, Coco McCabe of the international charity Oxfam told IPS.

She said these organisations vary widely in experience, skills, missions, and operating styles.

”The problem on the ground is that many agencies, in their haste to spend and with their lack of experience and knowledge of the context, just want to get on with reconstruction without consulting local communities,” McCabe said.

In Sri Lanka, she added, there are cases of transitional housing for fisher families being constructed in an agricultural area five miles inland with no convenient public transportation.

”How will fisher folk, who own no trucks or even motorbikes, manage their boats and sustain their access to the sea?” she asked.

McCabe said that resources and time taken to provide these transitional homes end up as waste: the houses go unoccupied and the latrines unused. ”Ultimately, they get torn down and replaced by something appropriate,” she added.

Donna Derr, associate director of international emergency response programmes at Church World Service (CWS), acknowledged that there has been criticism in the past of NGOs functioning in disaster areas.

”It’s as much a criticism of the international entities coordinating their activity as it is of the NGOs themselves,” she told IPS.

"In some cases, it has been true that some agencies may not be adequately prepared for the specific work at hand, working with specific local authorities or cultures. And, yes, response to the tsunami does seem to have evoked more NGO response than other disasters,” said Derr, who toured tsunami-affected areas of Indonesia in March, coordinating her agency’s long term recovery planning in Aceh.

She added that ‘small’ or ‘new’ doesn’t necessarily spell ineffective or uncoordinated, anymore than ‘large’ and ‘well-established’ guarantees efficiency and across-the-board expertise.

”Even larger agencies have their shortfalls and do not have direct experience in the terrain or cultures of every disaster-affected country, so they, too, have to get up to speed,” Derr said.

Oxfam’s McCabe said that many aid groups showing up in tsunami-hit areas, both in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, are either unfamiliar with internationally recognised standards or are simply ignoring them as they attempt to define a role for themselves.

”Under these circumstances, coordination becomes critical and donors should ensure that more money goes towards coordination,” she added.

McCabe said that Oxfam has taken the lead in some water and sanitation coordination meetings, providing technical support to agencies with less experience.

At an international donor conference in Thailand Monday, senior U.N. officials complained that although the donor community had pledged a total of 6.7 billion dollars for tsunami relief and reconstruction, only 2.5 billion dollars have been paid up so far.

According to assessments by the United Nations, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and bilateral donors such as Japan, total reconstruction costs over the next three to five years are expected to be in the region of 10 billion-12.5 billion dollars.

Indonesia alone needs about five billion dollars and Sri Lanka about 3.5 billion dollars. The rest is to be split among India, the Maldives, and Thailand.

In the tsunami emergency, according to Oxfam, the estimated expenditure per person could exceed 400 dollars compared with 40 dollars per person in Kosovo and just 40 cents per person in the Mozambique floods.

”Sadly, there’s an historic precedent for nations to pledge funds for disaster relief but not fulfil the extent of their promises,” said CWS’s Derr.

That may not really be the case here, however, because governments, world bodies, NGOs and the media alike acknowledge that recovering from the tsunami will be a process taking many years, she added.

”So we need to understand that funds must be available to allocate over the course of that process and not all at the front end,” Derr said.

”And, at least in the cases of Indonesia and Sri Lanka, donor countries may also be holding back more immediate-stage expenditures because they are still waiting for those countries’ governments to make clear that emergency aid as well as development support will be distributed fairly and evenly in affected areas, despite political conflicts,” she said.

In both Sri Lanka and Indonesia, some of the devastated areas have either been occupied by or are home to armed separatist groups.

”Additionally, in Indonesia, the government is manifesting a virtually day-to-day control and decision-making approach as to which foreign NGOs it will continue to allow to work in Aceh, the worst hit region,” Derr said.

In contrast to the wider cash flow problems, however, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), one of the U.N.’s lead agencies in tsunami recovery, is suffering from an embarrassment of riches.

UNICEF’s Gordon Weiss told IPS his agency appealed for 144 million dollars for tsunami relief and rehabilitation but by the end of January had received over 510 million dollars, nearly four times its requirements – and most of it in hard cash, not pledges. The agency made a second appeal asking donors to stop sending money.

Saying that UNICEF is a development agency, Weiss said it will be involved in both relief and reconstruction – including child protection, health, education, water and sanitation.

In Indonesia it has already allocated some 90 million dollars to rebuild 300 destroyed primary schools and repair another 200 damaged schools in Aceh and on Nias island in North Sumatra province.

Since donors are seeking accountability, UNICEF has a special tsunami Web site that provides information on how the money is being spent.

Asked to comment on stories of corruption by some governments handling tsunami funds, Weiss said: ”Where there is money, there is always corruption.”

He cited the example of an Asian country where UNICEF re-equipped schools with textbooks and new furniture. ”A few weeks later, we found that some of the chairs were being sold in the local market.”