ety Organisations and social movements presented the Colombo Statement on A People’s Process for Post-Tsunami Rebuilding: “ We reaffirm the fundamental principle for post-tsunami rebuilding: the need for people, particularly the affected people, to be the owners and therefore the designers and decision makers of the process of rebuilding." http://www.icsf.net/jsp/english/flashnews/rehabDocs/sta0101.pdf
The International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) meeting in Jan 2006 provided a useful summary of experiences especially as they related to coastal fisheries communities http://www.icsf.net/jsp/english/pubPages/proceedings/pros08.jsp . It concluded, among other points, that aid efforts must strengthen local institutions and their capacity.
There is still time and significant resources are still available to right some wrongs but, more so, to work with local coastal communities, artisanal fisherfolk and their organisations to secure a future that is better than before the tsunami struck.
Chair, UK Food Group
17 July 2006
The TEC secretariat is based in London. It is an international consortium managed by INGOs and UN organisations. There are links on the website to NGOs' own evaluations http://www.tsunami-evaluation.org/ . Below are selected quotes from the TEC report with links to relevant sections.
TEC REPORT – selected extracts
Foreword by Bill Clinton in which he summarises his reading of the report (my emphases)
“To my mind, the overriding messages of this report are three-fold:
First, we must do better at utilizing and working alongside local structures. With nothing but good intentions, the international community descends into crisis situations in enormous numbers and its activities too often leave the very communities we are there to help on the sidelines. Local structures are already in place and more often than not the 'first responders' to a crisis. The way the international community goes about providing relief and recovery assistance must actively strengthen, not undermine, these local actors.
Second, we must find the will and the resources to invest much more in risk reduction and preparedness measures. Local structures and local measures - whether part of national or provincial government efforts or embedded in the communities - need to be strengthened to reduce vulnerabilities to tomorrow's disasters. And international and local actors need to forge solid partnerships between and among themselves, well in advance of their being tested in crisis.
Third, we must translate good intentions into meaningful reform. The report identifies critical systemic challenges for the humanitarian community, many of which were analyzed at length in the aftermath of the Rwanda crisis and have already been included in a range of standards and codes of conduct. But the fact that we continue to struggle to turn these principles into practice, as this report highlights, demands that we set about on our shared agenda for reform with the courage and commitment necessary to see the process through to full implementation.”
Recommendations of the Synthesis report
1The international humanitarian community needs a fundamental reorientation from supplying aid to supporting and facilitating communities' own relief and recovery priorities.
2 All actors should strive to increase their disaster response capacities and to improve the linkages and coherence between themselves and other actors in the international disaster response system, including those from the affected countries themselves.
3 The international relief system should establish an accreditation and certification system to distinguish agencies that work to a professional standard in a particular sector.
4 All actors need to make the current funding system impartial, and more efficient, flexible, transparent and better aligned with principles of good donorship.
Five studies are published alongside the Synthesis Report as a set and their titles are:
• Coordination of the international response to tsunami-affected countries
• The role of needs assessment in the tsunami