ors.
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 response
• Impact of the tsunami response on local and national capacities (see recommendations below)
• Links between relief, rehabilitation and development (LRRD) in the tsunami response
• The funding response to the tsunami. populations.
The synthesis report highlights problems in the rebuilding process which led to greater inequities, gender- and conflict-insensitive programming, indignities, cultural offence and waste e.g .(my headings):
Marginalising the poor
The concentration on distribution of assets, especially boats, demonstrated a failure to understand and support diversified and sustainable livelihoods and communities. Affected people have frequently complained that NGOs deal only with village officials and that poorer people are marginalised. At best, the international response restored the ‘status quo ante'. At worst, it strengthened those who were better off and/or more articulate, such as fishermen who possessed boats, while marginalising those who had few assets, notably women and the poor.
Weakening local capacity
Weak information flows
Access to high quality information enables affected people to define and demand accountability, based on their own expectations and standards. It also allows them to plan their own recovery. Yet international organisations frequently failed in the modest objective of informing affected people in an accurate, timely, and comprehensive manner. The TEC LRRD Report (2006) notes: ‘A tragic combination of arrogance and ignorance has characterised how much of the aid community… misled people[.]' (p83); ‘Poor information flow is undoubtedly the biggest source of dissatisfaction, anger and frustration among affected people' (p73); ‘[S]ome… interventions may actually undermine future development[.] A lack of information to affected populations about reconstruction plans greatly limits their capacity to proceed with their own LRRD projects' (p10).
Other identified weaknesses include rarely coordinated or shared assessments, ‘supply-driven',
Impact on Local and National Cap