The Maldives and Aceh: from relief to reconstruction
Krishna Hort, Director of Advancement Assistance with the Australian International Health Institute (AIHI), worked in emergency relief teams in the Maldives and in Aceh. He provided this report of his experiences for the Melbourne University Magazine.
I participated in the initial emergency relief mission to the Maldives post-tsunami, and then later, in an assessment of the assistance needs in the health sector in Aceh, three months after the event.
One strong impression is the resilience of the people both in the Maldives and in Aceh, and their ability to pick up and go on with life, even after such an extraordinary event. This leaves one with the paradoxical impression that nothing has happened, that everything is back to normal. Until you visit the devastated areas.
Little can prepare you for the miles of razed buildings, the eerie silence, the few ghostly skeletal structures still standing, in the ruins of Banda Aceh. The fury and ferocity of what must have happened is hard to comprehend.
But outside these areas, the city is bustling, full of life, with only a few remaining encampments, and newly constructed barracks to show for the thousands of people now displaced. In both the Maldives and in Aceh, however, the vast majority are living with relatives and friends, absorbed and supported, no doubt with considerable difficulty, by the community at large. The result is that the affected communities are fragmented and dispersed, with many members mourning the loss of loved ones, and still traumatised by memories of the tsunami.
In both Aceh and the Maldives, relief activities, with the support of the international community and the Indonesian and Maldivian governments and people, have largely been successful in providing care for the survivors, and protecting them from further risk and ill-health. Particularly in Aceh, the number, range and variety of international and national relief organisations is amazing, from the rubbish collectors provided by the city of Istanbul to the enthusiastic yellow T-shirted Scientology volunteers providing massage therapy.
However, the move from relief to reconstruction brings new challenges. In the Maldives, the government was able to establish control and coordination within days of the event, and move early towards reconstruction planning. But in Aceh, it's only now that the period of informal coordination and networking among donor agencies and relief organisations is being replaced by more formal coordination and control by government, and the development of reconstruction plans and rebuilding.
It’s clear in both countries that there are major underlying unresolved issues that impact on reconstruction. In the Maldives, there is the underlying ecological fragility of populations living on small coral islands, and how best to distribute populations among the hundreds of inhabited islands. In Aceh, there is the legacy of years of conflict, and a public health service which has received little attention and insufficient funding for years, and is not focussed on the needs of the communities it serves.
Is reconstruction just about rebuilding what was, or is it an opportunity to address some of these unresolved underlying issues? This is a question for the communities and governments of the Maldives and Indonesia.
For donors, the key question is: How to help? This is perhaps particularly so in Aceh. In a situation where there are unprecedented amounts of money tohelp, there is a temptation to take over and ‘fix’ everything. Some NGOs who arrived early after the tsunami have now developed strong attachments to the communities and facilities they have been working with, and want to continue to work with them and improve them.
However, I believe we need to remember the lessons of decades of development assistance, and be prepared to work truly in partnership with the governments and communities we wish to help. We need to support and enable the governments and communities to make their own decisions, and prepare their own plans, and then work together to implement them. We need to facilitate dialogue between communities and governments, and create the ‘space’ for them to work on resolving longer term issues.
The reconstruction phase will test whether the international goodwill and sympathy generated by the tsunami can be channelled into long term and sustainable development assistance.
Krishna Hort, who is also a public health physician, was a member of emergency relief Team Charlie in the Maldives 30 December to 8 January 2005, and a member of the AusAID Health Sector Assessment team in Aceh from 6 to 26 March 2005.
<< Previous: University community remembers victims | Next: On the ground in Sri Lanka >>
