A new report from RMIT University cautions nonprofits to learn lessons from the 2004 tsunami to ensure aid money is not wasted in future relief operations. Rochelle Nolan reports.
A new report from RMIT University cautions nonprofits to learn lessons from the 2004 tsunami to ensure aid money is not wasted in future relief operations. Rochelle Nolan reports.
Researchers at RMIT University say international aid agencies will continue to waste aid money and make avoidable mistakes in new disaster situations because they have not learnt lessons from the tsunami in 2004.
The Globalism Research Centre has produced a study on what it takes to rebuild viable communities in the wake of a major natural disaster. The Rebuilding Community in the Wake of the 2004 Tsunami report is part of a series of post-tsunami reports for AusAID, and maps out social recovery across local communities in Sri Lanka and India.
Aid money wasted through hasty and competitive action
Dr Martin Mulligan from the centre says research showed many examples of effective action involving international aid organisations forming strong partnerships with community based organisations to ensure aid was properly targeted. But, he says, it was also found that a lot of post-tsunami aid money was wasted by agencies acting in haste and in competition with each other.
“The relief and rehabilitation effort after the 2004 tsunami remains the biggest global response to a natural disaster in human history; yet little has been done to capture and share what the affected communities learnt from the recovery effort,” says Dr Mulligan.
He says unless government and non-government agencies absorb the lessons from the disaster, they’ll continue repeating the same mistakes, wasting significant amounts of global aid money.
“We found inappropriate delivery of aid in many communities in Sri Lanka inadvertently opened up old divisions and wounds,” says Dr Mulligan. “A key lesson is that decisions made in the short-term – including the assessment of needs and relocation planning – can have major consequences for the rebuilding of coherent and resilient local communities in the long-term.”
Download the full report at www.rmit.edu.au/globalism/publications/reports
