When we opened our hearts to the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami with an outpouring of sympathy and donations, the assumption was that those affected would be properly taken care of. They were - although our meaning of the term and that adopted by the governments involved were apparently not the same.
A report by three aid agencies presented at the United Nations on Wednesday found that a year after the tragedy, many of the most vulnerable survivors in India, Indonesia, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand had been tricked from their homes and faced discrimination and violence. The billions of dollars given by the world's people so generously and in such good faith were generally not distributed by the officials of those nations with such thoughts in mind.
Rather, most of the more than 50,000 people interviewed for the study told how they had been forced from their shoreline villages and moved kilometres inland on the pretext that safety buffer zones were being created to prevent a repeat of the huge death tolls from future tsunamis. Later, they found that the areas had been rezoned and that hotels and other tourist developments were being built where their homes had once been.
Even now, 90 per cent of those interviewed are in temporary shelters and those provided with new accommodation had been given substandard structures. That was not the case for the better-heeled victims, a distinct minority of those affected; their circumstances were perceived to be on a par with or better than what they had been before.
Governments had pledged that the donations received, exceeding requirements by a billion dollars in the cases of Indonesia and Sri Lanka, would not only rebuild communities, but would also bring them into the 21st century. The study showed otherwise: the discrimination against women, children, the poor and handicapped that existed before the tsunami remained as pervasive. In essence, while we believed our financial contributions would take care of the present and future needs of the victims, the governments ultimately handling that cash used a vernacular form of the expression: 'take care of', meaning to 'take advantage of'.
The authorities involved cannot truly be said to have mishandled the funds they were given charge of - the rehabilitation and reconstruction work they were responsible for has been carried out. Unfortunately, bias, indiscretion and pre-existing prejudices were not factors that independent monitors of the process were warned to be alert for.
