Initial findings from the TEC

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Initial findings from the TEC
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A word of caution!

• Very much initial, preliminary, provisional, and
  tentative findings.
• Not all the TECs 30 different reports and
  surveys are yet available, even in draft form.
• The main report for the work of the TEC will be
  the Synthesis Report, due in April 2006
• More information on the Tsunami response is being
  published every day
• More detailed study of the individual TEC and
  other reports may lead to an alternate
  interpretation and emphasis in the Synthesis
  Report

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1. Relief was effective

• Overall the relief phase was effective, through a
  mixture of
• local assistance in the immediate aftermath
• international assistance in the first weeks after
  the disaster
• There seems to have been little or no significant
  examples of avoidable deaths or suffering.

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2. Response scale unprecedented

• The disaster was not the biggest but the scale of
  the generous public response was unprecedented
• In terms of the amount of money
• International 13.8 billion
• Affected governments 2 billion
• Populations of affected countries at least 190
  million
• in the speed with which money was donated
• in which it was channelled (NGOs and RC).

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2. Response scale unprecedented

• The scale of funding
• exceeded the capacity of the humanitarian system
• acted as a giant lens, highlighting many of the
  existing problems in the humanitarian systems
• Almost all large agencies still have funds at the
  end of 2005.

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3. Local capacity is a key capacity

• Most of those that were saved, were saved by
  their own effort, their families and their
  neighbours.
• Although local capacity is key to saving lives,
  this capacity is
• overlooked by the international media.
• underestimated and undervalued by the
  international aid community.

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3. Local capacity is a key capacity

• International actors measure local capacity in
  terms of their own skills base rather than in
  terms of the skills base appropriate to the local
  context.
• International agencies did not engage
  sufficiently with local actors, particularly in
  the vital initial phase.
• The role of national and local government was
  crucial.

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4. Funding system is deeply flawed

• A high proportion of Government pledges appear to
  have been turned into commitments.
• Funding decisions were made prior to assessment
  reports being available. Funding decisions are
  made in response to domestic political pressure
  rather than to needs assessment.
• NGOs and the RC were, in this crisis, the pivots
  of the humanitarian response, but this pivotal
  role brings new responsibility.

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4. Funding system is deeply flawed

• Funding for any one crisis is not related to
  needs.

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4. Funding system limits system capacity

• Systems develop for their normal level of demand.

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4. Funding system limits system capacity

• There was not too much money for the tsunami, but
  there is too little money for most humanitarian
  responses.
• This low level of background funding is what
  limits the surge capacity of the system overall.

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5. Corporatism versus accountability

• Corporatism puts the interests of the agency
  first, accountability puts donors or recipients
  first.
• Agencies focused too much on their own
  institutional needs and not enough on the needs
  of the affected populations. This was apparent
  in
• The low priority given to coordination in the
  early stages.
• The way in which evaluation reports have been
  treated.
• The lack of information flowing to aid
  recipients.

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5. Corporatism versus accountability

• The lack of accountability remains a problem
  within the sector. The recent spate of the
  so-called accountability reports demonstrates
  this.
• Agencies are still not transparent enough or
  accountable enough to the people they are trying
  to assist.
• In come cases agencies are also not sufficiently
  accountable to those providing the funding.

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6. Recovery is harder than relief

• Aid recipients were happier with the relief phase
  than with the recovery phase. This decreasing
  satisfaction may be due to
• recovery needs being more complex than relief
  needs
• the longer time scale needed for recovery
  interventions to bear fruit
• increased expectations for the recovery caused by
  the over-subscribed relief effort
• or a mixture of all three.

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6. Recovery is harder than relief

• While the relief phase was effective, the
  recovery phase is encountering many problems that
  may be due to
• the greater complexity of recovery
• the demands that such complexity places on the
  aid agencies.
• There are broadly agreed standards for relief,
  but no such standards for recovery.
• Agencies missed the opportunity to address issues
  of equity, conflict, gender, and governance in
  the response.

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7. The response changed over time

• The nature of the tsunami response changed quite
  significantly during 2005.
• What was true of the initial phase of the tsunami
  response, for example, competition between
  agencies for turf, was not true of the later
  phases.
• Some problems have remained throughout the
  operations, including issues of capacity,
  accountability, and transparency.