Students, int’l NGOs discuss tsunami relief

by Ronald Chan
Stanford Daily
March 29, 2005

Students from Stanford and four other American universities participated in a live videoconference with representatives from several non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, in Sri Lanka last night. The dialogue focused on the relief and reconstruction efforts taking place there, one of the nations hardest-hit by the South Asian earthquake and tsunami last Dec. 26.

The videoconference took place only hours after another powerful earthquake — jolting the seabed off the west coast of Indonesia — killed at least 300 people and sent a ripple of panic across a region still devastated by the deadly catastrophe three months ago.

Gathering in a distance-learning center equipped with a videoconference system in the capital city of Colombo, the Sri Lankan participants agreed that their country, where almost 31,000 people died in the disaster and 555,000 people now live without shelters, requires tremendous financial and human resources to rebuild even the most basic necessities.

“Sixty-five thousand houses need to be rebuilt within the next year or two,” said one of the NGO representatives in Sri Lanka. “Before the tsunami, we normally built only 5,000 houses every year. There’s a strong need for engineers and other technicians.”

He added that more manpower is needed to both rebuild the country and regenerate resources.

An environmental scientist in attendance explained that, unless houses are quickly assembled, epidemics and heightened crime rates could threaten refugee camps in affected regions.

“When people are desperate, when they lose everything overnight, they might resort to committing crimes,” he said. “The crime rate hasn’t increased significantly yet, but it’s possible that it’ll continue to rise.”

Some participants in the teleconference noted that while the reconstruction of physical facilities demands tremendous resources, the real problem confronting Sri Lanka is not how to acquire more money — donations worth some $1 billion have already been pledged — but rather how to manage the money. The international community, they said, should take this opportunity to help the Sri Lankan society enhance its civic capacity and reduce the corruption that has been so prevalent in the country’s political culture.

“It’s not just about building houses, it’s more about building homes,” an NGO representative said. “When we rebuild a village, we want new houses, but we also want a new way of organizing power politics in the village.”

In response to a question raised by a student about how the Indonesian earthquake a few hours earlier tested the tsunami warning system in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, the conferees said they were optimistic.

“The warning system went into effect last night,” said one of the participants.

“The government, the armed forces and the police acted very, very swiftly. The evacuation took place orderly and calmly. It demonstrates the power of communication — a two-and-a-half-hour prior warning could avert a large number of deaths.”

Last night’s event was organized by the Americans for Informed Democracy, or AID, a global student organization, and the Roosevelt Institution, the student think tank. The other universities that took part in the videoconference included San Francisco State, St. Mary’s, Rice and Berkeley.

Quincy Tanner, a freshman who attended last night’s event, said the discussion afforded him a new perspective on what people can do to assist in the relief efforts.

“We always ask if our donation is going to the right people or being used properly,” Tanner said. “But no one ever asks what objectives we have for the lives of those affected by the disaster and how we should allocate the money to achieve those objectives.”

Veronica Canton of the San Francisco State University chapter of AID said she hoped that relief efforts in tsunami-affected countries would continue to have a “human face.”

“The impact of the tsunami was immediately viewed worldwide,” Canton said.

“However, we must not forget that reconstruction efforts will take time, money and personal commitment. These conferences give our communities a personal connection with young people around the world in dealing with problems collectively, not as individual nations but as part of the global community.”