Tuesday, June 16, 2009

New Challenges for relief in Sri Lanka


There is a standoff emerging in this political tennis match between the government and the NGO community that is manifesting itself in the local media.  Every day there seems to an article in the newspapers on the state of toilets (or lack of them) in the camps in Vavunia.

Ever since the rush of people at the end of April, agencies have been struggling to cope with the needs.  Coupled with the operational restrictions enforced by the authorities,  it has certainly been a challenging environment to work in.

The current stand off is now around the question of toilets.  Who is responsible for building them?  And more importantly what is their design?

As it stands at the moment, according to the government, it is the UN and its humanitarian agency partners who are responsible for building the toilets.  Leave aside the issue that many agencies are complaining about access restrictions, what is now becoming a potentially divisive issue is the design and quality of the toilets.

For reasons that since the tsunami I myself am coming to grips with understanding, most of the humanitarian agencies led by the UN have this process by which they respond.  That is that they go through the initial response to a disaster by providing ‘temporary shelters and toilets’.  The next phase is the ‘transitional shelters and toilets (often called the semi permanent toilets) ’ and then you get to the ‘permanent shelter and toilets’.  The argument is that temporary means that those displaced will not be encouraged to stay in the place that they have been displaced to.  Rather there should be an encouragement for them to return.  There are political connotations in the right to return, but the key element is that displaced people should return to their places of origin.   Anything that is built that is of a semi permanent nature, in the eyes of the agencies, is tantamount to encouraging people not to return. 

In the eyes of critics, the flaw here is that agencies then end up spending almost double for the same shelter.  In the case of post tsunami reconstruction, the cost of transitional shelters sometimes exceeded the repairs to the damaged houses of the people. 

The argument does fall a little bit flat when it comes to toilets and sanitation.  In displacements such as this with the huge concentration of people, sanitation is often the weakest link and people end up falling sick.  A vicious cycle is perpetuated.  Hence whatever the nature or the duration of the emergency, one issue that is of utmost importance is the need to ensure basic human dignity with regards sanitation.

The current standoff is now on the fact that the designs for the temporary toilets are not really conducive to ensuring this basic dignity.  The government on the other hand has been advocating for slightly better designed toilets taking into consideration local cultural values.  However in the eyes of the UN, the nature of these designs are deemed to be ‘transitional or semi permanent’ which might ‘encourage’ the current displaced to remain and thus should not be followed through. 
This is the confusion for me.  Surely building a good toilet will ensure less disease?  At the end of the day I am sure people given the choice will not stay because their toilet facilities were better!! 

These displaced deserve the best that they can get.  This means that there should not be any compromise on basic things like their toilets, even if they have to return after 1 month.

The problem then arises that if you attend the cluster meetings and rely on these agencies for funds, you are also compelled to follow the same line which means temporary toilets are built which perhaps does not adequately address the sheer need for proper sanitation.
 
Compounding the sanitation problem is that of the mounting  garbage.  Waste management or lack of it is now a growing problem with the number of flies increasing.  As one of my colleagues answered wryly as he returned from a visit there last week  on how the situation is in the camps, ‘Flies! Flies! Flies!’. 

This is a worry.  I have already had three of my staff ill with fever and food poisoning after being in the camps.  The mounting garbage problem is not sustainable and coupled with the lack of adequate sanitation could make things worse than they already are.

The issues have become politicised.  Most agencies are quietly saying that there should not be anything done of a semi-permanent nature because this would be feeding into the government’s agenda of not resettling the people and keeping them in these camps.  Arguments apart,   it is interesting to note that many of these same agencies that are now protesting the need for these displaced to return have not considered the many hundreds of thousands that were also displaced over the last 20 years of this conflict, in particular, the 100,000 plus who were displaced to Puttalum living in refugee camps with basic toilets and houses. 


The key challenge now is for all stakeholders to work together to ensure that the displaced get the best. 

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