Social Innovations
Where’s the Money?
Where are the NGOs in the long wake of the Asian tsunami?
Two weeks ago, I visited the northern coast of Aceh, Indonesia, curious to see not only how people are faring one year after the tsunami, but also how NGOs are spending the largest pool of humanitarian funds ever raised. On both counts, my report is the same: Not well.
After one day in Banda Aceh, I spent four more driving through the districts of Pidie and Bireun. Even the view from the highway bore witness to the ongoing suffering of the Acehnese. Where thriving marketplaces and traditional houses once stood, tent cities and government-built barracks spread. The skeletons of washed-up boats and cars still sit on the roads’ shoulders as far as two miles inland. Schools are boarded up. Fishing ponds bleed into each other and into the sea. Even in Banda Aceh, the province’s proud capital, 50% of the surviving population is still homeless. In rural villages, that number climbs to 70%.
When is more help coming? I didn’t know what to tell the village chiefs or the boat builders or my generous hosts in Pente Rheng, Kiran Baroh, Beurembang, and Pasi Lhok. Their stories resembled each other: A flurry of NGOs hurried through their villages soon after the tsunami, asking questions, staking claims, making promises. And then the NGOs never returned. Or the NGOs did return, but only to replace demolished houses, not to repair the badly damaged ones. I heard about one NGO that refused to rebuild any schools in one village unless it could rebuild the most prominent ones, near the highway. The village agreed, retracting its agreement with a smaller organization that made simpler promises. The NGO nailed its logo to the schools, and hasn’t been seen since. I heard about another NGO that decided not to build until it has the materials and expertise to meet the highest European standards of earthquake readiness.
The day I returned to Jakarta, an article the New York Times confirmed that many NGOs are indeed taking their time. In her article, “After Tsunami, a Rarity: Donated Dollars Remain,” Stephanie Strom reports that NGOs are resisting pressures to spend-down their windfall, and instead are contemplating how to “build back better” with long-term investments in education, health care, and economic recovery. She also writes that NGOs are spending unprecedented amounts of time and money documenting and justifying their spending to donors. Oxfam, for example, has already spent $1.5 million of its $278 million on monitoring and evaluating its own performance. Many other organizations are likewise providing detailed breakdowns of how and where their money is spent.
Meanwhile, it seemed to me that the Acehnese are stranded in a trough between the first wave of emergency aid and a second, promised wave of reconstruction funding. The tents in which many live were never intended to weather two monsoons, as their mold and holes attest. The camps are filthy with litter and the stink of raw sewage. Scabies is rampant. Without boats for fishing, yards for raising poultry, or ponds for farming seafood, the villagers must rely on the World Food Programme’s rations of rice and vegetable oil and sardines. But the rations are never quite enough. The children are skinnier, and not growing to be as tall as their older siblings. Health care is lacking for everyone because most of the medical teams left a few months after the tsunami.
There are no squeaky wheels here. People mourn their dead in the Acehnese way, bearing their hardships quietly. A man who lost his wife, parents, and three children smiled and said, “I’m just trying to forget the past on move on.”
But NGOs have the grease, and plenty. Are they withholding immediate aid so that they can optimize their long-term planning and donor relationships? Whose needs are being addressed by this strategy? Whose standards are being met? Which sufferings are being forestalled, and which are being exacerbated? Could NGOs do a better job of addressing both immediate needs and long-term goals?
Alana Conner
Senior Editor
Stanford Social Innovation Review
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COMMENTS
BY Pablo
ON December 16, 2005 12:42 AM
Alana: We have someone blogging from Aceh as well, in case you are interested:
http://psdblog.worldbank.org/psdblog/aceh_diary/index.html
Also, see this article in this week’s economist:
http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5310549
You might also be interested in this FP report:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3314
Just in case.
BY jprey
ON December 16, 2005 01:27 AM
Where is the accountability, both to the people to be served and to those who donated money, thinking that these services were being provided?
Sounds like everyone is getting the screws except the NGOs.
Who can do anything about the problem? And why are they not acting on this issue (and New Orleans, and Pakistan, and Iraq, et.al.)
Reminds me of the irregularities that were reported about the Red Cross and the United Way, years ago.
BY Caroline Hartnell
ON December 16, 2005 12:49 PM
It seems to me that a huge problem throughout the tsunami relief operation, and now the reconstruction effort, has been the lack of coordination between the different groups involved and a failure of international NGOs to work with local organizations. I interviewed NGO leaders in January last year in Aceh and India and this was the clear message coming from both of them. See Alliance Extra at http://www.allavida.org/alliance/axfeb05b.html for the full interviews.
With regard to the reconstruction effort, Alex Irwan of the Indonesian Tifa Foundation was emphatic that ‘reconstruction must be based on local consensus’. He feels that international NGOs have a role to play in endorsing and supporting community-based plans for rebuilding. ‘Once the NGOs and community leaders have developed a vision of what the Acehnese people want, I think the international NGOs should follow them , If the international NGOs follow their platform, it will help us to pressure and convince the Indonesian government.’
I recently visited a volunteer project in Phuket, Thailand. Over the last 11 months, it has involved hundreds of international and Thai volunteers in a number of successful rebuilding projects. But when we asked them what other NGOs were working in the area, they had only a hazy idea. Certainly nothing like coordination meetings were taking place.
I’m sure there is greater coordination in other places—sometimes led by government. But I do feel this is symptomatic of an enormous problem that has been evident since the tsunami struck—and I’m sure in other disaster situations too.
BY abbey
ON December 16, 2005 04:10 PM
Where’s the money? Wow! After being in the Himalayas for six months at 5000 ft above sea level, perhaps a 4 day train ride from where the tsunami happended, I find funds being diverted to areas where the funds are not supposed to be. I found out that there are so much funds that are still sitting, being eaten away by the system. The big orgs are just giving away to their networks, who can come up with the initial applications and commision fees and a cut to the middle man. The small registered org are doing the job but have run out of funds.
I am sad to see where the funds are.
I love what you wrote, I am sad what I see in the fields.
Keep writing…..
Abbey
BY Joe
ON December 28, 2005 11:03 PM
Alana,
I too have heard about the slowness of the NGO’s response to actually doing the hard work in rebuilding.
What have you heard about my organization - Habitat for Humanity.?
I do not work in our international arena but am involved with our Katrina response - more on the fund raising side.
Who do you see as the best organization in terms of executive and performance in showing up to help the people rebuild and doing so effectively?
Joe
BY Leon
ON January 19, 2006 04:26 AM
Search “Aceh” and “tsunami” in UN reliefweb.org, I see a lot of humanitarian efforts still going on there. I was particularly impressed by an NGO organization called Tzu chi, which built 3700 houses in Banda Aceh for the tsunami victims.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/DPAS-6L4CFH?OpenDocument
“Just one year after the Dec. 26, 2004 devastating tsunamis struck Indonesia and 11 other countries bordering the Indian Ocean, Indonesian survivors began moving into a housing community built in Aceh Province by the Taiwan Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation.
“The US$27 million dollar project, started in September 2005 as part of Tzu Chi’s long-term relief efforts in Indonesia, includes plans to build three housing communities with 3,700 units ...”