Title of Event:

Name of Organisation:

Date and time of the session:

Community-driven tsunami rehabilitation

Asian Coalition for Housing Rights

20 June 2006, 1.30-3.30 pm

Key Highlights

1. Estimated no of participants: Around 150
2. Stakeholder group representation at the event: Professionals, policy makers and practitioners from government, non-profit, bilateral and activist backgrounds
3. What were the expected objectives: So this tsunami workshop was an attempt to bring the people - who are the real development workers - to present their experiences and their ideas. Many of the people who came from their Asian coastal slums and villages to attend this meeting may not get many chances to speak their minds at such big international meetings. But when an opportunity was created for tsunami survivors to speak, as here, out came ample evidence of their wisdom, their understanding, their ability and their resourcefulness
4. What did the networking event achieve: To bring out the people-driven tsunami rehabilitation processes that have been going on in four affected countries, but to emphasize that making communities the key actors should be an important principle in all kinds of development work which involve the poor - not only disasters.

2. What were the core issues identified in your event as they relate to the theme and sub-themes of WUFIII? This event, linked to the theme of safety and security, addressed the issue of community-centred and community-driven tsunami rehabilitation.

3. What were the main points raised by panellists and participants in relation to these different issues? What new ideas have been generated as a result of the discussion?

•  People know best : What we've heard from the communities today tells us very clearly how wise, what an enormous amount of wisdom they have. If the policies and programs are designed, based on what people say, we know we will never have problems. This is a very important thing that we have learned. As David said, it's a re-learning, but the fact is, we have to remind ourselves time and time again that people know best.

•  People should stay where they stay now : There are good reasons for people to stay where they now stay. There are good social reasons, there are good economic reasons, there are good cultural reasons. Therefore if you want to displace people or to remove people from that land, you must be very, very careful. And disasters certainly could not be a reason to displace people. This is very important in terms of the land issue.

•  Governments needs to learn how to listen to people. I personally believe that there was a great amount of concern when governments said, people should not stay near the sea because they could be damaged or they could be hurt. The problem is they don't have the ability, they don't have the instrumentality, they don't have the tools to go to people and listen to them. If this problem was handed over to people, that here is the danger from the waves, what do you want to do? If they'd been asked, they certainly would have come up with very different solutions than the solutions that the government came up with. Therefore if the government developed tools to talk to people, they would do much greater than they usually do.

•  Governments can learn and they can listen. Let me give just one concrete example. There are several people sitting here from Gujarat. They were able to relate to government in 2001, when the great earthquake happened, that if you really keep people in the center of the whole process, people will be able to do a good job. After the earthquake, 300,000 houses had to be built - and the government did not build a single house. All 300,000 houses have been built by the people. Therefore if you are able to communicate this to government, government will listen.

•  People should rebuild their houses, not the government, not the contractors, not the aid agencies. If you look at earthquakes and tsunamis, 90% of the houses that get destroyed are the houses of the poor. Then you should know that these are the houses that were built by people themselves in any case. Therefore people should rebuild them, not the contractors, not the government, not the funding agencies. Therefore if you want to rebuild them, keep people in the center of the process and you will do them well, you will move faster, and you will do exceedingly better.

•  Rehabilitation has to be "reconstruction plus" - it can not be just the reconstruction of what got destroyed. Because so much really is available. Now that "plus" could be sanitation, that "plus" could be community processes, that "plus" could be many things. But that "plus" must be identified and must happen.

•  A disasters can also be an opportunity. It's an opportunity to rebuild communities, it's an opportunity to strengthen people, it's an opportunity to end wars, it's an opportunity to go a step forward. If this happens, we'll be able to do it better, and the communities have shown us today how they know it better than most.

4. What process steps have been identified in your event that could help turn ideas into operational reality?

-To adopt tools that support affected communities in dealing with the diverse set of problems that may arise in the aftermath of disasters.

- To form and maintain networks of affected communities in effort to learn from each other's experience by sharing ideas, practices and case studies.