A week after the tsunami, a European aid worker visited the Jesuit Refugee Service office in Banda Aceh. He had been on his first assessment mission to an IDP community and wanted to share with us the conclusions he had…
Since a cease-fire agreement in February 2002 the LTTE’s prolonged struggle to establish a Tamil ethnic state in Sri Lanka’s Northern and Eastern provinces has given way to an uneasy peace. The sheer magnitude of the tsunami’s destructive impact may…
For the first two weeks after the tsunami struck, humanitarian agencies, the Sri Lankan government, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), local and international emergency response teams and the public in the eastern city of Batticaloa focused on providing…
The following stories offer a composite presentation of experiences related to the author by displaced people and aid workers some five months after the tsunami. They convey some of the key livelihood issues in post-tsunami Sri Lanka, in particular the…
It was 9.30am on 26 December 2004 when Mary Theresa Rajeswaran heard what she thought was an approaching military vehicle. Cooking in her kitchen, Mary only became concerned when shouts and screams accompanied the roaring noise outside. Taking her daughter…
In the late 1990s, with growing numbers of humanitarian emergencies and rapidly evolving complexity of relief aid, World Vision changed the way it responded to major disasters. Instead of borrowing development staff at the onset of an emergency, and losing…
From the first day of the emergency, international and national agencies in Batticaloa pulled together. Short and effective meetings were held by people who already knew each other. Camaraderie between Sri Lankan and expatriate colleagues grew from the personal dangers…
Across the globe ‘irregular’ or ‘undocumented’ migrants can be found working as domestic servants, farm labourers or street cleaners, doing jobs commonly viewed as dirty, demeaning or dangerous. Prior to the tsunami, Burmese migrant workers in the coastal areas of…
Tamil Nadu Speakers at the symposium[1] noted that the first response from the Government of India and the Tamil Nadu state government to the needs of the 2.73 million people affected by the giant waves was hesitant. As initial rescue…
When the tsunami inundated the small village in which she lives, Mariammal lost her catamaran and fishing nets. Her village – inhabited mostly by Irula tribal people – is on a small strip of land between Pulicat lagoon (60 km…