Information: a life-saving resource

Looking back over the events of 2004, it is striking how many of the year’s disasters could have been avoided with better information and communication. For tens of thousands of people, disaster arrived suddenly, unannounced.

The tsunami, which wrecked so many lives, homes and livelihoods last December, looms large in this year’s report. Although scientists across the region had the technology to register the massive earthquake off Sumatra which triggered the tragedy, they lacked the means to tell people what was coming or what to do.

Yet informal networks succeeded where official warnings failed: Vijayakumar Gunasekaran, based in Singapore, heard of the tsunami’s devastating impact on the radio early on the morning of 26 December. He phoned a warning through to his family in Nallavadu on the eastern coast of India, in time for villagers to evacuate all 3,630 residents to safety.

Early warning is the most obvious way in which accurate, timely information alone can save lives. In the Caribbean, during 2004’s hurricane season, most countries successfully alerted their populations of approaching storms and saved many lives as a result. The key to their success was putting people, not just technology, at the centre of their warning systems.

In Cuba, disaster awareness is taught as part of the school curriculum and evacuation drills are held every year before the hurricane season. In Jamaica, Red Cross volunteers like Patricia Greenleaf go from street to street issuing warnings by megaphone, 48 hours before hurricanes are due to hit. Building awareness from the bottom up is as valuable as transmitting information from the top down.

As well as saving lives, information reduces suffering in the wake of disaster. Tracing lost family and friends, knowing how much compensation you’re entitled to or where you’re going to live, simply understanding why disaster struck: such information means an enormous amount to survivors left homeless and traumatized.

In Aceh, Indonesia, Red Cross volunteers helped reunite 3,400 tsunami survivors with their families – often using satellite phones. In Sri Lanka, many people feared the waves were a divine punishment. The Belgian Red Cross helped dispel these myths by explaining the science behind the disaster.

Once fed and sheltered, disaster survivors are hungry for information on how to get back to work, how to participate in reconstruction, how to influence the recovery agenda of aid organizations and governments. In Tamil Nadu, the Indian state hit hardest by the tsunami, local civil society groups formed a coordination cell to capture people’s priorities across 100 disaster-struck villages and report back on what aid officials were planning. Maintaining communication with affected people is a crucial
way in which aid organizations can promote transparency, accountability and trust.

Good information is equally vital to ensure disaster relief is appropriate and welltargeted. After the tsunami, women’s specific needs were often overlooked. Large quantities of inappropriate, used clothing clogged up warehouses and roadsides across South Asia. Assessing and communicating what is not needed can prove as vital as finding out what is needed – saving precious time, money and resources.

Meanwhile, far from the media spotlight, various chronic crises silently steal lives and livelihoods. The Sahel region of West Africa has suffered near-famine, triggered by drought and locusts, which put the lives of 9 million people at risk by mid-2005. Despite timely warnings, the plight of the Sahel was overshadowed by events in Darfur and the Indian Ocean. Promoting better media coverage of the world’s neglected humanitarian disasters is a vital priority if global aid is to be apportioned more fairly.

Local journalists can make an enormous difference to the lives of people living in crisis. In Afghanistan, a long-running radio soap opera combines entertainment with life-saving advice on how to avoid disease or landmines. Evidence shows that people adopt less risky behaviour after listening to these programmes.

So the record of the international aid community is mixed. Information alone can save lives. But there are gaps in the way we gather and share this powerful resource. Fortunately, this year’s report reveals that there is much good practice on which to build. I would like to see three things happen.

First, aid organizations must recognize that accurate, timely information is a form of disaster response in its own right. It may also be the only form of disaster preparedness that the most vulnerable can afford.

Second, in our dialogue with journalists, donors and the wider public, we must put more emphasis on highlighting the plight of people caught up in the world’s neglected disasters.

Finally, we must put far greater priority on communicating with people affected by disaster. Not only will this lead to more efficient aid assessment and delivery, but more crucial still, by giving vulnerable people the right information, they can take greater control of their own lives.

Aid organizations must keep up. We need new approaches that boost people's resilience to the full spectrum of physical, social and economic adversities they face. By resilience, I mean people's ability to cope with crisis and bounce back stronger than before. If we fail to shift from short-term relief to longer-term support for communities in danger, we risk wasting our money and undermining the resilience we seek to enhance.

Top-down interventions may prove less effective than many assume. Following last December's devastating earthquake in Bam, 34 search-and-rescue teams from 27 countries flew to the city and saved 22 lives. Meanwhile, local Red Crescent teams pulled 157 people alive from the rubble, using far fewer 'sniffer' dogs. Investing in local response capacities saves lives and money.

However, 'natural' disasters are not the biggest killers. In sub-Saharan Africa last year, 2.2 million people died from HIV/AIDS, while 25 million live with the infection. Disease, drought, malnutrition, poor healthcare and poverty have together created a complex catastrophe, demanding a more integrated response than simply food aid or drugs.

Meanwhile, the unplanned acceleration of urban areas is concentrating new risks. Diseases from filthy water and sanitation kill over 2 million people a year - many of them slum children. So why have national governments and aid organizations barely addressed the issue?

The developed world faces new threats, too. Five degrees more summer heat than usual triggered a disaster that shamed modern, wealthy societies across Europe in 2003. Up to 35,000 elderly and vulnerable people suffered silent, lonely deaths, abandoned by state welfare systems in retreat.

Europe was caught off guard. Humanitarian organizations are more prepared for sudden-impact, high-profile disasters. But as the nature of disaster changes, we must change too. Instead of imposing definitions and solutions on people we consider vulnerable, we should ask them what they define as a disaster. How are they adapting to the new risks facing them?

The answers can be surprising - and inspiring. In Swaziland, HIV/AIDS and drought are conspiring to leave many perpetually hungry. But Chief Masilela informs us that his community wants irrigation and seeds - not food aid - so they can grow crops, craft their own recovery and retain their dignity. His government, meanwhile, is expanding access to life-lengthening drugs and recruiting 10,000 women as 'surrogate parents' for thousands of AIDS orphans.

Across the Indian Ocean in Mumbai, one woman we report on has rented out her comfortable apartment and moved into a shack beneath a bridge, at risk of flooding and fire. That way, she can pay for her daughter's education. She's decided the family's longterm resilience depends on investing in her daughter rather than living somewhere safer.

To the south, the low caste women of Andhra Pradesh have rediscovered indigenous, hardy seeds to help farmers recover from debt and despair as their cash crops - recommended by experts in distant capitals - wither in the drought.

The capacity for resilience in the face of adversity shines through all this year's stories. People continually adapt to crisis, coming up with creative solutions. They prioritise livelihoods and household assets rather than the quick fix. Supporting resilience means more than delivering relief or mitigating individual hazards. Local knowledge, skills, determination, livelihoods, cooperation, access to resources and representation are all vital factors enabling people to bounce back from disaster. This implies a paradigm shift in how we approach aid. We must focus on the priorities and capacities of those we seek to help.

Mapping vulnerabilities and meeting needs is no longer enough. The idea is not new - it's been enshrined in The Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief for the past 10 years. So why do humanitarian organizations still fail to assess - let alone harness - the capacities of those at risk?

Three things need to happen. First, we must understand what enables people to cope with, recover from and adapt to the risks they face. Second, we must build our responses on the community's own priorities, knowledge and resources. Third, we must scale up community responses, by creating new coalitions with governments and advocating changes in policy and practice at all levels.

If we focus only on needs and vulnerabilities, we remain locked in the logic of repetitive responses that fail to nurture the capacities for resilience contained deep within every community. We have talked about building capacity and resilience for decades. It is now time to turn rhetoric into reality: to dispel the myth of the helpless victim and the infallible humanitarian, and to put disaster-affected people and their abilities at the centre of our work.

Markku Niskala
Secretary General