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Lessons from Tsunami Aid Scramble
ADB Review [ June-July 2006 ]

By Nicholas Stockton
Executive Director, Secretariat, Humanitarian
Accountability Partnership International

The sheer abundance of financial resources that flowed through international humanitarian agencies in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami invalidated their usual alibi for weak performance.

Yet 15 months later, numerous program evaluators working within the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition are finding themselves under huge pressure to say something positive about the international relief effort when, on the ground, there is only patchy evidence that would actually justify this. So what went wrong?

The simple answer is—the system performed as it usually does.

It scrambled into action with a level of readiness that the emergency services of any provincial town would be embarrassed by, and with a plethora of actors driven by uneven degrees of competence, experience, and integrity; all involved in a contract bidding war conducted without the benefit of a comprehensive set of rules, standards, and procedures.

It is hardly surprising that the results were so mixed. Caught between the popular marketing-driven myth that quality humanitarian aid can be delivered without “overheads,” and the reality of highly expensive, expatriateheavy management and coordination practices, the squeeze is felt where there is least likelihood of it generating complaints. Proper consultation with affected communities was superficial or dispensed with altogether.

It is time for a universal humanitarian quality management standard to be introduced to enable beneficiaries, hosts, and donors to better identify those genuinely committed to quality and accountability.

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