Women and the Tsunami: Ensuring Effective Reconstruction

Post-tsunami relief and reconstruction has begun to shift from meeting immediate needs to focusing on mid- and long-term reconstruction. Helping disaster victims rejoin the workforce “will allow [them] to take control of their own lives and start rebuilding their businesses and communities,” according to USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios.

Today, the need for women to bring in a cash income is greater than ever, with new tsunami widows suddenly assuming full responsibility for their families. In many tsunami-affected communities, families depended on both men and women for both food and income. Women’s role as breadwinner was particularly pronounced in Aceh, Indonesia, which suffered two-thirds of the disaster’s death toll. With many men emigrating to escape the civil war, women and girls made up nearly 70 percent of the Acehnese population and kept their economy alive since the 1980s.

The tsunami destroyed many of the natural resources that women in the region relied on, making it even more difficult than before for poor women to support themselves and their families.

• Fishing industry – In Sri Lanka and Indonesia, women worked alongside the fishing industry. They made and sold coir ropes, mended nets, dried fish, produced salt, and fished for oysters. Many of their tools, as well as the fishing fleets they depended on, were swept away by the tsunami.

• Farming – Many Indonesian women sustained their families by farming rice, coconuts, and other fruits and vegetables. The tsunami flooded their fields with salt water, destroying soil fertility.

• Livestock – In tsunami-affected regions in India, women contributed to their families’ income by raising livestock. Many animals were lost in the tsunami.

• Micro-business – Women found opportunities in micro-enterprises such as brick and traditional handicraft production, as well as selling food in local bazaars. The tsunami destroyed their shops, tools, and materials.

Today, millions of women find themselves unable to support for themselves and their children. The impacts can be devastating.

• Sex Trafficking – The National Women’s Collective of Sri Lanka cautions that women’s vulnerability to sex trafficking escalates when income-earning opportunities are not available to women. In past disasters, women have entered the prostitution as a means of earning income. In other instances, male family members have sold their daughters so they could buy food for the rest of the family.

• Violence against women – Action for Girjan Development, a women’s NGO in India, draws a direct link between women’s income and domestic violence. Noting that the tsunami created extreme psychological pressures on families, it cites cases of men beating female family members for not earning enough money.

Past rebuilding efforts prove that women’s participation is critical to the success of any reconstruction strategy. Therefore, the Women’s Edge Coalition calls on the United States to support targeted efforts that create new economic opportunities for women.

• Restore and improve existing jobs – Where traditional forms of employment can be reestablished, women face such challenges as replacing tools, materials, seeds and animals, and rebuilding a clientele in their devastated communities or in refugee camps. Start-up funds are desperately needed. The Tsunami Women’s Fund in Sri Lanka sees the reconstruction process as an opportunity for women to increase their income-earning potential by learning improved techniques. For example, women in the fish-drying industry could better support themselves if they learned more modern ways to dry fish.

• Train women to earn income in new ways – There are many new industries that women feel would be culturally appropriate for them to enter. For example, women in Indonesia have called for training in tailoring, attap roofing, and running child day-care centers. In Somalia, they express interest in bee keeping, poultry farming, small-scale farming, and fruit tree cultivation.

• Extend and protect women’s access to credit and property rights –Many families lost their legal documents, including deeds and land titles. The process for reissuing papers must grant women, and especially widows, the right to own and inherit property. Additionally, women micro-business owners and producers will need to replace the equipment and tools they lost in the tsunami. Access to credit will be critical as they try to get back on their feet.

The perspective of local women’s organizations was effectively summed up by CARE President and CEO Peter Bell, who explained in testimony before the House International Relations Committee that women’s organizations will play a key role in the recovery effort:

• Knowledge of women’s needs - Women in tsunami-affected regions possess valuable expertise about their needs and potential roles in the aftermath of the disaster. Their knowledge must be integrated into all plans for relief and reconstruction to ensure that assistance reaches men, women, boys, and girls. If women’s expertise is not tapped, women’s needs often go unmet.

• Access to women beneficiaries - Women and local women’s groups offer a unique level of access to women and families in need of relief. Coming from a similar background as their beneficiaries, they are able to broach sensitive subjects such as women’s health and girls’ education, without generating distrust or discomfort.

• Lasting self-sufficiency – Inevitably local women’s organizations will be required to meet the long-term needs of women in tsunami-affected countries. They will need to have the capacity to run organizations, deliver services, and advocate the needs of women to their own governments.

Women’s groups are already responding to the challenge of helping other women. For example, an Indonesian women’s group called Flower Aceh has convened a coalition of 6 women’s groups. Together with a larger network of Indonesian NGOs, the coalition has set up a women’s crisis center that provides trauma counseling and coordinates referrals of displaced women to camps and field hospitals.

In Somalia, the Galkayo Education Center for Peace and Development provided 786 families with women’s clothes, blankets, and plastic tarps to build temporary shelters. They also organized two women’s committees so that women could express their needs to the people making decisions about refugee camp management and resource distribution.

The Sri Lanka-based Coalition for Assisting Tsunami Affected Women, a network of 60 women’s groups, has been gathering information on reported incidents of violence against women and women’s general needs. Member organizations have begun to use the collected knowledge to recommend and promote projects for women.

For the important, meaningful, and effective work of local women’s groups to continue, it will be important for the United States to support their efforts. This includes providing seed grants to form new women’s groups. The National Women’s Collective of Sri Lanka suggests that grants of $5,000 - $10,000 would enable women’s NGOs to launch new projects – and a new degree of organization -- to groups of women in the region.

Existing NGOs will also need support and capacity-building. Flower Aceh, an Indonesian women’s group, reports that many women’s NGOs lost their offices in the tsunami. With no place to meet, no computers, files or supplies, they will need to rebuild and refurnish their destroyed offices. Many NGOs also lost staff members and will have to hire new people to take over the responsibilities of deceased and traumatized workers.

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