Cholpon Akmatova
APWLD Information and Communications Officer

The Survey was conducted by APWLD member-organisations based in the disaster affected countries. Solidaritas Perempuan conducted the survey in Aceh (Indonesia), Society for Rural Education and Development in Tamil Nadu (India), INFORM, CATAW and Suriya Women’s Development Centre in Sri Lanka, Sustainable Development Foundation in Thailand and Roots for Equity in northern Pakistan. In total over 1,500 people, from 60 to over 900 disaster affected people, mainly women, were covered by the Survey in each of the five countries between September 2005 and April 2006.

The common issues across the five affected countries were:

• Women specific needs such as sanitary pads and underwear were overlooked in the relief assistance.
• Tent camps and temporary shelters had no separate toilets and bathrooms for women, which made women vulnerable to sexual harassment and abuse.
• Lack of privacy and security in overcrowded tent camps and temporary shelters made women feel insecure and increased gender based violence. In Pakistan, there were cases of abduction of young women and girls by criminal groups, allegedly, for sexual slavery or forceful removal of internal organs.
• There were no kitchens in temporary shelters which created additional problems for women who had to take care of food for the family.
• The governments’ use of concept of “head of household” as the basis for providing support, especially financial compensation and housing assistance, resulted in discrimination against women as the society recognises only men as heads of households.
• Women were excluded from decision making processes for relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction on all levels: community, local and national.
• In Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Aceh, gender blind disaster management led to exclusion of widows and women headed households from assistance, especially in Pakistan where women’s seclusion is practised so women could not leave their homes to access food aid, tents and other relief supplies.
• In Aceh and Pakistan women could not access reproductive health services due to a lack of female health workers.

A resident of Kargil Naggar temporary shelter sharing with anguish about 2 years of life in temporary shelters during the Asian Forum participants visit to the shelter Kargil Naggar temporary shelter residents listening to sharings about post-tsunami women’s issues in Aceh Kargil Naggar residents complained of mosquito borne diseases caused by the floods in the camp

Guidelines for Gender Sensitive Disaster Management have been developed based on the reports of the Survey of women’s human rights violations in the aftermath of disasters in the five above mentioned countries. The Guidelines are a set of practical steps to assist governments, the non state sector and civil society to respond to women’s concerns and needs in post disaster situations. Publications of the Survey in the five countries and the Guidelines have been widely distributed at the Asian Forum on Women in Disasters in Chennai.

One of the main outcomes of the Chennai Forum was national and regional action plans to ensure the Guidelines for Gender Sensitive Disaster Management are implemented. The participants committed to disseminate findings of the Survey and the Guidelines through translating the publications into local languages, producing posters and other education material and holding community and national forums to raise awareness of the general public and the local governments of women’s needs in disasters. Ravadee Prasertcharoensuk of Sustainable Development Foundation, Thailand/APWLD member urged the participants to use the actions planned for dissemination of the survey findings to empower women affected by the disasters to claim their rights and to benefit and participate in the post disaster rehabilitation and reconstruction process.

One of the planned regional level actions is to call a regional policy makers and NGO forum on gender sensitive disaster management aimed at providing opportunity for 1) policy makers to share how they are addressing women’s needs in post-disaster reconstruction and learn from each other and 2) for NGOs to advocate with governments for women’s rights. The participants felt a regional forum is an important tool to educate their policy makers about gender aspect of disasters and to learn about successful policies in other countries. E.g. Government officials from other countries were impressed that Aceh Rehabilitation Agency has a women’s department and budget allocation for women’s support programme. However, they were able to spend only 48% of their budget due to bureaucratic procedures. A top Tamil Nadu government official attending Chennai Forum admitted that it was one of the most interesting conferences he ever attended as he learned a lot about women’s issues he was not aware of. The Chennai Forum also served as an important advocacy platform for NGOs to challenge their governments to address women’s concerns.

In the joint statement issued at the press conference the Chennai Forum participants expressed their anger that 2 years after the tsunami women still face violations of their rights and thousands of people still live in temporary shelters which lack adequate sanitation, clean water, health services and security.

On day 3 of the forum the participants visited temporary shelters of the tsunami affected communities in Chennai. One of the visited sites Kargil Naggar shelters over 1,800 families. It is the 3rd site they had to move since the tsunami. The previous shelters built out of tar sheets caught fire so supporting NGOs funded the construction of temporary shelters out of bricks. Residents of Kargil Naggar cannot move back to their homes on the seashore near the Chennai port. Chennai government always wanted to get rid of the slums around the port to expand the harbour and road leading to the port. They took advantage of the disaster, which drove fisher folk away from the seashore, to prevent them from coming back. The area has been fenced off. Kargil Nagar residents do not know how long they will have to stay in the temporary shelters. They heard they might be moved to multi-storey buildings under construction a few kilometers away from the sea. The Chennai Harbour Development Project funded by the World Bank drove the fisher folk slum dwellers away from their homes only to put them into other slums but this time away from public sight in another type of slums - newly constructed multi storey buildings with no water and sanitation in the houses. Evictions have been legalised by the Parliament’s Coastal Zone Management Act which introduced 500 meter “buffer zones” to keep the poor away from the sea.

“We were as free as seagulls living at the sea. Now we feel like birds caged in these temporary shelters away from the sea. Without hearing the noise of the sea and seeing the vast beauty of the sea we become depressed,” says a woman resident of Kargil Naggar temporary shelter. For these people, who have been earning their livelihoods by small scale fishing, working as casual labour in the fishing industry and women buying and selling and processing fish, living 7 km away from the sea increases their cost of living and makes fishing impossible. To start fishing at 4 in the morning they have to get up at 2. Most of them do not have their own means of transportation so they spend most of their earning to pay ‘auto’ fares. Fisher people have to live by the sea because only constantly watching the sea they would know when is the best time to go into the sea to catch fish. It could be anytime of the night or day: 2 am or 12 pm.

The Tamil Nadu government official speaking at the Chennai Forum promised that Kargil Naggar temporary shelter residents would be allocated permanent housing by April 2007. However, thousands others in Tamil Nadu, Aceh and Sri Lanka will most probably remain in temporary shelters due to government bureaucracy, corruption and lack of affected people’s participation in the reconstruction process. The participants of the Chennai Forum committed to continue advocating for the rights of the disaster affected people in their countries and implement the national action plans developed during the Forum.