Christian Aid Director Urges Local-level Disaster Response

The international director of Christian Aid, Paul Valentin, has highlighted the world’s failure to recognise that prevention is better than cure, following a year of multiple and major disasters.

|PIC1|Mr Valentin said, “The year 2005 will be remembered as a year of disasters,” before citing a long list of disasters that happened worldwide including the famine in Niger, Zimbabwe and Malawi, the devastating hurricanes in Central America and New Orleans, and the massive earthquake in Pakistan.

He went on to highlight the suffering of the poorest people in these disasters, who often suffer more than others owing to their impoverished living conditions, lack of resources to fall back on, and lack of means to move to safer places.

“Aid agencies have felt unprecedented pressure this year to respond to these humanitarian disasters,” said Mr Valentin.

Across the world, Christian Aid has helped half a million people in the aftermath of 2004’s catastrophic tsunami and tens of thousands more including those seeking shelter in the camps of Darfur, where many people remain displaced because of civil war, as well as victims of the storms that hit Central America.

|TOP|The international Christian Aid director stressed that there were many lessons to learn from the year of major disasters, including the ability of local people to face disaster, and the wise saying that prevention is better than cure.

Following a cyclone in Bangladesh that killed 140,000 in 1991, Christian Aid partners were among the many local organisations that built cyclone shelters to better protect the people next time around.

When a stronger cyclone hit six years later just 100 people were killed, partly because communities had somewhere to shelter from the storm, said Valentin.

In Kashmir, 500 boys died when their school building collapsed on top of them. Mr Valentin said in south Asia the difference in cost between constructing an earthquake-proof rural primary school and a non-earthquake-proof one is a mere £500 - £1 for each of the boys who died in Kashmir.

“In virtually all disasters, wherever they happen, local people are the first to respond. Specialist relief and rescue operations may deserve praise for their often heroic efforts,” said Mr Valentin. “But it is local people, with basic equipment and often using their bare hands, who rescue the greatest numbers.”|QUOTE|

Mr Valentin said that the stronger the local communities and their organisations, “the better the chance of responding in a timely and effective way that saves lives”. He cited the examples of local organisations in south India and on the east coast of Sri Lanka which had community kitchens already up and running by the evening of Boxing Day.

“Communities with a basic understanding of disasters are actors in their own recovery, instead of passive recipients of other people’s generosity,” said Valentin.

He said that responding through well-prepared local groups is also much cheaper than flying in foreign experts and their equipment.

“While they have a vital role to play, external aid agencies and donors should remember that they can only enable and facilitate; local people have the right to be in the driving seat of their own recovery,” he said.

Mr Valentin said, it was necessary “to invest more in helping people living in the areas likely to be hardest hit to be prepared”.

He said: “After disasters, we must make sure that we rebuild better.”