20 years ago, as millions of people across North America and Europe enjoyed Christmas leftovers, and played with new presents, a 9.2 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Indonesia unleashed a tsunami impacting over a dozen countries, taking the lives of 230,000 people and causing billions of dollars of damage.
The humanitarian response to the Indian Ocean tsunami was remarkable for a number of reasons. The scale of the crisis, which came on rapidly and unexpectedly, was enormous. This, combined with its timing –over the holiday period – led to an unprecedented outpouring of private donations and support that has since been unmatched by any crisis, including Haiti earthquake in 2011 or the Ukraine and Gaza wars in present day. In total, an estimated $14 billion was raised for the response, dwarfing nearly any humanitarian response prior or since. It was an incredible outpouring of solidarity and good will that reflected a shared sense of humanity with those who had lost loved ones, livelihoods, and homes.
"The tsunami response was the last time that the entire humanitarian system – donors, UN agencies, local actors, government authorities, Red Cross/Crescent Movement – came together to engage in a collective learning and accountability exercise"
It was also remarkable because the tsunami response was the last time that the entire humanitarian system – donors, UN agencies, local actors, government authorities, Red Cross/Crescent Movement – came together to engage in a collective learning and accountability exercise, known then as the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition. Covering multiple themes and amounting to over 400 pages of written findings, the evaluation was a massive undertaking of its own, and turned up a wide range of recommendations.
Re-reading the tsunami evaluation, it is very clearly a product of its time (the introduction refers its reader to the ‘set of CD rom discs’ that can be provided on request, containing all the findings and Annexes). But it is useful to look back at the tsunami evaluation for 3 important insights on where the humanitarian system is at today, and the choices it has to make moving forward:
Lesson 1: We change what is in our interest to change.
Many of the recommendations in the tsunami evaluation read depressingly familiar to our sector today – the need to improve support and leadership of local actors, to be more connected to community priorities, the need to invest more in DRR and longer-term solutions. What is interesting, though, are the recommendations that we don’t see as often anymore, because for the large part they have been addressed – recommendations on professionalising the humanitarian sector, on improving the technical quality of programmes, creating stronger coordination mechanisms, and increasing cash based assistance.
Taken all together, the recommendations in the TEC were not actually mutually achievable – acting on them required very different solutions and offered different directions of travel for the humanitarian system. One pathway, suggested by the recommendations to support local actors and listen to communities, involves decentralising and shifting power away from international agency headquarters. The other pathway, suggested by recommendations on professionalising and improving quality and coordination, involves consolidating power and building out structures and processes in international agencies. We know well which pathway was chosen.
"It seems like an abject failure of the system that, 20 years on from the TEC, there are initiatives in the humanitarian sector that are ‘piloting’ approaches to listening to communities and meaningfully using their feedback, rather than this already being mainstream practice."
The experience of the TEC should teach us to be more mindful of how we prioritise the problems facing the sector and the range of changes we want to see, knowing that people and organisations, who are only ever made up of people, will lean towards the changes that are most in their interest. It seems like an abject failure of the system that, 20 years on from the TEC, there are initiatives in the humanitarian sector that are ‘piloting’ approaches to listening to communities and meaningfully using their feedback, rather than this already being mainstream practice. But it is simply a reflection of the fact that community engagement has been de-prioritised over advances in technical quality and more standardised programme design. How would the follow up from the TEC have been different if the lack of coordination and poor quality were framed as stemming from the lack of adequate engagement with local actors and communities, rather than as an issue distinct from these?
Lesson 2: The sector has not found a good way of fundraising for crises without centring Global North institutions as the solution.
The vast amount of funding for the tsunami response came from well-intentioned private donations and members of the public who felt moved by the dire situation faced by survivors. This funding went predominantly to international organisations, who presented themselves as central to the response, whilst they competed for partners on the ground or competed directly with local actors, undermining a more locally led response.
Twenty years later, we see the sector more aware of these problems, but still grappling with fundamental questions on how it motivates others to support its work. How can international agencies advocate for more funding for crises without centring themselves as the primary recipients of such funding?
Lesson 3: Independent, system-wide information and analysis is critical
"What learning leaves on the dinner plate becomes food for accountability – transparent, independent learning exercises, be they evaluations or research, provide the resources that others can use to hold actors to account later on down the line."
The TEC may not have driven as much change in the system as was desired by its authors – but then, no learning or evaluative exercise really does. But this does not mean it is for nothing. What learning leaves on the dinner plate becomes food for accountability – transparent, independent learning exercises, be they evaluations or research, provide the resources that others can use to hold actors to account later on down the line. They are exactly what enable us to say that the sector has been re-learning the same recommendations for decades, and to call on leaders to do better.
This is an important point to stress as we head into 2025, as we are seeing independent, system-wide analysis under threat from the same budget cuts that are impacting humanitarian aid writ large. Development Initiatives, the producer of the global humanitarian assistance report, closed abruptly in November due to lack of funding, and other producers of independent data and analysis are facing similar constraints. Evaluators report increasing demands to alter their findings in what are meant to be independent evaluations. This quieting of independent evaluation and analysis makes the sector more reliant on multilateral agencies to provide the information it uses to understand its goals and performance: agencies with an operational interest in how this data is framed and used.
"For all its faults, the TEC was an act of hope – that the humanitarian system could learn, recognise its mistakes as well as celebrate its successes, and do better in the future."
Since the US election in November, the words of the American activist Mariame Kaba have been repeated often – ‘hope is a discipline.’ Learning, too, is a discipline – the only option we have between the extremities of blind ignorance to our failures on the one hand and complete despair on the other. For all its faults, the TEC was an act of hope – that the humanitarian system could learn, recognise its mistakes as well as celebrate its successes, and do better in the future. As the sector faces some of the most significant challenges it has seen in its history, let’s hope that this discipline to learn survives.
This article first appeared on LinkedIn on 27 December 2024
