Power to the people: an urgent paradigm for disasters

100 days have passed since Yolanda/Haiyan devasted Leyte, Samar, and other islands in the center of our archipelago. The government, the international community, the private sector, and citizen organzations have been trying to respond to the challenges the disaster caused. It’s not surprising in this context that, in a survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations, President Aquino scored well in terms of satisfaction ratings among Yolanda survivors. People appreciate the effort even if the outcomes are not necessarily to their satisfaction.

Still, in the afflicted lands, we know that there is dissastisfaction, even serious unrest and anger. Consider that two days after the SES survey results came out, protesters reportedly numbering around 10,000, and coming all the way from other Yolanda stricken areas in the Samar and Leyte provinces marched through the streets of Tacloban City to express their indignation over the government’s purported shortcomings. The protesters demanded P40,000 in direct cash assistance from the national government and were calling for the repeal of the 40 meters ‘no-build zone’ from the shoreline policy, among other gripes, and have since issued an ultimatum for the government to heed their demands.

An open letter from Tacloban

In Tacloban, hard questions are being asked by good people like Redemptorist brother Karl Gaspar. In an open letter, this veteran of the struggle against the Marcos regime who has been on the ground in Tacloban for the last 100 days observes and asks:

“After a hundred days, Tacloban City and its adjacent towns and communities in Samar-Leyte still lay in ruins. Recovery has been very slow and the situation remains bleak and desperate! Thousands of survivors still live in tents and temporary shelters; and bunkhouses built by the government can’t still be used for these are deemed unfit for human habitation. Despite official rejection of corruption charges, suspicions of wrongdoings persist.”

A hundred days ago, thousands perished as the giant seawaters rushed inland sweeping everybody and everything that stood in the way of the storm surge. After a hundred days, government statistics still peg the casualty figures at 6.7 thousand, when ordinary folks claim it could be triple that figure. Hundreds of bodies still need to be dug from the debris, retrieved and identified, blessed and buried in mass graves. Pious elderly women lit candles near dump sites where they hear voices in the dead of the night wishing that restless souls be finally laid to rest.

A hundred days ago, the world watched in horror at images broadcasted by mass and social media showing corpses lying in the streets left unattended, the living desperately seeking food and water, evacuees occupying cramped evacuation centers huddled like orphans abandoned by their elders and State and private agencies distributing relief goods amidst complaints that government agencies assigned these tasks have been too slow in responding to people’s need for food and potable water. A hundred days after, thousands still rely on relief goods which could dry up any day soon, leaving thousands of children threatened with malnutrition.

All over the city, one sees signs on tarpaulin and cement walls – BANGON TACLOBAN! TINDOG LEYTE! (Rise up, Tacloban! Stand up Leyte!) But even as the ravaged areas are struggling to recover, one looks around the bleak landscape and wonders if there is hope for the majority of the survivors in the months and years to come.

Meanwhile the people raise very urgent and important questions:

1. (For those who have rebuilt or hope to rebuild their houses inside the 40-meter no-build zone) What are the provisions of the Presidential Decree that serve as legal framework for this no-build zone? How serious is the State in implementing this decree in Tacloban City and adjacent coastal towns and barangays? What are the implications for those who have no other place to rebuild their homes? What happens if they resist the PD? If the people are pushed out of this zone, are there relocation sites for them? Where are these?

2. (For those who still live in evacuation centers or in temporary shelters that do not offer adequate comfort and safety) When will the homeless survivors be able to transfer to housing projects that have been built or still being built? Who are the ones who would benefit from such housing projects? What is the process of applying for such houses? What are the terms for payment? Are the sites of these housing projects locations that provide livelihood for the residents?” 

Unequal distribution of disaster impacts

The truth is that even when a disaster is universal, i.e., it affects everyone, its impacts are always unequally distributed.

Vivid images of a disaster happening or its immediately visible impacts can be very powerful and make one forget the realities before the disaster occurred. Before Yolanda hit the Samar provinces of Eastern and Northern Samar, these two had long been identified as some of the poorest provinces in the country. The reasons for the Samar provinces’ impoverished state are winding and complex, but inadequate attention from the national government is certainly one of the culprits.

As poor households generally have low expectations or merely hope for marginal improvements in their quality of life, a public act of kindness by government leaders during or after disasters is often seen as an exercise of charity which already suffices to bring about great joy and satisfaction among the poor, but which, in turn, reinforces their psyche of mendicancy. 

Surely, the happening of Yolanda burdened residents of Samar and Leyte with even more hardships. But we must not lose track of the fact that even before their communities were devastated by the super typhoon the people there were already living in abject poverty. Disasters don’t erase that fact; rather it worsens the living conditions of the poor since the poorest people in a community also happen to be the most vulnerable to the impacts of disasters. It is the poor, on account of their lack of financial resources, who are forced to live in esteros, under the bridges, along dangerous mountain slopes, in permanent danger zones, and other geo-political areas where the life support and coping mechanisms are extremely fragile. 

By taking into consideration the pre-disaster socio-economic conditions in communities devastated by the disasters, we would see that the real impact of disasters also hinges on the socio-economic division between the rich and the poor. Contrary to what images of total ruins visually convey in post-disaster scenes, the impact of a disaster in a community is in fact unequally felt among the community members. For even if the super typhoon Yolanda did not discriminate which houses to destroy or inundate in Tacloban City, and in fact destroyed most of the houses there with equal severity, those financially well-off households were able to immediately seek comfort elsewhere as they were reported to have left in droves for Cebu City.

In Cebu, Manila and other places which were unaffected by the typhoon, these well-to-do individuals were accommodated in other residential options such as hotels, condominium units, in the residence of equally wealthy relatives or associates, and were able to immediately avail of other fine amenities that enabled them to quickly recover from the initial misery – all of which they were able to do because they have the financial resources or clout to do so. The same thing happened in Metro Manila when Ondoy hit in 2009, as the affluent affected residents of Marikina and Pasig were able to readily transfer to the comfort of their secondary homes in condominium towers, townhouses, or hotels, get immediate medical attention while staying in hospital suites, and basically escape the consequent hardships in the disaster-stricken area.

Disasters, therefore, do not affect everyone equally, even if the physical hazard was the same for everyone. 

Moving to a rights-based approach

Since disasters do not affect everyone equally, the poor, who cannot escape the brunt of the disaster impacts are necessarily put at a disadvantage position; sometimes at an even more disadvantaged position prior to the disaster. This is because the resulting household casualty or disability, as well as the lost of meager properties or livelihoods, pushes the poor even more towards the back end of the social mobility spectrum.

From this view, the framework of responding to disaster ought not to be charity based. Service delivery and rehabilitation efforts in disaster situations that are based on charity reinforce mendicancy and sense of dependence among the poor. It is a highly disempowering vicious cycle that only serves to perpetuate the poor in the doldrums of impoverishment, and which we must immediately put an end to.

The framework that we must work with should start with the premise that those who are in most need must be given the most help, because they are inherently entitled to it. The reason for having this context is that disaster assistance is not a neutral activity; it is always impelled by some force, some reason or motivation. The reason that moves one to extend help to disaster victims, may be different from that of the other, but it must always be carried under a framework that identifies rights holders and duty bearers.

This recognition of rights holders is attendant if the framework applied is a rights-based approach, which has as its basis the core international human rights instruments. A rights-based approach frees the rights holders from dependency and the burden of gratitude, and instead gives a sense of empowerment since the view becomes that the disaster assistance was, or is being provided, as matter of right, and not as an act of charity.

Persons claiming welfare assistance, on the basis of rights, also does not lose or sacrifice their dignity, which further encourages them to engage their leaders and express their needs on other facets of developmental needs. It is for this reason, the ability of the rights-based approach to identify the fulcrum of disaster victims’ needs towards full rehabilitation and its potential use in realizing the accountability and ethical dimensions of disaster response and rehabilitation, that it serves the higher purpose integrative holistic development.

Concrete steps forward

Utilizing the rights-based approach in actual disaster response and rehabilitation is no abstract matter. Some credible instruments and documents have been prepared, most notably the 2011 Operational Guidelines on the Protection of Persons in Situations of Natural Disasters produced by the IASC (Inter-Agency Standing Committee) which is a forum in the United Nations between UN and non-UN humanitarian organizations, as well as the IASC Field Manual in 2008.

The IASC Guidelines and Manual offers some useful, practical insights in contextualizing a rights-based approach to DRR, some of these are:

• The priority temporary settlement for disaster victims is living arrangements with host families (supported by cash or other incentives), while least preference should be given to a camp set-up  
• Maximize the involvement of displaced persons, in particular women and other in at-risk groups in the planning and design of camps/evacuation centres to ensure their protection and security
• Provide for distribution and assistance in a way that avoids the need for the elderly, PWDs without family support, and unaccompanied children to stand in line for long periods of time or to carry heavy loads from the distribution point to their dwellings
• Facilitate the early return of indigenous people and ethnic minority groups to their traditional land and property, recognizing their special connection with the land
• Livelihood training programs must not reinforce existing social or stereotypical gender divisions of labour which push women, as well as ethnic, religious or racial minority groups into the least desirable jobs with the lowest pay and poorest working conditions
• Employment rehabilitation and re-training schemes should take into account the special needs of single-parent households (due to casualty in the disaster), including the need for flexible hours and child care support
• Monitor closely post-disaster relocation and resettlement schemes to ensure that this won’t be use as an excuse to clear (or pack) areas with people in order to broaden commercial or political ends
• Every effort should be taken to keep unaccompanied or orphaned siblings-children together when arranging for foster care orphanages
• Only a detailed disaggregated data – providing information on gender, age, morbidity profile, ethnic composition, and needs profile (including nutrition, health, and the search for missing family members) – can enable humanitarian organizations to respond to human rights protection challenges of the rights holders

The narrow focus which presently pervades our disaster response and rehabilitation actions needs to give way to a rights-based approach, for it is only then that our people can genuinely gauge for themselves how a “very good” government response to disasters ought to be.

Power to the people. That’s the urgent paradigm we need for disaster risk reduction and management. – Rappler.com