Students and humanitarian workers discussed the tsunami relief effort with Sri Lankan government officials and relief workers during a videoconference at 7 a.m. Wednesday in the Technological Institute.
Sri Lanka was one of the countries hardest hit by the tsunami in December that killed hundreds of thousands in Asia and Africa.
Students and aid volunteers from 10 universities, including Yale and Oxford, shared the opportunity to speak with the officials. About 20 people from NU attended the conference, asking questions on topics ranging from disaster’s psychological impact on the victims to bureaucratic issues hindering the aid effort. Partners for Progress, a program sponsored by organizations including the United Nations Foundation and Americans for an Informed Democracy hosted the the videoconference.
“Considering how early it was, we had a really great turnout,” said Sarah Bush, a Weinberg senior and president of the NU chapter of Americans for an Informed Democracy. She said speakers had interesting responses to students’ questions about the tsunami and the relief efforts.
“The tsunami disaster of Dec. 26 has been unprecedented in scale and impact,” said Dr. Kan Tun, representative of the World Health Organization in Sri Lanka.
Tun said WHO has been working with the government to calm the population and reduce health risks associated with waterborne diseases.
“As movement of displaced people commences and they return to rebuilt damaged homes, are absorbed by families, or are moved to long-term shelters, this will challenge disease surveillance networks in different ways,” Tun said.
In addition to the difficulty of monitoring a precarious health environment, Sri Lankan officials emphasized the ineffectiveness of distributing funds in a hierarchy-plagued government.
“It’s a problem of logistics and what the capacity of a country is at any given time,” said Lalith Wikramanayake, chairman of the Environmental Foundation in Sri Lanka. “Lots of people want to do lots of things, but there is a limited number of pipelines through which it can come.”
Sri Lankan officials said there are organizations working to ensure transparency and accountability for funds being contributed toward the relief effort because of possible corruption.
Despite such concerns, Tun encouraged students to contribute to the relief effort. By giving representatives from tsunami-affected regions a voice, Partners for Progress hopes to sustain long-term international support for relief, reconstruction and development.
“We call on each and every one of you in the audience today, and the world at large, to continue to reach out to the beautiful country and its people,” Tun said. “It is an effort that will not be measured in months, but in years, and our very humanity is being put to the test.”
Reach Ilya Bunimovich at [email protected].
