Jonathan Fowler
Associated Press
October 28, 2004
Many of the methods being used by international aid workers may do more to hurt than to help the lives of disaster victims, the international Red Cross said Thursday in its annual report. Aid agencies and governments spend too little time listening to people on the front line and too much time fueling the "disaster victim cliche," which portrays affected communities as helpless, Red Cross expert Eva von Oelreich said. Helping people to help themselves before, during and after disaster strikes is the key to cutting the impact of catastrophes, said the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in its World Disasters Report. "It's a myth that only Western governments and aid agencies know best," von Oelreich told reporters ahead of the report's release.
The Red Cross study said that in 2003 the number of people affected by natural and manmade catastrophes fell to 255 million. The figure was some 2.5 times lower than the previous year - when the total was boosted to 608 million by drought in India - but close to the annual average for the previous decade. The reported death toll, however, leapt to 76,806 - three times higher than in 2002. The 1994-2003, annual average was 62,000.
The Red Cross figures cover earthquakes, weather-related disasters, famine, plane crashes and other "technological disasters" but omit war-related casualties and deaths from disease. Europe's heat wave caused nearly half the deaths from disasters in 2003, said the Red Cross. Up to 35,000 people died in Europe - around half of them in France and most aged over 75 years - as summer temperatures exceeded 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Most of the rest died in the magnitude-6.6 earthquake that struck Bam, Iran, in December. The quake killed at least 30,000 people, injured the same number and destroyed 85 percent of Bam's buildings. The Bam earthquake provided the perfect example of how relief organizations sometimes get it wrong, von Oelreich said.
Thirty-two international rescue teams from 22 countries, headed to Bam in the two days following the quake, complete with sniffer dogs and remote sensing equipment. They saved 22 people. Jonathan Walter, the report's editor, noted that it costs $50,000 to fund a Western rescue team for six days. The same sum could fund training and pay the salaries for two years for three Iranian dog handlers and their animals, who could be on the scene faster, he said. Teams from the Iranian Red Crescent saved 157 people with 10 dogs in Bam. Local people saved thousands of lives in the immediate aftermath of the quake. "I don't say that external aid is not needed," said von Oelreich. "What I want to say is that there is a need for a balance." "Disaster-affected people often do more to help themselves than aid organizations do, so we need to build on it. Affected people are far more resourceful than we assume."
Click here for more information, including excerpts and graphics from the World Disasters Report.
