Evaluation officer: Katarina Kotoglou, +46 8 698 56 22
Mail: 
The first phase of the evaluation took place during autumn 2005 as one of five thematic evaluations to the synthesis study on tsunami interventions. The second phase was carried out during 2008.
The evaluation assessed to what extent the tsunami disaster response succeeded in linking short and long-term recovery objectives. In other words, the evaluation addresses the issue of how to link relief (immediate life-saving support), rehabilitation (getting people back on their feet), and development (long-term change towards socio-economic stability).
It included field work in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Maldives where almost 500 interviews and a survey of 3,000 individuals were carried out. In addition, the evaluation included a document review of 7,775 public documents on the Tsunami response.
Key lessons from the evaluation included:
• Aid agencies have focused too much on rebuilding lost assets rather than to build capacity in affected communities. As a result, economic vulnerability has persisted beyond re-building.
• International donors have focused on the state as the principal owner of recovery. As a result, local communities have been disempowered from articulating their own needs and participating in their own re-building.
• In the recovery effort there has been a degree of disconnect between rebuilding, livelihoods, rehabilitation of the social fabric, risk reduction and capacity-building. This has lead to situations in which certain elements, in particular re-building, have forged ahead while others have lagged behind.
• Aid agencies often sought to assist those most affected by the disaster. This strategy had the unexpected result of increasing social disruption and tensions because traditional elites where threatened by social leveling.
