26th December 2014: 10 year anniversary of Indian Ocean tsunami – expert on the ground in Aceh, Indonesia.
Aceh was the hardest hit region with over
170,000 lives lost in Indonesia and 500,000 people left homeless.
Lilianne
Fan, Research Fellow, in the Humanitarian Policy Group at the
Overseas Development Institute (ODI)
- Specialist in humanitarian responses in Asia
- Author of Building Back Better in Aceh, Myanmar and Haiti
- Languages: English, Malaysian and Indonesian
- Previously Ms Fan worked as a member of the advisory team of the Governor of Aceh on sustainable development following the Aceh peace agreement of 2005, and as Senior Policy Coordinator for Oxfam International in Aceh and Nias.
Key talking points:
· Aceh’s recovery after the tsunami is often hailed as a success story. But today the province is still one of the poorest in Indonesia. International aid to Aceh went from $6.7 billion to nearly nothing four years after the 2004 disaster.
· Pressure was placed on donors to spend funds too quickly, with too much money thrown into housing and not enough into rebuilding sustainable livelihoods. Since the tsunami, people have moved away from their homes to big cities in Indonesia and Malaysia in search of work. Sturdy new houses have become ghost villages and the $250m USAID 150 kilometre highway down Aceh’s western coast, from Banda Aceh to Calang, remains mostly unused.
· When the tsunami hit, the people of Aceh were forced to not only cope with disaster but to rebuild following conflict that had devastated the province for 30 years. Still today the people of Aceh are battling, this time against poverty.
To arrange an interview with Ms Fan, please call the media team at ODI on +44 (0)7808 791 265 or email [email protected]
