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30th
March, 2005
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SRI
LANKA: In a cash for work programme in the Trinocomalee
district, Oxfam provides Chandrakala with tools and
an income for her and other local women to start work
clearing their land damaged by the Tsunami. PICTURE:
Tori Ray/Oxfam.
Up to
four times as many females as males may have died
in the Boxing Day tsunami, according to a new report
from Oxfam Community Aid Abroad.
The report shows that in some villages in Aceh, Indonesia,
females accounted for up to 80 per cent of the tsunami
victims. It was a similar story in India where in
at least one village, the only deaths were women while
in others almost three times as many women were killed
as men.
Oxfam Australia’s executive director, Andrew
Hewett, says the tsunami has dealt a “crushing
blow” to those in the region.
“This disproportionate impact will lead to problems
for years to come unless everyone working on the aid
effort addresses the issue now. We all need to protect
women’s rights and work to ensure the protection,
inclusion and empowerment of the women that have survived.”
The Oxfam report also revealed that some women were
experiencing verbal and physical harrassment by men
and feared sexual abuse in the packed resettlement
sites. It suggests that with a loss of income and
inability to access cash, some women are consequently
at risk of sexual exploitation.
Oxfam have recommended a range of actions by governments,
donors and aid agencies including making the protection
of women from sexual violence and exploitation a priority,
ensuring earning opportunities are available to both
women and men, working with men who have lost their
wives to adapt and changing the perception of women
from “vulnerable victims” to recognising
their status as citizens with specific perspectives.
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DAVID ADAMS
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DAVID
ADAMS
More than a thousand people are feared dead after
an earthquake measuring 8.7 on the Richter scale struck off
the west coast of Sumatra yesterday.
An aid agency official working in Gunung Sitoli - the capital
of Nias, the Indonesian island which bore the brunt of the
earthquake - has estimated that as much as 80 per cent of
the town has been flattened.
“People left the dead and injured under buildings as
they fled to higher ground,” said the official from
Yayasan Tanggul Bencana (YTB), a partner organisation of Lutheran
World Relief which had been working with survivors of the
Boxing Day tsunami disaster.
In other parts of Asia - including as far away as Thailand
and India - tsunami warnings were issued causing people to
flee from the coast. There were reports of some people dying
in the stampede.
The YTB official on Nias - a world renowned surfing destination
- said that evacuations were starting the morning after the
earthquake. “Our immediate needs are shelter, medicine
and food,” she said.
Lutheran World Relief’s communication manager Jeff Rasmussen,
had just returned to the United States this week after visiting
LWR-funded relief efforts in Indonesia, including those taking
place in Nias.
He described the town as a bustling, crowded place of 30,000
people “with tightly packed buildings in the central
city area and only one road to the airport, which is now damaged”.
“These factors and the island’s inherent remoteness
will make assessing needs and delivering assistance all the
more challenging,” Rasmussen said.
In Australia, aid agencies have already begun to formulate
a response to the disaster while the Federal Government has
pledged $1 million to the aid effort.
The latest earthquake comes only three months after a series
of tsunamis left as many as 300,000 dead across Asia on Boxing
Day.
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