doi:10.1111/j.0361-3666.2009.01108.

Housing anxiety and multiple

geographies in post-tsunami Sri Lanka
Camillo Boano Lecturer, Development Planning Unit, University College London,
London, United Kingdom

Tsunami intervention has been an extraordinary and unprecedented relief and recovery opera-
tion. This article underlines the complexities posed by shelter and housing intervention in
post-tsunami Sri Lanka, revealing a pragmatic, reductionist approach to shelter and housing
reconstruction in a contested and fragmented environment. Competition, housing anxiety and
buffer zone implementation have resulted in compulsory villagisation inland, stirring feelings of
discrimination and tension, and becoming major obstacles to equitable rebuilding of houses and
livelihoods. A new tsunami geography has been imposed on an already vulnerable conflict-
based geography, in which shelter has been conceived as a mono-dimensional artefact. An analy-
sis of the process and outcomes of temporary and permanent post-tsunami housing programmes
yields information about the extent to which shelter policies and programmes serve not only
physical needs but higher order objectives for a comprehensive and sustainable recovery plan.

Keywords: housing, natural disasters, programme design, shelter, Sri Lanka, tsunami

Introduction
The tsunami of 26 December 2004 led to extraordinary devastation and destruction
for people of the Indian Ocean region. It caused terrible damage to lives, liveli-
hoods and properties, and created more than 1.8 million displaced people across 12
affected countries. The scale of international aid was unprecedented, fuelled by
monumental media attention (Glassman, 2005; Greenhough et al., 2005): pledges
and donations topped USD 14 billion (Telford and Cosgrave, 2007), with USD 5
billion coming from private individuals and companies (The Economist, 2005). As
a result, hundreds of international humanitarian organisations descended on the
affected countries in what some referred to as the second tsunami (Brochard, 2005).
The duality of the disaster was also exceptional. Different states affected by the
tsunami had been host to long-term conflicts beforehand, such as in Sri Lanka and
Indonesia, raising questions about what impact the tsunami and related reconstruc-
tion aid might have on these conflicts (Hyndman, 2007; LeBillon and Waizenegger,
2007). In Indonesia, a peace agreement was signed in August 2005, but in Sri Lanka,
post-tsunami reconstruction has intensified and exacerbated political tensions, add-
ing a new displacement crisis to that caused by the islands long-running civil war,
thereby creating double layers of vulnerability (Boano, 2007).
Clark (2005) argued that the tsunami was a generative event, creating new spa-
tialities and temporalities (p. 386). Exceptional international funding flows shaped

2009 The Author(s). Journal compilation Overseas Development Institute, 2009

Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
Camillo Boano

different spaces: non-reconstruction zones, new relocation sites, townships, unique-

ness of geographical place, and personal circumstances were spatialised across the
region. The tsunami has brought temporal challenges in and through space. There
was a sense in which the clock was put back to zero, opening a new, post-tsunami
era defined by two extremes: the aftermath of the disaster and the aftermath of relo-
cation; or, in other words, the loss of home and the repossession of a new home.
Within this time frame I examine the shelter and housing approaches adopted in
Sri Lanka, a country fractured by a double-layer disaster. In doing so I unravel how
both housing anxiety created by floods of international actors controlling immense
resources, and paradoxical spaces created by the implementation of a buffer zone policy
compromised the recovery and reconstruction policies that already threatened to
increase vulnerabilities and inequalities.
This article, based on two periods of fieldwork carried out in early 2005 and mid-
2006 in Sri Lankas Eastern Province (Ampara and Trincomalee Divisions) and
subsequent desk work conducted for PhD completion,1 reviews shelter and housing
policies that highlight the complex challenges of earlier recovery plans and the
great difficulties in finding permanent, sustainable and appropriate housing solutions.
The article utilises the case study of Sri Lanka as a powerful symbol of the gap
between emergency shelter and durable housing. Most internally displaced persons
(IDPs) have now been resettled in villages and new urban settlements: outcomes that
superimpose a new tsunami geography on an already vulnerable conflict-based geography.

International congestion and anxiety of results

On 26 December 2004 the tsunami wave damaged two thirds of Sri Lankas coastal
strip. Around 30,000 people died, approximately 552,000 people were displaced, and
100,000 properties spread over 1,000 kilometres of coastline were destroyed (Figure 1).2
Partly as a result of intense media attention, within a few days of the tsunami
striking Sri Lanka, different international non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
and private individuals had started to arrive on the island en masse (Harris, 2006,
p. 1) with budgets of various dimensions, which came from a mix of private, family-
level remittances and small donations from churches, temples and faith-based organi-
sations. A plethora of international actors were able to far surpass pledges made by
bilateral donors.3
At the end of January 2005, there were an estimated 300 new international NGOs
operating in Sri Lanka, representing a four-fold increase on pre-tsunami numbers
(Harris, 2006, p. 2). These organisations were very varied and included both the large
and very small, well-resourced and under-funded, competent and incompetent, well-
prepared and unprepared, secular and faith-based, reputable and disreputable, ambitious
and humble, opportunistic and committed, governmental and non-governmental,
national and international, bilateral and multilateral, well-established and just formed.
The latest update of the NGO desk database of the Consortium of Humanitarian
AssistanceJapan International Cooperation Agency records a total of 615 registered
NGOs (see Boano, 2007, p. 243).
 Housing anxiety and multiple geographies in post-tsunami Sri Lanka

Figure 1 Tsunami devastation in Kalmunai village, Ampara District, Eastern Province, 2005

Source: Camillo Boano.

The vastly expanded number of players was a major challenge in the centralised
governments response coordination. However, in the early phase of the emergency
local initiatives and military intervention were crucial (Scheper et al., 2006, p. 25).4
Political appointees headed the governments ad hoc post-tsunami coordination bodies:
first, the Centre for National Operations (CNO), then three presidential task forces
the Task Force for Rescue and Relief (TAFRER), Task Force for Rebuilding the
Nation (TAFREN) and Task Force for Logistics, Law and Order (TAFLOL).5 Follow-
ing the November 2005 presidential election, these task forces were disbanded and
replaced by the Reconstruction and Development Agency (RADA).6 This was an
institutional arrangement that reflected the nature of Sri Lankas centralised admin-
istrative structure in which the bureaucratswho are engaged in perpetual internal
power struggles (Uyangoda, 2005, p. 348)manage the Sri Lankan state from the
centre and tend to impose their decisions on the periphery.
Thus, the reality in the field was that a plethora of aid agencies were distributing
goods, services and cash in the affected areas, sometimes without any comprehension
of their impact on local dynamics (Harris, 2006, p. 2). These exogenous interven-
tions (Albala-Bertrand, 2000) did not just reflect a range of new international actors
engaging in Sri Lanka, but also provided the catalyst for hundreds of new local NGOs
Camillo Boano

to emerge and expand, undoubtedly attracted by the sudden availability of interna-

tional funding.
The acute, complex and competitive relief phase proved to be short and relatively
successful (Nursey, 2005, p. 2; Telford et al., 2006). As might have been predicted,
however, the reconstruction process has been affected by numerous bottlenecks
and has been much slower and more problematic than expected, particularly in the
case of shelter and housing, resulting in an over saturation of the relief scene and
a scramble for beneficiaries (Pandya, 2006, p. 305).
Many international humanitarian interventions in Sri Lanka have acted as com-
munity dividers (Anderson, 1999) by failing to consider the implications of their
actions in the extremely divided and conflict-ridden context of the region, especially
in Northern and Eastern Provinces. As Uyangoda (2005) counsels, We must never
ignore the fact that this tsunami disaster occurred . . . against the backdrop of an
ethno-political civil war (p. 343), or as Hyndman (2007) posits, responses to the
tsunami have not taken place in a political vacuum (p. 361).
Within affected districts both the impact of the tsunami and the capacity of actors
and local government have varied considerably, contributing to a two-fold situa-
tion: a tsunami geography that overlaps with a pre-existing geography of conflict and
displacement, particularly in the eastern part of Sri Lanka, which has been politi-
cally turbulent since the 1980s.
The institutional imperatives of international humanitarian agenciessuch as the
urgency to spend money visiblyworked against their making the best use of local
and national capacities, creating instead an anxiety for obtaining results. Local
contexts, institutions as well as the willingness and capacity of affected people were
inadequately exploited in the relief and early recovery phases of the international
response (Telford and Cosgrave, 2007, p. 21).
Due to the elevated rate of destruction and displacement, shelter needs were very
high. Thus, most organisations worked in this sector not only because of their exper-
tise but also because of the high visibility of sheltering programmes to the media
and donors. In Ampara District, Eastern Province, more than 46 shelter agencies
were operating, assisting almost 100,000 displaced families (UNHCR, 2005b, p. 14).

Housing damage and shelter interventions

The large number of destroyed houses and the nearly 800,000 IDPs in the affected
areas were the two major characteristics of the tsunami disaster, along with the fact
that, when it struck, 352,000 people were already displaced by the conflict (CARE
et al., 2005; IDMC, 2006). The combined displacement caused by the conflict and the
tsunami resulted in a total of more than one million IDPs.
Initially, emergency shelter was provided in public buildings such as schools, tem-
ples and tents, while many people sought refuge with friends and family. It was
recognised early on that such accommodation would provide only a very tempo-
rary solution (UNHCR, 2005a) but also that reconstruction would take several years;
 Housing anxiety and multiple geographies in post-tsunami Sri Lanka

consequently, transitional shelter was required to bridge the gap between emergency
accommodation and a durable solution. By 7 January 2005 there were more than 597
welfare centres and emergency sites spread over the affected areas.
After a few weeks, it became necessary for the public buildings to return to their
original function. Thousands of tents arrived from neighbouring towns and from
abroad in order to house tsunami IDPs. It immediately became clear that the tents
were inappropriate as they were not durable in the corrosive coastline environment
and people were unwilling to move into them. Thus, the need to provide a large
number of dwellings in a short space of time coincided with the decision to start con-
structing temporary housing (Quarantelli, 1995) (Figures 2 and 3). The United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was therefore asked to develop
a country-wide strategy to coordinate the shelter sector and provide qualitative and
strategic guidance for the large number of shelter agencies (UNHCR, 2005a, 2005b).
Subsequently, the Transitional Accommodation Project (TAP) was set up to facili-
tate the implementation of transitional shelter (Da Silva, 2005, p. 4). It set minimum
standards of cost and size, irrespective of the different technologies used by different
actors, in order to ensure uniform quality of housing based on international standards
(Sphere Project, 2004). In Sri Lanka, transitional shelter meant a construction that
provided a habitable covered living space and a secure, healthy living environment,

Figure 2 Kalmunai village, Ampara District, temporary shelter, 2006

Source: Camillo Boano.

Camillo Boano

with privacy and dignity, to those within it, during the period between a conflict
or a natural disaster and the achievement of a durable shelter solution (UNHCR,
2005a, p. 6).
At that time, a distinction between emergency shelter and transitional shelter was
promoted in order to develop a shared understanding that the purpose of transitional
shelter was to provide an interim solution to bridge the gap between emergency shel-
ter and permanent housing. As noted by Da Silva (2005, p. 6) shelter must not only
provide protection from the environment, it must also be durable, provide security
and privacy, and allow families to carry out normal household duties, re-establish
their livelihoods and re-build their communities. Equally, the term temporary and
semi-permanent shelter was discouraged in order to reinforce the understanding of
transitional shelter as a route to durable housing.
Thus, as always in the shelter sector, conceptual deficiencies and semantic incon-
gruences began to emerge: temporary but durable; non-permanent but a route to
durability. These assumed a linear view of transitions that evidences the paradox of
temporary housing.
Almost 100 organisations contributed to constructing more than 50,000 shelters
from March to the end of August 2005. Figures indicate that approximately 15 per
cent of shelters were provided by UN family agencies; local NGOs (for example,
Seva Lanka) each constructed more than 3,000 shelters, contributing a further 2025
per cent; about a dozen international NGOs (including the largest, such as GOAL,
Oxfam GB, World Vision, Caritas, ZOA), mostly working through local NGOs as
implementing partners, built between 1,000 and 2,000 shelters each, contributing a
further 2530 per cent. The rest were provided by a combination of private donors,
political parties and local authorities.
However, both UNHCR and TAP were clear that transitional shelters must be of
comparable quality and cost, while also recognising that regional differences, donor
requirements, materials and designs may vary within agreed standards: these include
a 200-square-foot floor area, internal partitions, a cost of USD 300400 and a lifespan
of at least 18 months (TAP, 2005).
The initial phase was very competitive. Many international NGOs were involved
in delivering shelters of different shapes, formats and quality, using different mate-
rials, methods and standards depending on their donors requirements and the money
and expertise available to them. This resulted in the creation of either super shel-
ters or low standard ones poorly adapted to the hot, humid climate of coastal Sri
Lanka. The disparity in responses created social tensions both on the original land of
the owners, if outside the buffer zone, or on land allocated by the government.7 Poor
quality settlement and shelter tended to result.
Temporary housing structures, especially along the eastern coast, were built
with corrugated roofing materials, which created very hot, uncomfortable and some-
times unhealthy conditions. Most transitional settlements had no trees and no shade
making the environment poor and unhealthy (Boano, 2007; IUCN, 2005; Khazai
et al., 2006).
 Housing anxiety and multiple geographies in post-tsunami Sri Lanka

Figure 3 Love Lane, Nelsenpura village, Trincomalee Division, temporary shelters, 2006

Source: Camillo Boano.

Other housing structures were poorly designed and constructed due to a lack of
skills and expertise. The design provided by several organisations was shaped by
their initial budget of USD 350 per house (UNHCR, 2005a, p. 4)which proved
to be too low due to material and labour shortagesrather than by consideration of
appropriate quality standards.
In June 2005 UNHCR started a shelter upgrading programme to rectify sub-
standard shelters. This approach was thought to be essential in order not to perpetuate
the dependency culture that is beginning to emerge. . .; neither to create further
inequity between the assistance provided to conflict IDPs, or the housing standards
of the local population, as compared to those who have received tsunami related
assistance (UNHCR, 2005a, p. 1).
According to UNHCR data there were 4,534 shelters out of a total 6,434 requir-
ing upgrades in Ampara District (UNHCR, 2005b). Although the construction and
upgrading of shelters was nearly complete in September 2005, careful planning and
the delegation of responsibilities for the longer term care and maintenance of those
transitional shelter sites were essential to ensure that the infrastructure of the 490 sites
would be effectively managed and maintained to standard, rather than deteriorate
into slums.
Camillo Boano

Despite this adherence to international standards for shelters, the case of the tsu-
nami in Sri Lanka, where a disaster struck a country already dealing with a 22-year
civil war, is instructive. The combined displacement caused by the conflict and the
tsunami resulted in more than one million IDPs. In this complicated period the
UN Inter-Agency IDP Working Group in Sri Lanka established itself and made
significant contributions to policy, notably in its successful advocacy for equity between
conflict-affected and tsunami-affected people. Nevertheless, major constraints and
problems have arisen in subsequent phases of permanent housing allocation, mainly
in Eastern and Northern Provinces (Boano, 2006).
Transitional shelters and transitional camps remained for almost a year and a half
and were both a powerful symbol of the large scale of international intervention and
an icon of the gap between emergency shelter and permanent housing. According
to RADAs latest housing process report of 1 March 2007, although great progress
has been made in housing tsunami IDPs, there are still 13,598 temporary shelters in
place (RADA, 2007), confirming that nothing is more permanent than a tempo-
rary solution (Zetter and Boano, 2007, p. 3).

The coastal buffer zone

In January 2005 the Sri Lankan Cabinet of Ministers announced a new enforcement
of the 1981 Conservation Act No. 57 buffer zone as a public safety measure against
the potential devastation of another tsunami (Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2005;
Jansz, 2005). Within this buffer zone any construction or reconstruction was pro-
hibited except for port structures, historical monuments and tourist centres, which
would be decided on a case-by-case basis (TAFREN, 2005, p. 8).
In early February 2005, the buffer zone was 500 metres wide all along the coast
but during 2005 and into early 2006 it was progressively reduced to 100 metres in
the densely populated south-west, which is dominated by a Sinhala majority and
international tourism, and to 200 metres in Eastern Province, where tsunami-related
devastation and damage proved greatest (Figure 4).8
In both areas, the high density of population and land scarcity made the setting
back of the buffer zone highly contentious. The policy added confusion to the con-
fusion, creating uncertainty as to where residents within the zone would be relocated
and what would happen to the land they had been occupying in the zone when the
tsunami struck. As noted by Hyndman (2007) the policy created spaces of fear and
mistrust, around which party politics and nationalist tensions are organised. Fear of
another tsunami has been used to legitimate buffer zones (p. 366).
Concerns were expressed by some groups that the buffer zone was a pretext to
move poor people and small enterprises away from the coastline so that big business
interests such as major tourism operators could move in and take control of the coast
(INFORM Human Rights Documentation Centre, 2005).9 For some authors (COHRE,
2005; Leckie, 2005, p. 16; Oxfam, 2005, p. 7) the buffer zone policy provided a pre-
text for evictions, land grabs, unjustifiable land-acquisition plans and other measures
 Housing anxiety and multiple geographies in post-tsunami Sri Lanka

Figure 4 Kalmunai village, Ampara District, buffer zone demarcation, 2005

Source: Camillo Boano.

Camillo Boano

designed to prevent homeless residents from returning to their original homes and
land, opening the space for a disaster capitalism to develop (Focus on the Global
South, 2006; Klein, 2005). The Sri Lankan government, however, insisted that the
buffer zone was necessary to protect residential areas from natural disasters.10
The buffer zone became a major issue during the recovery phase and caused a
heated debate among international NGOs and the Sri Lankan government (Luthra,
2005). Sri Lankas World Bank representative, Peter Harrold, noted that buffer zones
have been the single greatest barrier to progress in housing reconstruction for those
who lost their homes in the tsunami (cited in Dias, 2006).

Fixing the buffer zone and defining housing needs

Some evidence suggests that the tsunami reconstruction process was used as a mech-
anism to regularise coastal land ownership. Indeed, people who lived on the coast
without property rights are now asked to provide documents showing proof of land
ownership before being granted reconstruction assistance. The consequent risk of
remaining, literally, in a no mans land, compounded by bureaucratic inertia and
uncertainty of land options (despite efforts and policy shifts by the government),
means that the buffer zone policy has amplified socio-economic disparities and initi-
ated a de facto gentrification of coastal areas (Ingram et al., 2006).
If people originally owned their property within the buffer zone they can retain
such ownership but are not allowed to rebuild houses or live there. Those whose
properties were affected outside the buffer zone will be provided with financial
assistance to rebuild on the same land, provided they own it (Centre for Policy Alterna-
tives, 2005, p. 5). This has caused a sense of grievance among those outside the buffer
zone who cannot prove ownership, since they cannot obtain assistance to rebuild
on a par with those who are legal owners. The feelings of discrimination have been
aggravated by the fact that assistance policies for those within the buffer zone do not
vary according to whether the damaged property was owned by the occupier or
not. Within the buffer zone unauthorised occupiers, which included squatters and
encroachers, were entitled to a new house outside the zone on an equal footing with
those who had originally owned their properties.
For Hyndman (2007, p. 365) this apparent geographical fix served to fan the
flames of political controversy between the major political parties and among the
various ethno-national groups that constitute the Sri Lankan population, namely
the Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim communities.
The Presidents Office announced that the government would identify lands (com-
prising parcels measuring between six and 15 pearch150 to just under 400 square
metres) closest to the affected villages and build a house for every affected house
owner who lived within the said 100 metres (Sambandan, 2005, p. 15) (Figure 5).
It specified that any owner of a home within the 100-metre zone will retain the
ownership of his original land and that the government will not in any way claim
ownership to such property. Moreover, the owner would be entitled to appropriate
 Housing anxiety and multiple geographies in post-tsunami Sri Lanka

Figure 5 Government of Sri Lanka advertisement and buffer zone selection

Source: Government of Sri Lanka (2005).

Camillo Boano

the land (within the 100 metre zone) as he wishes, except building on it (Sambandan,
2005, p. 15).
With this compensatory approach major delays and uncertainties were caused by
the problem of identifying available land for transitional shelter and permanent re-
settlement purposes. The land identification problem was greater in the eastern part
of the island where a long and narrow coastline is surrounded by rain-fed rice cul-
tivation and the average population density is about 98 per square kilometre.
Moreover, the two distinct ethnic communities of Muslims and Tamils create a
complex and mixed geography in eastern Sri Lanka. Although they live in separate
concentrations, these concentrations are located one after another. A Muslim village
is followed by Tamil village and vice versa. This alternate geography along the coastal
belt, in addition to the areas structural land shortage and ethnic sensitivities, posed
serious problems for the identification of land for resettlements. Ampara District was
particularly problematic: here, land was most scarce, population most dense and
human displacement most acute (Institute for Policy Studies, 2005).
Thus, in such a complex and paradoxical geography, the ratio between relocation
(ex nihilo) and in situ construction ranged from 60:40 to 50:50: thus, around half of
the families in this area needed to be relocated and new sites found. The zones served
to displace yet again those dispossessed by the tsunami and to reproduce patterns
of apparent discrimination against minority Tamils and Muslims. Many of those in
the hardest hit eastern districts of Batticaloa and Ampara had already been displaced
by the conflict, in some cases repeatedly, to the makeshift seaside homes that were
swept away by the tidal waves.
Ironically, the dramatic dispossession caused by the tsunami brought to light the
endemic displacement of so many members of these communities forced to move
to seaside locations to escape the war (Grundy-Warr and Sidaway, 2006). The war,
the tsunami and the buffer zone response each constitute a layer or moment of dis-
placement for those in these two eastern districts (Hyndman, 2007, p. 365).

Housing anxiety, no build zone and

the creation of new settlements
The fact that housing would be one of the major issues in the post-tsunami era was
clear in early January 2005. This was not only because of the high housing damage
caused by the disaster and the humanitarian imperative of providing houses for
desperate people, nor because of the vast array of literature that has positioned shelter
and housing central stage in post-disaster interventions (Barakat, 2003; Davidson
et al., 2007; Davis, 1978; Hamdi, 1990; Zetter, 1995; Zetter and Boano, 2007), but
mainly because of the contradictory meanings activated by the juxtaposition of
housing with forced migration: one is associated with the groundedness and per-
manence of buildings, the constitution of places and the delimitation of territories;
the other represents uprootedness, forced mobility and the transience of families and
groups of people for whom homeless and placeness are intrinsic by definition
 Housing anxiety and multiple geographies in post-tsunami Sri Lanka

(Cernea and McDowell, 2000, p. 25). This juxtaposition has, in the case of post-
tsunami Sri Lanka, resulted in a domopoliticsa term used by Walters (2004, p.
241) to suggest the central place of domus (home) in peculiar geopolitical discourse.
The introduction of the buffer zone has led to two types of housing programmes:
the first, known as owner driven, entails cash assistance to home owners to build
their houses on their own plots; the second, known as donor driven, entails the
Cash for Reconstruction and Repair programme and contractor built houses in re-
location sites outside the buffer zone or on the original plots of land.
The owner-driven reconstruction scheme was aimed at addressing the needs of
those families who could rebuild their houses in situ (on their own land) outside the
restricted area of the buffer zone. Under this programme, people whose houses were
partly damaged were given LKR 100,000 (USD 1,000) and those whose homes
were fully damaged were entitled to receive LKR 250,000 (USD 2,500). The owners
should rebuild the home by themselves using materials and skills available on the
local market, and receiving external financial assistance in four instalments. Institu-
tionally, a southwest and a northeast unit were created under the Ministry of Relief,
Rehabilitation and Reconciliation to dispense the money and coordinate the programme.
The donor-built reconstruction programme was planned to address the needs of
those families who were forced to leave the buffer zone, helping them to rebuild on
the new plots of land given to them. All affected families were entitled to a house
built by a donor agency in accordance with government standards. The donor was
expected to provide each new resettlement site with an internal infrastructure while
the government would provide the services up to the relocation site: a goal that has
faced major delays and problems. Some familiesthose that had proof of ownership
of their original land, requested financial assistance and were registered locally
have remained the legal owner of their property within the buffer zone and have
received full title to their property in the resettlement site.11
The high level of housing needs, difficulties in finding land available for resettle-
ment areas, the pressure to rebuild and the opposition to the buffer zone has resulted
in a highly conflictive environment around housing programmes. It took more than
a year for the decision to reduce the buffer zone to 3550 metres, in response to a
great deal of public and political pressure, which transformed post-disaster housing
support into a domopolitical discourse.
Before the buffer zone was reduced in December 2005 many people with homes
in the no construction zone were expected to be housed in relocation sites. The
reduction of the buffer zone therefore increased the numbers of potential owner-
driven beneficiaries because considerable numbers of families were no longer entitled
to the donor-built reconstruction programme. The ensuing delays and confusion,
combined with difficulties in finding appropriate relocation sites, created problems
in finalising the number and allocation of those eligible for different housing options.
The pressure to rebuild was in contradiction to the concept of housing that goes
beyond providing housing complexes or townships (Boano, 2007; Philips, 2005,
p. 3). The housing anxiety that arose from this contradiction resulted in a complex field:
Camillo Boano

a wide array of national and international aid organisations provided temporary

shelters as well as a wide range of housing assistance, from cash to materials and
labour to contractor built houses, which created immense difficulties in coordination
and in qualitative results (Aysan et al., 2007).
This housing anxiety further amplified social inequities in the reconstruction pro
cess as there was no consideration of livelihood issues in selecting the locations of
resettlement sites. The relocation of the fishermen inland was a drastic oversight
with respect to the livelihood needs of such communities. While many of the fish-
ermen have resorted to carrying their outboard motors several kilometres from the
shore to the resettlement sites, others have used their own limited resources to con-
struct cabins close to the shore to store and protect their motors and nets. In addition
to requiring communities to relocate to a foreign physical environment, the resettle-
ment process caused by the buffer zone has also resulted in unnatural social settings.
In many places in both south and east Sri Lanka, people of different social, economic
and cultural backgrounds were brought to live together at significantly higher popu-
lation densities than in traditional villages.
This situation is further exacerbated by the fact that some inland communities do
not want displaced fishing communitieswhose members have different cultural
valuesto resettle in their neighbourhoods (Khazai et al., 2006). At the same time,
the fishing communities want to live close to the shore, where their livelihood
needs are met. The unnatural social conditions seen in the large resettlement camps
has been a major strain on the displaced population, making a sense of community
difficult to attain. Thus, community networks, crucial for fostering adaptation and
learning from a disaster (Adger et al., 2005; Miller, 2005), have been disrupted
resulting in increasing vulnerabilities (Birkmann and Fernando, 2007).
In late 2005, under the government slogan of Getting People Back into Homes,
funding was pledged by donors for over 39,000 new homes. By the end of the year,
construction had begun on 23,800 houses, and 15,000 houses were to be handed
over by the first two months of 2006. More than 51,000 homeowners had received
at least one instalment of a grant to rebuild their damaged houses (TAFREN, 2005).
A recent evaluation (Aysan et al., 2007) found that, although the programme was
well planned, the high demand for building materials and high underlying infla-
tion have caused materials and labour costs almost to double since the start of re-
construction. This has meant that LKR 250,000 was insufficient in many areas to
complete houses, and as a result people struggled to complete their houses with the
LKR 250,000 and either had to invest their own resources, go into debt or leave the
house unfinished (Ayasan et al., 2007, p. 4). The evaluation points out that many
people in Trincomalee District, for example, have been unable to complete their
houses, leaving walls unplastered, windows, doors and durable roofs uninstalled,
and that 80 per cent of houses in Trincomalee are estimated as unfinished (Aysan
et al., 2007, p. 10).
The Post-Tsunami Recovery and Reconstruction: Joint Report of the Government of Sri
Lanka and Development Partners (Government of Sri Lanka, 2005) lists the total
 Housing anxiety and multiple geographies in post-tsunami Sri Lanka

number of houses damaged within the buffer zone as 32,218, with 29,640 Memo-
randums of Understanding (MOUs) signed.12 Other figures r eleased in January
2006 by RADA (2006) under the Donor Built Housing Project put the number of
damaged houses at 33,274 with 30,253 MOUs signed. Of interest here is the differ-
ence of more than 1,000 houses counted in the space of one month. One reason for
this disparity might be that individual divisions and districts count houses inside or
outside the buffer zone differently, either due to limited or non-availability of land
to relocate displaced families, or due to the buffer zone revision and the new arrange-
ment that shifts the number of housing units between the two.

Housing anxiety: tensions in the field

In Ampara District, land was available but very far from the IDPs original villages,
compounding problems related to sustainability of resettlements, livelihoods, trans-
portation and basic infrastructure. In several cases, the government has been slow
to acquire land from private parties or has been reluctant to pay the market price
(ActionAid, 2006, p. 22). Those difficulties were not translated into adequate infor-
mation sharing with affected communities. Many reports have argued that people
had not been consulted or involved in the process of identifying suitable land for
permanent housing (ActionAid, 2006; Oxfam, 2005; Telford et al., 2006).

Figure 6 Triplegem village (Pandirippu), Ampara District, 2005

Source: Camillo Boano.

Camillo Boano

Where houses have already been built for IDPs but stand vacant, as some people
opt to rebuild on their original land, beneficiaries will have to be carefully reselected
for the pre-built houses. Moreover, the reduction of the buffer zone has opened up
spaces for in situ reconstruction closer to the sea. This was the case for 125 families
in Pandirippu village in Kalmunai Division who received new houses from a US
Buddhist Foundation on their own land very close to the sea on the margin between
the previous and the new buffer zone lines (the village was renamed Triplegem accord-
ing to the donors name) (Figure 6).
This specific case created some tension in the area between those who received
a new house and could stay close to the sea and those who did not and had to move
away. The tsunami dealt a double blow to the housing rights of the affected com-
munities, who constitute the poorest segments of the islands population. Not only
were their livelihoods, housing and infrastructure destroyed, but their poor secu-
rity of land tenure has meant that those wishing to return to their previous plots of
land have been left vulnerable to forced eviction (Schmidt et al., 2005).
In Weragamawatta, Kalutara District, an international NGO was asked to build
130 houses on a new site identified by the Division Secretariat. On the same site UN
Habitat was also involved in reconstructing 26 houses. The international NGO chose
a labour intensive approach allocating the construction of a maximum of five houses
to small local contractors while supplying building materials and acting as a central-
ised procurement unit. UN Habitat chose to work with an owner-driven approach
giving the families money to buy and build their own houses on the same site. In
addition to the usual implementation problems of new site development in Sri Lanka
(identification of the families, land ownership complications, extensive governmental
bureaucracy, conflict with the host community in relocation areas) the approaches of
the two organisations soon clashed.
The UN Habitat houses fell behind the scheduled programme: the money allo-
cated per unit was insufficient for the owners to buy enough good quality material.
Some owners bought low quality material procured from the same building mate-
rial providers that had been discharged by the international NGO, and some did not
buy enough to complete their houses. As a result, the community became divided:
one half lived in completely finished housing while the other lived in unfinished
constructions, leading to tensions among themselves and with communities in the
surrounding areas.
In Trincomalee District, the Kumburupiddi site, located almost 15 kilometres from
the sea in the district of Trincomalee, was another example of the tense and conflic-
tive post-disaster environment (Figure 7). The site identified was supposed to be
flat and already prepared to host the new constructions, but in reality it was hilly
and in need of major preparation works, which delayed the start of the programme.
On this site, 349 permanent houses were built by six different international NGOs,
each with different approaches, methodologies, house designs and time frames. The
allocation of lots to each international NGO or agency was carried out by central
government on paper without any system of coordination or negotiation procedures.
 Housing anxiety and multiple geographies in post-tsunami Sri Lanka

Figure 7 Kumburupiddi village, Trincomalee District, 2005

Source: Camillo Boano.

Owners did not participate in the construction process in Kumburupiddi. At the

time of my field visit in April 2006 the handover to beneficiaries was not yet planned
due to a new eruption of violence in the area. The quality of houses was still insuf-
ficient, despite an earlier recognition that poor-quality housing in contractor-driven
reconstruction projects might be the result of the international NGOs inexperience
in handling contractors in such a pressurised, donor-driven and time-limited con-
text. Another 100 houses on the same site, built by a German Rotary club on an
adjacent lot of land, were completed externally but without any internal works.
These houseseffectively empty boxeswere handed over in a public ceremony in
December 2005, on the tsunami anniversary. Some months later, however, during
the final period of my fieldwork in April 2006, these houses still stood empty without
the return of any families.
The case of Kumburupiddi confirmed what Duyne (2006) argued for the village
of Tamil Nadu: villages reconstructed by professional companies generally consist
of grid-patterned row houses that pay little attention to communities social organi-
sation and settlement patterns. Such a disruption of a communitys spatial organisation
may lead to its social disarticulation (p. 1).
It has been found that the occupancy rate of houses constructed by external agen-
cies often remains low because people refuse to move in. In fact, wherever possible,
many people prefer to repair their old and damaged houses at their own expense (lead-
ing to further impoverishment and a massive waste of resources). Thus, paradoxical
Camillo Boano

spaces have been created by such implementation push practices that do not take
into account the social and cultural complexities of those communities they are
trying to help. This do it approach recalls the ethical dilemma of the band-aid myth:
a dilemma that comes about through the notion that the ills of war and empire can
be assuaged by the band-aid of reconstruction (Roy, 2006, p. 13).
International media attention produced pressure for results one year after the trag-
edy. Donor states wanted to see numbers of beneficiaries rising and to raise their
flags in the reconstruction programmes to gain greater visibility. This pressure has
contributed to a new tsunami geography of inequality. The most recent RADA hous-
ing report provides further evidence: by 1 March 2007, 103 per cent of housing
(34,972 houses: a figure higher than first projected) in Southern Province had been
completed while in Eastern Province the figure reached only 59 per cent (36,141)
(RADA, 2007).

Conclusion
The impact of the Indian Ocean tsunami has been paradoxical due to the dual dimen-
sion that the disaster created. A new tsunami geography has been etched onto an already
vulnerable conflict-based geography. This duality was reiterated by donor-driven policies.
Since the aftermath of the emergency phase, international actors have underlined the
importance of addressing tsunami relief in conjunction with aid provided to con-
flict IDPs. However, the Sri Lankan government, as well as several donors and the
EU, initially took the position that the two situations should be treated separately.
It is clear that the large amounts of money involved, the international pressure and
the internal competition between aid actors, fuelled by a de-contextualisation of aid
practices and policies, has created a tsunami geography made of new spatialities and
remote and unsustainable locations. International actors were cognizant of the ten-
sion between the need to show quick results and the need for thoughtful planning:
they have responded angrily to the lack of progress in regard to reconstruction and
the overall failures on the part of the Sri Lankan government, particularly in relation
to the buffer zone.
New relocation settlements were shaped by aid policies: prescribed standards, con-
ventional dimensions and costing, targeted numbers of beneficiaries and agency vis-
ibility. This resulted in an over-simplistic and rigid grid that impeded the development
of a sense of community. The approach aimed at accommodating as many houses as
possible, as if following a modernistic social and economic engineering experiment,
to use Kleins (2005, p. 31) words, which led to compulsory villagisation.
The dominant approach of both the government and aid agencies was based on a
commitment to large-scale reconstruction, carried out by external experts. Expe-
riences of ex nihilo housing reconstruction and shelter intervention underlined again
a poor conceptualisation of housing in the relief and reconstruction complex (Bello,
2006, p. 294). Housing was conceived as a mono-dimensional artefact, a physical
object, which resulted in reconstruction projects being implemented as reactive,
 Housing anxiety and multiple geographies in post-tsunami Sri Lanka

top-down, technology-driven and house-as-product approaches.13 This pragmatic

reductionism compromised the achievement of wider objectives: key strategic pa-
rameters were neglected in both the implementation push and the project-driven
approach adopted by the international humanitarian community in response to the
political pressure to deliver.
This pragmatism clearly imposes limits on the genuine participation of selected
beneficiaries of housing intervention. Furthermore, poorly chosen sites for resettle-
ments with hostile topography have resulted in unsustainable housing schemes and
high density multi-storey building solutions close to the coast. This has caused a
variety of difficulties such as a lack of privacy, psychological stress and insufficient
land around the dwellings for informal and public activitiesfactors that diminish
a sense of space and positive associations with home. There is no space for negotia-
tion, however, and no space for advocacy or internal learning; instead, there is just
implementation, direction and controla passive project-oriented management that
follows, in Pieterses (2001, p. 24) words, the linear, teleological, ethnocentric way.
This mono-dimensional conception of reconstruction results in a focus that is lim-
ited to lower order deliverables and measurable outputs: contract completions, costs
per housing unit, number of buildings restored. It is a logic in which houses are dis-
tributed as shelters, not as a viable short-term emergency response nor as a permanent
solution. It is simply a response to an urgent call for providing a house, a hut, a shel-
ter, with the absence of anything other than prescribed standard-setting of minimum
facilities.
It is crucial that, within both the transitional phase and longer-term re-development
phase, vulnerability reduction is the ultimate guiding goal. As the discussion herein
has demonstrated, typical quantitative measures of progress, such as the number of
houses built, are often hailed as a proof of recovery and advancement but may not
adequately reflect a reduction in vulnerabilities. The slogan of the post-tsunami inter-
vention, build back better, was an ambitious programme. The intention was not
to return Sri Lanka to the pre-tsunami status quo, but to improve it by seizing the
opportunity to create development and to achieve, hopefully, a long-lasting peace
in a territory ravaged by a complex conflict.
The reality indicates a missed opportunity. The initial arbitrariness of the buffer
zones infused the already precarious politics of ethnicity, class and gender with new
tensions, generating further polarisation and grounds for conflict between tsunami-
affected and conflict-affected communities (Nanthikesan, 2005). Compounding this,
the implementing agencies have largely been external actors whose work is donor-
driven, speedy and often conducted without any consultation. Designing post-
disaster reconstruction involves satisfying material needs and resolving competing
social requirements through a process of active participation on the part of the occu-
pants and mediation by professionals. Walls and joists can be positioned so that a
building stands upright, but occupants must also be able to see a space that suits their
needs. Thus the process of (re-)construction must also ensure a process of place for-
mation. Recovery is simultaneously the production of physical form, the creation
Camillo Boano

of social, cultural and symbolic resources, and the outcome of a negotiated/facili-

tative process. The renewed escalation of conflict in Sri Lanka since 2007 indicates
that the recovery work has been embedded within local ethnic tensions and there-
fore has been unable to build back better (Zetter and Boano, 2008). As Uyangoda
(2005) sums up: The post-tsunami recovery has been intensely politicized in a con-
text of the unresolved ethnic conflict and an incomplete, stalled peace process (p. 341).

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Nando Sigona, Andrew Inch and Roger Zetter for commenting on an
earlier draft.

Correspondence
Camillo Boano, Development Planning Unit, University College London, 34 Tavistock
Square, London, WC1H 9EZ, United Kingdom. E-mail: c.boano@ucl.ac.uk

Endnotes
1
This article is based on the authors PhD thesis. Participant observation, interviews with representa-
tives of development and relief organisations engaged in post-disaster shelter and housing, and
face-to-face dialogue with key informants on a wide number of specific topics have been conducted,
in addition to literature reviews and grey literature analysis, mainly during 2005 and 2006.
2
As noted by Philips (2005) the tsunami destroyed close to 13 per cent of the housing stock in the
affected areas. It is reasonable to estimate that Sri Lanka requires over 200,000 new housing units,
or five per cent of the national housing stocka demand that cannot be easily met in a short period
of time (Philips, 2005, p. 2).
3
In the case of Canada, 27 NGOs were able to raise more than CAD 200 million from their con-
stituencies by the end of February 2005 (Brochard, 2005, p. 1). In Italy, the Italian Civil Protection
service estimated that a tsunami campaign succeeded in raising EUR 52 million via SMS, while
the Italian government has deployed around EUR 16 million (Margelli, 2005).
4
In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, the Sri Lankan government re-introduced emer-
gency regulations, which increased the military role in the relief phase (Scheper et al., 2006, p. 25).
5
The CNO was disbanded in February 2005 when TAFRER and TAFLOL were merged to form
TAFOR with a mandate for looking after the well-being of affected groups (including provision
of food, cash allowances, transitional accommodation matters, and other duties formerly performed
by the CNO) (RADA, 2006).
6
In March 2006 TAFREN was replaced by RADA. The website further states that RADA is to
operate through existing structures but ultimately will function as the single government focal
point responsible for reconstruction and development activities to all natural and man-made dis-
asters in post-tsunami and post-conflict areas throughout the nation (RADA, 2006).
7
According to the project director of TAP, when transitional shelters are built on crown/state land
there is no problem because the state will not evict the IDPs. However, he states that the norm is
to have an agreement covering a period of at least 18 months. He also states that these agreements
 Housing anxiety and multiple geographies in post-tsunami Sri Lanka

differ from one organisation to another and that although they are in writing they are informal
in nature as they are not notarised or registered (UNHCR, 2005a, p. 1).
8
Continuous setbacks to the establishment of the buffer zone occurred during 2006. In some urban
areas of Kalmunai the buffer was brought down to 50 metres in late 2006.
9
The Institute for Policy Studies (2005) in Colombo stated that if public safety was the prevailing
aim, the buffer zones should have been equivalent for all areas. No explanation was offered indi-
cating that specific environmental, social and physical characteristics of coastlines in different
parts of the country ostensibly required responses tailored to those geographies, and no research,
rationale or examples of how this approach would work or had fared elsewhere were provided at
the time of their introduction (Hyndman, 2007, p. 365).
10
It is worth noting that the Sri Lankan constitution guarantees all citizens the freedom of move-
ment and of choosing ones residence within Sri Lanka (Article 14(1)(h)). The exercising of this
right is subject to specified restrictions, such as the interests of national security, public order,
protection of public health or morality, and of meeting the just requirements of the general welfare
of a democratic society (cited in Rice, 2005, p. 11).
11
Institutionally, a dedicated Tsunami Housing Reconstruction Unit was created under the Min-
istry of Urban Development and Water Supply, with branches in all tsunami-affected district and
divisional secretariats working with Village Rehabilitation Committees.
12
MoUs are contracts signed between the government and an NGO agreeing on the number of
houses the agency will build, the list of beneficiaries and the locations.
13
Field visits and subsequent literature reviews showed different interesting examples of owner-driven
approaches realised in Sri Lanka by international organisations, such as Practical Action and UNDP
(see Lyons, 2009).

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