Bottom-up Accountability and the Tsunami Response

Roche C¹*

1. Oxfam, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

This paper will explore specific examples of ‘bottom-up’ accountability related to the Tsunami response with particular reference to Sri Lanka and to a lesser degree India and Indonesia. Examples explored will include local and camp level processes as well as attempts to scale up these approaches at district, and national levels.

This experience will be related to the broader literature on Impact Assessment and Disasters, most notably work done by the Overseas Development Institute of Great Britain, as well as the World Disasters report 2003.

Finally, the paper will attempt to draw some broader conclusions about what this experience, and similar processes outside of emergency contexts, tells us about broader questions related to the orthodoxy of current “New Public Management” approaches and the implications for demand-led governance.

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