Survivor-Led Response: Local recommendations to operationalise building back better

Abstract

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How do you build back better so no one is left behind? Lessons from Sint Maarten, Dutch Caribbean, following Hurricane Irma

“…For a detailed explanation of the respective crises, see Annexe 1. 10 For a detailed account and analysis, see Murphy et al (2018). 11 There are a lot of competing figures; World Bank data is unclear/unavailable.…”

“…There was shared agreement on the need for the government to take responsibility for ensuring a coordinated response. Respondents also underlined that local government was integral to local leadership of response and reconstruction (Murphy et al, 2018). In Sint Maarten, devolved local governance through community councils was largely dormant and non-functioning, creating a gap that CBOs were challenged to fill.…”

“…Another primary driver of a community‐led response was the need to express citizen agency. As evidence from the original low‐income country cases shows, the calls for a survivor‐led response were ‘a reaction to the experience of survivors who had been marginalized from their own recovery through a lack of decision‐making power’ (Murphy et al, 2018, p. 138). Interestingly, this scenario has emerged too in Sint Maarten.…”

“…By contrast, community cohesion, vital to well‐being in the lower‐income case studies (Murphy et al, 2017), was in jeopardy among those people completely dependent on aid to mitigate the shock of a disaster. Indeed, as Murphy et al (2018, p. 141) reveal, ‘social cohesion was vulnerable to both the disaster event and external interventions, especially for large events with multiple, often overwhelming, external agency activity'—hence, two‐way communication between survivors and implementing agencies is crucial. In comparison, a significant proportion of the population in Sint Maarten had access to resources, which permitted a level of independence from aid interventions.…”

Spatio-temporal assessment of social resilience to tropical cyclones in coastal Bangladesh

“…Realizing the importance of community capacity for mitigating the inevitable shocks from disasters before, during, and after they strike, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030) was established, and resilience building features front and center in this strategy (Kelman 2015;Murphy et al 2018). This framework sets ambitious targets of concurrently solving humanitarian crises and advancing development activities among the world's most vulnerable communities, who were already grappling with multiple, persistent stresses.…”