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Building Back After Natural Disaster: Lessons from the Asian Tsunami

Date: Friday, September 23, 2005 / Time: 5:00am - 6:30am 

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The December 26, 2004, tsunami left devastated communities across Asia, killing hundreds of thousands of people and leaving hundreds of thousands more without homes, jobs, and loved ones. It also left a massive recovery effort in its wake, in which Indonesia and Sri Lanka are being led by specially created government reconstruction agencies.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it is particularly timely to focus on the lessons learned from the tsunami and the recovery efforts to date.

The panelists—the directors of the Indonesian and Sri Lankan recovery agencies and a senior UN official overseeing tsunami recovery efforts—will discuss the existing challenges to the recovery effort and the lessons from the tsunami experience that can be applied to responses to other natural disasters.

Speakers

  • Pak Kuntoro Mangkusubroto
    Director of the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Executing Agency in Aceh and Nias, Indonesia
  • Eric Schwartz
    UN Secretary General's Deputy Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery
  • Mano Tittawella
    Chairman of the Task Force for Rebuilding the Nation (TAFREN), Sri Lanka
  • Gary Matthews, U.S. Institute of Peace, Moderator

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