Rome, 7 July 2011 - Seven years after a tsunami devastated Sri Lanka, there are still 400 families living as refugees in their own country, in temporary shelters on the east coast. With the support of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), an United Nations agency working with rural communities, some of these families will now move into permanent new homes.

“While many Sri Lankans have returned to their normal lives by now, the families in the refugee camps still live with the aftershock of the tsunami’s destruction, both physically and psychologically,” said Ya Tian, IFAD’s Country Programme Manager for Sri Lanka. “For them to move on, rebuild their lives and leave the tsunami behind, they need to be able to go home.”

More than 35,000 people were killed and another 400,000 left homeless when the tsunami struck the island on December 26, 2004. Despite the out-pouring of international support just after the tsunami, IFAD is the only international organization that remained, and today continues to build houses to resettle victims of the tsunami.

“Seven years is a long time,” said Anura Herat, IFAD’s Country Presence Officer in Sri Lanka. “To build a house it takes only a couple of months. So the process that has been dragging on for years has, to a certain extent, destroyed their hope.”

While Sri Lanka's southern and eastern coasts were struck with the same ferocity, the rehabilitation work in the east has taken longer than expected, leaving hundreds of people in refugee camps.

One of these is the Sainthamaruthu camp, located in the Ampara District, an area that was hit particularly hard. Today it is home to 32 families. The children grow up in rudimentary structures that were originally designed to house them for just a short period of time. “They told us we would stay here for six months,” one of the refugees explained in an IFAD film called “After the Tsunami”that was released this week. “When the sun beats down on corrugated tin roofs the heat is unbearable,” adds another refugee interviewed for the film, describing the conditions in Sainthamaruthu camp.

The families living in the camp will receive their new homes as a part of the Post-Tsunami Coastal Rehabilitation and Resource Management Programme, which is one of two programmes established in 2005 for the economic and social recovery of the Sri Lankan coastal communities. Upon conclusion an estimated 50,000 households will have directly benefited from this programme. IFAD has worked in partnership with the government of Sri Lanka since 1978.

Notes to Editors

The video “After the Tsunami” filmed in the Ampara District of Sri Lanka was released by IFAD earlier this week. For footage or further information regarding the video, please contact James Heer, Head of IFAD’s Video Unit (Email: j.heer@ifad.org, Tel: +39 06 5459 2550).

---

Press release No.: IFAD/47/2011

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) works with poor rural people to enable them to grow and sell more food, increase their incomes and determine the direction of their own lives. Since 1978, IFAD has invested over US$12.9 billion in grants and low-interest loans to developing countries, empowering more than 370 million people to break out of poverty. IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized UN agency based in Rome – the United Nation’s food and agricultural hub. It is a unique partnership of 166 members from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), other developing countries and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).