Sri Lanka: How Tamils face repeated disaster warning failures
"Sivanu Dayalan lost his home and livelihood to the landslides and floods triggered by Cyclone Ditwah, which swept across Sri Lanka nearly a month ago, but it could have been even worse for him and his family due to early warning failures and the enduring marginalisation of Tamil-speaking communities."
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"When the country's worst disaster since the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami struck on 27 November, the 43-year-old labourer did not receive warnings in Tamil, the language he speaks and one of Sri Lanka's two official languages."
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"While Sri Lanka has established a national multi-hazard early warning system, the communications breakdown during Cyclone Ditwah raises serious doubts about whether the "last-mile connectivity" and "inclusive, people-centred" approaches mandated under EW4A exist beyond paper commitments."
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"Sri Lanka's disaster communication systems shifted online after the 2004 tsunami, but "communications have been weighted towards Sinhala ever since", Hattotuwa said, calling it an institutional failure."
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