Tsunami Crisis

On the ground

• 230,000 lives lost
• Two million people made homeless
• Millions more left without a way of making a living

The tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean on 26 December 2004 brought about a disaster on an almost unimaginable scale.

Historic response now closed

Having delivered assistance to around 2.5 million people in seven countries affected by the tsunami, we have now closed the separate charity we created to manage our response.

  What has been achieved is astounding. Hundreds of thousands of people are now living in better conditions than they were in before the tsunami thanks to the generous support we received from the public, the hard work of our local staff and partners, and the resilience of the affected communities to rebuild their lives.

Barbara Stocking, Chair of the Oxfam International Tsunami Fund Board

Oxfam International Tsunami Fund End of Programme Report (1.12MB pdf)

Learn more

• Situation overview
• Oxfam's response

An unimaginable situation

Those worst affected by the tsunami were people already living in poverty.The majority of those who died were women and children.

On film: "In ten minutes you lose everything"

A massive response

The scale of emergency relief and reconstruction following the tsunami was unprecedented. At the end of our four-year response, we are proud of what we have achieved.

• Hundreds of thousands of tsunami survivors now have safe water and sanitation facilities
• Thousands of new homes have been built
• Thousands of people, once again, have a way of making a living

• Find out about Oxfam's response

Oxfam's response

The generosity of the public has enabled us to help an estimated 2.5 million people affected by the tsunami. Oxfam’s tsunami response lasted four years in total.

In pictures: Oxfam’s long-term recovery effort

Our immediate priority was to save lives.

• We distributed essential relief items and shelter materials
• We set up clean water and sanitation services
• We promoted good health and hygiene practices

In the longer term, we worked to help communities break out of the poverty that caused them to be so vulnerable to the effects of the tsunami in the first place.

We want the tsunami recovery to leave a positive legacy and for people to be left in a better state than they were in before the tsunami.

On film: Oxfam's work with saltpan workers in southern India

Evaluation and learning

We are committed to monitoring our work.

• To ensure that it is achieving agreed aims, and adapting to changing needs
• To allow us, as an agency, to learn from difficulties and achievements, and so improve

Oxfam has learned two principal lessons from the tsunami: we need to work harder with communities on disaster risk reduction; and we need to step up our work with partners and local government to be prepared for disaster response.

Lessons learnt from the tsunami response will be vital as the world faces more frequent and bigger disasters as a result of climate change.

In depth

Oxfam International Tsunami Fund End of Programme Report (1.12MB pdf) – full details of spending on the tsunami response, and monitoring and evaluation work.