Kalain Ho­sein

In what is now the dead­liest earth­quake in a decade, the death toll of the Turkey-Syr­ia earth­quake sur­passed 12,000 yes­ter­day evening. Three days ago, a mag­ni­tude 7.8 earth­quake struck south­east­ern Turkey, send­ing dam­ag­ing seis­mic waves rip­pling across parts of the Mid­dle East, East­ern Eu­rope, and north­ern Africa. Hours lat­er, a mag­ni­tude 7.5 earth­quake struck in cen­tral Turkey, com­pound­ing the dam­age across the coun­try. Thou­sands of build­ings col­lapsed with road­ways de­stroyed across Turkey and Syr­ia, where res­cue and re­cov­ery ef­forts con­tin­ue.

Yes­ter­day, Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Re­cep Tayyip Er­do­gan vis­it­ed the dis­as­ter zone, urg­ing that cit­i­zens “show pa­tience” as more aid made its way to them. How­ev­er, the Unit­ed Na­tions sys­tem is in full op­er­a­tion to bring re­lief to the af­fect­ed coun­tries, ac­cord­ing to Ma­mi Mizu­tori, the head of the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Risk Re­duc­tion (UN­DRR), in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia.

Mizu­tori said: “What this calami­ty is show­ing us is first, of course, we need to re­spond and res­cue as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble. And this is what the UN sys­tem is do­ing now, right now, as we speak. Our job once we have been able to res­cue as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, we have been able to take care of the peo­ple who have been af­fect­ed as much as pos­si­ble.”

Look­ing ahead, Mizu­tori ex­plained: “I think we need to look in­to what we can do in or­der to what we call build back bet­ter.”

How­ev­er, this is some­thing that has been eas­i­er said than done. The UN­DRR is en­gaged glob­al­ly in the mid-term re­view of the Sendai Frame­work, a glob­al blue­print to pre­vent new and ex­ist­ing dis­as­ter risks. As coun­tries eval­u­ate their ad­vances with­in the Frame­work, one is­sue is glar­ing, ac­cord­ing to Mizu­tori.

“It is not re­al­ly clear whether this build­ing back bet­ter in re­cov­ery has be­come more than a mantra. It’s dif­fi­cult, isn’t it? Some­times we want to re­cov­er and build back as we have been in the past years, like, you know, con­struct­ing your house in the same place, even if it’s risky, con­struct­ing it in the same way be­cause you don’t have the means,” she said.

“But such a dis­as­ter like we are see­ing right now, and with all their sym­pa­thy and all our, you know, ef­forts, we will work with Turkey at this ini­tial phase, very dif­fi­cult phase. But once it’s over the work of UN­DRR, we want to work with the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment so that the re­cov­ery can be a built back bet­ter re­cov­ery.”

Though the quake’s epi­cen­tre and worst shak­ing were cen­tred in Turkey, north­ern Syr­ia was se­vere­ly af­fect­ed. Syr­ia’s more than decade-long civ­il war com­pli­cates ef­forts to get the coun­try’s aid. Many refugees dis­placed by the fight­ing live in the quake-strick­en area of Turkey, and while aid was not cross­ing in­to Syr­ia, bod­ies were. Though in­ter­na­tion­al aid has been flow­ing in­to Turkey, it hasn’t been as easy in­to Syr­ia due to com­pet­ing gov­ern­ment and non-gov­ern­ment fac­tions and the sole ap­proved route for UN aid col­laps­ing. Mizu­tori said this break­down has com­pli­cat­ed re­lief ef­forts.

Though the UN sys­tem, ac­cord­ing to Mizu­tori, has been pro­vid­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid to the coun­try, this re­cent calami­ty and break­down in gov­er­nance have com­pli­cat­ed re­lief ef­forts in north Syr­ia.

“We need to dou­ble our ef­forts, but it is very dif­fi­cult. What this shows us is that where there is no strong gov­er­nance, then when dis­as­ter hits, the peo­ple who live there or hit even more than in any oth­er place. Of course, the UN sys­tem will con­tin­ue to work on the hu­man­i­tar­i­an re­sponse, but in a place like Syr­ia, what we need to see is the re­turn of gov­er­nance, in that in that lo­ca­tion, but in the coun­try as a whole.”