Cyclone Ditwah’s unforgiving force has claimed hundreds of lives and left entire landscapes unrecognisable. As Sri Lanka grapples with the scale of loss, attention has turned to the architecture of its recovery effort, and to questions about whether that architecture is fit for purpose.
The government moved swiftly to establish a ‘Rebuilding Sri Lanka Fund’ and a ‘Management Committee’ to assess requirements, set priorities, allocate resources and disburse funds. Public reaction has focused on the committee’s problematic composition: all 11 members are men, and all non-government seats are held by business personalities with no known expertise in complex national development projects, disaster management, and addressing the needs of vulnerable populations. While their full mandate remains unclear (perhaps even to the Committee itself – given the emerging legal ambiguities), they could end up directing recovery spending for a nation where roughly 1.2 million women, 522,000 children and youth, and 263,000 elderly people have been impacted. A new UNDP-DMC assessment notes, “Over half of the people in flooded areas were already living in households facing multiple vulnerabilities before Cyclone Ditwah, including unstable income, high debt, and limited capacity to cope with disasters”. Appreciating these impacts, and directing rebuilding funds accordingly, requires knowledge beyond finance and business.
The magnitude and complexity of the decisions at hand have prompted debate around why inclusive governance must be embedded into the architecture of recovery itself, with key groups and perspectives represented through meaningful decision-making roles. Research on disaster recovery demonstrates that inclusive decision-making produces effective outcomes. Communities understand their realities better than distant technocrats, and local knowledge is critical when formal systems break down.
Anchoring recovery governance to well-recognised frameworks like the ‘Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction’, which emphasises a whole-of-society approach, could ground recovery in principles that strengthen credibility and equity.
Sendai Framework emphasises inclusivity
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) (2015–2030) was adopted at the UN World Conference in Japan in 2015, with Sri Lanka among its signatories. SFDRR encourages disaster governance across the entire continuum, from preparedness to recovery, and sets out guiding principles and priorities for nations and their partners.
SFDRR recognises that disasters do not affect everyone equally and are shaped by underlying drivers such as poverty and inequality. Inclusivity is therefore embedded as a core principle that should underpin all policies and practices.
Among SFDRR’s key actions is the requirement that at-risk groups take public leadership roles during response and reconstruction. It also recommends dedicated budgetary allocations for these groups to prevent the ad hoc, exclusionary patterns that have historically undermined past recovery processes.
The evidence is clear that disasters disproportionately affect vulnerable populations like women, making clear why integrating SFDRR is key. Women are 14 times more likely than men to die during disasters. They also face compounded risk because they serve as primary caregivers and prioritise the safety of children, partners, and the elderly over their own. Climate shifts have exacerbated the vulnerabilities they experience, with women now comprising 80% of those displaced by climate-related disasters.
These trends are also unfolding in Sri Lanka, where women constitute the majority of the population. While gender disaggregated data on disasters is often lacking, research shows why the conditions endured by women and marginalised communities need to be separately assessed. When the 2004 tsunami struck, nearly 66% of those who died in Ampara alone were women. The women impacted by Cyclone Ditwah is more than 50% of the total population affected. The highest numbers of those affected are in Colombo’s Kolonnawa Divisional Secretariat area (over 150,000 people) – an area where much of Colombo’s informal sector workers (many of whom are women) live, with little social protection cover, preexisting vulnerabilities including debt and malnutrition. leaving them more vulnerable to disaster-related economic shocks. This makes the absence of women, along with other vulnerable groups, from recovery mechanisms a critical issue.
Avoid repeating past patterns
The Presidential Task Force on Economic Revival and Poverty Eradication, established during the COVID-19 pandemic, was another example of problematic governance and representation in response and recovery mechanisms. Even though the task force was ostensibly formed to address poverty, support small businesses, and empower rural communities – at a time when intersectional vulnerabilities were acutely felt – the group’s representation did not mirror those needs. The majority of non-government representatives were heads of large corporate entities. There were no seats for SMEs, community representatives, or individuals with knowledge or appreciation of multidimensional poverty and intersectional vulnerabilities.
The scale and complexity of Cyclone Ditwah’s impact require expertise that reflects the breadth of affected communities and areas. Neither an all-male body nor business executives are best-placed to address the vastly different realities of landslide-prone hill country regions versus dense urban areas, or to balance competing priorities. These span half a million hectares of submerged paddy fields threatening food security, hundreds of kilometres of damaged roads and bridges, over 250 hospitals, and hundreds of communities in basic urban housing. Addressing this range requires voices from healthcare, engineering, agriculture, and affected and vulnerable communities themselves, among many others.
Reconsider the governance of rebuilding funds
The government must re-consider the role and purpose of this Fund, re-look at its legal mandate (alongside provisions in the Disaster Management Act of 2005, and earlier legal verdicts around similar mechanisms like the post-tsunami rebuilding funds – the P-TOMS and RADA cases), and re-constitute any management or governing committee to be more representative of the country, and reflected of the interdisciplinary needs in a response of this complexity and magnitude. One group – like the one appointed – might greatly help mobilize funds (corporates, international well-wishers, etc.), but this group may be ill-equipped to determine priorities and oversee disbursement and spending. It would be necessary to separate fundraising, fund oversight, and spending prioritization, given the different capabilities, and considerations required for each.
No doubt, past allegations of fund misuse – from tsunami relief to the Itukama COVID-19 fund – have created deep skepticism about successive governments’ ability to administer donations transparently. Appointing external actors to the Committee is perhaps a well-meaning effort to overcome this credibility gap. But ultimately, even well-meaning corporate executives answer to shareholders and boards, not to affected groups. Any public funding mechanisms must guard against conflict-of-interest risks. Funds and their utilization must be accountable to the public (through Parliamentary mechanisms), not to a few business leaders – this is not a private sector CSR fund, it’s a national rebuilding fund. The rebuilding mechanisms should not only be trusted by those making donations, but also by affected communities receiving support. They must be able to participate in, and hold accountable, these structures.
Responsibility of donor agencies to uphold inclusive governance
Development partners pledging much-needed funding must also not ignore these concerns, or they may be seen as complicit in perpetuating problematic governance. World Bank and ADB approaches to disaster risk management and recovery emphasise inclusive approaches in their own frameworks and their past projects in post-disaster contexts – specifically around gender.
Bilateral and multilateral development partners must insist on: 1) Political will and legal mandates for inclusive participation, not just rhetoric; 2) transparent fund management with public accountability mechanisms; 3) community-driven approaches where affected populations have genuine decision-making power; 4) targeted attention to vulnerable groups with disaggregated considerations; and 5) balancing urgency with meaningful consultation.
Staying true to the cause
The current government came to power by winning the trust and enthusiasm of a broad spectrum of Sri Lankan society. Their victory reflected the public’s dissatisfaction with allowing narrow groups to shape the future of the country. This must follow through in intent and action in this post-Ditwah rebuilding effort. It must shape recovery governance that is both legally legitimate, and reflective of the inclusivity principles Sri Lanka has committed to under the SFDRR. It is not just about ‘building back better’, but about ‘building forward differently’.
An earlier version of this article appears in the Daily FT of Friday 5th December 2025. The article has been updated to include the latest impact numbers from a UNDP-DMC survey (09 Dec 2025). Cover image copyright Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP, obtained via Bloomberg.com
