Who Controls the Truth After Disaster?

© 2025 Small Drops Balananthini Balasubramaniam. All rights reserved.

UNDP RAPIDA, State Power, and the Politics of Humanitarian Knowledge in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This article critically examines the United Nations Development Programme’s RAPIDA (Rapid Impact and Damage Analysis) assessment following Cyclone Ditwah in Sri Lanka. While RAPIDA employs advanced satellite imagery and geospatial analytics to produce technically robust measurements of disaster impact, this paper argues that such assessments remain politically circumscribed. Drawing on political economy, critical humanitarianism, and post-war governance analysis, the study demonstrates how technically accurate data can coexist with epistemic silences around militarisation, ethnic power, and structural vulnerability. The article advances a framework for reading humanitarian data as baseline evidence rather than causal explanation and argues for renewed political agency among affected communities, particularly Eelam Tamils, in the interpretation and deployment of international assessments (UNDP, 2025; OCHA, 2019).

Keywords: humanitarian knowledge, disaster governance, UNDP, RAPIDA, Sri Lanka, political economy, vulnerability

*1. Introduction*

The initial impact mapping of Cyclone Ditwah, released through UNDP’s RAPIDA assessment, reported that over 1.1 million hectares—nearly one-fifth of Sri Lanka’s landmass—were inundated, exposing approximately 2.3 million people (UNDP, 2025). Framed as a rapid, objective, and technically neutral intervention, the assessment has been widely cited by humanitarian actors and donors. Yet beyond its descriptive utility lies a more consequential inquiry: how is humanitarian knowledge produced, authorised, and delimited in post-conflict states? (Hyndman, 2007; Korf & Raeymaekers, 2013)

This article contends that in Sri Lanka, disaster assessment cannot be disentangled from longer histories of militarisation, ethnic governance, and post-war state consolidation. While RAPIDA delivers reliable measurements of scale, it simultaneously narrows the analytical field within which vulnerability and responsibility can be discussed (Duffield, 2007; Fassin, 2012).

*2. RAPIDA and the Architecture of Technical Neutrality*

RAPIDA assessments are institutional products of the United Nations system rather than nationally authored documents. Their analytical backbone consists of global satellite constellations, regional UNDP technical teams, and internationally standardised geospatial platforms (Scott, 1998; Barnett, 2011). Flood extent, land exposure, and population overlays are thus generated through methodologies largely insulated from direct political manipulation.

However, these global systems depend on nationally produced datasets—administrative boundaries, census grids, infrastructure records—supplied by the Government of Sri Lanka. Validation, contextualisation, and public release are coordinated by UNDP Sri Lanka, which operates within a constrained diplomatic environment (Duffield, 2007; Fassin, 2012). Neutrality, therefore, is procedural rather than absolute.

*3. What RAPIDA Measures—and What It Does Not*

The strength of RAPIDA lies in its capacity to establish magnitude with precision. Satellite-derived estimates of inundation and exposure are methodologically robust and internationally defensible (Slim, 2015; World Bank, 2017). Such data provide a baseline that states find difficult to contest.

Yet the assessment stops short of interrogating why exposure is structurally uneven. Regions repeatedly affected by disaster are treated as coincidentally vulnerable rather than politically produced spaces. The analysis quantifies impact while suspending inquiry into causality.

*4. Framing Vulnerability Without Power*

The concept of “multiple vulnerabilities” appears frequently in RAPIDA reporting, yet remains analytically depoliticised. Vulnerability is presented as a condition rather than a consequence. Militarised land control, post-war resettlement regimes, demographic engineering, and infrastructural neglect—particularly in the North and East—are absent from the analytical frame (Fassin, 2012; Barnett, 2011).

This omission reflects the operational constraints of UN country offices. Open attribution of state responsibility would risk institutional access and partnership. As a result, humanitarian knowledge is neither falsified nor complete; it is strategically delimited.

*5. Aid, Institutions, and Embedded Power*

Recent global scrutiny of international aid mechanisms—including documented cases such as the capture and redirection of USAID programmes by state-aligned actors—underscores a central insight of critical humanitarian studies: international institutions operate within power relations rather than outside them (Weiss, 2013; Duffield, 2007; UNDP, 2025). The Sri Lankan case illustrates that such dynamics can affect both the distribution of aid and the framing of vulnerability in humanitarian assessments. The USAID example highlights how even well-funded programmes can be co-opted or manipulated by local power actors, limiting their effectiveness for intended communities.

UNDP assessments should therefore be understood as technically rigorous outputs shaped by political feasibility. Their authority derives from methodological competence, not from immunity to structural power.

*6. Methodological Implications: Reading Humanitarian Data Critically*

This article proposes a triangulated approach to RAPIDA data. Such assessments should be read as:

1. Indicators of scale rather than explanations of cause;

2. Cartographies of impact rather than mappings of responsibility; and

3. Institutional baselines rather than normative judgements (Hyndman, 2007; Scott, 1998; Slim, 2015).

Their analytical value emerges only when placed in dialogue with local civil-society documentation, community testimony, investigative journalism, and historical analysis. In contexts of asymmetric power, silence constitutes a form of data.

*7. Political Agency Beyond Institutional Knowledge*

A central concern of this analysis is the strategic capacity of Eelam Tamil actors. While external actors and the Sinhala state navigate international and domestic power with deliberate coherence, Eelam Tamil communities have often been reactive, accepting external frameworks or donor priorities without asserting themselves as equal interlocutors (Korf & Raeymaekers, 2013; Barnett, 2011). This pattern of deference—through alignment with global powers, replication of international advocacy scripts, or reliance on external data—constitutes a form of structural vulnerability.

The consequence is not moral failing but systemic incapacity to leverage international engagement strategically. Without cultivating autonomous knowledge, coordinated diplomacy, and politically defined objectives, Eelam Tamil actors risk remaining peripheral in humanitarian decision-making and failing to transform technical evidence into actionable political leverage.

*8. Recommendations*

1. Humanitarian assessments should be complemented with community-led documentation to capture political and structural dimensions of vulnerability (Slim, 2015; Fassin, 2012).

2. International institutions must develop transparent frameworks for acknowledging epistemic limitations when data depends on state sources (OCHA, 2019).

3. Post-conflict communities, particularly Eelam Tamils, should invest in independent data collection and strategic advocacy, ensuring that assessments serve local priorities rather than reproduce dependency (World Bank, 2017).

4. Donors and multilateral agencies must recognise that technical precision is insufficient without critical engagement with the political context of data production (Slim, 2015).

5. Capacity-building programs should be established to enhance the analytical, diplomatic, and negotiation capabilities of marginalised communities, enabling them to operate as equal actors in international forums (Barnett, 2011; Duffield, 2007).

*9. Conclusion*

Cyclone Ditwah revealed not only the physical exposure of land and people, but also the epistemic limits of contemporary humanitarian assessment. RAPIDA provides accurate measurements of impact while leaving intact the political structures that sustain vulnerability.

The central argument of this article is not that humanitarian assessments are inaccurate, but that they are incomplete by design. In post-war Sri Lanka, the challenge is not merely to measure disaster, but to politicise its interpretation. Without such engagement, recovery will remain technical, humanitarianism procedural, and justice indefinitely deferred.

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