San Jose, Calif. ? Doling out tsunami relief funds to survivors of the horrific natural disaster has been rife with corruption, mismanagement and favoritism, according to an international team of researchers directed by the University of California-Berkeley.

“What we found across all the countries is inequity in aid distribution,” said Eric Stover, director of the university’s Human Rights Center, which issued a report this week calling on overseas governments to distribute funds more fairly.

Stover, a professor of public health, was one of eight researchers who spent two weeks in five countries devastated by the December 2004 tsunami. According to the United Nations’ Web site, the tsunami left an arc of devastation from Thailand to the Horn of Africa, killing at least 270,000 people and injuring another 500,000. Untold numbers were left homeless.

Billions of dollars were raised across the globe to help. And agencies such as the United Nations’ World Health Organization also recently asked similar questions about whether the funds were distributed effectively and efficiently.

The UC-Berkeley research was conducted by the school’s Human Rights Center and the University of Hawaii’s Globalization Research Center. Researchers who visited India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Thailand each wrote about 40 pages of findings, which are expected to be published in September.

On his visit to Thailand in March and April, Stover interviewed about 60 people in 18 coastal communities. There, he discovered that several women had received the equivalent of about $500 for the loss of their husbands, who earned the sole family income by fishing, but then never received any government assistance or support again.

Stover’s interviews also revealed that while one fishing village would receive aid, another one would not. “Sometimes it’s because the local government favors that group; other times it’s lack of coordination,” Stover said.

Some preliminary report recommendations, presented June 3 and 4 at a Thailand conference organized by the East-West Center in Honolulu:

¢ Establish a human rights monitoring project in each country for the next two years.

¢ Survey local people to ensure the money is distributed equitably.

¢ Make sure the communities themselves are involved.

Each of the countries affected by the tsunami had its share of problems.

In Sri Lanka, researchers said children are being abducted by the Tamil Tigers to become foot soldiers in the country’s continuing armed conflict. In the Maldives, security at the displacement camps is poor, causing people to fall prey to attacks by drug abusers. Stover said he wished that the various South Asian countries had “slowed down and managed things better.”

“What we’re worried about in the future is that they don’t repeat these measures in the reconstruction phase,” he said.