A joint follow-up evaluation of the links between relief, rehabilitation and development (LRRD)'This evaluation was commissioned by a group of governments from the region, aid donors and other organisations to review the relevance and the effectiveness of interactions between the interventions to help the populations in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives to recover from the 2004 tsunami. The evaluation was carried out at the end of 2008 and early 2009 by a team of independent consultants, covering separately five sets of issues: the roles of the states and civil society, livelihoods and poverty, social relations, disaster risk mitigation, and capacity building. It was composed of a review of some 600 documents and annotated bibliography, a qualitative fi eld research process, and a quantitative survey of the affected populations. It covered the work of NGOs, UN agencies, donor and national governments, but also civil society and community initiatives.