The Asian Tsunami on 26 December 2004 affected over a dozen coastal countries in the Indian Ocean rim.

In Asia, where much of the impact took place, these countries were (alphabetically): Bangladesh, Burma, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

In Africa, Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia and Tanzania were affected.

Click here for BBC News summary of all the affected countries:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/4126019.stm

For Children of Tsunami, we have chosen to work in the four countries that were hardest hit by the disaster -- India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Between them, these four countries accounted for more than 80% of the impact and damage.

Even though they were united by the shared disaster and tragedy, the four countries are different in social, economic, cultural and political terms.

• One (India) is the largest democracy in the world.
• Another (Indonesia) has the highest Islamic population for any country.
• Interestingly, all four are parliamentary democracies.
• Sri Lanka and Thailand have well developed tourism industries -- which meant that among the affected were nationals from different parts of the world.

The project instigators, TVE Asia Pacific, have been working in all four countries since 1996. We already had ground level access, contacts and local knowledge to mobilise the filming within a short time.