Examination of Witness (Questions 70 -
79)
THURSDAY 6 JULY 2000
MS CONSTANZA
ADINOLFI
Chairman
70. Good morning.
Can I thank you very much for seeing us this morning. We are the
International Development Select Committee of the House of Commons.
We get involved in emergencies in one way or another, the most
recent one being the emergency in Mozambique, but we were also
involved in the difficulties surrounding the refugees in Macedonia
and in Skopje and in Albania during the Kosovo war. We also see
work that you carry out elsewhere in Africa. We have most recently
visited Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa. We were very
anxious to see you again. We have done a report on the European
Development Programme which is now eighteen months to two years
old and we wanted to see you with the new Commission in order
to find out exactly what you are doing to improve matters and
in fact conduct matters totally differently. Last time we saw
ECHO Mr Navarro was in charge and he told us that in fact he had
made certain that all activities of ECHO had been contracted out
for other agencies to carry out. We do not know whether that will
continue to be your policy but we do have a series of questions
which we would like to put to you because we are planning to make
a report on the progress of the European Development Budget and
its outcomes, which are what we are interested in. Can I start
by asking a question about ECHO? We have read your Mission Statement
and we know that the Mission Statement says that you aim to disburse
or deliver emergency assistance within four days of a disaster
striking. What we would like to ask is in what proportion of cases
is ECHO meeting its target to get goods and services to crisis
zones within four days of a disaster, how long on average does
it take to disburse funding once a commitment has been made?
(Ms Adinolfi) I would say personally
that I am new in the job; I have been there for just three months
and I am a little bit astonished about the fact that you are mentioning
that we engage ourselves within only four days. I am not seeing
this in the Mission Statement that I have put in our own work
programme for this year.
71. It is on the website, we are told.
(Ms Adinolfi) Yes, but we are working also on the
website because I think we should be much more realistic and engage
ourselves in what we are really able to achieve. I would say that
in the case of emergencies it is clear that we try as hard as
we can to be very quick in our decisions. Normally in cases of
real emergency, which has been the case in Mozambique or Ethiopia,
the first decision we take very quickly because the procedure
gives us the opportunity to take at least the decision to commit
money quite rapidly. However, I would not engage myself at that
stage in saying that we are able to do this every time in four
days because in certain cases it does not happen. We try to shorten
it as much as possible but that has not really happened every
time. I would also say that we are quite concerned for the time
being about our capacity to react because we are also confronted
with a certain shortage of personnel and resources, although I
have used what we have in the best way I can. In certain cases
I have to say that just because of personnel we are not able to
meet very quickly certain delays or certain engagements. What
we do in these cases and how we are trying to organise ourselves
is that we try to create some kind of internal flexibility in
terms of the use of our resources in order that when we are confronted
with some big emergency, some huge issue, we can try to shift
part of our personnel to the countries which are in an emergency
situation in order to support what would be the service in normal
days in order to speed up the procedure. You are putting the question,
how long does it take to disburse between the moment you take
the decision to give money and the moment you contract and you
start to disburse money, and this is the part which concerns us
very much for the time being because we are doing some checks
about how we are reacting. For instance, let us take the case
of Mozambique which has been quite a good test case. We are a
little bit worried because we have found that on average our time
of response has been longer than in the past. That means that
because we have a larger portfolio to manage and we have more
and more crises to manage, our capacity, our response, in normal
cases but more in the case of an emergency, is diminishing. We
are examining this because we want to learn the lessons from what
has happened, for instance, in Mozambique, and we are doing now
a check list in order to see what are the things in which we can
give ourselves a better response by organising ourselves in a
different way or by taking some preventive measures in order to
be able to react better in the future in terms of response, and
what are the problems which are linked to the internal procedures
of the mission in order to enable us to come back again and improve
the situation. I would say that for the time being we are a little
bit concerned about our capacity to respond quickly and we are
analysing the situation very thoroughly in order to see which
steps we have to take in terms of organisation, in terms of streamlining
perhaps certain procedures internally, in order to come again
to a level of a really quick reaction in certain situations. On
the other hand I would also say that on average when we compare
ourselves and our capacity to respond to other services or to
other views of other instruments, we remain among the best and
we are the ones who react in the best way. In terms of disbursement
of funds for our partners who implement the projects in the field,
we are the ones who on average have a short time of disbursement
because in any case we are capable of disbursing on average in
a maximum of one to two months.
72. An average of one to two months for disbursement?
(Ms Adinolfi) Yes.
Mr Worthington
73. Can we stay with Mozambique because that
was before you took over?
(Ms Adinolfi) Yes. I came at the moment when it was
happening.
74. It is a good illustration and I will be
quite frank. I looked at the Mozambique crisis, as we all did,
and some people were out there. The crisis started round about
the end of January and we knew there were going to be problems
in terms of flooding. I could see no sign of ECHO doing anything
until Commissioner Nielson went to Mozambique and made an announcement
on March 1 which was after the main crisis was over, that there
were going to be European funds going into Mozambique. What had
happened in Mozambique as far as ECHO was concerned? Had ECHO
been doing anything before March 1 and what was it?
(Ms Adinolfi) I do not have the details. If you would
like to have a more detailed description of what really happened
and what we have done as a specific step I can send you these
after our meeting. I will be very interested to send you all the
information.[1]
What I can tell you is that in reality when the Commissioner went
in the field and made an announcement there was quite a lot of
work of fact-finding and preparing the announcement of the Commissioner
in terms of what we could do and how much we could deliver, which
had been done in the field by ECHO. In reality the announcement
of the Commissioner and the visit of the Commissioner were the
end of the first phase in which ECHO had been active.
75. How much have you spent in Mozambique because
of that crisis? When I say "spent" I mean it has happened;
not that it has been committed but that actual goods, materials,
useful services, have been delivered for the people of Mozambique.
(Ms Adinolfi) Until now in terms of engagement we
have engaged around nine million for Mozambique, but we will be
taking probably another decision, so all in all we will be probably
spending about 13.6 million for the Mozambique flood. What is
important to understand in Mozambique is that this is not only
an ECHO intervention. There are also funds coming from the DG
Development. What we have done in Mozambique from the very beginning
is to organise an analysis of national needs immediately from
the beginning together with the DG Development in order that we
choose in terms of humanitarian interventions the kind of intervention
which will really allow the field of intervention to be as wide
as possible and which will also be supported and handed over to
the DG Development once the emergency was finished. In the case
of Mozambique I would say, and we can provide this information
to you, that you would have to look to the larger Commission intervention,
Community intervention, in the way things have been planned. We
have intervened in certain sectors for certain activities but
in reality we have tried also to organise from the very beginning
the linkage between humanitarian interventions in the first emergency
and post-emergency crisis, and rehabilitation and construction.
76. This is an emergency that happened about
four months ago. What I want to know is: ECHO is supposed to be
the fast route as far as the European Commission is concerned.
You are the emergency service. I would like to know on what you
have spent your money on the ground. Is it medical? Is it educational
services? Is it repairing roads? What has been done on the ground
by ECHO?
(Ms Adinolfi) For Mozambique I have to say I do not
have all the details with me. Had I known the kind of question
you were going to put I would have brought out the documents with
me in order to be able to give you more details, but I am ready
to send these to you in a written form. From memory I would say
that definitely in the first intervention we have focussed on
shelters and the possibility of giving somewhere for people to
be where they are homeless. The first thing was shelter. There
was also some medical intervention in order to prevent health
problems. The first phase decision has been essentially aid to
give support to people who have been stricken by the result of
the flood. The later decision and probably the one we will be
taking is much more focusing on making the linkage with the rehabilitation
phase and so we will go much more on supporting the population
who have lost their crops and creating the possibility to reinstate
the cycle of production and other elements. In the first phase
we have essentially targeted the needs of the population who have
lost their homes and who could have health problems because of
the crisis. Now in the final phase, because we will be exiting
from Mozambique and we will be handing over to the DG Development
outfit, we are focusing on some specific problems which are related
to the fact that crops have been lost.
Mr Rowe
77. Given that for obvious reasons you have
some difficulty in responding as quickly as some of the NGOs,
does ECHO have a mechanism whereby they can underwrite the activities
of NGOs and, if so, can they do it very quickly because we get
the impression very strongly that a lot of NGOs who respond from
the beginning find themselves very heavily committed, almost in
faith, that the money will come in. I wondered to what extent
ECHO feels able to say to the International Red Cross or Save
the Children or whatever, "If you go ahead we will underwrite
some of your expenditure".
(Ms Adinolfi) In the case of emergencies, because
we are speaking of emergencies, there is the possibility on that
side.
78. Does it happen?
(Ms Adinolfi) It happens, that we can reimburse certain
investments which have been done by certain partners in the field
in the first phase of an emergency. In the case of an emergency
this is possible and this is applied. But I think we should also
make a difference in the kind of intervention that ECHO makes
because when we speak of emergency I would say that this is not
the major part of ECHO business. In reality a large part of our
normal activity does not happen in emergencies. It happens I would
say in productive crises of a humanitarian nature. In the case
of real emergency, like Mozambique, like Ethiopia or Eritrea,
this possibility you mention is normally applied, that is to say
we have partners in the field who are capable from the very beginning
to be in the field and to tell us, "We will be doing this
kind of intervention" and this, I would say, is in the remit
of what ECHO is thinking it can and will finance and we can say
to them, "Go ahead", and we can use certain later activity
in covering expenses that they have.
79. How long does it take to get reimbursed
on average?
(Ms Adinolfi) In certain cases it happens very quickly.
In other cases it happens a little bit slower and I will explain
why. In these cases the NGOs are in the field, or even a UN agency
or other partners are in the field, and they start their intervention.
We have received at that stage very little information and we
ask for very little information. The problem can become complex
in terms of disbursement once they come in with the real proposal.
We have an instrument which is not completely adapted for real
emergency because we have a project based legal base, a project
based instrument, which means that in reality you knit together
a project with identified objectives and targets which need to
be covered and with a quite detailed budget with a different chapter
on expenses and so on. On the basis of our regulations and financial
rules we can cover all kinds of expenses. In certain cases, if
the NGOs from the very beginning are not really clear how they
will be spending the money, we can have some difficulties afterwards
at the moment when they present the real projects and we have
to sign the contract. In certain cases, I would say with the very
well experienced NGOs or organisations who know the system well
and who also have a way of intervention which is quite in line
with our own legal basis, there are not so many problems and we
can sign quite quickly and disburse also quite quickly. In other
cases we can be confronted at the moment of implementation of
the project and signature to certain needs of adjustment in the
way they are presenting the project and in certain cases this
can create some difficulties and some more lengthy procedures.
We are aware of this problem. We have been confronted with this
problem in many cases and what we are now thinking about also
is to see to what extent we should not slightly modify the nature
of the contract, the framework of the agreement we have to sign
with our partners in order to make a better distinction between
the case where there is real emergency and the case where we have
a (normal) intervention, which leaves us more time. If there is
a problem we have more time to negotiate and find an agreement
with the partners. Our own evaluation, and this has been the result
also of the external evaluation we have had of our instrument
last year, is that probably the legal basis and the implementing
instrument we are using to contract out have not been completely
adapted to the emergency situation and probably we should reflect
how to adapt the instrument better and we are working on that.
We hope we can come to certain results between the end of this
year and perhaps next year. We are working on that because we
feel that we have to address this problem of the adaptation of
the instrument and the real situation we have been confronted
with in the field.
1 Not received at the time of publication. Back
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