House of Commons - International Development

Select Committee on International Development Seventh Report

1 Introduction

1. The number of natural disasters occurring worldwide is increasing, as is the number of people such disasters affect.[7] The effects of natural disasters are particularly severe in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) where early warning systems are often inadequate, infrastructure is frequently poor and social protection mechanisms are usually absent.[8] If the impact of natural disasters continues to increase, there is potential for progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be halted, and indeed for all the progress which LDCs have made over the past half-century to be wiped out.[9] We heard evidence that climate change, increasing population concentration and other processes of global change[10] are likely to sustain the trend of natural disasters occurring with increasing frequency and intensity.[11]

2. In response to the increasing impact of disasters worldwide, levels of international humanitarian assistance have grown. Over the past 10 years, such assistance has almost tripled, increasing from US$4.6 billion in 1995 to US$12.4 billion in 2005, or 13% of total official development assistance.[12] This increasing volume of humanitarian assistance is being provided by a growing range of donors: the independent humanitarian aid monitoring programme Global Humanitarian Assistance (GHA) reports that 99 governments and 2 intergovernmental organisations contributed to the response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami Disaster, 13 of which had never previously made a recorded contribution to a disaster.[13] Donors are also seeking ways to extract greater value from the money they provide by prioritising funding, financing critical gaps and improving the speed with which they disburse funds. Welcome as the extra funding has been, there is some concern that a proportion of this is money that would otherwise have been dedicated to delivering poverty reduction strategies and progress towards the Millennium Development Goals.

3. The increase in available resources has contributed to an exponential increase in the number of organisations working in the area. Jan Egeland, the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator (ERC), told us that whereas 15 years ago there were 100 agencies which would respond to an humanitarian emergency, today there were over 500.[14] This has increased the challenges of coordinating humanitarian activities and ensuring adherence to commonly agreed standards. Some commentators have raised concerns about the practices of 'briefcase' NGOs, created to respond to specific problems and often to particular funding opportunities.[15]

4. As the humanitarian sector has grown, it has faced numerous challenges, and in recent years these have accelerated. As the United Nations Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) comments in a review of its work in 2006:

"The last three years have been turbulent years for the humanitarian community — Afghanistan, followed by Iraq, the Darfur crisis in Sudan and then the Indian Ocean Tsunami and South Asia Earthquake[…] The humanitarian response system has coped with these major events and we have managed to save lives and mitigate suffering, but these events also have changed the humanitarian environment in which we work. Each of these major crises has in its own way tested the humanitarian response system; they have challenged perceptions of humanitarian assistance as impartial, they have challenged the appropriateness of our response and they have challenged our capacity to respond."[16]

The natural disasters that were tackled during 2005 demonstrated many of the longstanding issues affecting the sector (such as coordination between humanitarian actors and ensuring adherence to agreed standards), as well as confronting it with new problems (such as how to deal with the rapid increase in individual philanthropy generated by the high profile crises). These challenges, both old and new, were exacerbated by the scale of the natural disasters which occurred during 2005, and also by the fact that they occurred at a time when the humanitarian sector was already heavily committed in its responses to emergencies elsewhere in the world.

5. Inevitably much of the evidence we have received has focused on the high profile crises that occurred during 2005. Yet such large-scale disasters, which attract a high degree of public attention and consequently adequate or even excessive funding, remain the exception rather than the rule. At one point over 500 humanitarian agencies were operating in the Indonesian province of Aceh in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Disaster, and several humanitarian agencies received more in financial donations than they had the capacity to spend on the ground.[17] This situation created its own problems, but these were not typical of those faced by humanitarian agencies in their work. As representatives from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) emphasised in their oral evidence to the Committee, humanitarian responses to natural disasters are more commonly constrained by a lack of public attention, deficiencies in funding and too few agencies and staff available to work on the ground.[18] Jan Egeland has repeatedly underlined the inequity of responses to different disasters as one of the chief problems facing the humanitarian sector (we return to this issue in chapter 5).[19] Bearing this in mind, we have sought in this inquiry to consider the issues affecting humanitarian responses to natural disasters generally, and to avoid an undue emphasis on the high profile crises of 2005.

6. In his oral evidence to the Committee, Jan Egeland said that the international humanitarian sector had made significant progress in the speed and effectiveness of its responses to disasters over the past decade.[20] Other witnesses concurred.[21] In recent years however, widespread acknowledgement of continuing shortcomings of the sector has led to a number of initiatives for reform, which have aimed to improve the timeliness, appropriateness and equity of international responses to humanitarian disasters. Proposals for reform have focused on: the quality, speed and effectiveness of international response capacity and leadership; the level, mechanisms and equity of financing; and, the measurement of needs and of collective performance. DFID has been instrumental in pushing forward the international humanitarian reform agenda, not least through its advocacy for the Good Humanitarian Donorship initiative.[22] The Secretary of State for International Development, the Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP, has been particularly active in promoting reforms since 15 December 2004, when he launched his own agenda for reform of the international humanitarian system.[23]

7. Under the International Development Act 2002, DFID is authorised to provide humanitarian assistance to alleviate the effects of natural or man-made disasters or other emergencies. DFID leads the UK's response to humanitarian disasters through bilateral funding to non-governmental organisations (NGOs), multilateral funding including to the European Commission and United Nations agencies, and direct operational, technical and logistical support. Other government departments including the FCO and Ministry of Defence (MOD) support DFID's humanitarian work.

8. The architecture of DFID's own humanitarian policy has developed and clarified during 2006, with the publication of a new Disaster Risk Reduction Policy Paper in March 2006, a new Humanitarian Policy in July 2006 and specific humanitarian objectives included in the July 2006 White Paper.[24] In our examination of DFID's humanitarian work during this inquiry, we have taken account of the findings of a National Audit Office report on DFID's humanitarian policy, published in March 2003, and of the July 2006 report of the OECD Development Assistance Committee Peer Review of the UK, which included a specific focus on the UK's humanitarian work.[25]

9. This report is structured as follows. Chapter 2 briefly outlines the key concepts which relate to natural disasters and humanitarian assistance. This is followed by an examination of initial disaster response in the UK in Chapter 3. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 respectively, consider the issues which have been targeted for reform in the humanitarian sector: coordination and leadership; financing; and, measuring needs and performance. Chapter 7 addresses key operational issues facing humanitarian agencies working in the field, and Chapter 8 examines work on disaster risk reduction (DRR). Chapter 9 draws together our findings on the relationship between development assistance and humanitarian aid.

7 A recent World Bank report stated that the number of natural disasters had risen from fewer than 100 in 1975 to more than 400 in 2005. The cost of dealing with natural disasters has also risen; during the 1990s disaster response cost an estimated $652 billion, which is 15 times more than in the 1950s (World Bank Independent Evaluation Group, 'Hazards of Nature, Risks to development: An IEG Evaluation of World Bank Assistance for Natural Disasters' (2006)).Mr Jan Egeland told us "seven times more people are struck by natural disaster than by conflict" [Q 275].See also Ev 181 and Ev 197. Back

8 On 29 April 1991, Bangladesh was hit by a cyclone which caused140,000 deaths. Hurricane Andrew which struck the Florida coast in 1992, and was stronger than the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone, led to only forty deaths, directly and indirectly. Back

9 World Bank Independent Evaluation Group, 'Hazards of Nature, Risks to development: An IEG Evaluation of World Bank Assistance for Natural Disasters' (2006) Back

10 As discussed in more detail in Chapter 2, increasing urbanisation, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and conflict are factors which are increasing vulnerability to natural disasters. Back

11 Ev 149 [DFID] Back

12 Figures from Global Humanitarian Assistance, based on preliminary data released by the OECD DAC in April 2006 (see www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org). Back

13 Over half of the total pledged was provided by just five donors (USA, Australia, Germany, EC and Japan) [Development Initiatives, 'The International Community's funding of the Tsunami emergency and relief: analysis of overall funding flows: Final Draft' (6 March 2006). Back

14 Q 276 Mr Jan Egeland, UN-OCHA Back

15 UN-NGLS Civil Society Observer, 'NGLS interviews World Vision International' (January 2005). Back

16 UN-OCHA, 'OCHA in 2006: activities and extra-budgetary requirements' (2006), p.124, available online at http://ochaonline.un.org. Back

17 The Economist, 'Asia's tsunami: Relief but little rebuilding' (20 December 2005) Back

18 Q 35 Mr Toby Porter, Save the Children; Q 43 Ms Jane Cocking, Oxfam Back