House of Commons - International Development

Select Committee on International Development Written Evidence

23. Memorandum submitted by Mercy Corps

1. INITIAL DISASTER RESPONSE AND THE INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN SYSTEM

1.1 How do INGOs, national NGOs, the media, parliamentarians and the public influence DFID's decision-making and responses to natural disasters? Does the relative success of different funding appeals determine the priority afforded to different natural disasters by humanitarian actors?

1.1.1 NGOs spend time courting politicians and the media alike, to keep these catastrophes on the radar and get political support for effective long-term solutions.

1.1.2 Clearly the success or otherwise of funding appeals affects the priority afforded to different natural disasters. Hence unappealing humanitarian catastrophes get less funding.

1.2 Are evaluation mechanisms adequate to determine whether humanitarian responses to natural disasters are consistent with the principles of humanitarian action as agreed under the Good Humanitarian Donorship (GHD) initiative? Are lessons drawn from evaluations applied during later responses? What impact has the GHD initiative had on the practices of the actors which have committed to it?

1.2.1 The relief industry relies on public support and so is loathe to air its lessons learnt too clearly in a public forum. As an organisation reliant on political will, DFID is in a similar position. We are beginning to see a change here but still we are too upbeat about our failures and possibly curiously too quiet about our enormous successes. There is a role for an independent review from, for example, ODI.

1.3 How useful have recent reviews of the capacity, effectiveness and flexibility of the international humanitarian system been? Do we fully understand what the key constraints on the humanitarian system are? How significant are funding (including "core" funding), needs assessment and political processes?

1.3.1 Within agencies which work in relief, the lack of human resources is the most important issue facing humanitarian action on any scale. Core funding is also an issue for many of the mid-range agencies who need to dedicate their small and vital unrestricted funds to the initial response. Along with wider access to core funds should be access to staff or the support of mechanisms whereby staff can be immediately seconded to a response. Expanded staff rosters require expanded core funding, particularly since natural disaster response generally requires very quick deployment of staff while the survival window is still open. In practical terms, this translates into the need for standing staff capacity—and hence core funding for such.

1.4 Are proposals for reform of the international humanitarian system realistic and comprehensive? What has been HMG's role in promoting these? Are they likely to affect the responsiveness of the public and governments to future humanitarian funding appeals?

1.4.1 The major issue facing humanitarian action is a lack of experienced and able staff within all structures, whether the UN, bilateral agencies like DFID or NGOs, both national and international. No reforms of any type will improve responses until we are able, as an industry, to retain a cadre of experienced and able people. Improvements in codes of conduct, standards or funding will all be of little effect if we do not have the people to learn from previous mistakes and successes. Agencies need to be able to keep staff, including staff with family commitments, and help them still work in this field as their commitments grow. That said, it would be a sad day when a human response to a human disaster becomes exclusive. We are already trying to find ways to link donors of all sizes to our interventions in a more solid and personal way. We should not exclude the natural outpouring of compassion, nor should we limit it to the remote activity of writing a cheque.

1.5 What should be the role of the military and civil defence actors in humanitarian responses, including national military forces, the EU and NATO?

1.5.1 The military of the sovereign nation affected by natural disaster has a role to play in providing immediate support to the victims of a disaster. They are a recognised arm of a government and so have every right to intervene and indeed every duty to do so when requested by the government. Foreign militaries also have a role to play when requested to do so by foreign governments. We are not sure that the full costs should be borne by the providing country's aid budget (as was the case for the UK military role in Pakistan), but foreign militaries can do things that no other organisation can and no other agency should be trying to emulate. That said, responses can be slow: it took a couple of weeks to get the UK Chinooks airborne and then they had to fly in pairs, making them much less effective than they could or should have been.

1.5.2 The parallel coordination mechanisms can also cause friction. Militaries tend to coordinate with military rather than with civilian authorities. The military should therefore fill-in gaps, which can be enormous, for long range and some bulk logistics, plus support functions including emergency medical assistance and emergency repair to infrastructure.

However, we would emphasise that when it comes to conflict settings, we very much support the division of labour and roles outlined in the IASC guidelines on civil military co-operation—ie military involvement in humanitarian affairs only as a last resort in exceptional circumstances.

1.6 How can the recipients of humanitarian assistance, including DFID's local partner-organisations, contribute to DFID's decision-making processes regarding humanitarian assistance? In what ways can they hold DFID accountable for its humanitarian aid provision?

1.6.1 DFID should be prepared to work with its existing partner agencies where necessary and appropriate. DFID should be prepared to take both formal assessment and anecdotal evidence from those personnel and agencies who know what they are doing and offer assistance based upon this.

1.6.2 Accountability works in both directions, DFID should be accountable for speedy flows of funds and goods. They should also insist that partner agencies have within their budgets and core capabilities enough staff to gather, analyse and SHARE data. Further, they should insist that agencies are co-coordinating as an integral part of their operations and that they are staffed at a reasonable level to be able to do this effectively and meaningfully.

1.6.3 DFID should continue to support Sphere. Continued DFID support for this influential quality and accountability initiative helps bring added rigour to performance measurement, professional education and inter-agency efforts at co-operation.

1.6.4 DFID support to the UN system is critical, but must be met with timely and appropriately staffed UN performance in the field. UN coordination and information sharing teams have an essential role, but only if they deploy quickly and with the right skills sets.

2. VULNERABILITY AND DISASTER PREPAREDNESS

2.1 How do DFID and other development actors assess the vulnerabilities of the recipients of development assistance to natural disasters? Are development interventions designed to reduce vulnerabilities to natural disasters?

2.1.1 Mercy Corps has been developing its expertise in disaster preparedness for several years, in Central Asia and now Pakistan and Guatemala. We are now part of a partnership of NGOs which are collaborating to research optimal disaster preparedness in many parts of the world. In this area, we are very struck by a lack of funding for disaster preparedness.

2.2 How do donors ensure that humanitarian assistance is delivered equitably (in terms of gender, ethnicity, age, caste and so on)? What can be done to ensure that humanitarian assistance is pro-poor and does not exacerbate inequalities?

2.2.1 DFID should ensure that comprehensive and accurate assessments are carried out, agencies work to those, the data is shared and accessible to those who need it, and the organisations DFID supports are staffed and supported to be able to be clearly pro-poor and develop programming that reflects that. This should be the case through transition and on to development/recovery/rehabilitation. This underscores the importance of impartiality in assessment and response efforts—they must remain needs-based. Sri Lanka post tsunami is a good example of where the perception, if not the reality, of impartiality can lead to significant ethical and practical problems.

2.3 How can donors deliver humanitarian assistance in ways which, where appropriate, support rather than replace the natural disaster response capacity of recipient country governments?

2.3.1 Donors need to know in advance what those mechanisms are and how effective they are. This means not just investing in the preparedness systems themselves but in their maintenance and to ensure that they know what has been done where and in what country. As disasters have a greater effect on the poorest, there is a real issue as to who will be able to cope in a disaster. Where the comparatively better off in a society/community survive a shock, their survival may mask a crisis for the worse off.

2.3.2 The methodologies required for the delivery of aid needs to be varied a great deal. Agencies tend to try a one-size-fits-all approach, even if there is a variation in outputs.

2.3.3 That said, we can define a disaster as a breaking of coping mechanisms, and hence if we assess properly, we should be able to pick up these mechanisms and the people who have utilised them.

2.3.4 Local partnership and local capacity building are vital, particularly in the case of weak government institutions designated to lead or coordinate the response and recovery efforts.

2.4 To what extent do humanitarian responses to natural disasters undermine or enhance resilience and the ability of people to cope with future disasters?

2.4.1 We believe this is relatively unknown. We make assumptions about the effectiveness of preparedness plans. We here take Katrina as a case study.

2.4.2 Katrina's type of natural disasters, by their ampleness and sudden onset, are exceptional experiences that challenge the capabilities of most governments. The area affected by Katrina was comparable to the size of the UK. In a few days, 1.3 million people were displaced. The very people and assets that were trained and prepared to respond to the disaster were neutralised by it. Yet, in spite of the fact that Katrina affected the most powerful country in the world, the emergency response did not promote local initiatives or enhance the ability of people to cope with future disasters.

2.4.3 As has been widely reported, FEMA, recently incorporated into the Department of Homeland Security responsible for counter terrorism, was not prepared to manage the enormous emergency response and the generous amount of public and private resources that reached the affected Gulf Coast region. [42]Security perimeters with strict controlled access along with the absence of clear procedures to obtain identification cards prevented humanitarian actors from coordinating their responses with FEMA and other agencies. As in every humanitarian emergency, coordination would have been essential to make the best use of the resources available, but the domestic political environment prevented the involvement of expert agencies, such as the UNOCHA, that the INGOs involved in the response recommended to the Louisiana Governor office. [43]Ultimately, coordination took place at the local County or Parish level, mostly as a result of individuals' initiative, but the opportunity to learn how to coordinate a massive emergency response has been missed.

2.4.4 In addition to being a poorly coordinated operation or because of it, the Katrina emergency response did not reach the poor. While government donor agencies managing emergency responses overseas—including USG USAID, OFDA, USBPRM—require INGO partners to implement their emergency responses through local communities, the USG agencies managing the Katrina response implemented it through national, state and local contractors. As a result, beneficiaries were left with little to no control or choice over the services they received, and the local economy obtained but a small portion of the total relief funds. [44]This federal, top-down approach can be contrasted with cash for work projects during the tsunami emergency response in Indonesia where victims of the tsunami were hired in various cash for work community projects that injected a sizeable amount of cash into families' budgets and local economies. [45]

2.4.5 The Katrina emergency response also missed a unique opportunity to prepare for an environmentally and economically creative and sound rehabilitation and reconstruction phase. New Orleans housing stock is unique in the country, both as a result of its various architectural styles[46] and its age. A large segment of this housing stock came down through generations, but owners are often low income individuals who could not afford house insurance. Without insurance or income, the owner of a condemned house was left with a difficult choice: s/he could either sell her/his damaged house to speculators for very little money or accept the City's free offer to bulldoze it with the hope of building a new house on the empty lot later. [47]

2.4.6 There was no local or state government attempt at engaging the communities, and as a result, a multitude of ward or community associations formed all over the City and in displaced settlements. These groups' concerns were to save as many houses as possible and when houses are condemned, to reuse as much of their materials and architectural details as possible to repair or rebuild houses in New Orleans. This approach, called deconstruction, generates several thousand dollars of revenue to the home owner through the sale of materials and architectural details. It reduces landfill, creates hundreds of community jobs as deconstruction is essentially done by hand, and promotes community efforts that have demonstrated beneficial long-term social impacts. [48]Without the involvement and encouragement of the City of New Orleans, the State of Louisiana, and the federal agencies involved in emergency response, a unique opportunity to initiate an environmentally and economically sound rehabilitation and reconstruction phase has been missed during the Katrina emergency response.

2.4.7 While Katrina emergency response revealed remarkable individuals and inspired original initiatives, its publicised failings resulted from a lack of leadership. The top down approach adopted by FEMA and other federal agencies undermined communities' efforts and is largely responsible for the slow pace of the recovery as it kept relief funds outside the Gulf Coast economies. Only one third of the pre-Katrina population has returned to New Orleans by May 2006, and only 20% of the pre-Katrina African American population, among the poorest and the most affected by the storm, are back in the City.

2.5 Has an appropriate balance been found between investment in preparedness for and response to natural disasters? What evidence is there that interventions based on natural disaster mitigation and social safety nets have reduced the vulnerability of populations to natural disasters?

2.5.1 As an industry we are relatively new to widespread preparedness and preparedness planning. Currently we believe that local interventions are untested to any rigorous degree and over time; ie systems may work this year but may fall into disrepair. This is true for physical infrastructure as well as softer social safety nets. The balance is therefore, as yet, untested and undefined.

2.6 Where early warning mechanisms have been put in place, is there evidence that these are effectively informing decisions about intervention?

2.6.1 No comment.

3. DEVELOPMENT AND HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE

3.1 What should be the aims of humanitarian assistance? Do humanitarian and development actors understand their respective roles and responsibilities in relation to disaster risk reduction and preparedness, and to humanitarian assistance?

3.1.1 Many agencies have many roles, undertaking both relief and development activities. This should be encouraged. Not everyone or every agency is suited to relief work, but where agencies and staff are capable, they should be encouraged to work across artificial boundaries, which would provide a more integrated and ultimately more effective approach to relief operations.

3.2 How effectively do DFID and other development actors analyse the risks to their development programmes posed by natural disasters?

3.2.1 Poorly. We respond when there is a humanitarian imperative.

3.3 In what planning is DFID engaging to take account of the key threats to their humanitarian programmes, including HIV/AIDS, avian flu and the extreme climatic events which are likely to occur with greater frequency as a result of climate change?

3.3.1 No comment.

3.4 Can the interaction between development work and humanitarian assistance be improved? How can aid instruments be refined to reduce the binary nature of the relationship between development and humanitarian assistance?

3.4.1 We need to stop seeing the two as different. Rather, they are different places on a single continuum and we can transition much more quickly to a development stance of involving people in their own recovery whilst still meeting immediate needs. DFID should insist that the change-over is written and explained in all documentation and that professional staff in professional agencies are running sound operations. All this leads back to sound management and leadership practices and that in turn leads to retaining personnel who can manage in such circumstances. Continuous funding streams which support integrated planning and approaches, with consistency in staffing, would help ensure continuity in response efforts.

3.5 How appropriate is the balance between donor spending on immediate relief work and longer term reconstruction and development? How successfully are transitions between relief, reconstruction and development managed?

3.5.1 Very often the transition is poorly managed. A group of staff transition out and are replaced, and "bang" the change has been made. Agencies and staff need to see that they are on a single path. From the start, victims must be bought into the process of their own recovery, or at least when they are willing and able. Many are shocked early on and intent on grieving for their loss. We must be sympathetic to that whilst working with those we can until people are much more employable.

3.5.2 DFID should allow adequate training lines in short-term budgets.

May 2006