Examination of Witnesses (Questions 29-39)
MS JANE
COCKING, MR
MARCUS OXLEY
AND MR
TOBY PORTER
6 JUNE 2006
Q29 Chairman: Thank you for being so
patient. I trust that you found the last session interesting and
there will be questions that may arise out of it directed at you.
You will appreciate that we are just getting stuck into this and
we are really looking for information from people who work on
the ground as to how they perceive these things. I guess what
is of interest to us is that we have had a long discussion about
the high-profile disasters and the impression one gets sometimes
is that everybody wants to be in the high-profile ones, to the
point where people argue that agencies trip over each other and
get in each other's way. I would like to know, first of all, the
extent to which that might be true but how do you as agencies
in the field resolve the issue of, "It is high profile and
everybody will be there but how important is our role and how
necessary is it for us to be there or could we be doing something
more useful? Do we all have to be there? Do we all have to focus
on that?" I do not know who wants to take it first.
Ms Cocking: As our journalist
colleagues were saying, it is a perennial problem, how we get
the balance right, and it was very interesting to hear Lyse Doucet's
assessment of what happens on a Saturday morning when there is
an earthquake. It is remarkably similar to the process that goes
on in most aid agencies, I think. The word, though, that is very
high in the conversation in our discussions which did not come
from Lyse (which is probably right) is need. That has to be and
quite genuinely is the first priority that feeds into our decision-making.
Are we talking about a crisis which will unfold and affect the
lives of hundreds of thousands of people or are we talking about
a crisis which will unfold and gather many column inches or television
time? That is the basis on which we would make our decisions and
that would very much influence the scale of what we do and also
the nature of what we do. However, it would be invidious of us
to pretend that it is not difficult to get the balance right between
responding to the earthquake in Pakistan on 8 October and maintaining
a presence and an impact in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Both of them are happening in chronic and very deep-rooted crises
and both of them are places where organisations like Oxfam have
been for many years and we maintain a commitment to be there,
but it is easier to raise money to respond in the first days following
the Pakistan earthquake than it is to continue doing the work
in Eastern Congo that we have been doing for many years.
Q30 Chairman: I do not know whether
it is a fair question to you but it must be a question that relates
to some agencies, which is if something happens which is clearly
going to be big; is there not going to be a discussion that says,
"We will not get our share of the money unless we are there,
even if we are not the best agency to do the job and we are not
the best equipped to do it." How easy is it for an organisation
to say, "Actually we have not got a huge amount to add to
that. We are just going to pass it up even though we know it might
affect the fundraising"?
Ms Cocking: You are right it would
be very difficult for an organisation like Oxfam to say, "We
are not going to respond to a high-profile emergency." It
would be very difficult in terms of our global profile. What we
have done to guard against that and also to put it positively
to ensure that we do have something that we believe we can always
bring to the table is invest in particular competences and particular
expertise. In the 15 years I have been working in humanitarian
crises, I think we can say genuinely that we have got much better
at that. For example, nine years ago—as long as that—we
took a decision that we were not going to work in curative health,
that there were others who were much better at it, that it took
a huge amount of investment, both human and financial, to be good
at that, and we were simply not going to do it. What we would
do and what we have done is we have invested in developing our
capacity to respond to water and sanitation needs and so we will
bring that to the table on all occasions, and that is how, if
you like, we answer your question in saying are we going to always
respond. We always will respond if we can but in a way we have
sidestepped your question by saying we will make sure that we
always have something to bring to the table.
Q31 Chairman: I wonder if either
of your colleagues wanted to add anything, particularly if you
have been faced with that decision at any time; should we not
respond, should we opt out of this one?
Mr Oxley: Tearfund is a much smaller
organisation than Oxfam and that is a decision that we have to
make all the time because we have only got limited resources ourselves
and so we are constantly challenged by this question of where
do we respond, where do we not respond? We have quite well-established
internal procedures. We have a flow chart and on the left-hand
side of the flow chart we are looking at what the humanitarian
imperative is, what the need is, what the external environment
is. On the other side, we are looking at what the capacity and
the added value of the organisation is and, all the time, as you
make that decision, as the management team comes together, essentially
it is a needs niche equation. You are trying to say, first of
all, what is the scale and the scope of the crisis? How many people
have been killed? How many people have been affected? How many
people have been displaced? What is the level of loss? Has the
government actually requested external assistance? Have they declared
a state of emergency? If you like, that is the official request
then for external assistance to come in. What is the level of
need? What are the sectors involved in that? Is there unmet need?
That is really what you are trying to cut it down to; what is
the level of unmet need? What we mean by that is we are looking
at what the internal indigenous capacity to respond is, both within
the community that has been affected, within the national government
of the country that has been affected, what is the unmet need
within that and then we are looking at what the external response
is to that from the UN agencies, from the Red Cross organisations,
from the non-governmental organisations, and that is all trying
to define what the unmet need is. Then on the other side of the
equation we are faced with issues of do we have sufficient capacity
ourselves? Do we have an historic presence in that country? Do
we have local partners that we have a relationship with in those
countries? What is the level of financial resource we are going
to get for that? That is related to the degree of media attention
that it is going to get. Will the DEC do an appeal?
Q32 Chairman: That is helpful in
terms of the criteria but can I press you—and perhaps Toby
as well—have you actually been in a situation where you
have concluded that this is a high-profile emergency but Tearfund
is not going to be there?
Mr Oxley: In Java just recently.
We have made a decision that we are going to have a very minimal
response to the Java earthquake for all those various reasons
that we feel it is not the role of Tearfund to go in there.
Q33 Chairman: Toby?
Mr Porter: No. And the reason
for that is because with all of the inconsistencies and vagaries
that the last group before you explained, the high-profile emergencies
tend to be quite significant emergencies, so if you are a global
organisation with a global mandate to respond, finding yourself,
except for operational reasons, in a situation where you were
not going to respond to a high-profile emergency would be a very
odd thing in view of mandate. That said, security is obviously
a factor. I think a lot of agencies still are very uneasy about
the current drought in Somalia because that is not really a place
where people want to scale up and have to start huge programmes.
Many of us are already there, but I am talking about the last
group, and there is Chechnya and earthquakes or other natural
disasters in places where access is difficult. Of course for the
Bam earthquake in 2003 there was a very substantive response and
UK agencies, my own included, had a very prominent role there
then. Iran is the most earthquake-prone country in the world.
Would we be allowed in there now if there were a similar event
given the way that political relationships have gone in the last
two years? Almost certainly not.
Q34 Chairman: That is not a decision
that you would be taking. It would be taken on your behalf.
Mr Porter: That is true. What
I would say in summary is that NGOs are not a homogenous group
and I would acknowledge that, it has been a feature of my career,
indeed I think a phrase was coined for it years ago of "briefcase
NGOs"; there are a lot of NGOs whose entire mission and raison
d'etre revolves around going to well-publicised crises and
the moment the publicity has gone and the funds have gone that
they retrench and go off somewhere else. I would say that the
professional agencies represented here and through the DEC are
not like that.
Q35 Mr Davies: There has been some
criticism recently that too many agencies have responded and there
has been great duplication and confusion. For example, 300 agencies
were involved in the Pakistan earthquake and about the same number
in the tsunami. That indicates that coordination does not seem
to be working very well. Is the DEC working satisfactorily? Is
it inadequate to try to coordinate on a purely national basis?
Are there international coordination mechanisms? How do they work
and is it the International Committee of the Red Cross or OCHA
or ECHO in this business? Is it excessively bureaucratic to try
to fund some sort of international coordination mechanism where
people spend weeks arguing about coordination before there is
any response at all? Could you let us have your views about the
present state of the workings of the coordination mechanisms in
this business?
Mr Porter: Firstly, it is very
rare to get too many NGOs working in a place. Take the Pakistan
example; you may have had 300 NGOs but, two months in, probably
less than 50% of the affected families had received minimal shelter
and support; it was such a huge emergency. It is not impossible
but it is quite rare. Possibly it applies to the tsunami and possibly,
in particular for European agencies, the Balkans crisis, the Kosovo
crisis in 1999, where you really did see an enormous plethora
of groups because it was within range of the white vans from the
UK and other European countries, so people who had never done
anything like that just loaded up a truck, all of which is a marvellous
humanitarian impulse and everything else, but which led to problems
in the field. There are coordination mechanisms. They are usually
founded around the host government leading on coordination with
the support of the UN, or in places where the host government
is unable or unwilling to avail its coordination function, then
done directly by the UN. I think it is well-known that the role
of the UN and the performance of the UN in their coordination
role has been patchy. I think there is wide consensus amongst
both donor and recipient governments and most serious humanitarian
agencies that it is worthwhile to try and support the strengthening
of the UN to enable them to better fulfil their coordination role.
That does try our patience sorely at times because it can be pretty
dismal. I do not think there is a need to overhaul or introduce
a new way of doing coordination. I think the systems are there,
the structure is there, they just need to be better. Just a final
point; DEC is not a grouping that extends itself operationally
to the field as a coordination mechanism. It is a fund-raising
group and Brendan will tell you exactly what it is.
Q36 Mr Davies: Do you see a greater
role for ECHO in coordinating EU-based agencies?
Ms Cocking: To be honest, probably
not. I think, as Toby has said, the key thing is to ensure that
host governments, which have a legal responsibility to ensure
assistance to their citizens, and the UN system which has a similar
mandate, are able to fulfil that role.
Q37 Mr Davies: It would be very nice
if they were. We have just heard evidence that the UN is not and
we all know the problems about UN reform and the inefficiencies
of OCHA, and it would be very nice if host governments could,
but in most cases in the third world these bureaucracies are over-stretched
and often ineffective and corrupt anyway. When they have a disaster
hit them they are even less likely to be able to perform efficiently.
You are rather wishing for the moon, are you not?
Ms Cocking: If I could perhaps
share a personal experience with you on that. First of all, let
us state the truism: you can only coordinate the willing; you
cannot coordinate those who do not and will not come to the table.
How you do it and whether the UN is doing it adequately is, as
Toby has said, very patchy but I think there are examples of when
it works. I was in Pakistan shortly after the earthquake struck
for some weeks and the coordination of the water and sanitation
sector was an example of both the good and the bad. For the first
few weeks when UNICEF, the lead agency, had a forceful personality
and organisational commitment to really pull together information
and to ensure that duplication of effort did not take place and
that the right priorities were set, it worked, and the attendance
at those meetings was very high and very positive because people
felt they were getting something out of it. To be honest, the
quality of that slipped when the chair of the group changed and
the barometer of number of seats around the table filled rapidly
demonstrated that even those such as ourselves who are wholeheartedly
committed to coordination, and even I had difficulty in persuading
some of my colleagues to go to some of those meetings. So I suppose
I am challenging you that it never works. It does work and it
can work, but I think what our role as agencies and the role of
donors particularly (and DFID plays a very positive role in this)
is to set very clear markers where we expect to see delivery on
the UN's coordination mandate and to ensure that they are resourced
appropriately. If that means simply putting the right people in
the right place at the right time, then they need to be able to
do that.
Q38 Mr Davies: Thank you for that.
Let me challenge Mr Porter on what you just said about the fact
that over-provision or over-subscription is unusual and unlikely,
except perhaps in a special case of when a disaster occurs within
easy driving distance of EU capitals. I would draw his attention
to the latest DFID report on the earthquake in southern Java in
the Yogyakarta area where it says: "There appears to be a
significant number of pledges coming from donors in either money
or material support. Over-subscription is a potential reality
given the apparent and relative scale of the disaster[1]."
So I put it to you, Mr Porter, that over-subscription, over-provision
is not as unusual or as unlikely a phenomenon as you have just
been telling the Committee.
Mr Porter: I have not spoken to
DFID in the last couple of days about Java but I think in Java
there is the fact that so many of the tsunami agencies were in
Aceh anyway and there are very thickly staffed UN offices in Jakarta,
far more than anywhere else, so I think there are some slightly
unusual variables impacting on this.
Q39 Mr Davies: This note specifies
the pledges that have been made in relation to the recent earthquake.
Let me give you a copy of the note. The note may be right or may
be wrong but you should perhaps read it and if you think it is
wrong you should let us know it is wrong.
Mr Porter: Let us put it in the
context of one country. The current range—and it is still
far too wide a range to be satisfactory—coming out of the
government is between 200,000 and 600,000 people have been left
homeless effectively by this earthquake. This Government, which
is a generous government, has pledged in total now five million
pounds for that. So that leaves each family—and someone
will be better at maths than I am- depending on the range, with
somewhere in between 10 and 15—
1 DFID Situation Report No 7, Indonesia Earthquake,
1 June 2006, 14.00 GMT. Back
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