Review of the CAP

1
Mid-Year Review
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs(OCHA)
OCHA Mandate and Work
June 2005
2
OCHA Mandate and Work
Overview

• Mobilise and coordinate effective and
• principled action in partnership to..
• Alleviate human suffering in disasters/emergencies
  
• Advocate for rights of people in need
• Promote preparedness and prevention
• Facilitate sustainable solutions
• Emergency response

3
Rapid response
Available tools

• UNDAC
• INSARAG
• IHP standby arrangements
• NRC, DRC, SRA, Swiss
• Internal OCHA staff roster from HQ and field
• Surge capacity unit
• ALL CREATED TO CIRCUMVENT HR blockage

4
Human Resources
OCHA issues

• Emergency organisation inside UN secretarait
• Secretariat rules work against rapid response
• 24 hour UNOG service
• UNDAC/surge standby 90 days
• Current recruitment 4 months min.
• Tsuami difficult to recruit response low
• Contracts dictates pool choice
• Quality? All interviews by telephone

5
UNDAC System

• Standby capacity of disaster managers
• Standardised rapid deployment procedures to
  arrive prior to majority of international
  responders
• OCHA deploys UNDAC only upon request from the
  HC/RC or the government of the affected country
• Pre-funded by member countries
• 176 UNDAC members from 67 countries and
  organisations
• Regional teams
• - Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Europe,Latin America
  and Pacific
• Approx 1 mission per month

6
UNDAC in Tsunami Response

• Indonesia (Jakarta, Medan, Banda Aceh)
• Duration 28 Dec 04 - 6 Feb 05 (41 days)
• Team rotation 20 UNDAC members (7 deployments)
• Thailand
• Duration 27 Dec 04 20 Jan 05 (25 days)
• Team rotation 6 UNDAC members (2 deployments)
• Sri Lanka
• Duration 26 Dec 04 30 Jan 05 (36 days)
• Team rotation 14 UNDAC members (7 deployments)
• Maldives
• Duration 27 Dec 04 18 Jan 05 (23 days)
• Team rotation Team rotation 4 UNDAC members

7
International Humanitarian Partnership (IHP)

• Partners
• Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden,
  UK, (Belgium)
• Support Modules for rapid deployment
• Communications, accommodation, sanitation,
  catering, transport
• Support UNDAC team and UN field operations
• Modules utilised on most UNDAC missions
• Standardised (compatible) equipment and software
• Methodology and compatibility training (TRIPLEX)
• Asia/Pacific Humanitarian Partnership
• Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore,
  South Korea

8
Humanitarian Response Review
Issues

• Darfur driven, pre-tsunami
• Response fails to meet the basic needs in a
  timely fashion,
• Response varies considerably
• Insufficient humanitarian capacity for concurrent
  major crises.
• Factors that hindered speed effectiveness of
  response
• Ensure steps taken to improve
• Evaluate recruitment, training, and deployment

9
Humanitarian Response Review
Some initial findings

• Development of simple and action-oriented
  quantitative benchmarks with focus of speed and
  scale for the first four weeks
• Greater empowerment of the ERC and HCs is
  required
• IASC needs to be reviewed and transformed to
  become a governance
• Existing joint services are operating well, but
  need to be strengthened.

10
Humanitarian Response Review
Some initial findings

• Preparedness - Substantial lack of response in
  human resources, organizational process,
  procedures and financing.
• Existing human resources and training
• There is a need to develop the necessary training
  to increase the pool of humanitarian workers

11
What can OCHA do?

• Field support section fully staffed
• Identify better pool of potential staff
• Better training/orientation
• Encourage secondments and apprenticeships
• Surge capacity toolbox develop
• Work on retainer idea

12
Why do we do what we do?
PROCAP initiative

• Darfur USAID wants 500 protection staff in
  situ
• ERC approaches NRC to establish 100 pers roster
• 10 perm staff in field, mission and training
• 90 on roster, NRC contracts, OCHA administered
• Who are they, where are they?
• SCF idea
• Why are we setting this up? donor vs need
• Compete for specialised staff