Disaster-Response Mechanisms: In Search of a More Effective System
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Peacekeepers ayudan a un ciudadano
haitiano tras el sismo de 2010.
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Over the past several decades, responses to major disasters have become an important responsibility of the international community. In that time, the global disaster-response system has evolved to cope with the increased human and material consequences of geophysical events. Nevertheless, shortcomings of the current system have become increasingly apparent and must be addressed in order to strengthen it. Much of the discussion of how to do so contrasts centralized global solutions with decentralized regional solutions. To get a better idea of the relative merits of both approaches, it is necessary first to understand the key components and overall architecture of the current global response system.
Humankind and Nature
Disasters lie at the juncture of an external shock and a population physically at risk. A volcanic eruption in Iceland does not qualify as a disaster in this sense: Even though it can seriously disrupt international air transport and affect the global economy, Icelanders themselves are physically secure. A population's level of risk depends in part on its exposure to an external shock -- for instance, proximity to the epicenter of an earthquake or residence in a coastal area hit by a tsunami or a cyclone. Risk is also determined by vulnerability, which occurs when populations have limited capacities to offset risk -- in other words, limited resilience. Depending on the nature of the disaster, resilience is enhanced by a combination of factors, including immunity, knowledge resulting from the experience of past disasters, coping mechanisms, access to alternative livelihoods, construction standards, entitlements and access to relief.
Disasters are usually categorized as either natural or human-made. Unlike armed conflicts and genocides, geophysical events, famines and epidemics are usually regarded as natural disasters. But this dichotomy can be questioned. Famines are not mechanical extensions of droughts or floods: They are caused, not by a decline in food availability, but by breakdowns in food-entitlement systems, and specific political systems and policies have proven effective in preventing them. Similarly, epidemics of various infectious diseases that have been successfully curbed for generations in developed countries continue to periodically take their toll in the developing world due to weak health care systems and other problems.
Even geophysical events have very different consequences depending on the context. Earthquakes in the developing world usually result in much higher death tolls than earthquakes of similar magnitudes in the developed world, where construction standards are more stringent, warning systems more effective and zoning rules more restrictive.
Thus, while such disasters are triggered by natural events, their consequences are magnified by inadequate human, social and political responses. Still, it is essential to mark the conceptual difference between natural disasters and armed conflicts. Their causes and consequences differ, and each type of disaster calls for distinct responses. The focus is here on responses to natural disasters.
Local and national government authorities are the sole or primary responders in most cases, as many natural disasters are of limited scale and impact. In some instances, though, local and national authorities appear to be overwhelmed, at least initially. Examples include the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan, the 1999 Chi-chi earthquake in Taiwan, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or the series of earthquakes, tsunamis and the nuclear disasters they triggered in March 2011 in Japan. In all four cases, the government response was found wanting, provoking significant criticism. These examples aside, the vast majority of natural disasters that prompt the involvement and assistance of the international community occur in the developing world.
The Disaster-Response Architecture
External interventions begin with a request from the authorities of a disaster-affected country, who are responsible for coordinating the response. External responders include civilian and military organizations, bilateral and multilateral agencies, and nongovernmental actors. These responders are in turn supported by a wide range of donors, including foreign governments, individuals, corporations and foundations. Governments may choose to channel donations bilaterally or multilaterally. Individuals usually channel their funds through NGOs or specialized U.N. agencies.
Military responses are organized differently than civilian operations, which are dealt with through a single response system for both disasters and armed conflicts. In line with the United Nations Charter, conflict situations are handled multilaterally and referred to the Security Council, which may dispatch a peacekeeping force or authorize countries or groups of countries to intervene. For disaster responses, in contrast, military assistance is organized bilaterally at the request of the country struck by disaster.
On the civilian side, the main external organizations involved in disaster response are specialized U.N. agencies, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and its members, and NGOs. Key U.N. agencies include the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Food Program and the World Health Organization. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (UNOCHA), established in 1992 by Resolution 46/182 of the General Assembly, gathers and disseminates through its website information regarding assistance provided by U.N. agencies, the Red Cross and NGOs. The same resolution also created the position of undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator (ERC), as well as the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), which includes representatives of relevant U.N. agencies, the World Bank, the Red Cross and NGOs. UNOCHA and the IASC, chaired by the ERC, were set up with a view to strengthening humanitarian action in response to both complex emergencies and natural disasters, and in particular to coordinate the responses of external civilian actors.
The new system was plagued by massive failures in its initial years, first and foremost in Somalia (1992) and Rwanda (1994). Despite efforts to fix it, the global disaster-response system has often been described as ineffective, blind, biased, opaque and wasteful.
The system has been perceived as ineffective because it is slow to respond -- a criticism addressed in particular to the U.N. and its specialized agencies -- and often fails to identify essential needs in the emergency phase. In addition, system blindness is characterized by recurrent and persistent erroneous beliefs, a lack of understanding of the social and political contexts of interventions and a limited ability to learn from past mistakes. The beliefs, for example, that unburied corpses trigger epidemics, that immunization campaigns are a high priority in the aftermath of natural disasters, that survivors are helpless and apathetic, and that overseas specialized teams are the primary rescuers are as enduring in the disaster-response system as they are erroneous. Responses based on such beliefs have repeatedly led to suboptimal outcomes. In fact, when disasters occur, survivors intervene quickly: Family members and neighbors are the primary rescuers, while outsiders invariably arrive too late to save but a few lives in the rescue phase.
Next Page: Understanding Bias in Disaster Response . . .
The lack of understanding of the contexts of interventions is a recurrent problem. Natural disasters do not happen in a political vacuum. With the notable exception of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, state capabilities are largely unaffected by natural disasters. A cursory glance at the relevant evaluation literature from 1994 (Rwanda) through 2010 (Haiti), including of course the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, shows that the system fails to learn from past mistakes.
Global media reports on disaster responses are often biased, as they tend to focus on foreign -- usually white -- aid workers assisting natives portrayed as helpless victims. In reality, the bulk of rescue and relief efforts are carried out by local and national governments. This bias is nurtured by logistical constraints, with journalists often dependent on foreign aid organizations for transportation and accommodation.
In operational terms, two main types of biases must be emphasized. First, disaster-affected countries with similar needs and requirements may receive very different levels of assistance. Second, within a disaster-affected area, some groups may be adequately assisted while others are not. Both types of biases constitute breaches of the principle of impartiality. Relief operations should be guided by humanitarian principles alone -- principles endorsed by all the main actors, in particular in the Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief. But in practice, numerous other considerations drive relief. These include the institutional interests of the organizations involved, the foreign policy and security interests of the governments that provide funding and military assistance, and the fundraising constraints of U.N. agencies, Red Cross societies and NGOs. For instance, UNOCHA's Financial Tracking Service (FTS) reports that, in 2010, 75 percent of Haiti's post-earthquake-assistance requirements and 69 percent of Pakistan's flood-relief assistance needs were funded, whereas appeals for West Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe received 50 percent of requirements or less.
Transparency is another problem, particularly with regard to needs assessment and funding allocations. There is no single methodology for assessing needs across emergencies. UNOCHA's efforts represent a laudable effort to improve transparency in funding allocations, but the FTS is not yet exhaustive. Also, donors may provide funding not reported to UNOCHA or outside the consolidated appeals process. It is also unclear whether and how aid provided by military forces is included in FTS tables. For its part, the U.S. military simply refers to donations of "excess nonlethal DOD property," without specifying whether in-kind services provided by U.S. military forces -- such as security assistance, infrastructure repairs, transportation, training and medical services -- are reported as disaster-relief expenditure or absorbed by the general Department of Defense operations budget. This opacity complicates evaluations of disaster responses. And while military assistance is not requested in most cases, it represented a significant component of the response to a number of recent major disasters, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
Waste arises from many factors, including the provision of unnecessary or irrelevant relief goods or services, duplication of efforts, delays in implementation, corruption or excessive mark-ups in local purchases of goods or services. For example, donations of drugs that have expired or are not properly labeled may result in additional disposal costs. Similarly, unnecessary immunization campaigns have an opportunity cost. The scene most typical of post-disaster relief is a saturated local airport clogged with a laundry list of useless, irrelevant and sometimes dangerous goods, which may delay the arrival of essential relief items.
How can relief operations be made more relevant, effective, impartial, transparent and inclusive? From a logistical perspective, further strengthening and professionalizing needs assessment is the first step toward a better response, as a relief operation's effectiveness depends first and foremost on the accurate identification of the affected population's needs. One solution to conflicting data in this regard would be to have a single source producing high-quality and authoritative assessments. Whether all organizations would accept such a mechanism is unclear, but efforts to upgrade and standardize methodologies, and to share results in real time, would help inform the actions of responders.
Refocusing on Humanitarian Principles
More broadly, disaster relief, like other humanitarian actions, should be guided by the principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence, as outlined in the Principles and Good Practice of Humanitarian Donorship, the Red Cross Code of Conduct and numerous other declarations. It would, however, be naive to expect that donors and relief organizations have no other motives or interests in mind.
NGOs and specialized U.N. agencies have often been criticized for their fundraising practices and for financial dependence on disaster appeals, which offer better returns than appeals for development programs or drawn-out refugee and conflict situations. However, excess funding from disaster appeals often leads to assistance in excess of needs, especially when compared to other situations. An example of good practice was provided by leading organizations in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami -- notably the International Committee of the Red Cross, Oxfam and Médecins sans Frontières -- which redirected both fundraising and programming once the needs they had identified were covered. Publicizing good practice in line with professed principles is important, but there is also a systemic aspect to assistance in excess of needs following major disasters, at least compared to other situations. While the role of the media has often been highlighted, distortions arising from state interests have been discussed less frequently. These include security and foreign policy interests, such as the U.S. government's desire to avoid a collapse of the Haitian state in 2010 and to prevent jihadi groups from increasing their influence in northern Pakistan following the 2005 earthquake. The U.S. response in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was likewise informed by its desire to improve its image in the Muslim world and re-establish links with the Indonesian military.
Security and foreign policy interests lead donor governments to skew funding allocations in response to specific disasters. This problem has been exacerbated by the fact that, over time, U.N. specialized agencies have become more dependent on earmarked funding. Allocations of non-earmarked funds by U.N. agencies amounted to a mere 0.4 percent of global disaster funding in 2010. Similarly, many NGOs are heavily dependent on earmarked funding from governments. Most humanitarian agencies depend on a small number of key government donors and, as a result, have little room to maneuver if they want to reallocate resources to address less adequately covered needs. The United Nations established the Central Emergency Fund in 2005 to facilitate and speed up assistance, in particular in response to underfunded crises, but the fund contributed just 1.9 percent of global disaster funding in 2010.
Next Page: The Need for Transparency . . .
Private sources, in turn, represented only 11.1 percent of the funds available for relief in 2010. As such, the key issue is for donor governments to increase non-earmarked funding, which represented just 12 percent of their total contributions last year. This average masks significant differences among major donors, however, with non-earmarked funds ranging from 6.4 percent of total funding for the U.S. to 54.2 percent for Sweden. A commitment by governments to establish a baseline of 12 percent of non-earmarked funds would help relief organizations respond better to forgotten crises. Raising the proportion of non-earmarked funding to 20 percent of the total would prod them to allocate resources where they are most needed, bringing relief funding more in line with humanitarian principles. This issue would probably be dealt with best in donor clubs like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Development Assistance Committee (OECD DAC), but it could also be profitably discussed in regional organizations across the developing world or at the U.N. General Assembly.
Refocusing on humanitarian principles also implies drawing attention to "forgotten" populations in disaster areas. In many instances, vulnerable groups are denied assistance because of political, religious or other social divides. While donors could pay more attention to these issues, regional instruments -- such as the convention to protect the rights of people forced from their homes by conflicts and natural disasters, drawn up by 15 African countries -- may be more effective in prodding recipient governments to devise and implement more-inclusive relief programs. In addition, disaster-affected countries sometimes turn down offers of external assistance while neglecting or failing to assist vulnerable groups -- examples include the U.S. after Hurricane Katrina and India after the 2004 tsunami. In extreme cases such as Cyclone Nargis, which ravaged the Irrawady delta region of Burma in 2008, the Responsibility to Protect doctrine was evoked to force reluctant rulers to allow access to foreign assistance, a move many observers regarded as controversial and potentially counterproductive.
Increasing transparency across civilian and military responders requires higher reporting, auditing and evaluation standards for each category of responders: donors, U.N. agencies, national Red Cross societies, NGOs and others. This would also help disseminate best practices, for instance through the OECD DAC or the Humanitarian Practice Network.
Military expenditure relevant to disaster relief should also be better identified to more accurately account for services that military forces provide. Military forces are best equipped and organized for activities such as clearing and reopening seaports or airports and repairing access roads or bridges, but the real costs of using them for these tasks are far from apparent. Security assistance is another "nonrival" service that other actors are not in a position to provide. Here the question is: security for whom? As mentioned above, security assistance is also motivated by nonhumanitarian considerations and objectives. Finally, military forces also provide "rival" services such as medical, training and other services that can also be provided by civilian relief organizations. Here, cost comparisons would be valuable in determining which service providers are best suited to the work.
Based on systemic evaluations undertaken in the aftermath of recent major disasters, it is critical to reinstate the centrality of a disaster-affected country's government. Even in exceptional cases such as Haiti, where already limited state capabilities were severely weakened by the earthquake, relief actors were found to engage authorities insufficiently and too late. Underlying this problem is the eagerness of foreign relief organizations to highlight their specific roles, even in cases where a collaborative or subordinate role would be better overall.
One possible way to resolve this issue is to move from in-kind to cash-based assistance programs in disaster-affected countries where reasonably well-functioning markets and transport infrastructure exist. Foreign relief agencies would find their role changed from primarily logistical to a monitoring and advisory one. This could help speed up the response, better answer needs, reduce duplication of efforts and waste, and lower costs.
While these issues need to be addressed at a global level, regional organizations could play enhanced roles beyond the disaster-preparedness and risk-reduction activities most have endorsed. Regional organizations will face many of the same limitations of the already existing response architecture. For instance, building up standby forces for disaster response, one common proposal to improve relief efforts, is unlikely to be easier at the regional than at the global level. The same applies to standby arrangements for the deployment of key assets such as helicopters, amphibious ships or transport airplanes. Also, regional organizations are not necessarily more impartial than the U.N. and may be hampered by a lack of regional consensus. Nonetheless, the regional level may be a useful forum to elaborate and agree on common principles and to internalize and disseminate them.
Moving Forward
While systemic change is often hampered by organizational interests, the dysfunctional responses to major crises have ultimately resulted in incremental, albeit limited, changes to the disaster-response architecture. Is something more radical, such as a centralized disaster-response system, desirable or feasible? Even if it were desirable, such a system would clash with the institutional interests of the many actors involved and the different security and foreign policy interests of major donors and military powers. An alternative option could be a specific system set up to address natural disasters, rather than a joint system that also addresses conflict situations. Such a system, however, would have three main drawbacks. First, disaster response is a temporary activity, while peacekeeping has become an ongoing, permanent activity. Duplicating the management and administration of the existing system would entail prohibitive costs. Second, the challenges arising from disaster response are increasingly similar to those of conflict response, as an ever-growing share of the world's population lives in precarious conditions in resettlement camps, newly colonized areas and slums, where they have often lost their relative immunity against communicable diseases, the social memory of risk-mitigation strategies and the traditional coping mechanisms they possessed prior to displacement. Their needs and vulnerabilities when disasters strike are therefore increasingly similar to those of people displaced by conflicts. Third, major disasters have in recent years cut across political fault lines and conflict areas, as in Kashmir, Sri Lanka, the Aceh province of Indonesia and Haiti. The presence of a U.N.-mandated force in Haiti prior to the earthquake led the Security Council to deliberate for the first time on the institutional response to a natural disaster. Similar situations are likely to arise again in the future, which could also prod the Security Council to clarify and endorse the role of military forces in response to major disasters.
Finally, would a decentralized, regionally based system perform better than the current one? Although regional organizations could be more responsive than the U.N.-led system, countries in regions with limited resources may receive insufficient assistance, and regional organizations will not necessarily be as impartial as the U.N. system. As a result, upgrading and incrementally streamlining the current hybrid system, with a renewed focus on the humanitarian principles highlighted above, offers the best way forward for a disaster-relief architecture that has become an increasingly significant responsibility of the international community.
Alain Guilloux is a Lecturer in the Department of Asian and International Affairs at the City University of Hong Kong. His research centers on humanitarian aid and disaster relief in global governance, with a focus on Asia.
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