- Email: [email protected]
Coordination in urban humanitarian response
Progress in Disaster Science 1 (2019) 100004
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Progress in Disaster Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pdisas
Coordination in urban humanitarian response David Sanderson Inaugural Judith Neilson Chair in Architecture, University of New South, Wales, Sydney, Australia
A R T I C L E
I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Humanitarian Urban Coordination Crises
This paper discusses the challenges of humanitarian coordination in crises situations in urban areas. It identifies the range of stakeholders and the central role of local authorities. It discusses the cluster system and its limitations in urban response. The paper argues that for better humanitarian action in urban areas, international efforts need to be aligned towards supporting local actors, and that to achieve this, international humanitarian action needs to take on less of a delivery approach. © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Engaging with city authorities . . . . . 3. The Cluster approach and urban response 4. Concluding comments . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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1. Introduction The subject of humanitarian coordination in crises response (to rapidonset disaster and during conflict) has been widely written about and studied.1 A definition of humanitarian coordination is, ‘the systematic use of policy instruments to deliver humanitarian assistance in a cohesive and effective manner. Such instruments include strategic planning, gathering data and managing information, mobilising resources and ensuring accountability, orchestrating a functional division of labour, negotiating and maintaining a serviceable framework with host political authorities and providing leadership’.2 Recent research3 identifies three levels of coordination: communication, where information and knowledge is shared between organisations; alignment, where organisations ‘may adjust their activities to create a more effective response on the basis of the activities of other organisations’, for example ensuring they work in different neighbourhoods; and, collaboration, where organisations may share common goals and E-mail address: [email protected]. 1 The references cited in this section provide some examples and sources of further information 2 Minear et al., 29,912, cited in [10], pii 3 [8]
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share activities. The research notes that, concerning coordination within the humanitarian Cluster approach (discussed below), ‘overwhelmingly, Cluster activities fall at the alignment level’.4 In urban areas there are of course a wide range and diversity of stakeholders (such as different level of government, civil society, private sector and many others), many with competing interests and with differing degrees of power and legitimacy. While humanitarian coordination is often between international humanitarian organisations and national government structures, local government bodies are in particular essential stakeholders, with repeated lessons that humanitarian interventions need to align with local government priorities. This however may not always be possible, particularly in situations of conflict or immediately after a disaster.
2. Engaging with city authorities While local government and its functionaries are, as noted, essential actors in urban humanitarian response, the humanitarian community has repeatedly been found wanting in how it engages with city authorities. One 4
[8]
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pdisas.2019.100004 Received 10 January 2019; Received in revised form 27 February 2019; Accepted 1 March 2019 Available online 18 April 2019 2590-0617/© 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
D. Sanderson
Progress in Disaster Science 1 (2019) 100004
informing strategic decision-making, planning and strategy development and advocacy.11 Fig. 1 below illustrates the Cluster approach. With the humanitarian and relief coordinator in the middle, aid is organised according to the goods and services that are provided during a crisis, such as education, shelter and health. As noted earlier, Cluster coordination beyond information sharing struggles. This undoubtedly is especially true where competing interests, stresses and pressures call on different organisations to make careful calculations on where and how to align their efforts. Other factors include workflows, policies and institutional cultures; also, the capacity and willingness of local government and local civil society to be involved and/or lead on coordination, and what level of coordination is being attempted. That said, coordination in disasters and crises is an essential element of any successful intervention. While the cluster system overall has been found to add value for better coordination and the sharing of information,12 they have been found to be problematic in urban areas. As the International Rescue Committee (IRC) observes, ‘The traditional cluster system does not lend itself to the complexity of needs, services and systems across an urban landscape with humanitarian agencies struggling to deal with the complexity, density and built environment of towns and cities or [un]able to take full advantage of the potential a city has to offer13. The IASC has challenged the very validity of the cluster approach in urban recovery operations: ‘the current cluster system is structured around sectors of expertise and sectorial coordination, while in a context of urban crises there might be a need to identify and respond holistically to multi-sectorial needs in a given territory, requiring stronger inter-cluster linkages and coordination at city-level.14 For clusters to work well in urban areas, there are some key points. The first is that local leadership by local government structures is crucial, to avoid the creation of parallel structures which remove ownership from existing governance structures. The second point is that cross-sector coordination is vital: single sector interventions that do not recognise urban complexity risk causing harm. Thirdly, engaging local actors is essential but is often overlooked. Language is an important concern – default English in a non-english speaking location alienates local bodies from engaging. Also, many local stakeholders may well not attend cluster meetings, for instance private sector organisations or gangs. Other ways of engaging stakeholders is therefore needed. The choice of meetings location and their frequency in cities are also important. Traffic jams in congested areas can lead to massive wastage of time and for cluster members not to bother to attend meetings. For example, in Port-au-Prince after the 2010 earthquake, chronic traffic jams and the location of cluster meetings on the outskirts of the city meant that several hours a day could be spent in a vehicle.15 Finally, many NGOs may be stretched to attend a large number of meetings, especially if an organisation is involved in more than one sector. Fig. 2 below illustrates what would perhaps be a better approach for urban engagement, wherein existing local governance structures such municipal authorities are at the centre, with sectoral approaches supporting, rather than directing, efforts. Efforts to achieve this require better collaboration between sectors.
study of the response of 13 INGOs following Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, which caused widespread damage across the Philippines, found that across the track of the typhoon, local government units (LGUs) were largely bypassed by aid agencies, who worked directly at the community level.5 Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake it was reported that, ‘local authorities… complained that three months after the earthquake they felt “like strangers in (their) own city’.6 This is a particular problem in urban areas, where meaningful action often relies on the functioning of complex systems of governance. A 2016 wide-ranging study of cities and crises7 identified three key barriers to engagement by municipalities. The first is overwhelmed and underresourced municipalities who also lacked expertise to deal with ‘the exponential needs resulting from crisis’. The second is a failure by international agencies ‘to understand local dynamics and to engage with local stakeholders’. The third is a ‘lack of city-level multi-stakeholder coordination mechanisms’ which ‘contributed to the divergence between international and local actors’. The report found that these problems led to a suboptimal response (for example bad targeting and duplication), the undermining of local systems and the fuelling of community tensions (for example in not consulting with all actors, leading to perceptions of bias). Failing to engage with municipal authorities can also mean that short term emergency interventions in areas such as shelter and settlement, waster, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) and public health fail to articulate with – and even set back – longer term development planning. Research by the UK thinktank ALNAP emphasises that working with government structures is a necessity, not a choice, stating ‘in many situations there are possibilities to work closely with line ministries or other parts of government, even where the government is engaged in internal conflicts. Where even this is not possible, coordination models should be designed to align with government structures to the degree possible, to allow for government ownership at a later date’.8 Engagement with authorities however can often be sensitive, particularly in conflict situations. Where authorities are partisan or may be the aggressors, engagement may not be possible. An example from Somalia's capital city Mogadishu highlights the relations between humanitarian actors and municipal authorities.9 Mogadishu has been ravaged by civil war and political unrest for over two decades. Research by Grünewald describes, among other things, the relations between humanitarian actors and municipal authorities, as follows. ‘One of the main conceptual difficulties for aid actors has been to approach Mogadishu as a city and not as a classic humanitarian situation. This requires strategic sector-based coordination linked to administrative units rather than cluster-type sector-based coordination, and, above all, an attempt to engage with urban authorities. While some of the NGOs working in Mogadishu have tried to establish Memoranda of Understanding with the Ministry of Health, they have bypassed the municipal level and gone down to the district commissioner level, which is responsible only for law-and-order control functions rather than urban planning. The reasons why there has not been any engagement with municipal authorities include the fear of politicisation, the risk of corruption; and, more broadly, ignorance about their roles, if not reluctance to work with these urban actors'.
3. The Cluster approach and urban response 4. Concluding comments
The key globally-agreed formal mechanism for post-disaster coordination is the Cluster approach, brought in as one of the ‘four pillars’ of the 2005 Humanitarian Reform Agenda to improve humanitarian aid.10 Key Cluster functions include, among other things, supporting service delivery,
The need to consider how to respond to increasing crises in urban areas is matched with the recognition that humanitarian aid itself is in need of reform. The first World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) held in 2016 acknowledged that ‘woefully under-resourced humanitarian response’ has to ‘do
5
[15], p15 [3] 7 [6]. Urban crises lessons were drawn from the Central African Republic, Philippines, Haiti, Turkey and Jordan 8 [16], p7 9 Source: [3], p115 10 The other three are strengthening the Humanitarian Coordinators System, Adequate, Flexible, and Predictable Humanitarian Financing, and Building Partnerships 6
11 12 13 14 15
2
Source: [17], cited in Knox Clarke and Campbell, p20 See for example [4]. See also [8] [18] [5], p1 [2]
D. Sanderson
Progress in Disaster Science 1 (2019) 100004
Fig. 1. the cluster approach.
Crises response in urban areas needs to be first and foremost owned by local governance structures – however imperfect or otherwise these may be. The cluster system has always been intended to be jointly managed and convened by local government structures and respective operational agencies, with a shift as quickly as possible (where this is not the case) to local structures. In cities coordination is especially vital, given the large range of actors and the sheer complexities involved in enacting meaningful humanitarian interventions. To these ends, humanitarian aid must do better to support local activities, rather than to provide externally-provided services. The outcomes and calls to action from the Grand Bargain,18 resulting from the WHS, make this clear. To achieve this, coordination mechanisms may need rethinking. This does not mean ‘doing away’ with the cluster system (the system in place is a considerable improvement on what existed before their implementation), despite the above-cited criticisms. It perhaps does mean however, for international humanitarian actors, to consider their roles, responsibilities, and the range and spread of activities they can meaningfully engage in. The result may be a much smaller and far more strategic international humanitarian presence, for instance lending advisory support to governments and large national institutions, leading to a reduced need to coordinate on such a large scale.
Local governance
sector
sector sector
sector Collaborating sectors supporting local structures
Fig. 2. a coordination mechanism supporting local governance.
much more far better’.16 Also, the UK's Overseas Development Institute (ODI) argues that, ‘the formal system faces a crisis of legitimacy, capacity and means, blocked by significant and enduring flaws that prevent it from being effective’.17 16 17
[14], p2 [1], p7
18
3
[14]
D. Sanderson
Progress in Disaster Science 1 (2019) 100004
References
for International Studies: Providence, Rhode Island) Occasional Paper 13. See: https:// reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/ A62BFF27BE6837F6C1256C2500535B54-coordination_brown_jul2000.pdf; 1992. Reindorp N, Wiles P. Humanitarian coordination: lessons from recent field experience a study commissioned by the office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) June 2001. See: https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/4186.pdf; 2001. Sanderson D, Sharma A, editors. IFRC world disasters report, resilience: saving lives today, investing for tomorrow. Geneva: IFRC; 2016 See: https://www.ifrc.org/Global/ Documents/Secretariat/201610/WDR%202016-FINAL_web.pdf. Sanderson D, Knox-Clarke P. ALNAP Lessons. Responding to urban disasters. Learning from previous relief and recovery operations. London: ODI; 2012 See: https:// www.alnap.org/system/files/content/resource/files/main/alnap-lessons-urbanweb.pdf. Twigg J, Mosel I. Emergent groups and spontaneous volunteers in urban disaster response environment & urbanization. IIED 2017;29(2):443–58 See: https://journals. sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956247817721413. UN. The grand bargain—a shared commitment to better serve people in need. Istanbul, Turkey, 23 May 2016. New York: UN; 2016. Sanderson D, Delica Willisen Z. Philippines Typhoon Haiyan response review, for the DEC and HC. London and Ottawa; 2014. Knox Clarke P, Campbell L. Exploring Coordination in Humanitarian Clusters, ALNAP Study. London: ALNAP/ ODI; 2016 https://www.alnap.org/system/files/content/ resource/files/main/update-exploring-coordination-in-humanitarian-clusters.pdf. IASC. Reference Module for Cluster Coordination at the Country Level, cited in Knox Clarke and Campbell. Exploring Coordination in Humanitarian Clusters; 2012; 20. IRC. Humanitarian Crises in Urban Areas: Are Area-Based Approaches to Programming and Coordination the Way Forward? New York: IRC; 2015; 5 http://www. syrialearning.org/resource/21830.
[1] Bennett C. Time to let go: remaking humanitarian action in the modern era. London, UK: Overseas Development Institute; 2016. [2] Clermont C, Sanderson D, Spraos H, Sharma A. Urban disasters - lessons from Haiti. Study of member agencies' responses to the earthquake in Port au Prince, Haiti, January 2010. London: Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC); 2011 See: https://www.alnap. org/help-library/urban-disasters-%E2%80%93-lessons-from-haiti-study-of-memberagencies%E2%80%99-responses-to-the. [3] Grünewald F. Aid in a city at war: the case of Mogadishu, Somalia. Disasters, Special issue: urban vulnerability and humanitarian response, Volume 36, Issue 1; July 2012; 43–63 Pages 105–125. See: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14677717/36/s1. [4] Humphries V. Improving humanitarian coordination: common challenges and lessons learned from the cluster approach. USA: Tufts University; 2013 Available from: http:// sites.tufts.edu/jha/archives/1976. [5] IASC. Guidance note for improving coordination and responses to urban crises in the humanitarian programme cycle through the IASC and its cluster system; 2016 [IASC working document]. [6] IMPACT and UCLG. Consultations on humanitarian responses in urban areas perspectives from cities in crisis world humanitarian summit. See: https://www.uclg.org/ sites/default/files/cities_in_crisis.pdf; 2016. [7] IRC. From response to resilience working with cities and city plans to address urban displacement: lessons from Amman and Kampala. New York: IRC; 2018 Available from: https://www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/document/2424/ fromresponsetoresiliencefinalweb.pdf. [8] Knox Clarke P, Campbell L. Exploring coordination in humanitarian clusters. ALNAP study. London: ALNAP/ODI; 2015 See: https://www.alnap.org/system/files/content/ resource/files/main/update-exploring-coordination-in-humanitarian-clusters.pdf. [9] Minear L, Chelliah U, Crisp J, Mackinlay J, Weiss T. UN Coordination of the international humanitarian response to the gulf crisis 1990–1992 (Thomas J. Watson Institute
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14] [15] [16]
[17] [18]
4
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Progress in Disaster Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pdisas
Coordination in urban humanitarian response David Sanderson Inaugural Judith Neilson Chair in Architecture, University of New South, Wales, Sydney, Australia
A R T I C L E
I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Humanitarian Urban Coordination Crises
This paper discusses the challenges of humanitarian coordination in crises situations in urban areas. It identifies the range of stakeholders and the central role of local authorities. It discusses the cluster system and its limitations in urban response. The paper argues that for better humanitarian action in urban areas, international efforts need to be aligned towards supporting local actors, and that to achieve this, international humanitarian action needs to take on less of a delivery approach. © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Engaging with city authorities . . . . . 3. The Cluster approach and urban response 4. Concluding comments . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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. . . . .
. . . . .
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1. Introduction The subject of humanitarian coordination in crises response (to rapidonset disaster and during conflict) has been widely written about and studied.1 A definition of humanitarian coordination is, ‘the systematic use of policy instruments to deliver humanitarian assistance in a cohesive and effective manner. Such instruments include strategic planning, gathering data and managing information, mobilising resources and ensuring accountability, orchestrating a functional division of labour, negotiating and maintaining a serviceable framework with host political authorities and providing leadership’.2 Recent research3 identifies three levels of coordination: communication, where information and knowledge is shared between organisations; alignment, where organisations ‘may adjust their activities to create a more effective response on the basis of the activities of other organisations’, for example ensuring they work in different neighbourhoods; and, collaboration, where organisations may share common goals and E-mail address: [email protected]. 1 The references cited in this section provide some examples and sources of further information 2 Minear et al., 29,912, cited in [10], pii 3 [8]
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1 1 2 2 4
share activities. The research notes that, concerning coordination within the humanitarian Cluster approach (discussed below), ‘overwhelmingly, Cluster activities fall at the alignment level’.4 In urban areas there are of course a wide range and diversity of stakeholders (such as different level of government, civil society, private sector and many others), many with competing interests and with differing degrees of power and legitimacy. While humanitarian coordination is often between international humanitarian organisations and national government structures, local government bodies are in particular essential stakeholders, with repeated lessons that humanitarian interventions need to align with local government priorities. This however may not always be possible, particularly in situations of conflict or immediately after a disaster.
2. Engaging with city authorities While local government and its functionaries are, as noted, essential actors in urban humanitarian response, the humanitarian community has repeatedly been found wanting in how it engages with city authorities. One 4
[8]
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pdisas.2019.100004 Received 10 January 2019; Received in revised form 27 February 2019; Accepted 1 March 2019 Available online 18 April 2019 2590-0617/© 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
D. Sanderson
Progress in Disaster Science 1 (2019) 100004
informing strategic decision-making, planning and strategy development and advocacy.11 Fig. 1 below illustrates the Cluster approach. With the humanitarian and relief coordinator in the middle, aid is organised according to the goods and services that are provided during a crisis, such as education, shelter and health. As noted earlier, Cluster coordination beyond information sharing struggles. This undoubtedly is especially true where competing interests, stresses and pressures call on different organisations to make careful calculations on where and how to align their efforts. Other factors include workflows, policies and institutional cultures; also, the capacity and willingness of local government and local civil society to be involved and/or lead on coordination, and what level of coordination is being attempted. That said, coordination in disasters and crises is an essential element of any successful intervention. While the cluster system overall has been found to add value for better coordination and the sharing of information,12 they have been found to be problematic in urban areas. As the International Rescue Committee (IRC) observes, ‘The traditional cluster system does not lend itself to the complexity of needs, services and systems across an urban landscape with humanitarian agencies struggling to deal with the complexity, density and built environment of towns and cities or [un]able to take full advantage of the potential a city has to offer13. The IASC has challenged the very validity of the cluster approach in urban recovery operations: ‘the current cluster system is structured around sectors of expertise and sectorial coordination, while in a context of urban crises there might be a need to identify and respond holistically to multi-sectorial needs in a given territory, requiring stronger inter-cluster linkages and coordination at city-level.14 For clusters to work well in urban areas, there are some key points. The first is that local leadership by local government structures is crucial, to avoid the creation of parallel structures which remove ownership from existing governance structures. The second point is that cross-sector coordination is vital: single sector interventions that do not recognise urban complexity risk causing harm. Thirdly, engaging local actors is essential but is often overlooked. Language is an important concern – default English in a non-english speaking location alienates local bodies from engaging. Also, many local stakeholders may well not attend cluster meetings, for instance private sector organisations or gangs. Other ways of engaging stakeholders is therefore needed. The choice of meetings location and their frequency in cities are also important. Traffic jams in congested areas can lead to massive wastage of time and for cluster members not to bother to attend meetings. For example, in Port-au-Prince after the 2010 earthquake, chronic traffic jams and the location of cluster meetings on the outskirts of the city meant that several hours a day could be spent in a vehicle.15 Finally, many NGOs may be stretched to attend a large number of meetings, especially if an organisation is involved in more than one sector. Fig. 2 below illustrates what would perhaps be a better approach for urban engagement, wherein existing local governance structures such municipal authorities are at the centre, with sectoral approaches supporting, rather than directing, efforts. Efforts to achieve this require better collaboration between sectors.
study of the response of 13 INGOs following Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, which caused widespread damage across the Philippines, found that across the track of the typhoon, local government units (LGUs) were largely bypassed by aid agencies, who worked directly at the community level.5 Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake it was reported that, ‘local authorities… complained that three months after the earthquake they felt “like strangers in (their) own city’.6 This is a particular problem in urban areas, where meaningful action often relies on the functioning of complex systems of governance. A 2016 wide-ranging study of cities and crises7 identified three key barriers to engagement by municipalities. The first is overwhelmed and underresourced municipalities who also lacked expertise to deal with ‘the exponential needs resulting from crisis’. The second is a failure by international agencies ‘to understand local dynamics and to engage with local stakeholders’. The third is a ‘lack of city-level multi-stakeholder coordination mechanisms’ which ‘contributed to the divergence between international and local actors’. The report found that these problems led to a suboptimal response (for example bad targeting and duplication), the undermining of local systems and the fuelling of community tensions (for example in not consulting with all actors, leading to perceptions of bias). Failing to engage with municipal authorities can also mean that short term emergency interventions in areas such as shelter and settlement, waster, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) and public health fail to articulate with – and even set back – longer term development planning. Research by the UK thinktank ALNAP emphasises that working with government structures is a necessity, not a choice, stating ‘in many situations there are possibilities to work closely with line ministries or other parts of government, even where the government is engaged in internal conflicts. Where even this is not possible, coordination models should be designed to align with government structures to the degree possible, to allow for government ownership at a later date’.8 Engagement with authorities however can often be sensitive, particularly in conflict situations. Where authorities are partisan or may be the aggressors, engagement may not be possible. An example from Somalia's capital city Mogadishu highlights the relations between humanitarian actors and municipal authorities.9 Mogadishu has been ravaged by civil war and political unrest for over two decades. Research by Grünewald describes, among other things, the relations between humanitarian actors and municipal authorities, as follows. ‘One of the main conceptual difficulties for aid actors has been to approach Mogadishu as a city and not as a classic humanitarian situation. This requires strategic sector-based coordination linked to administrative units rather than cluster-type sector-based coordination, and, above all, an attempt to engage with urban authorities. While some of the NGOs working in Mogadishu have tried to establish Memoranda of Understanding with the Ministry of Health, they have bypassed the municipal level and gone down to the district commissioner level, which is responsible only for law-and-order control functions rather than urban planning. The reasons why there has not been any engagement with municipal authorities include the fear of politicisation, the risk of corruption; and, more broadly, ignorance about their roles, if not reluctance to work with these urban actors'.
3. The Cluster approach and urban response 4. Concluding comments
The key globally-agreed formal mechanism for post-disaster coordination is the Cluster approach, brought in as one of the ‘four pillars’ of the 2005 Humanitarian Reform Agenda to improve humanitarian aid.10 Key Cluster functions include, among other things, supporting service delivery,
The need to consider how to respond to increasing crises in urban areas is matched with the recognition that humanitarian aid itself is in need of reform. The first World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) held in 2016 acknowledged that ‘woefully under-resourced humanitarian response’ has to ‘do
5
[15], p15 [3] 7 [6]. Urban crises lessons were drawn from the Central African Republic, Philippines, Haiti, Turkey and Jordan 8 [16], p7 9 Source: [3], p115 10 The other three are strengthening the Humanitarian Coordinators System, Adequate, Flexible, and Predictable Humanitarian Financing, and Building Partnerships 6
11 12 13 14 15
2
Source: [17], cited in Knox Clarke and Campbell, p20 See for example [4]. See also [8] [18] [5], p1 [2]
D. Sanderson
Progress in Disaster Science 1 (2019) 100004
Fig. 1. the cluster approach.
Crises response in urban areas needs to be first and foremost owned by local governance structures – however imperfect or otherwise these may be. The cluster system has always been intended to be jointly managed and convened by local government structures and respective operational agencies, with a shift as quickly as possible (where this is not the case) to local structures. In cities coordination is especially vital, given the large range of actors and the sheer complexities involved in enacting meaningful humanitarian interventions. To these ends, humanitarian aid must do better to support local activities, rather than to provide externally-provided services. The outcomes and calls to action from the Grand Bargain,18 resulting from the WHS, make this clear. To achieve this, coordination mechanisms may need rethinking. This does not mean ‘doing away’ with the cluster system (the system in place is a considerable improvement on what existed before their implementation), despite the above-cited criticisms. It perhaps does mean however, for international humanitarian actors, to consider their roles, responsibilities, and the range and spread of activities they can meaningfully engage in. The result may be a much smaller and far more strategic international humanitarian presence, for instance lending advisory support to governments and large national institutions, leading to a reduced need to coordinate on such a large scale.
Local governance
sector
sector sector
sector Collaborating sectors supporting local structures
Fig. 2. a coordination mechanism supporting local governance.
much more far better’.16 Also, the UK's Overseas Development Institute (ODI) argues that, ‘the formal system faces a crisis of legitimacy, capacity and means, blocked by significant and enduring flaws that prevent it from being effective’.17 16 17
[14], p2 [1], p7
18
3
[14]
D. Sanderson
Progress in Disaster Science 1 (2019) 100004
References
for International Studies: Providence, Rhode Island) Occasional Paper 13. See: https:// reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/ A62BFF27BE6837F6C1256C2500535B54-coordination_brown_jul2000.pdf; 1992. Reindorp N, Wiles P. Humanitarian coordination: lessons from recent field experience a study commissioned by the office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) June 2001. See: https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/4186.pdf; 2001. Sanderson D, Sharma A, editors. IFRC world disasters report, resilience: saving lives today, investing for tomorrow. Geneva: IFRC; 2016 See: https://www.ifrc.org/Global/ Documents/Secretariat/201610/WDR%202016-FINAL_web.pdf. Sanderson D, Knox-Clarke P. ALNAP Lessons. Responding to urban disasters. Learning from previous relief and recovery operations. London: ODI; 2012 See: https:// www.alnap.org/system/files/content/resource/files/main/alnap-lessons-urbanweb.pdf. Twigg J, Mosel I. Emergent groups and spontaneous volunteers in urban disaster response environment & urbanization. IIED 2017;29(2):443–58 See: https://journals. sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956247817721413. UN. The grand bargain—a shared commitment to better serve people in need. Istanbul, Turkey, 23 May 2016. New York: UN; 2016. Sanderson D, Delica Willisen Z. Philippines Typhoon Haiyan response review, for the DEC and HC. London and Ottawa; 2014. Knox Clarke P, Campbell L. Exploring Coordination in Humanitarian Clusters, ALNAP Study. London: ALNAP/ ODI; 2016 https://www.alnap.org/system/files/content/ resource/files/main/update-exploring-coordination-in-humanitarian-clusters.pdf. IASC. Reference Module for Cluster Coordination at the Country Level, cited in Knox Clarke and Campbell. Exploring Coordination in Humanitarian Clusters; 2012; 20. IRC. Humanitarian Crises in Urban Areas: Are Area-Based Approaches to Programming and Coordination the Way Forward? New York: IRC; 2015; 5 http://www. syrialearning.org/resource/21830.
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