This independent report assesses the humanitarian response capacities of the UN, NGOs, Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), and other key humanitarian actors. It identifies capacity gaps, and makes recommendations to address them. The major gap identified is organisations’ low level of preparedness in terms of human resources and sectoral capacities.
The report covers complex emergencies and natural disasters, and gives special attention to reviewing the preparedness of international humanitarian organisations to predict crises, prevent them, mitigate their impact on vulnerable populations and respond effectively to their needs.
Key Findings
In the area of human resources, major shortcomings in managerial capacities are acknowledged. Recruitment policies, in particular during emergencies, fail to provide, in a timely fashion, the numberand quality of required staff. Training within organizations, in general, is limited in scope and number of dedicated hours. The voluntary nature of staff deployment for assignments to emergency missions, which is applied by the majority of the organizations, often hampers the speed of response.
In relation to sectoral capacities, protection capacities are weak and need to be strengthened. Gaps have also been identified in some sectors, including water and sanitation, shelter, camp, management and in food aid, nutrition and livelihoods. In addition, there are limits in common services and surge capacities that need to be expanded.
- In nearly all the organisations, strategies exist or are being developed to address major shortcomings and to improve the quality and timeliness of the response and the sense of direction is well defined and supported by the senior management of these organisations.
- The reform process is however faced with problems of obtaining the continued engagement of the whole organisation and of all the staff, as well as the failure to secure adequate political and financial support from the organisations’ governing bodies and from the donors.
While individual initiatives are proceeding in the right direction, a global vision, supported by a plan of action providing an agreed shared response to many of the challenges experienced by all the humanitarian organizations is lacking.
Recommendations
- The report highlights the following key recommendations:
- Conduct a global mapping of humanitarian response capacities among international, national and regional actors, the private sector, and the military.
- Develop and apply benchmarks and indicators to measure performance: at the level of the organisations (management benchmarks for preparedness and planning) and of the system (process and impact benchmarks for CAP and other planning/appeal models).
- Strengthen response capacities, especially human resources: review policies (recruitment, training and rules of assignment to emergency missions) to boost capacities at managerial, sectoral and field levels.
- Improve coordination of the international response system.
- Ensure that funding enables timely response in emergencies.
