DRAFT – Synthesis of Tsunami LessonsEMOPS/PD, 12-10-2010
DRAFT - Synthesis of
Lessons on the Tsunamiresponse
2004 –2009
EMOPS/PD, October 2010
Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
COORDINATION/MANAGEMENT/PLANNING
CO-RO-HQ COORDINATION
RBM
RAPID/NEEDS ASSESSMENT
SECTOR COORDINATION
STAFFING
STRATEGIC APPROACH
SUB-NATIONAL/DECENTRALIZED COORDINATION
PROGRAMME
CCCS/UNICEF’S COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE
SUSTAINABILITY/RECOVERY
WASH
HEALTH
CHILD PROTECTION
EDUCATION
NUTRITION
CROSS-CUTTING PROGRAMME STRATEGIES
PARTNERSHIPS
PARTICIPATION OF AFFECTED COMMUNITIES
HRBAP
NATIONAL CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT
COMMUNICATION FOR DEVELOPMENT
ADVOCACY/EXTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS
CONFLICT AND POST-CONFLICT ENVIRONMENTS
CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS
NATURAL DISASTER
OPERATIONS
HUMAN RESOURCES
FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION
RESOURCE MOBILIZATION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The text that follows is a synthesis of key lessons over the past 5 years of the international community’s response (and particularly UNICEF’s response) to the tsunami in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Solomon Islands and India. It is intended to feed into global learning to inform future humanitarian response. The synthesis is a document review, drawingfrom 35 documents: 23 UNICEF evaluations, 9 external evaluations, 2 UNICEF debriefings and 1 UNICEF seminar. It should be noted that a dozen or so other documents, both internal and external, were reviewed, which yielded no substantive learning. The documents reviewed were those which were readily available to the researchers. This synthesis represents the findings of the above documentation.
All lessons from the Tsunami response need to be put in context of the extraordinary magnitude of the disaster and scale of the response required. Key features of that context which were consistently highlighted include:
- Operating across multiple countries, with all the internal coordination challenges involved (HATIS creation).
- The number of agencies involved in the response andamount of funding for each agency, complicating coordination.
Key Lessons/Issues:
- UNICEF’s Comparative Advantage
A relevant lesson from the tsunami was that UNICEF’s strength in humanitarian action lies in the CCCs - the areas in which it typically responds. It is therefore critical that there is wide knowledge of the CCCs across the organization and understanding of UNICEF’s role in humanitarian action. In the tsunami, the large amount of funding and the media spotlight put increased pressure on UNICEF to respond both effectively and visibly. This was coupled with the obvious gaps in response and capacity which confronted UNICEF; these gaps prompted the pressure and expectation that UNICEF should have been responding all areas of need, not just in the areas in which the organization typically responded (CCCs). A further issue is the pressure of how to spend large amounts of money. UNICEF received a great deal of funding for the tsunami response; the decision to take school construction was partly based on needing to oblige donors and spend that money - with hardware as a means of absorbing large funding.
One of the key constraints for UNICEF was its focus on capital-intensive infrastructure rather than building institutional capacity. Capital-intensive projects, such as construction and the purchase of significant assets entails high transaction costs for materials as well as staff and can distract from wider development concerns. This was particularly the case with school building in Aceh and WASH hardware installation in the Maldives. The pressure to spend large sums of public money raised for the tsunami would inevitably lead towards choosing these projects over others, despite UNICEF’s inexperience in construction and its comparative advantage in the ‘soft’ side of programming.
- Staffing
Effective and timely redeployment of staff in major emergencies, even with the Global Trigger, requires strong recognition and enforcement of compliance at CO-RO-HQ levels.Despite the Global Trigger being initiated, several COs refused the release of staff for internal redeployment. It was notable that only a few of the internal staff members, who were redeployed, actually completed the three month mission duration required by the Global Trigger, instead returning to their parent CO early. This need to eliminate staff turnover, especially during the first two to three months, was identified in several Evaluations Reports.
Absence of formal systems, clear roles, responsibilities and accountabilities resulted in Offices using an ad hoc approach to surge capacity: utilizing informal channels, ignoring central advice and at times instructions. UNICEF did not have fully developed surge capacity systems in place to respond to a catastrophe of the magnitude of the Emergency in which over 220,000 people died.
At country level, there was high staff turnover which weakened institutional memory and undermined continuity. There were also difficulties in managing short-term surge staff/consultants, including their relations with pre-crisis CO staff and existing partners and their tendency to have short-term perspectives.
- Sector Coordination
The post-disaster flood of INGOs created a congestion of humanitarian space and hindered information flow and coordination. There were so many actors on the ground in the early part of the response that it was a logistics challenge to respond to the many displaced. But coordination became more and more crucial as the response moved to the assessment and fundraising stages, requiring hours and hours of staff time to work with other organizations. Difficulties relating to information flow were evident.
It was evident that coordination required sufficient and distinct coordination capacity, apart from programming responsibilities.The dual function of programming/doing and coordinating at CO field level proved difficult in the tsunami response, one reason being that there was limited and uneven capacity to lead where UNICEF is sector leader.
- Recovery
The move from emergency to recovery and development requires different sets of skills, and UNICEF can do better in managing human resources in this respect. For example, strong contextual analysis (political economy, institutional analysis, etc.) can significantly improve the relevance, effectiveness and sustainability of interventions. Likewise, investments in planning and preparedness pay dividends economically, socially and in terms of speed of recovery. In the health sector, for instance, a clear lesson emerged particularly from Sri Lanka and the Maldives that the tsunami response had little impact on underlying chronic trends in nutrition and maternal mortality. However, incremental changes can be induced through judicious use of time-bound funds. A final point is that critical for recovery is whether key (managerial) response staff understand what is entailed in linking their relief, rehabilitation and development activities both short and long term.
- Community Participation
Community participation was often overlookedduring the tsunami response. International agencies often failed to make their systems and practices suitable for maximum understanding and participation by local people. Greater transparency and accountability requires a proactive approach to information communication, including active dissemination and public analysis of agency information.
COORDINATION/MANAGEMENT/PLANNING
CO-RO-HQ COORDINATION
In a major emergency of this scale, with Headquarters (HQ), Regional (RO) and Country Office (CO) all involved together in the response, greater clarity is needed on a process for reassessing, reconfirming or adjusting existing decision-making structures and accountabilities as needed and communicating this effectively through to all staff engaged at CO, RO and HQ levels. In the tsunami response, theconfused mix of information sharing and strategic decision making was apparenteven at high level meetings in New York and Geneva; indeed, many of the discussionsheld in, for example, UNCT and IASC meetings in Jakarta, Colombo, Male or Bangkokwere almost simultaneously reproduced at headquarters.The demands for feeding information from the field to headquarters were huge, andpreoccupied much staff time of every agency on the ground (UN as well as NGO). For UNICEF also, there was a disconnect in perception of information sharing needs between HQ, ROs and COs. This is evidenced in the health and nutrition response in different perceptions on proposed monitoring indicators as well as in perceptions of conference calls. HQ perceived itself as seeking a better grasp of the situation on the ground. ROs and COs perceived information requests as sometimes controlling and not supportive. Yet, it appears that there is space for more HQ or RO visits to the field to provide a technical review of the response from an overview perspective – as opposed to assignments to carry out a specific technical task. The visits may need to be sector specific to provide a thorough review of programmes – i.e. may not be covered by RD level. There is need for clearer division of labour HQ-RO-CO in health and nutrition or at least a more established approach to working together. The distinction between HQ and RO roles is not universally clear. Clarity is hampered in some cases by gaps in technical advisor posts and in others by lack of basic emergency programming knowledge of regional staff. Between H&N, good coordination was made possible by high level leadership and good communication between chiefs, proactivity of both sections. (Bennett, 2006, p.25; UNICEF, 2005, H+N, p.7)
Effective CO-RO-HQ coordination requires the management of conference calls, including to the sub-offices.Management of conference calls needs to be examined more closely. There were very mixed views on the effectiveness of calls. Some perceived value in participation of all COs. There was a fairly consistent perception from interviewees/contributors (CO, RO and HQ) that some of the communications between headquarters and the CO would have been more effectively held with Banda sub-office. A distinction could have been made between communications of policy/long-term strategy nature with the CO and communications on progress reports with the CO and sub-office, the latter leading. (UNICEF, 2005, H+N, p.7)
Flexibility in office structure must be anticipated. In large-scale disasters, the structure of the office requires flexibility after the 3-6 month emergency phase. In the tsunami, the rapidly evolving situation required staff with different skills and a longer-term commitment, but the Programme and Budget Review process was slow to respond. (Beigbeder, 2008, p.1)
RBM
If UNICEF’s operations procedures are too slow – which was the case - it is important to examine work processes for ways of streamlining, especially at CO level -to instil a culture of principled, calculated management risk-taking; balance control with flexibility.There is flexibility built into principles and polices though many staff do not realize this; it is often the procedures, and specifically the application of these that becomes cumbersome, when speed is essential. If new methods of working and risk-taking are accompanied by transparency, then they can be utilized well for ensuring good, fast humanitarian response.There was a reluctance to diverge from normal (development) prescribed or standard procedures– whether documented or not (e.g. being unable to order more than $200,000 worth of supplies from Copenhagen). Numerous instances of delays in providing services to beneficiaries were justified by the need to ‘stick to the rulebook’ despite common sense that said they should do otherwise. The management philosophy seems, in some cases, to be orientated towards strict adherence to these inappropriate procedures. Such an approach discourages staff-members from making use of the emergency procedures, and applying flexibility and common sense (essential in an emergency).Where staff have shown creativity and flexibility in order to respond in a timely manner, they have been open to criticism. For example, the internal audit pointed to the failure to use competitive tender for ongoing Long Term Agreements at the apex of emergency response (mid-January 2005), when needs were greatest and skilled staff were in extremely short supply. UNICEF’s extreme aversion to any form of risk is not compatible with emergency humanitarian programming. At the same time it should be noted that the existing rules and processes are by no means foolproof to anyone serious about wanting to misappropriate resources.(UNICEF, 2006, Indonesia, p.27; Woodhouse, 2005, p.1)
At present, ProMS is a one-size-fits-all system preponderant in its stability, integrity and mastery of detail. In times of emergency where the role of UNICEF starts with emergency response, then passes to subsequent phases of recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction, there is a clear and urgent need to properly calibrate UNICEF’s response capability. To do this, it will be necessary for UNICEF to update its financial systems and procedures to properly support each and every role of UNICEF. (UNICEF, 2005, p.35)
M&E
Given UNICEF's reliance on partners for implementation, programme monitoring capacity at field level is critical.Tracking systems for the continuous monitoring of what happens to supplies once they are handed over to partners need to be established and constantly up-dated. There is a particular need for UNICEF to place more emphasis on programme monitoring capacities. The undertaking of self-monitoring by NGO partners is not sufficient to ensure efficiency and effective service; therefore, capacity building activities with and monitoring (particularly post-distribution) of partners, performed by UNICEF or potentially by an independent agency, is crucial. This could also usefully be supplemented with partner training on human rights based response. Such measures can ensure that results of interventions meet UNICEF’s desired targets and international standards, even if that monitoring is hampered by the difficulty of an environment.It is the responsibility of the partners to report how their supplies have been utilised and how useful they were. UNICEF needs to make this clear to its partners. (Baumann, 2006, p.41)
Ensure adequate – even if simple - monitoring ofprogrammesto meet desired standards.Tsunami COs faced significant challenges in monitoring the response. In Nutrition, data on the overall response was less a problem -- nutrition surveys/surveillance provided useful data on status of population. Monitoring programme implementation and UNICEF response was the challenge. There is a sense from field offices that in the initial response, there is need for more simple informal approaches. The quantitative figures are limited above all by problems in defining the denominator. In terms of informal approaches, Sri Lanka was an exceptional case in that it benefited from zonal sub-offices in all affected areas, most of them staffed with health and nutrition focal points. In Indonesia, more informal approaches were effectively used for monitoring for management purposes – i.e. local university students hired to go out to communities and check in informal interviews whether measles vaccination had reached the community. This provided an informal spot check on gaps, though not quantitative figures for reporting to donors. (The nutrition survey was also used but timing came in the middle of vaccination so data was superseded quickly by ongoing programme.)(UNICEF, 2008, p.43; Broughton, 2003, p.56-57; UNICEF, 2005, p.4)
RAPID/NEEDS ASSESSMENT
National actors present on the ground prior to disaster can rapidly identify and reach the affected and assess their immediate needs; improving their technical skills and quality standards is crucial to effective cross-sectoral rapid assessment.Strong partnership, particularly at local level, and knowledge of national partners and context at different levels is critical for the design and implementation of rapid assessment. It cannot be overstressed that only the actors present prior to the disaster – local institutions, the national Red Cross or Red Crescent Society, some NGOs and the civil society – can rapidly identify and reach the needy, and assess their immediate needs. Continuing to enhance the capacity of these institutions and to promote their use of standards (in collection and sharing of information but also in implementing projects) is probably the only realistic way for the international community to save lives and attend to the most critical needs in the first few days. In addition, most, if not all, initial humanitarian assessments carried out after the tsunami relied primarily on local sources. Improving the quality and standardisation of those governmental sources is the most obvious approach to improving the accuracy and speed of cross-sectoral and sectoral needs assessment.In Indonesia, at the technical leadership level in Banda, RO nutrition advisor’s previous experience in the country helped ensure insertion of the rapid assessment survey in the right institutions and processes, as well as involvement of the right actors. In Sri Lanka, the speed with which the first survey was launched was attributed to close relations with national partners. In Thailand, the involvement of national staff with experience and knowledge of local level actors and institutions were essential in the rapid collection of existing data. (Goyet, 2006, p.56, 63;UNICEF, 2005, H+N, p.1-2)
Local Context
Take the time to understandlocal power structures.Especially where donor organisations are under pressure to spend funds rapidly, they may be unable to address the complexity of power processes within the community. And yet their aid can often have a significant effect on power structures and can bring about long-term change for better or worse. Poor understanding about modes of representation can easily lead to capture of aid by ‘elites’ – reinforcing inequality. In the worst case, aid distribution could make communities more vulnerable to disasters in the future.Accordingly, agencies need to take time in order to understand more of the power structures and dynamics within communities, how these have been sustained in the past and how a crisis can open opportunities for change. Planning should be based on the assumption that aid is likely to reinforce inequalities within the community unless corrective action is taken. (Parakrama, 2006, p.32)
Differentiate and prioritize between immediate needs and those resulting from longstanding poverty and conflict. This was a critical failing in the tsunami. Disaster-induced needs may genuinely be critical for survival and truly require immediate life-saving measures, while other welfare needs may not be as vital or time-sensitive. Assessments must provide information to assist in the prioritisation of needs, as different approaches, partners and speeds are required to address truly life-saving needs, needs of a less critical nature and those resulting from developmental problems. (Goyet et al, 2006, p.50)