News archive

Sign up to the ECB e-newsletter

Get our free quarterly email newsletter direct to your inbox.

ECB Project on Twitter

Share and Bookmark

ECB humanitarian leaders sign the DREP on April 1, 2011. "The development of the DREP showed good spirit, effort and maturity from all consortium members. The DREP is a strategic document that guides the members on their relation during the emergency response. As a new approach, this will need to have significant efforts to be widely shared and understood in each agency to encourage good collaboration during an emergency period." - Wahyu Widayanto, Field Facilitator, ECB Indonesia © Wahyu Widayanto, CRS, April 2011

Published on 14 April 2011

Indonesia was struck by twin disasters in October 2010, when a tsunami hit the Mentawai Islands off the western coast of Sumatra, and Central Java faced multiple volcanic eruptions from Mount Merapi. In the months preceding these events, the ECB agencies were already working with a consultant, James Staples from HumEx*, to develop a set of Disaster Response Engagement Protocols (DREP) that define how a consortium could and would decide to respond to an emergency. The core purpose of these protocols is to pre-position relationships and pre-negotiate various options for individual, coordinated or joint response activities in advance of an emergency striking Indonesia.

In October 2010, and within a few hours of the disasters, the ECB Project member Country Directors met and made an innovative and courageous decision to test the utility of these draft protocols in a real-time situation. Members of the ECB Global Project Team were tasked with observing the process and capturing the learning. Highlights from this process were shared in the last ECB E-Newsletter, and an after-action review was completed in Indonesia in March 2011. This review included the opportunity to review was worked successfully, how the twin disasters were managed, and what were the next steps for finalizing the DREP.

The agencies came together to discuss the learning that emerged in nine key areas. The need to improve the Joint Needs Assessment (JNA) approach came through as a priority and steps have already been taken at the ECB consortium, and global level, to resource the finalisation of the JNA approach and recruit a dedicated JNA Project Manager. Assessment skills and capacity gaps were also identified for practitioners who require further training on assessment and analysis skills.

The importance of information management was highlighted and the attempt by ECB agencies to develop and use a joint ECB situation report (Sitrep) template was applauded as a coordination success. Processes and protocols for sharing and analysis of information was identified as an area that needed to be further refined and a recommendation was made for rapid documentation development and dissemination, including critical decisions taken in management stakeholder meetings.

If consortium responses to emergencies continue to be a model for the future, the sustainability of the approach needs to be ensured, and donors such as USAID / OFDA and ECHO need to be bought further into the conversation to discuss some of the challenges and benefits of this way of working. Similarly the review group acknowledged that other stakeholders such as United Nations agencies, UN clusters, government departments and private sector companies must be included in the dialogue in order to improve the clarity in decision-making and communication of Government Departments during an emergency.

On a more operational level, the workshop participants decided to amend the existing DREP to include guidance on safety and security, and some basic principles on how this should be managed when carrying out joint operations. It was also recommended to amend the roles and responsibilities of the Response Coordination Agency (RCA)** to include guidance on external representation in fora such as clusters, during a consortium emergency response.

Country Directors signed the DREP on April 1st 2011. This will now need to be signed by all Emergency Directors, at headquarters and regional levels, to ensure that during any future disaster international surge capacity deployed from regions or headquarters will be aware of the locally negotiated agreements and ways-of-working in Indonesia.

The Disaster Response Protocols are a step forward in defining agencies' efforts to work together during disasters; they clarify our role as international actors with the government, civil society organisations and business partners.” Sébastien Fesneau, Humanitarian Coordinator (2006-2011), Oxfam Indonesia

The testing of the DREP and Joint Needs Assessment (JNA) approach by ECB agencies in Indonesia found that both tools and protocols need further adjustment and flexibility given each individual emergency context. However, it is clear that what the ECB agencies are attempting to do in Indonesia is both innovative and ground breaking in the humanitarian sector. The Global ECB Project team is proud to support the reflection and learning opportunities that have arisen, and help Indonesia to fully incorporate these two approaches into their humanitarian program cycle. We are continually impressed by the openness, trust and respect that have been built over the years between the ECB agencies in Indonesia. Together we feel confident that improvements in coordination and collaboration in disaster response in Indonesia will continue for many years to come.

The DREP was not deliberately planned at the start; rather it came up as a joint idea, strategy and commitment from all ECB consortium members to improve the quality and effectiveness of our collaboration and coordination in disaster response. Given the agency’s vision, mission and interests we know too well that it has not been always easy for a humanitarian agency to collaborate and coordinate with others in emergency response. But I really hope that ECB consortium will always respect what we have agreed in the protocol to prevent misunderstanding and miscommunication and at the same time improve our speed, effectiveness and efficiency in providing assistance to the people affected by disasters.” Yenni Suryani, CRS Country Team Leader

This article was written by David Hockaday, edited by Andrea Stewart; and reviewed by Yenni Suryani, Wahyu Widayanto, and LeAnn Hager from CRS.

*HUMEX visit www.humex.net
** The Response Coordinating Agency (RCA) is the agency selected to lead any coordination activities during an emergency response, this might include coordination meetings, attendance at UN Cluster meetings, and donor fund management.
 

Related news