In order to improve humanitarian effectiveness in Eastern and Southern Africa, what should be the priorities? This was the main question asked of six speakers, as well as more than 60 participants, in a live online consultation event for the World Humanitarian Summit hosted by PHAP on 23 October. The event was the final event hosted by PHAP leading up to the regional consultation for Eastern and Southern Africa, held in Pretoria, South Africa 27-29 October.
The event started with Francis Onditi, Regional Child Protection Coordinator for West and East Africa with Save the Children International, who focused on the importance of civil-military coordination for improving humanitarian effectiveness, as well as the opportunities that existed for encouraging young volunteers in the region, as the current lack of a “culture of volunteerism” is an important problem, in his view.
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| This example snap poll question that was posed to participants in the event shows the unanimous support for a greater role to be played by local organizations. |
Michael Charles, Regional Programs Coordinator for the Southern Africa region for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), highlighted the difference in terms of effectiveness between sudden-onset disasters and protracted or chronic crises. Effectiveness in sudden-onset disasters was mainly about timeliness, coordination, quality, and access. Improvements had been made over the years in all of these areas, but there was still much to do. In protracted crises, the issue was more about strengthening systems, mitigation, and building resilience. He pointed out that these crises are increasingly located in middle-income countries, and that they seldom made it into international media. To come to grips with this situation, it is necessary to invest more in national and local institutions, and make sure that they become less dependent on international humanitarian aid, with local systems meeting local needs.
Participating from Zimbabwe, Mvuselelo Huni, Chief Operating Officer, Organisation of Rural Associations for Progress (ORAP) briefed the group on what she saw as the main priority for the region: coordination among agencies towards the empowerment of local organizations to achieve efficient and sustainable humanitarian interventions in Eastern and Southern Africa. She pointed out that local organizations have a very good understanding of the context they are working in and are tied in to the history of it. They are also invested in the outcomes of any project, and have an interest in ensuring the sustainability of them.
Rania Rajji, Humanitarian Affairs Advisor with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Spain, underlined that the region was not homogenous, having large variations both in terms of the types of crises that affect different areas as well as their resilience, vulnerability, and capacity to handle these crises. She highlighted some recommendations based on MSF’s experiences of overcoming challenges for effective humanitarian response in the region. These included basing humanitarian response on need; identifying your limits as a humanitarian actor, both in terms of capacity and access, and attempting to expand them; finding ways of engaging with the various actors who might otherwise hinder operations; and working with governments to build capacity, so that they can at least manage the response, even if they are not able to provide the necessary resources themselves.
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| A snap poll question was posed to participants regarding the need for a specific fund for protracted crises, to which a majority answered negatively. |
Focusing on the importance of coordination for humanitarian effectiveness, Joseph Nkinzo Tchibo, Executive Director of Hope in Action International in Kenya, briefed on how humanitarian actors should make sure that thresholds for entry and exit were better managed jointly. Without entry and exit being better coordinated, there is a risk of confusion regarding responsibilities, as well as potential problems with long-term capacity building of local actors.
The final presenter in the event, Filipa Gouveia, Programme Officer and Gender Focal Point for Protection Cluster at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Mozambique, talked about the importance of local context, in particular regarding very young populations, gender imbalances, HIV prevalence, and the strength of basic service provision. She also reinforced the point made by other speakers regarding strengthening local capacity, especially by building linkages between the recovery phase and development work in order to promote durable solutions as well as to learn from local coping mechanisms that can help avoid dependence on external assistance.
In the following questions and answers session, the speakers gave their views on issues raised by participants in the event. Given that the empowerment of local organizations had been one of the main recommendations from previous Summit regional consultations, speakers and participants discussed what the main barriers were to successfully building local capacity, as well as examples of how local organizations had been successfully empowered.
For those who missed the event, a recording is available at phap.org/WHS-23oct2014 and it is also possible to continue the discussions in the thematic forum for humanitarian effectiveness on the World Humanitarian Summit website.