13 June 2016 – “The centrality of the role of the State’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) is key in leading the process to effective civil-military coordination during disaster response.” This was stressed by Undersecretary Alexander P. Pama, Executive Director of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) and Administrator of the Department of National Defense-Office of Civil Defense on May 23 at the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) in Istanbul.
Undersecretary Pama, speaking at the side event on Development of Common Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination Standards at the WHS on May 23, said: “I believe that having a predictable platform for humanitarian-civil-military coordination is critical in developing common standards and ensuring proper and coherent use of foreign military assets (FMA) in support of humanitarian action.”
He cited the experience of the Philippines during typhoon season, stressing that the entire national capacity is utilized to ensure preparedness, effective response and speedy recovery from disaster, if and when one happens. An after action review (AAR) on the Haiyan response was conducted four months after landfall and it focused on the humanitarian-military-police interaction and associated coordination mechanisms, including the tasking and use of FMA in support of national/local authorities during the first two months of the emergency response operation.
One of the key recommendations of the AAR is the need to establish a predictable Humanitarian-Civil-Military Coordination (CMCoord) mechanism at the national level through use of foreign military assets in supporting humanitarian activities and operations to address urgent humanitarian priorities.
Regionally, the Philippines takes the lead, as current chair of the Asia-Pacific Regional Consultative Group (RCG), in encouraging countries in the region to develop work plans to enhance coordination of operational planning between humanitarian and military actors for natural disaster response. At the regional level, the RCG supports the integration of CMCoord mechanisms in regional disaster response exercises.
The Philippines, for its part, is looking at the Humanitarian-Military Operational Coordination Concept (HuMOCC) and how it could be integrated into existing disaster preparedness policy and guidelines.
An effective coordination platform should be able to offer practical, real-time and responsive coordination services to humanitarian-civil-military actors whose work it is supposed to facilitate in pursuit of an effective humanitarian response operation.
The World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) was held in Istanbul on May 23 and 24 and aimed to provide a platform to address the most pressing challenges and set an agenda to keep humanitarian action fit for the future. END