OCHA: ON THE FRONT LINES

IN THE SERVICE OF EMERGENCIES

EVELINA RIOUKHINA AND DAVID WINCH

Can you briefly say what OCHA does? How many staff are employed in OCHA Headquarters (Geneva), and how many of OCHA staff are in the field?
The mission of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is to mobilize and coordinate effective and principled humanitarian action, in partnership with national and international actors, in order to alleviate human suffering in disasters and emergencies; advocate for the rights of people in need; promote preparedness and prevention; and facilitate sustainable solutions. OCHA’s staffing for 2009 is planned at approximately 1,795. In Geneva, there are a total of 240 staff members, eighty-four of whom are General Service staff and 156 are international staff. OCHA’s Field Offices, including the staff of the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), include some 340 internationals and some 1,000 national staff. OCHA’s functions are spread across locations at UN Headquarters (New York and Geneva), in six regional offices and twentytwo field offices.

What is the general background of OCHA staff?
OCHA staff are diverse and have multidisciplinary backgrounds. They include political scientists, international affairs experts, information management specialists, finance and administrative specialists, just to mention the main functional groups. Many colleagues have had prior field-based emergency relief experience, in operational agencies, in NGOs and/or within their own national structures. Geneva and Field Office staff come from over fourty-four countries across the world, with a good gender balance of male and female throughout. Currently our statistics show fifty-three per cent male and fourtyseven per cent female staff in Geneva and Field Offices.

What is your background? For how long have you been working in OCHA?
My academic background, at the post-graduate level, consists of degrees in Development Economics and Humanitarian Health, while also being an alumnus of the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna.

I started with UNDP in 1975 and held a number of positions with the Programme, at HQ (New York), in the field (Malaysia, Madagascar) and in Geneva (the European Office). In 1991, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, I was loaned by UNDP to the Office of Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, to assist in the elaboration – and subsequent implementation – of a large-scale humanitarian assistance programme in Iraq. My loan turned into a secondment and, upon Prince Sadruddin’s departure, I was to head the Special Unit for Iraq which then became, in 1992, a part of the newly created Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA). I have been with DHA/OCHA in various locations and in a variety of positions, dealing with the coordination of response activities to both complex emergencies and natural disasters, ever since.

You are also the Chief of Emergency Services Branch which includes Civil Military Coordination and the INSARAG group, correct? How do you organize emergency support? Logistics? And for what kind of emergencies?
The Emergency Services Branch consists of the following Sections and Units: the Civil-Military Coordination Section (CMCS), the Emergency Preparedness Section (EPS) – which includes the Environmental Emergencies Unit (EEU) – , the Emergency Relief Coordination Centre (ERCC), the Field Coordination Support Section (FCSS), the Logistics Support Section (LSU) and the Surge Capacity Section (SCS). We also “house” the Field Information Services Unit (FIS), the Information Technology Section (ITS), the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) Liaison Office and ReliefWeb (which are functionally overseen by New York). These organizational units are more than the sum of their individual parts; as a team, which has exercised and performed together, they complement each other and – on account of the various networks they have created and belong to, in all parts of the world, at national and regional levels – they are in a position to generate a sizeable “multiplier effect”.

When not responding to Disasters and Emergencies, the sections and units in question are actively engaged in capacity building (response preparedness), whereby we ensure that the ability to respond to recurring (and worsening) disasters, by the national authorities in disaster prone countries, is constantly enhanced.

How, for example (if it is not secret), do you currently (during a military siege) organize support in Gaza?
In the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) we have a well established field office structure through which we support the UN Humanitarian Coordinator and work with a wide range of national and international humanitarian agencies. Our field colleagues support inter-agency coordination, assessments and resource mobilization. They are also active, as you may have seen, in information management and advocacy. Like in all other locations where OCHA works, we implement our activities in strict accordance with commonly recognized humanitarian principles, such as neutrality and impartiality. This is of course of extreme importance and relevance in the highly-charged context of Gaza. The Emergency Services Branch supports our field colleagues with additional resources such as surge-capacity personnel and the identification of requirements in terms of essential equipment (also securityrelated). Other parts of OCHA, including our Administrative Office, in Geneva, and our New York-based colleagues, play a variety of important roles in this context also.

What are some other recent emergency support missions – Myanmar? Georgia?
We were very closely involved in the international response to Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar. We sent an UNDAC team to support the UN Country team and supported the efforts made by ASEAN to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance in the Irrawady Delta. In fact, the UNDAC team was the first organized entity of the international system to be allowed into Myanmar at that time.

Georgia was what we commonly refer to as a “complex emergency”, where we deployed colleagues through our surge mechanisms to work on general humanitarian coordination and response issues (but also specific challenges such as access arrangements to populations in need in the midst of conflict).

What continents/regions receive the most OCHA missions? For example, during last couple of years, what were the main OCHA missions? In what missions did you participate personally? What were the most difficult or/and dangerous of them?
In terms of missions fielded from here, in Geneva, and this sometimes at only a few hours notice, the majority take place in the context of sudden-onset disasters (earthquakes, floods, etc) in the Asia-Pacific and Latin America-Caribbean regions. I think you may be aware of the role we played in the aftermath of the South-East Asia tsunami of 2004, and at the site of the Pakistan earthquake, in 2005, the two largest most recent missions. These were indeed unusually largescale and complex, and in both we had all our “instruments” and related stand-by experts, put to full use: UNDAC, INSARAG, our International Humanitarian Partnership partners, our Civil-Military Coordination network of officers, the Logistic Support Unit (including our warehoused relief items in Brindisi) the Environmental Emergencies Unit, our On-Sight Operations Coordination Centers (and the virtual version thereof on the internet), ReliefWeb et alia. I participated in both missions. In the tsunami context, I was tasked with the establishment of a coordination mechanism with the international military forces providing support to humanitarian operations in all affected countries, in Bangkok and U Tapao (Thailand), and in Aceh. In regard to the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, I was the UNDAC Team Leader (taking off from Geneva, in an aircraft made available by Switzerland, with the Team, only a few hours after the event), and was subsequently – in country – the Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator.

I suppose all missions are what you would call “dangerous”, although not always for the same reasons. Moving about in the “Central Area” of Iraq, in the aftermath of the 2003 war, when I was there as Area Coordinator, was not without danger. But neither was sleeping in a building in Turkey, after one of the two large earthquakes in 1999, that was continuously rocked by aftershocks. The most difficult mission, for me and for a number of us who were in OCHA at the time, was the one which consisted of bringing back the bodies of close colleagues who tragically died in a helicopter accident, in Mongolia, eight years ago.

Are some types of emergencies increasing? What type of background /training does this require? You are dealing with the organization and coordination of training, right? For example, how do you organize such training for UNDAC Teams? And for INSARAG? Who are the members of the UNDAC Team? Governmental representatives? What professions? With what background?
I think the impact of natural disasters is certainly increasing because of a variety of factors including growth in population, climate change and extensive urbanization. To deal with this we need staff, stand by partners and indeed UNDAC members with a variety of backgrounds, and skills.

UNDAC members come from Governments, the UN, other international organizations and NGOs. To ensure that new UNDAC members understand how to function in an international emergency, we conduct a two-week UNDAC Induction Course for all new members. Thereafter, in each of the three regions, ie. Asia- Pacific, Africa-Europe and the Americas, we conduct a yearly Refresher Course, for three days, for all UNDAC members from that particular region. Additionally, there are short specialized training courses available throughout the year on various skills such as team leadership, information management and field/on-site coordination.

For INSARAG (the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group), we organize training and exercises, as well as international operational classification of international urban search and rescue teams, in accordance with agreed standards (provided in the INSARAG Guidelines).

What other important programmes can you mention? How is funding organized for these programmes? For your Office in general (mainly your posts are extra-budgetary?) By special appeals? Who are the main donors?
OCHA receives only five per cent of its financial requirements from the UN regular budget. This means that the rest is extrabudgetary and needs to come from active resource mobilisation by our Donor Relations colleagues. Our strongest financial supporters are Sweden, Norway, UK, USA, ECHO, Ireland, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Finland, but it is very encouraging to see that in recent years a number of new member states have joined the ranks of OCHA’s donor base such as, for example, the United Arab Emirates. Besides funds, we get invaluable in-kind support from a wide variety of external organizations and member States with whom we have agreements for the provision of disaster response personnel and materials. However, we do more than generating our own donor support; we are also the custodians of the inter-agency Consolidated Appeal Process through which funds (some US$ 5 billion in 2008) for UN organizations and NGOs are mobilized to respond to humanitarian emergencies and disasters across the globe.

What would you say to those who want to work in such a difficult area as yours, to provide support in emergencies?
It has been, for me to date, a fascinating job. I have, with very few exceptions, enjoyed every single day of the part of my thity-threeyear UN career spent with DHA/OCHA. In view of what OCHA is and does today, the respect in which it is held by Governments, partner agencies/NGOs and others in the Secretariat, the Office is able to provide those who have the appropriate background, skills and commitment with a fascinating line of work, both in the field and at HQ. As I retire later this year, I will look back fondly on these years, on the many field missions I have been a part of and on the colleagues with whom it has been a privilege to do very worthwhile work.