Drought Preparedness and Response in the Horn of Africa: An agenda for collective action: Learning the lessons and doing things differently A JOINT RHPT & IAWG MEETING

1^st MARCH 2012, MAYFAIR SOUTHERN SUN HOTEL

BACKGROUND

Chairs of IAWG and RHPT noted the large number of reports and initiatives that have been launched in second half of 2011, analysing the response to the Horn Drought and making recommendations for areas and issues to be addressed collectively by the humanitarian community in order to ensure more effective recovery and disaster preparedness in the aftermath of this crisis, alongside recommendations for better response to future droughts.

These initiatives have included, inter alia:

nter-Agency Horn of Africa Plan of Action (launched in 2010, yet finding new momentum of a result of the current crisis)

- IASC and DEC Real Time Evaluations

- IAWG Resolutions for 2012 and Briefing Note on CC/DRR

- Save/Oxfam Report “A dangerous delay”

- ODI Report “System Failure: Time to reboot”

- FSNWG “ Food for thought on the HoA crisis”

Much of the analysis forthcoming does not necessarily highlight new issues, but rather underlines issues that repeatedly emerge during drought crises, and for which the challenge remains effective implementation.

The start of 2012 represents an opportunity to take stock of lessons learned and propose collective action that can secure progress on implementation of recommendation. The RHPT IAWG, FSNWG therefore proposes the holding of a joint roundtable / workshop, identifying key themes emerging from these reports, and exploring proposals for ways forward.

We would also like to propose that the event could be co-hosted by IGAD - as a key regional partner in managing drought emergencies in the Horn, playing an increasingly strong leadership role on resilience and drought preparedness and with the mandate at the September 2011 Nairobi Conference to coordinate the activities of Member States, and official co-chair of the FSNWG

Outcomes from the workshop should consist of a set of action for follow up from key groups, including RHPT, IAWG, FSNWG, and Horn of Africa Plan of Action.

DRAFT AGENDA

8.45- 9.00: Introduction – Gabriella/Matt

· Purpose of this round table, agenda (20mn) – Fran Equiza (Oxfam Regional Director)

9.00-10.30: Introduction & Report Presentation (World Cafe):

FACILITATOR: Maxine Clayton

- Horn of Africa Plan of Action – Jordi Renart (WFP)

- Oxfam/Save the Children’s Early Warning Late Response Report – Philippa Crosland-Taylor (Oxfam)

- IAWG Resolutions – Matt Croucher (SCF) /Steve McDowell (IFRC)

- IGAD Regional Platform – Mohammed Moussa (IGAD)

- ODI System Failure - Simon Levine (ODI)

- FSNWG Food for Thought – Astrid de Valon (FAO)

10.30-10.45: questions/comments

10.45-11.15: BREAK

11.15-12.30: Risk Management, Early Warning, Early Action and Accountability

- GROUP 1 (Risk Management)

Facilitators: Oxfam (Philippa Crosland Taylor), IGAD (Mohammed Moussa)

(i) What are the biggest impediments to an approach of risk management and what steps can we take to reduce risk aversion (i.e. failure to act on basis of predictions rather than actual crisis) for donors, governments, UN, NGOs and the ICRC movement? How do we develop a common risk management strategy?

Rapporteur: OCHA (Gabriella Waaijman)

- GROUP 2 (Early Warning, Early Action)

Facilitators: Alexandra Crosskey (independent consultant), Kenya Red Cross (IFRC to advise)

(i) How can we undertake more refined (but not prohibitively expensive) collective monitoring and ensure early warning results in early action? What new tools may be required and who should lead? How can we develop a toolbox of early response / ‘no regrets’ interventions to ensure their rapid implementation in response to crisis? What role for drought preparedness?

Rapporteur: Oxfam (Elise Ford)

- GROUP 3 (Accountability)

Facilitators: Massimo Nicoletti Altimari (ECB) and Paul O’Hagan (PFIM)

(ii) What kind of organizational changes we need to have to ensure downward accountability is streamlined across the project cycle management as it is the upward accountability? What are some practical steps necessary at National and Local levels to ensure downward accountability? How can we close the gap between system and people?

Rapporteur: IFRC (Maxine Clayton)

12.30-13.00: Report Back, Key Actions for Follow-up

13.00-14.00: LUNCH

13.45-15.00: Funding, Partnership and Understanding Vulnerability

- GROUP 1 (Funding)

Facilitators: Alastair Fernie (DFID), OCHA (name to be confirmed)

(i) Discussion: What changes in funding mechanisms could help ensure better combined humanitarian/development response, building resilience and more effective action to end drought emergencies? What concrete steps to go ahead? What strategy, who to lead and who to be involved?

Rapporteur: Save (Matt Croucher)

- GROUP 2 (Partnership)

Facilitators: James Onuor (Head of NDMA, Kenyan Government) Jarso Mokku (Northern Aid), Sanda Ojiambo (Safaricom),

(i) Discussion: In a rapidly evolving world, where the role of humanitarian community and government is changing, what partnerships (private sector, non-traditional donors, diaspora groups, etc) should we prioritise that can improve our collective action? What actions should we take to reinforce these partnerships and complement existing initiatives?

N.B. What should we do collectively? Which partnerships do certain organisations have specific added value for?

Rapporteur: Oxfam (Philippa Crosland-Taylor)

- GROUP 3 (Vulnerability, coping mechanism & livelihoods)

Facilitators: Steve McDowell (IFRC), Vanessa Tilstone (REGLAP)

(i) How do we better integrate our understanding of vulnerabilities, coping mechanisms and livelihoods into response decision-making to ensure an effective resilience-building approach? What are the gaps in our knowledge and what practical steps can we take to address this? How can we establish better links between analysis and programming?

Rapporteur: OCHA (Ben Parker)

15.00-15.30: Report Back, Key Actions for Follow-up

15.30-16.00: BREAK

16.00-17.30: Wrap-up

- Conclusion of key recommendation

- Next steps. Representative of (i) RHPT/RTE (ii) IAWG (iii)Horn of Africa Plan of Action (iv) FSNWG (v) IGAD on how outcomes relate to them and how they can contribute to taking forward.

- What does this mean for how the “system” works together more effectively in the future?

17h30: Reception

Aid agencies exercise significant financial, technical and logistical power in their mission to save lives and reduce suffering. In contrast, the disaster survivors have no formal control and often little influence making it difficult to hold these aid agencies to account. Those affected need to be key participants in design, planning, implementation and evaluation, share intervention information and provide the beneficiaries with an opportunity to give feedback to the agencies. Paul Gol,Kabul.

Learning the lessons from the humanitarian response to Haiti shouldn’t take long......

We did a great job in Haiti. Well, not bad. We – the international development community – kept thousands of people from dying. That’s a good thing to do, and it’s something that we’re pretty good at now. When was the last time that a lot of people died following (as opposed to during) a sudden disaster? Considering that Haiti was about as difficult an emergency as they get – a tsunami’s worth of death and destruction in one city, with most of the response capacity of Government, UN and NGOs right in the middle of the disaster – that’s a credit to people and organisations involved.

The problem is, keeping people from dying is pretty much what we’re good at, but we’ve made the mistake of wanting to do more than that. No, worse, we’ve convinced ourselves that we COULD and SHOULD do more than that. We imagine that we can keep people’s lives and livelihoods going, that we can give the right aid to the right people at the right time, that we can be cost-effective and appropriate and timely in our responses, that we can be sensitive to their psycho-social needs, that we can respond to their engendered needs, all the while mainstreaming HIV and whatever else besides. The truth is more mundane, as the story of the Haiti response illustrated.  

Though I haven’t been involved in any operation in Haiti myself, I have been reading a draft of the Humanitarian Practice Network’s Humanitarian Exchange Magazine  (no. 48) on Haiti, and reading a review of the humanitarian response.  This set me thinking about what we have done – and what we thought we wanted to do – in response to the earthquake.

Did we give people the help that they really needed, beyond life-saving aid?  Not really.  Months into the crisis, we ‘needed to do better at’ (meaning really ‘we hadn’t started’) listening to Haitians. After four months, a review pointed out that aid agencies needed to remember that Port-au-Prince is an urban context.  By May, we’d given 3.5 million people food aid. In a city after an earthquake, where everyone normally buys food anyway, one might think that cash was what people needed after the first few days, but actually we’d only given 17,000 people cash-for-work.

Were we supporting local initiative? Not really. The same review said that we had been ignoring what people were doing themselves and we should have been supporting them.  We ‘needed to be better at’ working with the Government – and indeed, in the sectors where this had happened, achievements were noteworthy.  It’s not hard to understand why we hadn't been listening to local people or their government: months into the relief operation, coordination meetings were still being held in English. OK, finding fluent Creole speakers in the humanitarian world is hard, but how hard could it be to find a French speaker or two?  It’s hard to escape the conclusion that our rhetoric about how we want to work isn’t really how we measure ourselves at all. Just look at how success is measured:  the food tonnage, or the cubic metres of water.  We don't say how many people we listened to and were sensitive to.  Our projects are valued by our outputs not by the impact on people’s lives, and we sometimes make the mistake of valuing ourselves in this way too.  Fair enough, the job’s hard enough keeping people alive.  So should we just stop pretending we could do more? Hopefully, most readers will feel passionately that we should be doing more and doing it well.  But what does this choice imply?

Thinking about the Haiti experience, there are perhaps two possible responses.  The obvious one, and the one we will doubtless hear many times, is that ‘we need to learn the lessons from Haiti so that we can improve our response next time’.  The problem is, it’s really not that easy to find any lessons at all from Haiti that we did not already know – and should have internalised by now in our practice.  The review points, for example, to a need to analyse context before designing responses, to build on what people are already doing for themselves, and to coordinate better – none of which are exactly new.

The most glaring lesson is actually not about any failure in the response after the earthquake, but at just how unprepared we all were beforehand for an earthquake on, er, a major earthquake fault.  But the lack of contingency planning and preparedness for very predictable crises is old news.  Haiti has taught us nothing new, it has only thrown these lessons into extreme relief (forgive the pun).  And the repetition of what we already knew came from both the positives, of which there were many – e.g. how the cluster coordination system kicked in quickly – and the negatives.

The sad truth is that all of these ‘lessons’ are the same ones we have known about and been struggling with for years. The question that we need to be examining is not ‘what do we need to get better at?’ but ‘why are we finding it so hard to get better?’

Tuesday, October 19, 2010 by By Simon Levine, Research Fellow, Humanitarian Policy Group

TEARFUND AFGHANISTAN ACCOUNTABILITY TEAM

"We at the centre of beneficiary accountability mainstreaming take this to mean how an aid agency engages with its ‘beneficiaries’and other stakeholders.This engagement aims at: Ensuring meaningful involvement and participation; Building relationships;Providing project information in a way that enhances transparency;Develop mechanisms for feedback handling and more so be accountable for the results in ways that enable learning and improvement towards the achievement of its mission. We constanly ask; How do our planning tools, reporting formats and information systems capture the quality of accountability to beneficiaries? Do they actively enable learning for programme improvement? We strongly believe that accountability leads to quality and learning and for these we commit ourselves". Beneficiary Accountability Team, Kabul, Afghanistan (Dec 2008).

13. Sphere Standards Revision

Wednesday, 25 February 2009
The Sphere Project is pleased to announce the start of the
Handbook revision process.

TIME FOR A NEW REVISION
Since the launching of its first edition in 2000, and after the revised edition in 2004, the Sphere Handbook has become one of the most widely recognized tools for improving humanitarian response, not only by NGOs but also, and increasingly, by United Nations agencies, host governments, donor governments and other actors involved in humanitarian response. The success of the Handbook reflects the fact that Sphere is responsive to the needs of people responding to disasters, and is considered a relevant and‘living’ document. For the Sphere Handbook to remain relevant to humanitarian workers and to the populations affected by conflict and calamity, Sphere needs to keep in touch with changing practices in the context of humanitarian work, as well as technical innovations. To this end, and acknowledging the significant changes that have taken place since the 2004 edition, the Sphere Board has decided that the Sphere Project Handbook – Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response – should be revised. The new edition is planned to be published late 2010.

PURPOSE OF THE REVISION
The purpose of the revision process is not to change the qualitative standards, nor to overhaul the Handbook. Rather, it is to update the qualitative and quantitative indicators and guidance notes as needed, enhance linkages between sectors, iron out inconsistencies, faults and important omissions from the 2004 edition. Latest developments in the sector are also to be taken into consideration, such as issues around climate change, disaster risk reduction, protection, the Humanitarian Reform process and the cluster approach, among others.

For further information, please read:
• Revision proposal 2
• Compilation of the feedback about the revision of the Sphere Handbook
• Sphere handbook revision scoping - Compilation of responses

PROCESS & FOCAL POINTS
Following the successful precedent set by earlier revisions, this process will also be broadly consultative, and based on establishing consensus for the changes that will be made. Through a robust and widespread process of engagement among practitioners in each sector, each of the five chapters and the Cross Cutting issues of the current Handbook will be revised by volunteer focal “working groups” (made up of up to ten representatives consisting of key practitioners, researchers, readers/writers), as well as a peer group, and led by a focal point. In addition, the Humanitarian Charter will be reviewed and revised as felt appropriate.

The overall revision process will be managed by a Sphere Project Revision Coordinator. Working closely with the focal points and other members of the Sphere office team, the Coordinator will be responsible for reviewing and finalising the text, for approval by the Sphere Board..
For further information, read:
• Revision Focal Points list


TIMELINE – Key dates
1. Revision Preparatory work March-April 2009
Each Focal Point is expected to prepare an initial preparatory report including:
1. List of the working and peer groups members.
2. Presentation of the latest developments related to the topic since the last edition based on evidence-based research and reports from the field and review of any other standards that may have been developed.
3. Consolidation and analysis of the feedback received from the working group.
4. Major suggestions and recommendations for the new edition.
5. Plan for the revision including the global/regional/local consultation that you intend to have and a simple budget.

For further information, read:
• Revision preparation information

2. First revision Workshop 11-13 May 2009, Geneva
The objective of this launch workshop is to bring ALL focal points together in addition to the handbook editor, project team, and representation from the Sphere Board. During the workshop, each focal point will present the initial findings and recommendations resulted from the preparatory work. We will agree also on the main milestones of the revision and how to coordinate the work of the focal points to ensure inter-sectoral linkages and the appropriate integration of Cross-cutting issues. We will also agree on how to communicate between the Revision coordinator and the different focal points. The handbook editor will provide guidelines and recommendations to facilitate the final editing of the handbook.

3. Mid term workshop 28-30 September 2009 (location to be decided)
The objective of this workshop is to present an outline of the chapter/topic, with an indication of a) proposed changes in structure and content and b) overlap or shared issues that require joint discussions, for example the cross cuttings issues, the evolving common standards and linkages with the technical chapters and emerging issues that need more thoughts. Gaps, overlaps and conflicts are to be identified and resolved.

4. Final workshop 13-15 January 2010 (location to be decided)
The main bulk of the field consultations should occur between May and December 2009 leading to the elaboration of a first draft which will be presented and discussed during this workshop. A first complete draft is expected to be submitted before the workshop in December 2009. The draft should present a consolidation and an analysis of the consultations with the working group and at the filed level. Cross-cutting issues focal points are expected to provide their input in this first draft as well.

5. Final draft ready by end March 2010
The final draft should be submitted to the revision coordinator before the end of March 2010 revised based on the feedback of the January 2010 workshop and through a wide Peer Review across the sector. The final draft will then be handed over for the editorial process with the close involvement of the focal points.

HOW TO GET INVOLVED
Comments are encouraged from national and international NGOs, UN agencies, donor, governments especially those where disaster response frequently takes place, academic institutions and other humanitarian actors. To make sure that your and and/or your agency’s experience, insights and technical expertise inform the Sphere handbook revision, please:
1. Tell us directly what do you think by filling the online handbook revision feedback form, or
2. Get directly in touch with the Focal Points to provide them with your feedback, suggestions and recommendations or to express your interest to be part of the working or peer review groups. The Focal Points (listed here) come from NGOs and UN agencies that have generously donated staff resources. In addition to their regular work with their respective agencies, they are responsible for managing the revision process, or
3. Run a separate local/regional or community level consultation meeting.
Find here some guiding questions to help you run those meetings.

For more information about the process, please write to Aninia Nadig,
Sphere Materials Senior Officer, the Sphere Project, email:

KEY DOCUMENTS
• 1. Revision preparation information
• 2. Revision Focal Points list
• 3. Revision Guidelines
• 4. Revision Proposal
• 5. Compilation of the feedback about the revision of the Sphere Handbook
• 6. Sphere handbook revision scoping - Compilation of responses
• 7. Handbook Revision flyer

Terms of Reference
• ToR for Focal Points
• ToR for common standards focal points 5
• ToR for facilitator revision meetings

12. “How to re-introduce the agency to the local communities”

By Paul Gol

Tearfund UK has been supporting relief, development and capacity building work in
Sudan for over 30 years, working with local partner organizations and, since 1998,
implementing an operational emergency program through its Disaster Management
Team (DMT). Tearfund’s general intervention strategy has been to reduce morbidity
and mortality in targeted populations of Northern Bahr el Ghazal and Upper Nile
(Shilluk Kingdom and Mobile Nutrition Response locations).

Tearfund is verified compliant with the “People in Aid Code of Best Practice in the
management and support of Aid Personnel” and it is a signatory of the “Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief”.

Tearfund is committed to implementing Humanitarian Accountability Principles and
Standards across all its emergency programmes. This commitment seeks to;
Tearfund UK Disaster Management Team (DMT) is a certified member of HAP International
and is therefore committed to implementing Humanitarian Accountability Principles, HAP1 2007 Standards and Quality Management across all its emergency programmes.

This commitment seeks to;
o Improve the way Tearfund engages with the local communities in decisions
that affect them by striving to enhance participation of affected populations in
order to seek informed consent.
o Share information with beneficiaries in order to promote and improve
transparency through information provision.
o Provide beneficiaries with channels through which concerns can be raised.
There is an ethical commitment to listen, monitor and respond to beneficiary
concerns.
o Ensure that members of staff are provided with a thorough understanding of
Humanitarian Accountability Principles and standards.

Public information sharing
It is Friday the 2nd May 2008 and the time is 9:26 am, the venue is Tearfund Motot Feeding
Centre. A large crowd of women with children either carried in the traditional baby carrier or
walking, expectant mothers and young girls are gathered waiting patiently for the Friday
feeding procedures to begin. Lactating mothers are busy feeding their babies in the last
minute rush before they are called upon to form a queue. The nutrition staff evidently
overwhelmed by the crowd that keeps gathering are seen rushing about to make sure that
things are in place before the actual feeding begins.

At 9:30am Irene, the Nutritionist, motions to the crowd to gather on one side of the compound
in an apparent attempt to hold a public meeting. Five minutes later the large crowd is silent
and Irene through an interpreter informs the now attentive gathering that she would wish to
talk to them first on an important matter. She begins by asking if they understood Tearfund. A
woman responds by saying. “I really don’t know what Tearfund is apart from seeing you
people feeding children and expectant mothers and running the local clinic”. One woman
after another repeats the same and Irene now surprised realises that Tearfund’s four year
presence in Motot had not translated into knowledge about the agency. With this realisation she begins from basics by saying that Tearfund is a Christian humanitarian agency registered in the United Kingdom and operating in many countries of the world including Sudan. She added that Tearfund responds to disaster by implementing emergency programmes. The Motot programme covered Uror county and focused on nutrition feeding for the under five years malnourished children, lactating mothers, primary health care and community health education and promotion. She further emphasised the need for them as the programme beneficiaries or their representatives to give feedback to Tearfund and that it was their right to raise concerns or complaints to enable Tearfund to address them and for improvement in the service. She said that no one would be victimised for raising complaints.

In response the women appreciated the work of Tearfund and particularly the assistance in the
drilling of boreholes and the local Primary Health Care Unit. They said that the two facilities
had greatly reduced the burden on women. Irene informed them that during the next meeting she would talk about their rights and entitlements, Tearfund staff and complaints handling mechanism.

Key Learning Points
~Humanitarian agencies, Tearfund included, make assumptions that they are known by the
community.
~Beneficiaries desire to know more about us (Tearfund) what we stand for and what we
intend to do and above all how we intend to do it, what it is that is community stake.
~When we talk about ourselves openly, communities are able to pick our perception of
ourselves and as a result and are likely to trust us more and thereby endeavour to build better
working relationship with us (Tearfund).

For further information contact:
Paul Gol
Dmt-afghan-ao@tearfund.org or paulgol@socialwork.net

11. Notes on Feedback Handling Mechanism

By Paul Gol
March 2008.

What?
The Feedback Handling and Response procedures provide step by step on what can be done in different circumstances when stakeholders raise complaints or concerns about Tearfund staff or about Tearfund’s humanitarian action. They clarify roles and channels of communication available in such circumstances. Documentation of concerns is also important to ensure reference and full implementation.

Why?
The purpose of this procedure is to provide a clear, consistent and accessible means of addressing concerns about staff and the services provided by Tearfund. These procedures ensure prompt response to concerns raised. They would also facilitate compliance with prescribed standards and rights of beneficiaries and to improve on programme performance.

Complainants for example may not come forward unless they trust the agency to an extent that it will take the issue seriously and protect him/her from potential reprisal. The agency members of staff need to create an environment, culture and related systems that promote trust among both staff and between the staff and the local community.

The procedures for giving feedback or raising concerns need to be accessible to all. Language, age, gender, physical ability, faith, level of literacy, culture or job role should not hinder access to the mechanisms. For those women and children who have an impairment or disability it is essential that they have a means of being heard and that lack of mobility or verbal communication does not exclude them.

Mechanisms such as suggestion boxes should be put in place through wide consultation so that anonymous concerns can be made. In addition other measures need to be developed so that those who are not literate can also raise concerns, e.g. Establishing a system of beneficiary advocates.

Note
It is particularly important that, where the complainant is a beneficiary, the staff member or the accountability focal point receiving the complaint considers whether the beneficiary has immediate needs requiring attention.

Recording of information
Information (concerns or feedback) that is referred to via this mechanism needs to be as clear as possible. It may be used in subsequent disciplinary actions against a staff or for programme improvement and adjustments hence the need to make a detailed record, including:
~The nature of the concern or feedback.
~A description of events (If applicable).
~An accurate account of what was said by the stakeholder in his/her own words.
~Any observations made by staff member or designated Beneficiary Accountability focal point receiving the concern of feedback.
~Time, location and dates given.
~Whether any one else knows or has been given the information or are affected by the concern.

Procedures for making/receiving a concern or feedback.
It is the responsibility of the staff member, designated Beneficiary Accountability focal point or the Beneficiary Reference Group to solicit for concerns and feedback from stakeholders and to report via the process outlined in the procedures proposed as follows:

1. The main point of contact should a member of BRG, local community structure or a designated Beneficiary Accountability (BA) focal point at the community level.

2. If the stakeholder genuinely believes that s/he would be victimised or s/he has no confidence in the above to respond appropriately to the concern, then the concern should be raised directly with the team leader (Area Co-ordinator) or designated project Accountability focal point at the field level.

3. In exceptional circumstances, the complaint could also be made to the shurah (Local Community Council) or the Community Development council if the beneficiary or complainant genuinely believes that raising the matter directly with the agency representatives would not be effective, or could result in victimization, or if s/he has already disclosed the matter to the agency but no effective action has been taken.

4. It is good practice that the concern should be recorded. This can be in a log book and should be signed and dated. The staff or BA designated focal point must ensure that the individual who raises a concern is informed of the Tearfund’s policy on confidentiality and the right to speak out and to receive feedback.

5. Once a concern is made to BRG member or BA focal point who receives the information he/she should immediately report it to Accountability Focal Point or the Area Co-ordinator.

6. Once a concern is received the Area Co-ordinator or his/her appointee will consider the appropriate steps to take, including the initiation of preliminary inquiry or provide a response immediately.

7. Any inquiry that is undertaken must be completed and findings shared. In the event that a concern does not warrant a full investigation, the project may nonetheless be asked to take a number of steps to address concerns in other ways, (for example, addressing matters of poor practice via training or a change in procedures).

8. Finally the stakeholder must be given feedback at a maximum two weeks from the date the complaint was lodged.


For further information contact:
Paul Gol, Accountability Officer,
E-mail:dmt-afghan-ao@tearfund.org