1.  INTRODUCTION

  1.1  CARE International is a global humanitarian organisation working with over 45 million people in 70 of the world's poorest countries. This document sets out CARE International UK's submission to the International Development Select Committee's (IDSC) inquiry on "Humanitarian response to natural disasters".

  1.2  CARE welcomes this inquiry's holistic scope across both humanitarian and development interventions, and its attention to slow on-set crises. These issues constitute a significant gap in the current UN reform process, which has placed more emphasis on UN system coordination in rapid emergency response. Furthermore, it is clear that chronic poverty and vulnerability—particularly in so-called "fragile state" contexts—remain major obstacles to the achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Towards that end, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) budget is projected to increase substantially in the coming years and donors, including the UK, have committed to scaling-up basic service delivery in so-called "difficult environments" (ie contexts of largely humanitarian aid modality). This inquiry thus comes at a critical juncture not only in terms of the humanitarian system reforms championed by the UN and DFID, but also in the wider context of efforts to achieve the MDGs.

  1.3  CARE staff involved in humanitarian response recognise and welcome the UK's leadership role in the UN humanitarian reform process. However, concerns have also been expressed about the management of the UN process to-date, which has been highly top-down. Civil society, including both local and international NGOs involved in humanitarian action, have been treated largely as an after-thought. As NGOs are responsible for a significant proportion of humanitarian programmes, this failure to engage civil society effectively constitutes a serious flaw in the process.

  CARE will not address the full range of issues raised by the UN humanitarian reform agenda in this submission, but will focus on the following themes:

—  Chronic poverty, vulnerability and mainstream development programmes.

—  Military roles in natural disaster response.

2.  CHRONIC POVERTY, LIVELIHOODS AND HUMANITARIAN RESPONSE

2.1  Development—Humanitarian linkages

  Recent crises in sub-Saharan Africa have demonstrated that the international aid system is failing to adequately address problems of chronic poverty and vulnerability that characterise many slow on-set crises. DFID's commitment to invest in earlier responses to reduce risk and extreme vulnerability is thus welcome. However, CARE is concerned that this will apply only to humanitarian assistance, when it should be a consideration across all development aid. Both DFID and its NGO partners still need to clarify the optimal linkages in terms of policy, funding and practice between humanitarian assistance, support to livelihoods, social protection and development programming.

  Doubtless, DFID's challenges are similar to those faced by multi-mandate agencies like CARE, which seek to promote a holistic approach to emergencies across development programmes. Many DFID country offices appear focused on development programming and it is unclear whether the optimal balance has been struck in terms of human and other resources allocated for humanitarian preparedness or response. Our experience in some countries vulnerable to food security-related crises, such as Mali and Niger, also suggests that present DFID staff capacity is over-stretched relative to other donors. In the absence of adequate global early warning systems, a commitment to future investment in early warning does not compensate for having insufficient experts "on the ground".

2.2  Social and political dimensions of vulnerability to natural disasters

  Chronic poverty makes people more vulnerable to natural disasters. To address this, CARE believes greater attention must be paid to social and political marginalisation. A particular example is provided by pastoralist communities in Africa whose habitats are increasingly the locations of crisis (Darfur, East Africa, Niger). Rarely, if at all, are these "natural" disasters, but rather a consequence of their interests being perceived to run counter to national interests. Such structurally marginalised groups are too frequently peripheral to the thinking of key actors, including the donor community, except when the humanitarian imperative demands a response.

Pastoralists in the Horn of Africa, 2006

  The current crisis unfolding in parts of the Horn of Africa, affected by long-term drought, illustrates a number of the challenges in terms of the interaction between development work and humanitarian response. It would appear that the early warning systems in this part of the world at least are now fairly strong. However, despite the evidence for a potential crisis being flagged, it appears that the timeliness and appropriateness of the response was, in several important respects, deficient.

  There has been a continuing focus on provision of aid, primarily food aid, to the affected human populations. While there have been some problems in terms of adequate and appropriate supply, the pipeline has been well supplied in general. Despite this form of assistance being important, there is a strong case for arguing that it was prioritized to the exclusion of other complementary forms of assistance, several of which would have been better attuned to addressing the longer term effects of the crisis. The main early victims of this crisis have been livestock—estimates of 80% total losses in some areas—and given the pastoral mode of production this means that livelihoods will be hard hit with long-term implications for assistance in the region.

  The gravity of the losses—the full extent of which remains to be seen—could have been mitigated if other forms of assistance had been prioritized earlier, based on an understanding of the particular technical and socio-economic needs in the given context. Options included: animal health assistance; destocking; provision of fodder and explicit calculation of the water needs of livestock. CARE International has reverted to several of these forms of response in the region, particularly within its Pastoral Livelihoods Initiative in Ethiopia and to some extent within its work in North East Kenya. Donors have been less prepared to release funds for livelihoods or livestock related interventions. The UN CERF, which was mobilised for this emergency, did make provision for non-food work in its design phase, but ultimately concentrated release of funds around the World Food Programme's response.

  Another important and inadequately addressed aspect of the crisis in the Horn is the social and political marginalisation of the affected populations. Natural disasters in Africa often take place in pastoralist zones as demonstrated by recent experience in Niger, Sudan and now the Horn. Of course the fragile ecology of these regions makes them susceptible to crisis, but historically these crises have been cyclical and local populations had mechanisms to cope with even acute crises. It appears that their ability to cope is diminishing and there is an unprecedented move out of pastoralism. This is in large part is due to policies and practices which are unfriendly to pastoralist interests. Agricultural and other interests are prioritized over pastoralists, even when these make bad economic or environmental sense. There has also been a long-standing push to sedentarize and therefore "modernise" pastoralists.

  In Tanzania and Kenya, for example, the Maasai have for decades seen themselves squeezed off their land as their respective governments prioritize the interests of the powerful international conservation lobby. In various parts of Sudan, as elsewhere in the region, the World Bank and bilateral donors have promoted commercial agriculture in pastoralist areas. These programmes have deprived the indigenous population of key resources that have diminished their coping strategies and often resulted in heavily subsidised, unsustainable or defunct programmes. Such approaches frequently bring about further decline through greater impoverishment, environmental degradation and precipitating conflict, further fuelling the potential for future crisis.

  This marginalisation is due in part to ignorance, and in part to unfounded hostility to this mode of production. Inappropriate humanitarian responses can be seen as a continuation of this historic trend. There is a need to better understand the man-made dynamics which contribute to worsening the effects of drought in these areas. Donors can then support long-term efforts to reduce the potential for crisis before, during and after they occur. An important part of this strategy should be creating greater political space and hence understanding of pastoralists and their needs and interests locally, nationally and internationally.

2.3  Slow on-set crises and triggers for humanitarian response

  DFID's current triggers for supporting a humanitarian response to slow on-set crises are unclear. At present, a focus on developmental and social protection approaches appears to have clouded the judgement and capacity to respond to crisis.

  CARE's operational experience suggests that this apparent reluctance is largely driven by the substantial uncertainty facing all agencies dealing with humanitarian action, including: uncertain timeframes for operational planning and management; changes in human resources; adaptation, suspension or closure of existing programmes; new financial needs combined with unknown fundraising outcomes; and uncertainty regarding the donor willingness to fund an appropriate response. It is important that policy-makers, including DFID, understand how these "uncertainty" factors confront both organisations and individuals involved in humanitarian response. Donor policy and funding modalities should thus support operational agencies to better manage these uncertainties by supporting the necessary financial, contractual and organisational flexibility and surge capacity in trusted operational agencies.

  At present, several factors combine to suggest that DFID could review its levels and modalities for NGO humanitarian funding. The British Government has committed itself to significant increases in ODA, and DFID officials recognise the need for a considerable scaling-up of basic service delivery programmes in protracted crises. Many of these contexts qualify as so-called "fragile states" and present the greatest challenges in terms of achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals. DFID's promotion of UN humanitarian reform, and specifically CERF reform, suggests that a large proportion of additional UK ODA resources will be channelled through the UN. However, DFID should also reflect on how its additional resources can build the surge capacity and emergency reserve available to trusted NGO partners, who deliver the majority of on-the-ground implementation. A parallel could be drawn with the significant core funding available under DFID PPA arrangements for CARE Zambia to develop innovative social protection programmes with an objective of pioneering approaches that can later be adopted and rolled-out by Government agencies. Bolstering such support to NGOs would parallel DFID's extensive support to UN agencies like the World Food Programme (WFP) to develop their information management, analytical and response capacity.

  Both quantity and flexibility of funding are crucial constraints. In the case of predictable disasters where responses have a larger lead time, funding should be made available as early as possible—avian flu currently providing a current case in point. But flexibility in funding mechanisms is also important. While humanitarian and development issues are no longer conceptualised in terms of a continuum, it remains true that funding is largely structured along binary lines. DFID's commitment to allocate a percentage of humanitarian funding for disaster risk reduction (DRR) is potentially helpful in this regard. However, DFID development funding could also incorporate DRR components more explicitly in programmes to help ease them into an emergency footing at the first sign of deteriorating livelihoods. This also depends on the definitions of risk and vulnerabilities applied. Many development programmes could be framed as reducing vulnerability, but these may not be specific to disaster risk per-se.

Flexible Funding Models: US "Food For Peace" Funding

  The US "Food For Peace" (FFP) mechanism could provide a useful model of flexible funding. Funding is divided into two categories: C-SAFE, which is emergency funding; and C-FARM which focuses on rehabilitation and mitigation. FFP holds aside a funding allocation which can be topped up if a situation turns out worse than expected, for example if rainfall stops early. Similarly, the mechanism allows agencies to divert funds from development (C-FARM) activities towards emergency (C-SAFE) activities if required by the situation.

  Increased levels of contingency funding should be made available in areas that are highly prone to disaster risk. This funding should provide for the following:

—  Vulnerability analysis at both regional and community-specific levels.

—  Development of appropriate disaster preparedness and mitigation programmes, livelihood protection programmes to run alongside more traditional livelihood promotion activities.

—  Contingency funding through mechanisms at project, programme and Government level to facilitate effective responses in the early stages of hazard impact.

  In slow on-set emergencies characterised by food insecurity, the humanitarian response of major donor institutions continues to be food aid as an automatic default option. This is not always appropriate. The 2003 food crisis in Southern Africa provides an example of a food security crisis precipitated by factors other than low level of rainfall, yet the response was primarily food aid. DFID and other donors could support a shift to more appropriate responses, for example by providing additional funding for local food procurement. This would also help cushion NGOs from the financial impact of their shifting away from food aid-centred approaches, which remain the mainstay of other major donors and UN agencies.

  In many instances, another factor in delayed response is the need for Government consensus. In 2005, CARE led a multi-agency crop assessment in Zambia which was suppressed because it revealed a bleaker picture than the government was prepared to accept. Official donor agencies like DFID need to support effective joint approaches and use their influence to support convergence in governmental and NGO analysis of the situation.

Social protection in Ethiopia: Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP)

  In Ethiopia, CARE is part of the Government Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), which receives £52 million funding from DFID. The PSNP attempts to provide a "productive safety net" to respond to the needs of food insecure communities through "guaranteed and timely transfers of resources". Under PSNP, CARE implements the HIBRET programme in six "woredas" (districts) with four major objectives: "Building Community Assets"; "Protecting Household (HH) Assets"; "Diversifying and Expanding HH Assets" and "Capacity Building of Government and Community Counterparts". Food transfers are primarily planned for lean times when beneficiaries experience food shortage, mostly in periods when crops have not yet been harvested. Combined with longer-term asset protection and development programmes, this offers those households a bridge to address their immediate needs until the next harvest. "Diversifying and Expanding HH Assets" concentrates on capacitating households, both in terms of skills and providing income-generating assets such as poultry, livestock, etc. Activities under the "Capacity Building of Government and Community Counterparts" objective attempt to capacitate government and community counterparts to develop the support structures to enable these communities to "graduate" towards becoming truly self-reliant.

  One fundamental issue with the PSNP is the lack of clarity over its conception of the "graduation" to self-reliance. According to the Programme Implementation Manual (PIM), the Government guidelines on PSNP implementation, chronic food insecure HHs are expected to graduate in the next three to five years. What exactly this "graduation" means is not clearly articulated. There is a risk that HHs will be assumed to have automatically "graduated" after a three year timeframe if they have not experienced food insecurity and thus risk losing continued support. In such a scenario, in the case of further acute stress or shock, these HHs could then become "acutely food insecure", shifting from the social safety-net programme to the "emergency" programme.

  CARE Ethiopia is currently leading a consortium to research and develop recommendations on graduation. At present, preliminary findings from this process suggest at least two levels of graduation. The first is a "graduation to food security" in which HHs produce or able to purchase sufficient food for their needs and structures in place to do so when donor assistance is absent. The second graduation constitutes of a level of "self resiliency" in which HHs generate adequate revenue to not only feed their families, but also to fulfil other needs, such as education and medical care. This level also would also reflect a level of social and political empowerment within the community and at national level, strengthening the social protection afforded to these HHs.

2.4  Vulnerability and Needs Analysis

  The first stage towards improving our response to chronic vulnerability is better poverty analysis. The "chronically poor" or "severely affected" figures used to trigger many humanitarian responses are frequently insufficient. Such information needs to be further disaggregated. CARE Zambia has been able to achieve this through the support from a DFID PPA, which permits analysis of those who are starving, incapacitated, and capacitated ("vulnerable but viable"). There is also a need to collect on-going data on vulnerability to capture lead indicators—not simply when emergencies strike. In Zambia, for example, the Vulnerability Assessment Committees (VACS) are conducted only in the run-up to what is considered an emergency and thus provide a skewed snapshot of the longer-term vulnerability situation.

  Better analysis enables better and earlier response. For example, as a result of the above analysis in Zambia, CARE has made the distribution of high energy protein supplements (HEPS) part of the response to the chronic food insecurity situation, particularly for household affected by HIV/AIDS. HEPS distributions create a market for a range of food inputs and thus act as an incentive for farmers to produce them. This strategy addresses the immediate food needs of the most vulnerable households while simultaneously increasing the livelihood opportunities for households that possess higher levels of productive and other human assets (ie land, agricultural inputs, labour). This programme thus reflects shared development and humanitarian outcomes.

  This example notwithstanding, the current situation is the tendency to focus on immediate needs rather than addressing potential future risks and vulnerabilities generated in crisis. For example, donors, including DFID, were unwilling to fund measures in the Bolivia floods response to stop vulnerable women and children from being further exploited as a result of their reduced livelihood options following the floods.

3.  MILITARY ROLES IN NATURAL DISASTER RESPONSE

3.1  Clarification of policy framework

  The mandates and competencies of military and humanitarian organisations are different and must not be confused. However, under certain exceptional circumstances, CARE believes that military forces can play a legitimate "last resort" supporting role in relief operations. In terms of natural disasters, the Oslo guidelines provide the standard humanitarian reference framework for demarcating legitimate military roles. [4]These are defined in terms of activities beyond the capabilities of civilian agencies and in environments that are inaccessible to civilian agencies due to safety and security concerns or other significant constraints. Judgements on the appropriateness of military engagement will be context-specific. However, their role should, in general, be delimited to one of support to civilian-led assistance strategies. This support should also be limited to activities that are necessary to enable life-saving assistance. Priority should be placed on a civilian leadership for humanitarian response and enabling a swift transition from military to civilian implementation of relief operations.

  As recently demonstrated in Darfur and Pakistan, international militaries are frequently called on to provide capabilities (eg airlift) or direct implementation (eg transport route clearance) which could be equally provided by civilian agencies, if those agencies were provided with adequate funding in terms of both surge capacity and operational response. CARE recommends that the IDSC further investigate the nature of the military contribution to relief in such contexts to clarify its precise nature, contribution to relief operations, and assess the potential for alternative civilian options (see text below).

  Recent experience in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Indonesia also illustrates that international military involvement in natural disaster response frequently occurs in contexts of violent conflict or political instability. As a consequence, the military role in disaster response needs to be clearly delineated with attention to its consequences for humanitarian space and the wider political and conflict dynamics. This analysis should consider implications for both the local operational space and the wider national, regional and international context. Experience demonstrates that decisions to pursue military involvement in natural disaster response will generally reflect a combination of humanitarian and political-strategic objectives. On these grounds, CARE advocates that all military involvement in support to humanitarian operations should thus be described in terms of "relief", not "humanitarian", operations by policy-makers and military spokespeople. It is also essential that any interaction between humanitarian and military actors is on the invitation of local civilian authorities, humanitarian agencies and beneficiary communities, and is not imposed. Inappropriate interaction or the perception of blurred boundaries between humanitarian and military actors can undermine humanitarian agencies' security and acceptance among local populations in crisis-affected countries, both over the immediate term and longer-term horizons.

  CARE advocates that the British Government adopts a clear policy framework to delineate the military's role in assistance-related activities in both conflict and natural disaster-related emergency contexts. Such a policy framework should be based on the existing best practice and guidelines identified under the UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), in particular the Oslo Guidelines on the "Use of Military and Civil Defence Assets in Disaster Response" (1994); the IASC reference paper on the "Civil-Military Relationship in Complex Emergencies" (2004); and the "Guidelines on the Use of Military and Civil Defence Assets to Support United Nations Humanitarian Activities in Complex Emergencies" (2003).

Role of local and international military forces in the Pakistan earthquake response

  In Pakistan, CARE has adopted a "coordination, rather than de-facto co-operation" approach to relations with the military.

  CARE's participation in daily coordination meetings provided our primary interface with the Pakistan military. From the start of the emergency, the Pakistan military sought to assume control of the relief effort from local civilian authorities. In particular during the early stages, considerable pressure was exerted from the military to conduct centralised distribution of relief. CARE resisted this pressure and chose to deliver supplies directly to villages in most cases. This decision in part reflected an agreement between various agencies operating in the same valley as CARE on the division of labour between NGOs, with CARE taking on assistance to higher altitude villages. CARE also used a community-mobilisation approach to humanitarian response, as opposed to the more top-down approach adopted by the military and some NGOs.

  The Pakistan military has attempted to impose military escorts on CARE response teams and other NGO programmes. CARE strongly resisted this pressure and, for the most part, did not take escorts or make use of military flights. The exceptions were relatively few and limited to scenarios in which UN flights were unavailable. In these cases, CARE managers decided that the humanitarian imperative prioritised a fast response, and hence permitted our delivery of key supplies with the use of military transport (eg helicopters). While some agencies proved more willing to compromise on these issues, most NGOs reflected the CARE approach and sought to maintain their distance from the military. Unlike other agencies, CARE did not co-locate its operational bases with the military.

  In terms of the international military's role, CARE International UK is currently in discussion with the CARE Pakistan Country Office and the UK-based "NGO-Military Contact Group" network to explore the potential for an independent evaluation of their contribution in Pakistan. Besides the use of NATO helicopters to deliver assistance to higher altitudes during the initial phases, CARE had no interaction with the NATO NRF. Feedback from our Country Office suggests that the NATO deployment was able to compensate for those tasks in which the Pakistan military and UN were under-resourced during the initial response (ie. transport and logistics). At this time, the capacity and efficiency of NATO capabilities exceeded that provided by the UN.

  As outlined above, CARE believes that the IDSC inquiry should conduct careful research into the international military role in natural disaster response, as exemplified in Pakistan and elsewhere. Such research should include a comparative analysis across different actors, civilian and military, in order to assess the respective capacities, constraints, comparative advantages and wider, longer-term consequences of different actors' involvement in natural disaster response. In evaluating the added value of different actors, such an inquiry should also explore the full range of alternative options.

May 2006