Humanitarian Assistance: The role of IGOs and IOs

This is a summary and a brief reflection on humanitarian assistance coordination efforts carried out by international government organizations and international organizations. According to the website of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the objective of this organization is to ensure a coherent response to emergencies. OCHA staff is supposed to do so by mobilizing and coordinating efforts, advocating rights, promoting preparedness, and facilitating sustainable solutions. In terms of budget, OCHA had US$ 242 million for its operations in 2011; however, 70% of this amount was directed to staff costs. Voluntary contributions from States and private donors comprise this budget. The total budget of OCHA represents 0.6% of UN regular budget. Since 2002, OCHA’s budget has quadrupled but allocation has remained the same -- geographically and within the organization. In addition to financial contributions, a pool of countries also offers political and technical support. Coordinating different stakeholders is the main challenge of OCHA. Donors usually earmark resources, aid agencies oftentimes are not concerned about the costs of coordination, host authorities operate under hidden agenda, and the public pressure for direct alleviation of suffering (Sommers, 2000). Other inherent challenges related to the coordination of humanitarian assistance are: reducing the weight of interpersonal relationships between international organizations’ decision-making processes, centralizing or decentralizing strategic decisions, channeling funding to NGOs, defining who creates and controls information, dealing with the assumption that UN agencies and international NGOs -- not donor and national governments -- should take the lead on coordination, resolving the dispute over funding, managing the power of donor, deciding on whether to marginalize or involve host governments, and creating a long-term reconstruction plan (Sommers, 2000). To address these challenges, it is required a type of command-and-control authority and the establishment of working relationships with national authorities (Sommers, 2000). A logical question to ask regarding OCHA’s operations is the relation between budget allocation and OCHA mission. Humanitarian assistants do need money to finance operations; however, it is argued whether budget should be reallocated from response to preparedness, whether most of budget actually reaches its clients, and whether political and technical support are more necessary than money during the disaster cycle. Other two issues that OCHA has to deal with are related to its ability and capacity to coordinate different interests so that humanitarian assistance is effectively delivered and to keep open the channels of communication with host governments during humanitarian crises. Assuming that humanitarian crises are expected to increase over the next decade due to climate change and intra- and inter-state political instability, OCHA staff and international organizations have to manage wisely their limited resources and develop a relationship with unstable governments. If OCHA finds itself not able to deliver long-term solutions to donors and host nations, the own existence of the organization becomes questionable. Reference Sommers, M. “The Dynamics of Coordination”. Occasional Paper #40. Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, and the Humanitarianism and War Project, Tufts University, 2000.