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Chad: Mixed Verdicts On Coordination of Massive Relief Effort
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UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
ANALYSIS
23 January 2008
Posted to the web 23 January 2008
Ndjamena
It is a question almost as old as the aid industry itself: How to avoid waste and inefficiency when dozens of humanitarian agencies are working alongside each other in a rapidly evolving emergency?
Two years ago the key humanitarian policy decision making body, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, endorsed the cluster approach, the UN's answer to the problem.
Under the scheme, emergency relief organisations were grouped into 11 sectors like food, shelter, water, protection and sanitation.
Since clusters were introduced in Chad six months ago, the country's massive relief operations have become a key test for the new approach.
A dozen UN agencies and more than 50 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from around the world work there in a massive relief effort to get aid to 285,000 refugees in 16 camps in the south and east of the vast country and 180,000 displaced Chadians caught up in a complicated armed rebellion against the government and inter-communal fighting.
Piling on pressure for aid agencies in Chad to perform at their best, donors poured in almost US$300 million of the money for food, shelter materials, water, education and basic health services aid agencies had collectively asked for, in 2007.
Chad's humanitarian appeal for 2007 was 97 percent funded, higher than any other humanitarian appeal the UN launched that year.
Top level
The most senior humanitarian official in the country, Kingsley Amaning, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator, said that with funds flowing and donor pressure on, the cluster approach helps him because he knows where to point the finger when things go wrong.
"The new approach marks a change because it makes one aid organisation the 'cluster lead' for a given sector," he said. "Before when there were problems, no one was responsible. Now when there is a complaint I can say 'speak to the cluster lead' because they are the ones who are responsible."
Eliane Duthoit, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Chad said the reforms have formalised projects which were previously ad hoc or unstructured.
"I always felt in the past that people were not compelled to look at their work within a global structure for the sector and to follow it," she said.
"Now, the clusters are more binding. If you're working in a sector and you want to get funds for your work, you need to take part in the design of the strategy; then you are part of the strategy and you have to follow it."
Technical level
Enthusiasm for that structured approach also runs strong at the technical level.
At the next level down in the aid agency chain of command, technical managers working out of the relief hub Abeche, in the remote east of the country, closer to the site of most of the refugee camps and displaced people in the country, also expressed satisfaction.
"I don't think anyone can deny that cooperation between technical coordinators has improved," said Nicholas Palanque, country director for CARE International in Chad.
Technical coordinators in Abeche said they have become better at working out which among them is best equipped to provide a particular service and on agreeing how to adapt international standards of assistance to conditions on the ground.
For example, implementing the international standard of how many litres of water a person should get a day, known as the Sphere standard, is not feasible in eastern Chad, so aid agencies had to agree a new standard among themselves to make sure they were consistent in their aid deliveries across the region.
"Organisations participating in the water and sanitation cluster recognised this issue and agreed to adapt the standards to local constraints," said Thomas Merkelbach, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Chad.
Bottom up?
Where the new approach gets less praise is for its direct impact on the ground and among the NGOs which deliver the aid the UN coordinates.
Jef Imans, head of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Chad, is one of the approach's most outspoken critics.
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He dismissed the approach as being "first and foremost about politics and money", and said that clusters have not always had a positive impact on operations.
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