Inter-Agency Real Time Evaluation of the Response to Cyclone Nargis

virtually all communities in the worst-affected areas was that they “have nothing to do” and a desirefor livelihood support in the form of agriculture or fishing inputs, or capital to (re)start businesses.Time constraints precluded detailed investigations into the CERF or Flash Appeal. From the handfulof interviews with UN and INGO staff where these issues were raised it was clear that more remainsto be done in improving transparency and consultation and in educating NGOs regarding CERF andFlash Appeal processes and objectives. For example, there was still confusion amongst some seniorINGO staff about the difference between the CERF and a Flash Appeal.3.3.1 Funding RecommendationR.3. Donors should make available adequate funding for livelihood activities for the response toCyclone Nargis and for appropriate international components of a national DRR strategy.3.4 ClustersBased on interviews and document review, clusters in Yangon were seen as useful in settingdirection, mobilizing resources and, particularly in the case of national staff, perceived as a usefulcapacity building forum. “Predictability” played out in various ways. A pre-existing in-countryIASC established the previous year helped ensure that clusters were established in Yangon almostimmediately after the cyclone hit. UNHCR played a useful interim role in leading the shelter clusteruntil IFRC assumed leadership once they were able to deploy the necessary staff.Another favorable comparison with the tsunami response is that national agencies are relativelywell-represented at all cluster meetings, particularly at hub level, and most of the staff interviewed(including from the private sector) found them very useful learning opportunities.Key informants were asked to rate clusters and describe the features that they felt contributed to aneffective cluster. The health cluster was ranked highest by virtually all respondents, and the positivefeatures they mentioned included:Strategic level of discussion (i.e. not limited to information sharing);Government participation;Development of useful technical tools and guidelines;Effective meeting management, including efforts to engage local actors; andCo-chairing by UN and NGO. Co-chair arrangement was perceived to limit potentialconflict of interest, reduce problems related to frequent cluster lead turnover and theshared workload afforded cluster leads the possibility of spending more time in the field.There was widespread acknowledgement amongst both national and international key informants ofweak linkages between Yangon clusters with hubs and national actors. Many staff in the hubs wereonly partially aware of the planning processes going on at Yangon level. This was viewed by the IARTE team as a contributory factor in limiting information flows to communities. Another exampleof the weak linkage was a geographic prioritization on more populated areas leaving some of theworst affected areas underserved (described in section 6.1 above).Most cluster meetings in Yangon are conducted in English with no translation services available,which some interviewees from national organisations claimed made them feel “unwelcome”. Thesituation was observed to be much better at hub level since verbal translation services are available.Meetings observed by IA RTE members were all conducted in English, and translated from19