Inter-Agency Real Time Evaluation of the Humanitarian ... - alnap

IA RTE of the humanitarian response to Pakistan’s 2010 Floods crisis
‘reactive’ or ‘slow’. Some agencies characterised the international response as far too late to be
considered life saving with the exception of a few areas, coming in as a second wave of support,
raising questions concerning where and how the assistance was provided. As for the IDP crisis,
in‐kind assistance should therefore only be provided where items are no longer available on the
market 25 . Several factors therefore led to the fact that the response has largely been considered
to be supply driven rather than needs based.
6.2 Response Modes
65. The GoP has been clear on its role and responsibility with regards to leading the response
and coordinated international efforts. Heading these tasks was the NDMA, established in 2007.
Despite vested efforts in taking the lead and coordinating the response efforts, there have been
issues concerning its role versus that of other national institutions, such as the Economic Affairs
Division (EAD), key line departments as well as NDMA’s provincial branches, the Provincial
Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) 26 . A late 2010 law, approved by the Pakistani
parliament, has clarified these issues, giving NDMA full fledged authority on matters related to
disasters. PDMAs in the affected provinces are also emerging institutions and the most
experienced, also with the strongest capacity, is the one in KPK due to the recurrent disasters
affecting the Northern regions. While most coordinating efforts at national level went through
the NDMA and to some degree also PDMAs, the apparent unresolved division of labour between
national institutions have seemingly also hindered a more smooth cooperation between the
GoP and the international community’s prime humanitarian representative, the UN.
66. On its side, the UN’s performance during the initial stages did not cater for a smooth
collaboration either. Despite requests from the Pakistani Government’s side on limiting the
response efforts to four key clusters, the UN favoured, once again, to activate the ‘traditional
response setup’ through eleven clusters 27 , implying also that these were reflected in the appeal
processes (i.e. the PFERP and PFRERRP’s widened scope). There are different reasons why the
Pakistani Government may insist on one option and the UN on another. On one side, the
Pakistan Government, keen on solving internal affairs fast, favoured the more focused and
short‐lived option. On the other side, the UN, driven by a more rights based approach, favoured
the inclusive and all‐encompassing scope.
67. The RTE found that while all clusters indisputably have made contributions to ease
suffering of the affected populations, many interviewees argued that the large cluster setup was
too cumbersome and took away focus from the response (see part 7 on Coordination and
25
See recommendation 7 in IA‐RTE of Humanitarian Response to 2009 Displacement Crisis, DARA, 2010
26 th
The 8 Amendment to Pakistan’s constitution passed in April, 2010 devolves more autonomy to the Provincial level
than the Federal level. However, the Federal Government still leads on international development and humanitarian
assistance and its allocation to the provinces.
27
The 2007 IASC RTE pointed to the same issue where NDMA preferred four4 clusters and not the 12 that were finally
setup as a response to the emergencies following the floods and cyclone Yemyin earlier that same year.
Riccardo Polastro, Aatika Nagrah, Nicolai Steen and Farwa Zafar
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