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

IA RTE of the humanitarian response to Pakistan’s 2010 Floods crisis
include PDMA in the coordination activities from the Multan hub (5‐6 hours drive from
provincial capital Lahore), but provincial authorities did not respond effectively.
116. Today the PDMAsinvolvement in the response avtivities have been limited both Sindh
and Punjab. This have partly to due to their limited experience and capacity to involve
effectively, partly because hubs were created outside their operation spheres. While this of
course is unfortunate, most stakeholders consider that the advantages of responding from the
hubs outweighted the disadvantages of disconnect with PDMA structures. Lack of coordination
between NDMA and PDMA also meant that the provincial authorities were ‘vertically’ detached.
There are ongoing activities in Sindh to ensure that PDMA takes a more prominent position in
the recovery activities, a process lead by OCHA and UNDP in close collaboration with the Sindh
authorities.
Effectiveness
117. Operational coordination was mainly carried out at district levels, often chaired by the
DCO, in some cases with support from an OCHA focal point. OCHA has successfully promoted
this level of field coordination, hence brining coordination closer to operations. District
coordination has added value to the operations, progressively ensuring primarily that
duplications were avoided, but also that minimum information was shared on needs and gaps.
This decentralised coordination mechanism has also contributed to a more effective response
where the leadership of the DCO did match the coordination challenges.
118. Among the challenges at district level was the lack of information sharing, especially from
INGOs, that bypassed the DCO, limiting the overall district coordination effectiveness. Another
challenge is that clusters as such has no authority, and as line departments rarely participated in
district coordination meetings, it was difficult to take concrete decisions at this level that would
involve sector authorisation.
119. The UN system has invested significant time and resources in ensuring effective
coordination across the different levels of the flood response, but generally speaking, it has not
met the mandated coordination challenges. For its part, the UN has been criticised for a lack of
a clear leadership structure during the floods, especially in its relations with the GoP. It was
generally considered that the HC and the clusters lacked leadership from the agencies. One DCO
said it was like having “11 captains of the same team on a football pitch”. Also the Humanitarian
Coordinator (HC) leadership has been questioned several times, some with particular reference
to the fact that the UN Country Team was lead by a UNICEF Representative, whom by some, had
insufficient humanitarian exposure to such large scale disasters, and favoured his own agencies
interest. Added to this comes that during the floods, the UN Resident Co‐ordinator (RC) position
was between permanent appointments. More recently (January 2011) a double‐hatted HC/RC
has been appointed to lead the UN Country Team, hence merging the HC and RC functions.
Riccardo Polastro, Aatika Nagrah, Nicolai Steen and Farwa Zafar
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