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

IA RTE of the humanitarian response to Pakistan’s 2010 Floods crisis
coordination and management functions and the necessary experience to deal with a disaster of
such proportions (see part eight coordination).
80. The high turnover of international staff, especially during the initial phases when people
only came for fortnight‐periods, was another challenge, especially for coordination activities. As
mentioned earlier, better qualified national staff was more present in KPK as this area has been
home to most of the recent emergency situations in Pakistan, hence reflecting efforts to
develop capacities in these areas. In the aftermath of the 2007 floods, which
affectedBalochistan and parts of southern Sindh, recommendations focusing on developing
national capacities as first responders have not been followed through and response as well as
coordination activities have largely depended on surge capacity which, by many, has been
considered to be insufficiently qualified and experienced.
6.4 Standards
81. The sheer scope of the disaster made it difficult to apply internationally agreed upon
standards and guidelines across the clusters (e.g. Sphere standards or IASC guidelines on gender
mainstreaming, etc.). There have been attempts, and some clusters have also succeeded in
defining standards, some of which are also supported by the GoP: WASH has managed to adapt
standards to the context (e.g. such as water‐drilling in southern Punjab) and in coordination
with the shelter cluster, WASH partners seek to provide adequate sanitation facilities where
more permanent shelters are made; the shelter cluster has applied a one‐room standard policy
for permanent shelter, in the beginning only applied by some PDMAs; agriculture provides
guidance to implementing partners on what kind of products should be provided, at what time
and to whom; the nutrition cluster applies international criteria for surveying malnutrition and
where detected, standard supplementary feeding schemes are established; the food cluster
likewise managed to maintain acceptable levels in the rations distributed despite a record high
number of beneficiaries; and finally WHO ensured drug usage control within the health cluster.
Riccardo Polastro, Aatika Nagrah, Nicolai Steen and Farwa Zafar
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