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

IA RTE of the humanitarian response to Pakistan’s 2010 Floods crisis
aforementioned survival strategy is the only example of agencies and implementing partners
gathering around a thematic area, as opposed to cluster‐divided areas. Currently, early recovery
activities carried out on an individual agency base – or at most, through a cluster approach. This
may warrant uncoordinated and non‐prioritised efforts, if immediate action is not taken.
7.1 Communication
129. Communication within clusters is crucial to ensure guidelines, standards and conditions
for delivering aid in a manner which is agreed upon and follows certain criteria (for more
analysis, see Part six). Communication also refers to how information is managed and used in
order to ensure that assistance is used in the most effective and efficient ways. Finally,
communication refers to ensuring that the population is informed about what can be expected,
from whom and when.
130. The information flow was massive but with limited strategic usage (i.e. decision making
and prioritisation). Since the early stages of the response, there have been concerns raised
about the need for a common reporting format used by the different organisations involved in
the response. However, only until recently has the ‘single reporting format’ (SRF) been tested,
but massive roll out is still pending. The format was delayed due to differing positions between
NDMA and UN on its design (i.e. content on data to be collected, details of data, etc.). The lack
of a common reporting format has meant that organisations do not systematically report
activities to OCHA, and if they do, the information is not consolidated because each organisation
uses their own formats and reporting criteria. Consequently, precise and consolidated data does
not exist, affecting not only monitoring but also the humanitarian system’s strategic
programming in terms of identifying precisely how have been attended, where, by whom and
for how long. Thus, much time is spent at cluster meetings at different levels to gather this type
of information, instead of devoting valuable time to strategic programming.
131. Communication has been a general issue in the response as many affected people were
not properly informed about what they were expected to receive, when, by whom and for how
long. The humanitarian community and governmental counterpart should agree on a simple but
clear communication strategy on order to avoid misunderstandings and abuse. Civil society and
NGOs should be engaged in this process in order to ensure wide dissemination. A
communication strategy would also be an important contribution to improving accountability
towards affected populations. NDMA has recently established a working group to coordinate
and systematise communication. Though it is too early to judge whether this has improved
communication 37 , it seems relevant and a possible way to tackle communication challenges.
Many organisations issued bulletins on a regular basis, however, in many of these bulletins data
was insufficiently disaggregated on key issues related to gender and age.
37
In fact, no clusters made reference to the working group at federal level.
Riccardo Polastro, Aatika Nagrah, Nicolai Steen and Farwa Zafar
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