training for emergency humanitarian action

REPORTS AND COMMENTS

Training for Emergency Humanitarian Action

PHILIP SARGISSON

WHY TRAINING?

As many readers will know, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has overall responsibility, on behalf of the international community, for the world‘s refugees, who today stand at some 14 million. Many other parties are closely involved in individual refugee programmes (e.g. sovereign governments, NGOs and other UN Agencies) but it falls to UNHCR to assume international coordination and the establishing and upholding of standards in the refugee field.

In an area which is both politically and emotionally charged to the extreme and in which vested interests of all sorts are inevitably rife, this calls for a level of leadership on UNHCR’s part which is invariably challenging to say the least. Possessing neither an army nor a judiciary, UNHCR must rely for its effectiveness solely on its moral authority to influence and/or control the course of events. That authority emanates to some extent from the mandate handed to it by the General Assembly in 1951 as well as the resolutions and conventions that currently exist to protect refugee interests. In practice, the greater part of its moral authority must come from the perceived effectiveness of its staff. It is only this effectiveness that will

convince host governments to grant asylum to refugees in the first place, donor governments to contribute generously to assistance programmes, and NGOs and others to take on an active role as implementing partners in the refugee assistance programme.

How does one achieve such a level of all-round effectiveness in an area that is so complex, so diverse and in which the “workers” all come from different cultural backgrounds? It is even more challenging to find ways of professionalizing the staff of the numerous governments, NGOs and other organizations involved, upon whom UNHCR must depend on a day-to-day basis. Consider the Afghan refugee presence in Pakistan, which involves different organizations employing between them no fewer than 25,000 persons, virtually none of whom had any previous experience of refugee work before the Afghans’ arrival. Similar examples may be found in most parts of the world. In fact, the total number of persons who work in the refugee field and whose professional ability will largely determine the lot of the refugees themselves may be estimated at well over 100,000.

Nearly all large-scale refugee programmes begin as emergencies. Typically, tens or hundreds of thousands of destitute

- D I S A S T E R S V O L U M E 15 N U M B E R 1

56 Philip Sargisson

refugees cross into an equally destitute border country needing food, shelter and safety. Consider the countless Ethiopian refugees in the Sudan, Salvadorians throughout Central America, Mozambicans in Malawi and many others. The magnitude of the problems generated by such massive influxes is generally mind boggling. Nowhere is the need for professionalism greater than in such emergencies. Apart from the fact that large numbers of lives are at stake, experience shows that all subse- quent phases of a refugee operation will depend on how successfully the emergency phase has been handled.

In recognition of the critical nature and sheer difficulty of refugee emergencies, UNHCR produced in 1982 its now well- known Handbook for Emergencies which distilled much of the experience gained to date in the establishing and running of refugee emergency operations. Although immediately appreciated by UNHCR staff and operational partners alike, it quickly became apparent that the Handbook in itself was not enough to ensure actual application to new emergencies of the many lessons learnt over the years. Indeed, we were frequently criticized during the early 80s for the handling of various refugee emergencies, sometimes with justice. It was clear that the combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes required in refugee emergencies would have to be conveyed in a much more dynamic form to all those called upon to take action in these difficult situations. The answer was obviously to provide first-class training. Thus was born in late 1985 the UNHCR Emergency Man- agement Training Programme (EMTP) which, to date, has trained directly some 1000 professionals involved in refugee emergencies.

THE NATURE OF THE PROGRAMME

From the outset, we considered that since effective team work is the absolute

condition for successful operations, training needed to be available to all the actors. Indeed, various institutions have differing but mutually enriching experience and bodies of knowledge. They need to understand what they are, learn from each other and agree on how best to work together. Thus, UNHCR did not claim to know better or more than anybody else but was providing a framework for NGOs, host governments, donor governments, UNHCR itself and other concerned UN agencies to review what has happened in past operations (good and bad) and see how they would jointly get it right in the future.

Among the benefits of this approach were the following:

1.

2.

3.

4.

the process itself would oblige organizations, including our own, to evaluatelassess operations to date and define the body of knowledge, the policies, approaches, resources and skills, etc. required; the process would lead to innovation in all of the foregoing, bringing new solutions to this field; the process would help break down barriers between institutions and even within individual institutions.

We entered into an association with the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) of the University of Wisconsin right from the beginning in 1985 to ensure that the most up-to-date pedagogical approaches, training designs and knowledge of the subject matter were brought to bear. This association is still current and has been of great value to both institutions. The DMC has, additionally, been particularly useful in ensuring that training materials were thought through and ready in time and that the new steps achieved in a given presen- tation or paper were factored into the general body of knowledge for the next "show" - a permanent challenge for busy emergency workers who may often see their

DISASTERS VOLUME 15 NUMBER 1

Training for Emergency Humanitarian Action 57

job as putting out fires rather than reflecting on how to prepare for them.

Four kinds of course exist at the moment.

1.

2.

3.

4.

A one-week course is offered once a year in Geneva for all-comers. The course being relatively short, it is designed primarily as an “awareness raiser” of refugee emergency issues. Regional courses are offered in areas that are already affected by an emergency or are likely to be. They are open to all the organizations and staff based in the region and called upon to prepare for andlor respond to the emergency. The course generally lasts ten days and is purposely designed to problem solve and team build as well as to teach. Short (3-5 days) country-specific courses that heavily stress immediate problem solving are also organized for specific existing refugee emergencies, preferably at the beginning of such emergencies. An in-depth course is held in Madison once a year at the University of Wisconsin lasting three weeks. The course caters for experienced refugee emergency managers and is primarily designed as a means of providing organizations with a cadre of top-notch experts.

All courses except the country-specific ones begin with a full-day simulation of a refugee emergency. Participants are cast in roles that they do not assume in their real professional lives. Calamitous events and technical and managerial challenges of all kinds are built into the simulation. Success is heavily dependent upon the participants’ ability to master the information flow, to set priorities, communicate, coordinate, plan and work together. One learns from doing, rather than from being told. The power of the lesson learned - from, for instance,

losing thousands of refugees because one did not search for the correct information - generally sticks particularly well. Participants have occasionally broken down in sobs. This simulation, which has received constant improvement and updating, is now nearly as close to the “real thing” as an aircraft cockpit simulator.

The rest of the course relies heavily on the interchange of experience, role playing as well as structured presentations. In the longer courses the last two days generally include a ”field” exercise as well as a self- assessment or personal exam. Just as the participants themselves come from all of the organizations involved in refugee emergencies, so the resource persons used in the courses are also taken from all sectors. In fact, the line between participant and resource person is frequently blurred, which underscores the importance of the whole training process as the leading edge of the ”technology” involved in refugee emergency management. Beyond the simulation and exercises described above, core training materials have been simultaneously developed covering management, legal, planning, health, water, sanitation, logistics, early warning, needs assessment and a host of the other inter-related subjects. These materials are in written or video form and are updated in the light of new field experience and the new approaches that often derive from the courses themselves. These materials are all available for self-study purposes.

RESULTS

Five years into this effort to ” profess io n a1 ize ” refugee em erg e n c y management, what conclusions can we draw?

(a) First, there is a lesson in humility. We realise that we all have so much to learn, in the absolute and from each other. This field is very complex.


58 Philip Sargisson

The training process has forced us all greatly to enhance our collective institutional memory in the refugee emergency field, so as not to repeat errors. The training process has been a forum for the emergence of new ideas and approaches. The team training approach is a must. Many courses have helped rival organizations and individuals to solve their differences, to understand the complementarity of their respective roles and work better together. Personal relationships have developed between course participants that have helped improve team performance in real life emergencies. We have become increasingly aware of the pre-eminent importance of positive mental attitudes and values as the key to all else. Equipped with these, knowledge and skills will be acquired relatively easily. Without them, knowledge and skills are useless. The training programme has increasingly empha- sized behavioural questions, for example, through role playing and exercises, and is increasingly wary of the “knowledge dump”. Participants (especially the more experienced) have invariably remarked on the value of the “taking stock” that is involved in this kind of training. Beyond what is actively learnt, the opportunity to structure one’s own experience is hugely beneficial. In fact, many participants felt that they had learned things on a professional and personal level that extended well beyond refugee emergencies per se. Expressions such as “greater under- standing of my career”, “improved sense of purpose”, ”renewed motivation”, ”improved confidence” have been among the most frequent. A disappointment is the continued contradiction between the need for

specialized emergency managers and the posting policies of many organizations, including UNHCR. Too often, no matching takes place between the emergency management needs of a given situation and the existence of trained personnel. Just as trained doctors are obviously to be appointed to medical rather than say legal positions, we must collectively develop the personnel systems to ensure emergencies get the right people.

(h) Experience in the field and in the courses underlines that humanitarian emergencies are first and foremost about information, communication and planning. Only then, can successful shelter, feeding, social programmes and the like be efficiently provided. The training has been a key factor in introducing emergency managers to the tools at their disposal, and in particular the several excellent manuals and handbooks which too often go unheeded. The EMTP has had a strongly catalytic effect in ushering in many other forms of training, such as in protection, durable solutions, programming and administration, all of which were long overdue.

(k) The most important question is, has performance in refugee emergencies improved? As managers and trainers know only too well, quantified evaluations of the impact of training in this kind of area are impossible. Circumstantial evidence points strongly to greatly improved planning, management, response and technical inputs in refugee emergencies over recent years by the international community as a whole. Awareness of the correct approaches is improved and a cadre of professionals has brought increased effectiveness to the operations.

(i)

(j)


Training for Emergency Humanitarian Action 59

WHAT NEXT?

Why, one might well ask, was this form of training not introduced earlier? Could one remotely consider the consequences of sending an army into battle without training in the use of firearms and military tactics? Could one conceive of a company such as IBM standing the slightest chance in the competitive market place without training its personnel in strategic planning, market- ing, negotiating and other techniques? Humanitarian operations are no less exact- ing. As the globalvillage assumes an increas- ing reality and interdependence between peoples becomes inescapable, competence and professionalism in our humanitarian endeavours become of paramount importance and call for global approaches.

Nowhere is this more true than in the field of natural disasters which attract even larger amounts of money and attention due to their ever greater impact on human populations. It is certainly no accident that our decade has been declared by the UN Secretary General the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. Can that reduction realistically take place without a major training effort on a global level involving all concerned agencies of the UN system, the NGO community, concerned Governments and the donor community? Surely a concerted training effort is greatly overdue. There are indeed encouraging signs that such an undertaking may soon be made. It will deserve everybody’s full support.

The modest but exhilarating beginnings in the refugee field may be a useful precedent. In fact, the lessons learned in launching and running the refugee Emer- gency Management Training Programme should allow related but yet broader-scale training programmes to develop faster and more easily. Training activities of this kind should greatly increase our collective competence. We need not be amateurs in emergency humanitarian action.

Appendix: The UNDROlUNDP Disaster Training Programme

Since the above article was written, the United Nations Disaster Relief Organization (UNDRO) and the United Nations Development Pro- gramme (UNDP) have decided to go ahead with a large-scale disaster management training programme. 1 was the co-author (with Paul Thompson) of a study and proposal to both agencies on this subject. The following summar- izes the programme that has now been agreed befween UNDP and UNDRO.

In recognition of the impact and cost of disasters throughout the world, the UN General Assembly has declared the 1990s the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR). Through a joint Task Force, UNDP and UNDRO have examined ways to improve their collabor- ative efforts with an emphasis on specific areas, of which training may be the most significant. The IDNDR, as an international drive to promote mitigation and related activities, has been seen as an ideal opportunity to provide both agencies, and through them the international community, with a first global strategy for disaster management training, proposing a coherent and coordinated approach to improving performance before, during and after natural disasters.

The primary objective of this far- reaching training programme is to instigate the creation of strong disaster training capabilities at the national and local levels through a series of professionally designed and run training activities conducted initially at the international level. The ultimate objective of the training is, of course, to promote increased and improved disaster preparedness and management activities in disaster-prone countries. The training programme is based on the premise that the UN system, in order to exercise its coordination role satisfactorily, should enhance its own disaster training capability. In doing so it should have a strong

-


60 Philip Sargisson

multiplier effect, for the benefit of all parties involved in disasters.

As readers will know, the primary UN mandate for disaster questions resides with UNDRO which is represented in practice in the field by UNDP. UNDP is also concerned with disasters because mitigation con- stitutes an integral part of the national development process. In view of the complimentary roles of the two agencies in the disaster field, it was agreed between them that they would assume dual responsibility for this training programme.

Using training materials that are being drawn up with the help of specialized disaster management entities, the first year of the programme will concentrate on raising the disaster management awareness of the UN field system, national disaster teams and the donor community. Subse- quently, the programme will provide more indepth training to these and other groups. As the programme progresses, regional and country disaster institutions will be drawn increasingly into the training process. They will gradually take over most of its components and take a leading role in the numerous mitigation and preparedness activities that, it is believed, will be one of the main tangible results of the training activities.

Training activities will consist of self- instruction programmes, structured brief- ings and group courses. The latter will constitute the most frequent activity, conducted primarily in the field by different combinations of training teams including in- house trainers from UNDRO and UNDP (who will be going through special “train- the-trainers” courses for this purpose) as well as from regional and country disaster institutions. Trainers will use modern training methodologies and will include in the course objectives team building, problem solving and planning for concrete

preparedness activities. As the training activities generate more specialized materials, learning activities will be lengthened and expanded.

The programme started on 1 July 1990 and will run for three years, at which point i t is expected that global disaster management training will be launched as a permanent and ongoing activity. An evaluation process is built into the programme as is a research and ”lessons learnt” capability. The programme aims to train directly, over the three year period, some 3200 persons. Indirectly the programme will train many thousands more through the generation of new training programmes at different levels. It is expected that the programme will have a considerable catalytic impact in contributing towards enabling diaster-prone countries and regions to:

- cater increasingly to their own disaster training needs;

- professionalize the international community’s overall performance in disasters; and

- enhance concrete collaboration between national and international entities in the disaster field.

The programme is financed by both UNDP and UNDRO as well as from special earmarked contributions from UN member states.

Philip Sargisson Chief, Training Section United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Case Postale 2500 CH-1211 Geneva Switzerland


training for emergency humanitarian action

Documents