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www.clustercoordination.org

The sections that follow are designed to complement, not replace, the ‘official’ tools and guidance notes coming out of the formal Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) process, which can be found on the UN’s official ‘humanitarianresponse.info’ web platform.

As ever, the content is supposed to evolve to reflect changes in the humanitarian system. It is in other words, a living document. Comments from anyone at any time are welcome, even encouraged, as we all need to learn from each other’s experience. It would be great if you could post a comment in the space provided at the bottom of each section. One of us will do our best to reply.

As lead-editor, I would like to thank the various humanitarian experts, all of whom are members of ‘clustercoordination.org’, who contributed to the writing of these sections, and who provided invaluable technical advice based on their experiences of applying the Cluster Approach in the field.

They are:

Dave Hodgkin of Benchmark Consulting

Brian Kelly of IOM

Anna Pont of UN-Habitat

Neil Bauman, independent

Joseph Ashmore, independent; and

Pete Manfield of UN-OCHA

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2009-2011 by James Shepherd-Barron

Use of the information not explicitly produced by the Inter Agency Standing Committee or the Global Cluster Lead Agencies, and therefore already in the public domain, is encouraged although due recognition and mention of the author and ‘www.clustercoordination.org’ would be appreciated when doing so.

DEDICATION

‘Clusterwise 2′  is dedicated to Yantisa Akhadi who has helped us so ably over the years since ‘clustercoordination.org’ was formed by volunteering to keep our website not just up, but reasonably up to date.

DISCLAIMER

The views expressed in ‘Clusterwise 2′  are solely those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of their clients and/or employing agencies.

Updated 22 May 2011

But it isn’t.

It’s about grapefruits.

Not really. It’s about smoking and grapefruits. How weird is that?!

It’s also about those twenty Virginia killin’ sticks. All lined up in two neat rows, clean and invitin’ like yet nowhere to go. All that glossy gold packaging telling you how sophisticated, how cool, you are.

All those movies showing sultry film stars lighting up immediately after wasting twenty baddies with nothing but a ripped vest two sizes too small and a pump-action shotgun. Or after some turgid love scene with an ‘ass double’.

What Bollocks. Playing to your basest emotions.

This is what you have to do.

Decide you want to quit.

The coughing. The yellow fingers. Stained teeth. Bad breath. The grey skin. Dry hair. The heart twinges. Your friends stopped the snide comments years ago. Nobody says anything anymore. But you know. And you know they know. And you know they know you know.

But don’t quit just yet.

Just sometime this year.

Tell your partner, your friends, your family, everyone you know, you intend to quit. They won’t believe you.

But keep on telling them.

Get a year planner. Put it on the wall so everyone can see.

Decide which day would make a good ‘Quit-Day’. Make it at least three months away. But it must be sometime this year. The date itself is not important. Though the day, of course, is. Just like a wedding day. Designed to fit in with other commitments. Not important in itself, just a date to be remembered for the rest of your life.

Plan a party for this day.

Tell everyone again that you are going to quit on this day. Revel in the fact that not one of them will believe you. You are stronger for this knowledge. You are stronger than they ever imagined.

Continue to smoke as much as you want. Even more, if you can.

As the day of the party approaches, fill the fridge with a dozen grapefruits and at least six cartons of fresh grapefruit juice. Put grapefruit-flavoured chewing gum (www.doolittle.ch/pink-grapefruit) and a large packet of toothpicks on the shelf inside the door.

Why grapefruit? Because it makes nicotine taste more disgusting than any other fruit, that’s why. Something to do with ascorbic acid.

On the day itself, smoke more than you know is good for you. As many as you want. As many as you can. Chainsmoke.

Keep your ciggie supply visible. On the kitchen table is good. Clear the house of any other ‘forgotten’ stashes.

Get dressed in your glad rags. Begin the party.

Get drunk. Very drunk.

Smoke as much as is humanly possible. Smoke until your throat hurts. Smoke until your eyes water.

At some point, it doesn’t matter when, well into the wee hours, the party will be over. At this point, smoke all remaining cigarettes with those last remaining friends who have remained with you to support you through what happens next. Then, as the sun comes up, pour the contents of all the ashtrays you can find into a pint beer glass and half fill it with flat, warm coca-cola.

Swill it around. Get your mates around you. Those that can still stand.

Go outside with them.

Pass the glass around. Everybody must smell it.

But you must drink it. The liquid, not the butts.

You will throw up. Immediately and copiously. Drink some more. Chunder again. And again. Continue to do this until the glass is empty. There is a reason you are doing this. Psychologists call it ‘aversion reinforcement behaviour therapy’.

There, that’s easy. You just quit. You don’t know it yet. But you did. But you feel so wretched, you really don’t care.

Go to bed.

And now, the hard part.

The craving will start when you wake up. You will reach for a ciggie. Then, with an awful surge of panic, remember.

Oh God! Fuck! Shit! Crap! Bugger! Bastards! Asshole!

Get up.

Go to the fridge.

Peel a grapefruit and dissect it into pieces as you would an orange. When did you last do this …!?

Eat each piece. One by one. Slowly.

Then chew some gum. And put one of the toothpicks in your mouth. Play it with your tongue. And actually pick your teeth. It’s like flossing. There is a reason for this too. Psychologists call it, “transference”. Smoking is as much about your hands as it is about your mouth. You have to keep your hands busy as they no longer have cigarettes to toy with.

Make yourself some green tea. No sugar. And no coffee. Not for now anyway. As your brain, for now, is associating smoking with drinking tea or coffee.

If you are going to quit smoking, you may as well quit excess sugar at the same time. Your body won’t notice as it will be too busy getting over the shock – and it is in ‘shock’ – of no nicotine.

All of this will be strange, and your mouth will, at some point in the day, begin to taste a bit metallic.

Do the grapefruit-gum-toothpick thing every time you feel the craving.

Cravings last no more than 90 seconds. The actions described above take longer than this. By the time you have carried them out, the craving will have reduced to a kind of sad longing.

Success.

Until the next time.

It might be three minutes or three hours. But it will come.

Every time you feel like a smoke, eat grapefruit, chew gum, and pick your teeth. And then do something else as well. Go for a walk. Get on a bus. Anything.

Because what you are trying to do is break old ingrained habits.

Because, yes, smoking – or, rather, the nicotine in cigarette smoke – is addictive. But it’s also a habit.

Break the habit, and the addiction will disappear.

It might take a few days, or it might take some weeks before the cravings reduce. But they do. And surprisingly quickly. Much depends on your personality type, how long you have been smoking for, and how much. The fact they might have been ‘lites’ makes no difference.

Cravings diminish at a much faster rate than you expected. Beware this false dawn, though. Because they will come back again, only for a bit, just when you thought the worst was over.

Every time you feel the urge, every time, eat at least one piece of grapefruit or drink some grapefruit juice. Pop in some gum. If you haven’t got any, go get some. Pop a toothpick into your mouth. And think of the two hundred quid you are saving yourself every month and the 15 years of extra life you just gave yourself and your grandchildren.

Don’t fool yourself. Once a smoker, always a smoker. Weeks will go by without you thinking of a cigarette. Then suddenly, bang, something triggers the reflex and you will kill for a drag.

The urge, however overwhelming, lasts for 90 seconds.

Think grapefruit. Think family. Think healthy. Think anything. Chew gum. And use the toothpick.

Go for a walk. Just a few hundred metres. Tell a stranger you quit. And smile.

Why?

Because you have their respect. They won’t say so. But you will see it in their eyes.

Your friends will see the effects in your skin, in your hair, and in your eyes within days. And they will tell you. And they won’t be lying. They will mean it. They will be jealous of your willpower.

Go on. Try it.

Not much to lose. And, at the very least, an excuse for a party.

If it doesn’t work,  try the opportunistic route. Tell yourself you will quit when whichever of these two scenarios arises first:

The next time you get the flu. Nobody feels like smoking when they have the flu

or

The next time you take a long distance flight. Because you can’t smoke in airports or airplanes.

I quit at least twice every year, so I know it works !?!?

Those of us who manage disasters indirectly as ‘coordinators’ seem unaware of the consequences of the monumental changes unfolding around us, and continue more or less to conduct business as usual. This means we continue to confuse the ‘sharing of information’ with the ‘providing of strategic direction’. And we do this with scant attention paid to the fostering of genuine partnership.

Meanwhile, large aid organizations practicing ‘enterprise risk management’ have failed to spot the threat posed to their corporate reputations when they misunderstand, and therefore superficially apply, the Cluster Approach. Their constituents, the poor and the dispossessed, suffer as a result. The transformative potential of the collective Cluster endeavour has yet to be realised by these agencies, and therefore yet to be realised by the entire humanitarian and development enterprise. This is precisely why Clusters must now situate themselves firmly within the wider ‘disaster risk reduction’ paradigm, not shrivel into an ultimately self-defeating ‘Cluster Lite’ mentality.

Ultimately, applying the Cluster Approach all about managing the creative tension between ‘leadership’ and ‘partnership’. Experience suggests that current Cluster membership does not equate to partnership, and Cluster members are not seen as stakeholders in the outcomes. This needs to evolve, perhaps even be formalized.

We are always being reminded, too, that leadership of Clusters requires a shift in mindset from a directive to a more collaborative approach. But, Cluster partners, even the largest of International NGOs, expect an element of guidance and direction from time to time. This requires a new level of professionalism, one that perhaps requires formal accreditation.

“Performance of clusters has been 
disappointing. (DFID HERR, March 2011).

It might also be timely to resurrect the idea of ‘mentoring’. This concept foresees early mobilization of an experienced ‘coordinateur sage’ to support the actual Cluster Coordinator and his or her team. This person remains in country only for those first few hectic weeks, provides remote support thereafter, and returns to lead the Cluster through a quick and dirty peer review process two months later in order to help the Cluster re-focus.

But, come on, let’s be realistic. Humanitarian coordination has always been likened to “herding cats” for this very reason; that competing agency mandates, most of which are self-given, allow for, and even encourage, fragmented approaches in the name of diversity and the humanitarian imperative. Clusters were never going to change that.

It’s not the idealism, though. It’s not even the independent feline behaviour. It’s because humanitarian organisations, at least the larger ones, tend to behave much more like elephants than cats: Elephants lumber around, grey and massive, bumping into things. But they do it with intensity. They do it with purpose. They meander apparently without direction trying to do no harm, yet know exactly where the rhythm of annual migration will take them. They are short sighted, but have long memories. From time to time, they make a lot of noise, flap their ears theatrically, and snort mud over each other. They consume a lot, and, after much time and energy trying to digest the indigestible, dump on smaller animals from a great height. And, when confronted by something strange that threatens the natural order, they don’t hesitate to trample it underfoot.

But, just in case you think I’m being a bit melodramatic with the metaphor – and, perhaps, a bit unfair on elephants – I should point out that a friendly keeper at London Zoo once told my then very young son that elephants also have a sense of humour. And, much more important, they learn to love their handlers, their mahouts.

If you take the elephant to be an aid agency, the herd a Cluster, and the mahout a Humanitarian or Cluster Coordinator, this book is then as much about how to be a good elephant as it is about how to be a good mahout.

To continue with the zoological metaphor for a moment. Sometimes, it seems that the whole ‘Cluster Approach’ thing suffers from what a World Bank friend of mine calls, “Aquarium Syndrome”: Many species of brightly coloured fish swim around in circles supposedly forgetting what happened on their previous circuit. They float in their sealed off watery world trying to ignore each other, totally unaware that there is a world beyond the glass staring in. This world sees what the fish are doing, and are suitably impressed. But they are totally unable to influence what is going on inside the aquarium. They are disconnected, and, unless they strip off and go for a swim, always will be.

These metaphors are not meant as oblique criticisms; just a recognition that the world is not perfect, and that the original philosophy behind the establishment of ‘clusterccordination.org’ still appears to hold good on the basis that:

Too many senior managers responsible for implementing humanitarian reform, and, within it, the Cluster Approach, continue to under-appreciate what it takes to coordinate Clusters effectively in the field.

Too many Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) guidance notes on the subject are either too ambiguous, or too impractical to be of much use in the field.

“The cluster system needs to be revised” (DFID HERR, March 2011)

And that too many Global Cluster Lead Agencies (GCLAs) – and some donors, for that matter – still think that improving coordination management is a cost to be borne, and not an investment to be made in enhancing humanitarian action. The DFID ‘Humanitarian Emergency Response Review’ of March 2011 seems to recognise this, and calls for a paradigm shift in the way the humanitarian enterprise is managed.

With all this as context, the book is an attempt to shed light on what humanitarian coordination can be, or, more properly, what coordination management actually involves, and could achieve, despite these constraints.

It is much longer than the first as it deliberately sets out to inform the debate. It still focuses on those results-based and action-oriented tips that Cluster Coordinators and members of Clusters might like to consider before, during, and after the activation of their Clusters. But it is not meant to be another Handbook. Rather, a more readable discourse on the realities of being involved in ‘Clusters’ in 2011 and beyond.

The author is co-founder of ‘clustercoordination.org’, a global public good provided by an informal ‘community of practice’ of experienced Cluster Coordinators and Information Managers to provide those involved with Clusters in the field practical ‘best practice’ advice on how to manage the coordination of humanitarian action. More detail on how to actually do the tasks outlined in brief here, complete with templates, ‘best practice’ examples, and case studies can be found at our website:

www.clustercoordination.org

The book complements ‘official’ tools and guidelines coming out of the formal IASC process, which can be found on the UN’s official ‘humanitarianresponse.info’ web platform.

As ever, this is an evolving draft and is meant to be a living document. Comments from anyone at any time are welcome, even encouraged, as we all need to learn from each other’s experience. Please feel free to send such feedback to me

james@clustercoordination.org

Here’s to hoping you enjoy the read.

This is, of course, stereotypic rubbish but it’s not uncommon to hear views expressed along these lines when civilian aid-workers are operating alongside the military.

One does ‘quick impact projects’, the other does ‘development’. And both use a ‘lingo’ so totally incomprehensible to the other that they wonder if they are from the same planet, far less working to the same end. And they spend a lot of time wondering what that their respective ‘ends’ might be, and how they can work together towards achieving them.

Do aid workers with their social science degrees and earnest, self-righteous naivety really think they can ‘save and protect’? And what does ‘protect’ mean anyway when children run around wearing suicide vests?

So, why should some poor squaddie from Bargoid, dripping in bullets and weaponry he has only just learned to point in the right direction, spend freezing nights out on the hillsides of the Hindu Kush, risking life and limb to protect that floppy-haired teacher fresh out of training college who just wants to sit and drink tea with a bunch of semi-literate ‘rag-heads’ in a classroom with no windows, no blackboard, no books, and no pupils? Or escort an engineer who can’t put his helmet on properly to a rusty hand-pump with no handle?

Civil-military Cooperation in Multinational and Inter-Agency Operations

While many attempts have been made to improve civil-military cooperation in multinational and interagency operations over the past decade, field studies show that de facto cooperation remains inadequate, ad-hoc and fragmented.

The first challenge has to do with civilian and military actors’ lacking knowledge about one another’s organizational identities – meaning the traditions, cultures, and fundamental goals that constitute and constrain their activities in multinational operations. Indeed, stereotyping and prejudice due to lack of knowledge and information about one another’s work are one of the main obstacles to civil-military cooperation.

A fundamental point of principle for many humanitarian organisations is, for instance, to protect their identities as independent, neutral, and impartial actors when working in the field. From such a viewpoint, the military can be seen as neither independent nor impartial, as they will always be subject to political interests as well as constrained by mission mandates.

Furthermore, civilian actors have at times argued that the military lacks knowledge about, and experience of, delivering aid, and that they are too concerned with mission mandates and logistical issues. Another frustration that has been expressed by civilian actors is that while the military frequently turn to them to get information, they are often reluctant to return the favour.

On the military side, the fact that civilian actors are not a homogenous group is sometimes neglected. But, there again, neither is the military entirely homogenous. Helicopter squadrons, for example, with all their different roles, can be from the Army, Navy, or Air Force. Cavalry Troops have about one third the number of men than their infantry counterparts, the Platoon, use different weaponry, and are trained to think in different ways.

A key obstacle to closer cooperation in multinational and interagency cooperation is precisely this, the sheer scale and divergence of organisations, activities, and perceptions in the civilian sector. Indeed, the ‘jungle’ of civilian organisations can sometimes make it hard for military actors in the field to keep the various organisations and their activities in their proper ‘boxes’.

In the document “NATO Civil- Military Co-operation Doctrine”, for instance, NATO distinguishes between three principal types of civilian organisations: International organisations (IOs), non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and international and national government donor agencies. In so doing, they fail to make a distinction between NGOs and the Red Cross Movement which shows there is still some way to go in understanding each other.

A second overall challenge to civil-military cooperation is lack of knowledge about one another’s security concerns. For civilian actors, the always imminent threat of becoming a target in the conflict sometimes makes cooperation with the military necessary in order to secure the physical space necessary to carry out their work. At the same time, however, it is often crucial for humanitarian actors like MSF to uphold their impartiality and independence in a conflict. Too close cooperation with the military may – in the worst case – create doubt in the local community regarding the organization’s impartiality and neutrality.

For the military, in contrast, the central dilemma is rather the security risk connected with sharing operational information with civilian actors. At times, civilian personnel have been accused by the military of being too naïve about the security risks in conflict areas, and for refusing to fall into line with military structures.

The third and final challenge to civil-military cooperation concerns civilian and military actors’ lack of knowledge about one another’s diverging working procedures in the planning, implementing, and monitoring phases of an operation. Above all, there are large civil-military as well as intra-civilian variations when it comes to defining operational end-goals and establishing a working plan for achieving these. As one humanitarian organisation points out: “there are more and more aid organisations and agencies involved in the business of aid. Many have different values, goals and strategies.”

In this context, two particular aspects should be emphasised: On the planning and implementation level, the lack of convergence between operational terminology used by civilian and military actors represents a major barrier to civil-military cooperation. At the monitoring level, the great differences between how operational processes and outcomes are evaluated and reviewed by civilian and military organisations, give rise to equally tough challenges.

Military actors must know how the different civilian parties work, their perceptions of the situation, their principles, and vice-versa. Cooperation also requires that involved parties be aware of the terminology used by other actors. Furthermore, where practices are similar, civilian and military parties must share knowledge about their experiences.

Military Humanitarianism: an oxymoron?

Interaction between the military and humanitarian agencies is governed by existing civil-military guidance drawn up by NATO, the UN and the international humanitarian community. But in practice, there are often tensions in the relationship. Some humanitarian actors refuse to accept that international military have any role at all in humanitarian response. They argue that the humanitarian imperative’ of neutrality, impartiality and independence is compromised when they do, and that the so-called “humanitarian space” contracts each time to the point that their programmes deliver less while actually putting both themselves and the people they are trying to help in harm’s way.

For their part, the international military find such positions inappropriate since they fail to take into account the reality that armed forces, particularly where they are party to a conflict, have a moral and legal responsibility under the international laws of war to protect civilians and facilitate their assistance.

At the same time, the military acknowledge that they have, at times, failed to comprehend the essential contribution that humanitarian actors can make in crisis situations, including in saving life and protecting the innocent from further harm, and why humanitarian principles are so fundamental to the success of humanitarian operations.

Coordination

The stated objectives of military humanitarian missions such as the one currently underway in Libya are shared by the international humanitarian community – to protect civilians and ensure access to life-saving assistance. Tensions arise in relation to the different strategies and tactics military and humanitarian actors consider appropriate to achieve these objectives. How the military mission to protect civilians is implemented, the likely chance of success and how this is perceived inevitably shapes the degree of civil-military coordination that is possible.

In Libya, the Security Council’s two principal objectives are the protection of civilians and the facilitation of access to humanitarian assistance. As such there is clearly a need for a coordinated effort, whether through cooperation or collaboration, by the international military and the international humanitarian community to achieve these aims.

While the ‘end’ may be mutual and agreed in principle, the means used in practice are clearly not. The military exercise command and control, for one, and scoff at such wooly and nebulous terms as “coordination” which appear to them to be little more than exercises in ‘paralysis by analysis’. Certainly, coordination as practiced by the international humanitarian community is neither the most efficient nor the most effective way to get help to where it is  needed most in good time. Without the sophisticated planning apparatus of the military, or the logistical assets required at any scale, humanitarian interventions are all about making rough sense out of shaky information. Decisions are made by consensus, too, which the military find results in little more than doubling the time it takes to get anything done, while racing to the bottom of the barrel of already low standards in the process.

International humanitarian agencies have remained largely silent on the merits of NATO’s action in Libya, but many have privately expressed limited confidence that the military strategy will succeed in protecting the Libyan people. Given the asymmetric nature of the conflict, and the experiences of “military humanitarianism” in places like Bosnia and Kosovo, it is reasonable to question how effective the NATO operation can actually be in protecting civilians. As the commander of the NATO operation, Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard, once vividly put it in the Economist magazine, “it’s a knife fight in a phone booth and it’s very difficult to get in the middle of that”.

However, in light of available evidence, there is an apparent need for physical protection of civilians under imminent threat of attack. The ability of humanitarian agencies to provide that physical protection at this point may be limited, but NATO and humanitarian actors can play complementary roles in protection, including proactive efforts to protect civilians under imminent threat, promoting adherence to international humanitarian law, including by NATO, and advocating for rights to asylum. This, too, is part of ‘coordination’.

Facilitation

There are also tensions around the role of the international military in ‘facilitating’ humanitarian assistance. While NATO has insisted that it will not play a ‘leading role’ in the delivery of aid in Libya, the European Union (EU) has drawn up plans to deploy a military force to support the humanitarian effort, including securing ports and aid corridors – exactly the strategy used in Bosnia in the nineties which many feel merely prolonged the war, allowing many more people to die than would have otherwise.

Although offers of military support have been declined by the UN, agencies have felt under pressure, as they did in the Pakistan flood response last year, to accept the use of military assets from key NATO member states to support the delivery of assistance.

Agencies have asserted that such support is unnecessary, and are concerned that this may be an attempt to co-opt humanitarians into the wider political strategy of the international community.

Exactly when and how the military can enable the delivery of humanitarian assistance, how they coordinate with humanitarian actors, is clarified in the Guidelines on the Use of Military and Civil Defence Assets to Support United Nations Humanitarian Activities in Complex Emergencies (MCDA). The fundamental concept underpinning these guidelines is that of ‘last resort’ – military assets can be used in the delivery of assistance only when there are no other comparable civilian assets available, when all alternative delivery options have been explored, and where they are used for a very specific purpose and for a limited period. Use of military capacity in such circumstances must also be under auspices of civilians – the so-called “dual key” approach so lamentably applied by the UN in former-Yugoslavia, and so reviled by military commanders as a result.

Adherence to these guidelines by both humanitarian and military actors is essential, and not just for policy or conceptual reasons. There are operational risks inherent in military engagement in humanitarian response for both affected populations and humanitarian agencies. Affected populations may not receive the assistance they require because military actors do not have the technical skills necessary to assess needs or ensure aid is delivered safely. They may even be placed at risk of attacks by belligerents in ‘retaliation’ for accepting assistance, such as is the case today in Sudan and large swathes of Afghanistan under Taliban influence.

Since the intervention of international military forces in a conflict are frequently perceived as neither neutral nor impartial, any association with them may mean that belligerents or even affected communities no longer see humanitarian agencies as neutral third parties either, and will not cooperate with them or allow them access to deliver assistance. Belligerents may even attack aid workers as a result. The attack on UN offices in Mazaar-el-Sherif in March and Tripoli in May demonstrates how real these risks are in this context.

Dialogue is essential to enhance respective efforts to mitigate the risks to civilians, whether through sharing analysis or promoting adherence to international humanitarian law.

Robust civil-military coordination efforts are required to manage the relationship between the military and humanitarian agencies, to facilitate an understanding of what their respective comparative advantages may be, where these may be complementary, and when it is necessary for tactical and conceptual reasons that the two strategies are, and are seen as being, separate.

In Bosnia, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq and Pakistan, the blurring of lines between humanitarian, military and political objectives has had a profound impact on the civilian population, ultimately jeopardizing efforts to achieve the shared objectives of saving lives and delivering assistance. Let’s hope the drive for ‘stabilisation’ in the ‘Arab Uprising’ unfolding across the Middle East doesn’t compound the problem still further.

All humanitarian action, including civil-military coordination for humanitarian purposes in complex emergencies, must be in accordance with the overriding core principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality.  This section outlines these cardinal humanitarian principles as well as other important principles and concepts that must be respected when planning or undertaking civil-military coordination.

Clusters have been brought up as ‘nouns’ by their parents, the ‘Global Cluster Lead Agencies’, with the sort of benign distracted indifference that busy nanny-hiring parents so often display. But, with their parenting skills being increasingly challenged by those who pay the school fees, it turns out that these parents have not only lost their little darling’s birth certificate, but are now also querying the paternity. This is because they have just discovered — qu’ell horreur cherie — that their offspring are expensive as well as troublesome. “Our children are not ‘nouns’ at all,” they wail, “they have been ‘transitive verbs’ all along!”

They cannot be nouns because, as legally accountable entities, they don’t exist.

And, as verbs, all they can do is ‘facilitate’ an ‘approach’ that is so controlled that they can do little more than throw the odd toy out of the playpen.

There is a growing number of people who think Clusters have become self-serving, bureaucratic “monsters”, and that it’s time to “get back to basics”. Do they have a point?

The primary role of Cluster coordination is to ensure that humanitarian assistance programmes in any one geographic or thematic area of work do not conflict, overlap with, or result in major gaps in service delivery. Secondary aims are to ensure complementarity between agencies as well as with government, identify outstanding needs, and advocate for funds and policy change.

To do this, Clusters are required to create a sector strategy which integrates cross-sectoral areas of work, includes cross-cutting issues that conform to the contextual realities on the ground, and provides guidance on appropriate technical ‘best practices’. Such a strategy needs to be adapted according to emerging needs.  All this assumes the regular supply of meaningful planning information and analysis to and from Cluster partners. For this to be ensured four things are required:

• Well managed information-sharing and coordination meetings (they are not the same thing …)
• A current strategic operational framework document
• A recent Situation Report (SitRep)
• An up-to-the-minute website (or googlegroup or similar)

There, how difficult could that be?

But it is difficult. And the other forty-six sections that follow in ‘clusterwise 2′ explain why. It is much more difficult, and requires a much greater investment in people and assets than most senior managers seem to realize. Coordination management does indeed require shed-loads of highly qualified people but only in certain phases of the crisis and only for limited amounts of time … the time it takes to transfer skills, in fact.

That said, in certain places, and at certain times, Clusters have performed well, and the original intentions of the architects of humanitarian reform have been realised: Improved humanitarian action through better coordination, leadership, predictability, accountability, and partnership. In too many other places, though, Clusters have not performed so well.

This book therefore suggests that we, the humanitarian community, ‘get back to basics’ by re-defining those core functions that are essential to good coordination of humanitarian action, and deepen the particular skill-sets needed for each. Trust and invest in Coordinators at all levels. Distil the Cluster enterprise back to its fundamentals. Decide who is responsible for what, and delegate the required level of responsibility and authority to staff and partners in the field to get the job done. Recognise that all partners have a stake in, and are therefore equally accountable for, the outcome of their combined humanitarian actions.

“We are more than the sum of our parts when we coordinate and collaborate” (Steve Jobs, CEO Apple)

Hold individuals to account for their performance. And deliver the ‘value added’ that those affected by disaster have a right to, and that donors expect.

CLUSTER LITE

Getting back to basics does not imply a ‘Cluster Lite’ approach. But nor does it imply a “Cluster Heavy” approach either, as a supply-driven, heavily staffed, and overly process oriented bureaucratic approach is self-serving, inefficient, and ultimately unaffordable.

The situation right now is a roiling sea of competing mandates, mis-managed expectation, and selective interpretation of ambiguous guidance. Against this backdrop of confusion and unfulfilled promise, some of the larger agencies seem to be suggesting that humanitarian reform has run its course, and that something bolder is needed; that the time is right to move beyond consensus to a two-tier system which favours the more operational, life-saving Clusters and which is rather more ‘controlled’.

Some go on to argue that Clusters have diverted attention and resources to the process of coordination at the expense of delivering humanitarian assistance. Clusters have also been criticised for threatening longer term developmental assistance and undermining pre-existing development coordination structures. They also suggest that, since Clusters are expensive and unsustainable, they should be trimmed back to smaller numbers of people, be ‘live’ for shorter periods of time, and restrict themselves to the core business of ‘emergency response’ only.

As a result of these criticisms, CLAs are likely to opt increasingly for a “Cluster Lite” model. ‘Cluster Lite’ means that CLAs employ only the basic tenets of good coordination practice.  In other words:

• Cluster Coordinators do not need to be dedicated (i.e coordinators have programme management roles with coordination as an additional and largely unsupported TOR);
• there is no need for sectoral Information Management capacity
• provider of last resort means no more than ‘advocate of last resort’; and,
• accountability and reporting structures to the Humanitarian Coordinator can remain vague and partial.

The consequence of employing ‘Cluster Lite’ is that the quality of coordination in some responses has reduced to the unacceptable levels that were the reason for implementing the humanitarian reform agenda in the first place! And further, have opened the door for CLA’s to get away with diluting and reducing Cluster support in crises which unequivocally demand a full Cluster Approach to be implemented.  The initial Cluster response to the Haiti earthquake in 2010 is a case in point for some Clusters, with real and tragic consequences for the Haitian people – which is what stimulated Sir John Holmes’ stinging letter at the time, and which you can find partially reproduced in the section on Accountability.

In other cases, coordination groups have been sustained after a crisis to support ongoing response preparedness and contingency planning, particularly in countries where crises are recurrent.  Where these groups have not been subsumed into pre-existing developmental coordination structures they have retained the name ‘Clusters’.  While supporting efforts to maintain minimum preparedness for future crises in times of non-crisis is a positive outcome, continuing to brand these coordination groups as Clusters can detract from a global understanding of what activating a Cluster can and should require.

At the same time, donors, in a drive to reduce transaction costs and transfer political risk, have expectations of the Cluster Approach which never matched the mandates, systems, capacities or competencies of the Cluster Lead Agencies. Other factors also affect the extent to which Clusters ‘add value’:

The Cluster Approach has suffered a form of “mission creep” and now involves aspects of prevention, mitigation, and recovery best left to the development sector which it does not have the capacity to take on.

Humanitarian Coordinators often lack the humanitarian experience and leadership skills craved by the humanitarian community. This is particularly the case in sudden onset crises where a Resident Coordinator becomes a Humanitarian Coordinator and is expected to manage and direct response to a crisis for which he or she has little or no experience or formal training.

“Reporting lines between clusters and coordinators are unclear” (DFID HERR, March 2011)

Very few Cluster Coordinators have the experience as well as the technical and managerial skill-sets to ‘lead’ their Clusters in large-scale, acute crises. Consultants – who comprise approximately half of all coordination management functions within a month or two of disaster onset – often lack institutional experience of working with the government and/or the UN system. Furthermore, agency staff assigned to this role often come from a technical programme background with little knowledge of either how to coordinate, or collaborate with agencies who are not contracted ‘implementing’ partners.

The reporting and accountability lines for Cluster Coordinators have been diluted to the point that

• Cluster Coordinators are no longer perceived as impartial or independent
• Clusters are no longer principal agents in their own strategy setting
• CLA Heads misrepresent the collective Cluster view in their advocacy with donors and governments.

Inter-Cluster coordination leaves too many gaps and issues unresolved because the connection between Cluster Coordinators, OCHA, and the Humanitarian Country Team is not well understood.

Independent yet accountable coordination is not taken seriously enough either by the Cluster Lead Agencies or their partner stakeholders as a management discipline. As a result, Cluster Coordinators are neither empowered to lead the Clusters they supposedly represent, nor operationally enabled to carry out the core coordination functions expected of them. As if that weren’t bad enough, it is the NGOs’ belief that humanitarian reform has consistently syphoned disproportionate money towards the UN and slowed the distribution of funds to NGOs who do much of the implementation. Hardly surprising, then, that many NGOs have kept their distance.

Meanwhile, CLA representatives at country level face two important ‘perverse incentives’ that constrain their ability to be ‘accountable’. For, how can the Head of a CLA at the national level be expected to:

• Be accountable for Cluster activities – including being the ‘provider of last resort’ – carried out by Cluster partners over whom (s)he has only limited oversight and no control?
• Delegate responsibility and authority to a Cluster Coordinator whose loyalties, core competencies, skill-sets, and experience are unpredictable, variable, and whose primary accountability is to a group of organizations rather than exclusively to the employing CLA?

It is unrealistic to expect acceptance of responsibility in the face of these two realities, especially when the ‘independence’ expected of the Cluster clashes so spectacularly with the CLA’s traditional views of their own roles and accountabilities.

THE NEED FOR INDEPENDENCE

According to the NGO, Save the Children, there is “an acute need for independent, effective Cluster Coordinators”. Too often, Cluster Coordinators are asked to run the Cluster while simultaneously representing their parent UN agency [Note: Except  that IFRC and IOM, the only other non-UN Global Cluster Leads, don't seem to have this problem]. This not only leads to a conflict of interest, it reduces the effectiveness of the Cluster, as the demands of coordination management are too great to be a part-time job, and too sophisticated for partially trained programme managers. The trouble with the word, “independence” is that it sends a shiver down the spine of those who are ‘accountable’ i.e the Heads of the Cluster Lead Agencies. At best, they prefer the word, “autonomous”, and it may well be that is as far as the notion of “honest broking” gets. But it’s better than the concept of “neutral facilitation” and the lack of ‘leadership’ implied by such a sterile term.

THE LEADERSHIP DEFICIT

As far back as 2009, the Feinstein Centre at Tufts University was noticing another crack in the Cluster edifice: “As long as the different UN agencies will not report to the Humanitarian Coordinator but essentially only to their own headquarters (through their respective Regional Directors), any recommendation on improving humanitarian leadership and all that follows will fall on deaf ears. While personalities might well be important, the issue is essentially structural: unless there is a solid commitment to the principles (of humanitarian reform) from the headquarters of UN agencies and from donors – including an HC empowered to ensure that humanitarian action is protected as much as possible from subordination to political and/or development agendas – substantive change will remain elusive”.

“The cluster system has merely replicated agency divisions meaning prioritization remains just as difficult” (DFID HERR, March2011).

A symptom of this ‘leadership deficit’ is also visible in the ‘grey zone’ of accountability that rests between the ‘rock’ of the Humanitarian Country Team’ and the ‘soft place’ that is the ‘Inter Cluster Coordination Group’ when it comes to setting the strategic direction of the overall humanitarian response [see more in the section on 'Inter-Cluster Coordination']. Unfortunately, no amount of ‘HC strengthening’ – itself an explicit objective within the humanitarian reform process – will help reduce this structural deficit; in fact, it may even make matters worse by raising unrealistic expectations. Perhaps, now that the IASC Principals have endorsed moves to further empower the Emergency Relief Coordinator, Valerie Amos, these dichotomies will finally be addressed.

WAY AHEAD

Experience suggests that Cluster membership does not currently equate to partnership, and Cluster members are not seen as having a stake in the outcome of their collective action. Efficiency and effectiveness of coordination in the field could be much improved by

1. Returning independent, impartial and neutral coordination to the centre of humanitarian action
2. Simpler and more targeted cross-sectoral preparedness in-country
3. Provision of coherent and consistent real-time support from Global Cluster Leads at central level in providing what is essentially ‘standard’ technical and operational guidance
4. Providing synergy (and sometimes co-locating) through common services
5. Professional accreditation of trained and selected Cluster Coordinators and Information Managers of proven experience

Being a ‘coordinator’ can also mean providing an element of direction from time to time. Getting the balance right between benign dictatorship and unanimous agreement is the art of coordination management. Cluster partners, even the largest international NGOs, expects some guidance and direction, at least initially into what to do (and what not to do) and where. The implication is that such ’direction’ should be well informed. This means good needs assessment, proper gap and capacity analysis, technical know-how, ideally, knowledge of the country and its language, and, above all, experience in the sector.

What every stakeholder craves is evidence-based analysis of impact balanced with extrapolations from ‘known unknowns’ interpreted through the lens of experience.

Too often, Coordinators refer to input and output rather than outcome, impact and outstanding challenges. This drives donors in particular to despair. State of the art Information Management, and a realization that CLA’s are not necessarily accountable for every aspect of that which they report, is needed to change this. Cluster Coordinators must represent, and be seen to represent, the interests of the Cluster. Every time a CLA Head discusses particular Cluster issues with the RC-HC without the Cluster Coordinator present, this is eroded and the chance to really add value is lost. Coordinators must be empowered through proper delegation of authority and responsibility, and operationally enabled by being given the means to do the job. Coordinators, in close cooperation with their SAGs, must be able to advocate cogently — sometimes against the (programme) interests of their own CLA.

WHAT ARE THE ‘CORE’ COORDINATION FUNCTIONS?

‘Getting back to basics’ will improve humanitarian action through systematically providing the following core coordination services of:

1. Assessing need (including collecting and distilling useful information)
2. Identifying and filling gaps in service delivery while preventing duplication of effort
3. Developing common strategies and action plans (including inter-sectoral and cross-cutting issues)
4. Providing appropriate technical guidance
5. Developing informed advocacy messaging
6. Telling the world what has been achieved and what remains to be done

In aid-speak, this can be expanded to mean that Clusters are required to manage the process by which a minimum set of service outputs are delivered quickly and consistently. At the next level of detail, this will require the cluster coordinators to:

1. Establish a SAG.
2. Establish TWIGs as required.
3. Write the Flash Appeal and manage subsequent fund raising initiatives.
4. Agree on level of human resources needed to complete the organigram.
5. Identify needs, and map capacities to meet them.
6. Identify gaps and ensure they are filled.
7. Ensure no duplication of effort.
8. Identify and work in close collaboration with a single Government counterpart (for some clusters, it may be necessary to have Government counterparts from more than one Ministry).
9. Know the Cluster members and how to contact them (which also means knowing who is in the country but not engaging with the Cluster).
10. Establish a web platform (see Info Management section)
11. Produce maps (with multi-variate overlays as required)
12. Provide regular Situation Reports, Updates and Bulletins
13. Track attainment of objectives by establish monitoring mechanisms (provide spreadsheets and graphics) that track inputs, outputs, and outcomes.
14. Conduct joint needs assessments.
15. Formulate a strategic operational framework and update it as required (at least monthly).
16. Conduct plenary information sharing meetings (with simultaneous or consecutive translation).

BRING BACK MENTORING

One of the best ways to ensure that these core functions are implemented with ‘minimal’ resources is to resurrect the idea of ‘mentoring‘. This concept foresees early mobilization of an experienced ‘coordinateur sage’ to support the actual Cluster Coordinator and his or her team. This person remains in country only for those first few hectic weeks and then departs, to remain available to offer remote support from a distance. It is also quite possible that this person carries out the first ‘real time assessment’ which all Clusters should be carrying out more or less at the eight week stage. This is not meant to be a full-on evaluation, but a quick and dirty ‘mirror for management’ to help the Cluster re-focus on areas that have had insufficient attention. Sadly, the power of this idea has been lost in the debate over cost versus investment, but, on the limited occasion sit has been used (by the WASH Cluster in Bangladesh, for example) is has worked well.

Updated on 18 May 2011

In formal terms, “disaster risk is the potential loss expressed in lives, health status, livelihoods, assets and services which could occur to a particular community or society due to the impact of a natural hazard”.

In plain English, a disaster is when something bad happens and lots of people die, get maimed, get sick, and lose everything they own, including their ability to earn a living.

Risk is a function of the probability that such shit will happen, its potential impact in terms of vulnerability and exposure, and how able everyone is to cope if it does. It is, in other words, a synonym for something everybody would rather avoid.

We all, as individuals, households and societies have developed our own strategies to manage risk every day. We do it when chopping tomatoes in the kitchen and every time we get behind the driving wheel. Though we may not really be aware of it, we have thought through what to do before our worst imaginings happen to us, and what action we would take if it did. Put a slightly different way, ‘Disaster Risk Management’ increases our resilience and is all about how to avoid the negative impacts of hazard events and recover from them if we were not lucky enough — or did not have the foresight to prepare — to get out of harm’s way.

Traditionally, ‘risk’ (R) is expressed as a function of hazard (H), vulnerability (V), exposure (E), and resilience (r). Disaster epidemiologists feel more comfortable with a slightly more ‘scientific’ model and so put it into the form of pseudo-equation which looks something like this:

R = (H x V) + E / r

The diagram at the end of the section and separately under ‘presentations’ on the homepage makes it seem even more complicated by trying to capture the main functions of risk and show how they relate to each other, as well as by highlighting that we all have different ways of perceiving and interpreting risk.

Shit happens … but you can  make sure it doesn’t happen to you !