For our first discussion, we’d like to hear your views on what you consider to be the key challenges for the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement in today’s crises and emergencies?
Please leave a comment (click on “Leave a reply”) to contribute to the conversation!
Red Cross Red Crescent Global Response Tools Review 
The biggest challenge is the timely response, recent example of cholera epidemic in south sudan this year, DREF was launched weeks late, and National society had to respond and then one of the partners (NetherlandsRC) gave 20000 Euro to at least start the response (volunteers social mobilization trainings and deployment), till the time DREF funds were made available. So the time between launching DREF (funds received) the RCRC had to response, so missing part is the ”Local Domestic Fund/Contingency or response fund) at country level which can give cushion till DREF or is launched. Because essence is the ”in time response”.
Again now for Elnino preparedness South Sudan HNS needs support as in country no ”domestic/contingency fund/forecast based disbursement fund” is available, again we will wait for cholera or malaria or floods to hit and then we will be reactive again. So, this proactive preparedness is missing we are mostly reactive based.
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A key challenge for recipient NS is the delay in the emergency funds. We have had to use our own (small funds) to cover the gap; it’s not the best solution. Once the regional team arrives it helps of couse
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Like my previous colleagues the main challange it will be time response in disasters in special in urban disasters or a disaster that affect huge areas. Also the quality of the intervetion. Maybe in the future to introduse quality indicators.
A solution can be to release very quikly a sum of money (can be named Quick DREF) to the NS affected and after the rest of necesary resulted trought assesment.
First to be indetify the common part of needs in disaster for 24/48 h an calculate an amount on diferent segment of affected persons
ex : 1000 IDP person Quick Dref – 10 000 CHF
1001-2000 IDP person Quick Dref – 20 000 CHF
over 3000 IDP person Quick Dref – 50 000 CHF
Also for proactive measures , can be made DREF prevention or something similar when you have the information that it will happening something, for example : Danube Flood , Balkans Flood etc.
An assement of financial/logistics capacity for NS on regions.
Coruption can be a challenge in the future for some NS.
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Only the 2% of the Humanitairna Aid is directly managed by local NGO’s. The Mouvement should revert this situación at his level, strenthening the Host National Societies, closer to the people. The second challenge is the Access. There are many emergencies uncovered even by the RC Mouvement, security of local personel is a major concern, Syrian Arab Red Crescent has lost more tan 48 volunteers on duty.
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Timeliness / Access/ Political/ Security situations as above
Sustaining qualified teams in the field both national and international
Financing operations-better to do two things well than 10 things badly- reputation
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One of our biggest challenges (and one in which we lag against UN and INGOs in humanitarian space) is of course accountability to affected communities. At the moment, the IFRC Membership cannot even measure its collective reach (how many men, women, boys and girls do we all reach) and therefore we cannot even begin to show whether we have speed, breadth or timeliness, and additionally we cannot measure ourselves against the challenge of the day. If x million people are affected by disaster risk, and we recognise that there are xyz social inclusion challenges and differentiated impacts on people, but we cannot say that WE reach xx people, how can we spend donor money with a clean conscience? We have entirely lost our compass on accountability to the people we serve and the people who provide us their goodwill (volunteers) and funds.
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Fully agree with this. As far as I know, we as the IFRC have not even finalised and endorsed our internal accountability framework, let alone have a standardised approach to operationalising accountability, both downward as well as upward. Until we are able to say that we have reached the most vulnerable though proper recording of gender, age and vulnerability data, we cannot determine to what extent we have fulfilled our humanitarian mandate and mission to serve the most vulnerable groups. Until we have records that we have put in place formalised channels to communicate important information as well as safe and accessible means to obtain feedback and complaints which are addressed by closing the feedback loop, we cannot say that we are being accountable to the people we assist (which is in our Code of Conduct).
A huge challenge in this area is the need for strong leadership commitment and organisational culture to drive the importance of these quality aspects. What is the impact of having delivered 5,000 tarpaulins or 700 jerry cans if at the end of the day, they did not go to the right people, or were not used for whatever reasons? Numbers and figures mean nothing if we cannot back them up with qualitative data and prove that we are promoting the rights of communities to information and feedback.
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A key challenge for RC action in the future relates to ensuring a coordinated and minimum quality standard to our responses, particular to stay in line with developments in the humanitarian sector, such as ensuring that gender, diversity, Sexual and Gender Based Violence and protection matters, are considered in all stages of the disaster and crisis management cycle. How to sensitise the diverse and broad number of people engaged in the global tools all at once to these issues will be a challenge, but is ultimately one that we need to address if we are to stay in line and as a competitor with other humanitarian actors (whether older ones or newer ones).
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I agree with the previous post (Nov. 14, 06.00)
For me, a key challenge is ensuring that staff everywhere have a common understanding of how to implement in very practical terms a people-centred approach to humanitarian assistance, such as protection (mainstreaming), gender and diversity, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) prevention, and response measures and child protection.
These areas of expertise deserve further consideration and development (such as FACT profiles for gender & diversity (or Protection) and for SGBV and child protection).
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One key challenge is ensuring a standardized approach across our global tools such as ERU/FACT/RDRT to allow for greater co-ordination that ensures issues of gender, diversity, protection and sexual and gender-based violence are incorporated within the tools and practically applied. Essential to this is ensuring that staff deployed are aware of the importance of conducting our humanitarian responses in such a way that is sensitive to gender, diversity (disability, age, ethnic origin etc) and ensures protection needs are met.
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A key challenge would be to build up local capacity during response operations, and not just pay lip service to this. Decision making should really be done hand in hand with local staff, they are the ones who possess the local knowledge, context and expertise within the affected country. As much as possible, existing local staff must be involved in planning and executing operations. Thus our global tools system must designed in such a way that it will not override the authority, or neglect the capacity of local actors, which often tends to happen.
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Capacity Building and Organization Development is absolutely key for RCRC Movement, Preparedness at National Society level would be the most efficient, feasible, pertinent in case of future emergencies, disasters, conflicts, etc.
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I agree with Sandra, especially considering the comments above regarding gender and diversity etc. the NS needs the be involved and prepared with all these issues or we risk of just having very nice narrative but the implementation and follow-up will not reflect our aspirations.
A well prepared NS will improve a lot of these issues.
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Adjustments to our RCRC response architecture, response mechanisms and the re-alignment of response triggers, systems, and processes to reflect today’s response environment to include more and more responses outside of natural disasters in a rural context. We’re responding more and more to urban and complex emergency events and many of our response mechanisms, systems, processes have not necessarily been adapted for emergencies that are complex or urban in nature..
A reflection on the more recent (regional) response to Ebola and the Europe Migration events highlights the necessity to have more robust institutional positions for our wider-organizational engagement for response to events such as Public Health in Emergencies and Population Movements; including sustained support to Internally Displaced Populations (IDPs) and/or refugee flows.
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