For our third discussion, we’d like to hear what are your expectations of the global tools for future Movement responses in terms of assessment, coordination, information management and operational leadership?
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Red Cross Red Crescent Global Response Tools Review 
Assessment: during peace time the refresher trainings for HNS volunteers and staff for assessments carrying out. Engagement of beneficiaries voice in needs assessments.
Coordination: big issues of power game between ICRC and IFRC. Specially in countries of conflicts. We need to really follow the spirit of Movement Coordination Agreements as ICRC the lead agency. Politics between movement apart, our ”center of humanitarian action should be vulnerable people not the power between two pillars of RCRC Movement”. According to countries profile/history of disasters proper legal in writing agreements needs to be signed during peace time where clear roles and responsibilities between ICRC/IFRC PNSs would be chalked out for following so that we do not lose time in responding.
Information Management: lot of issues with in movement and external national clusters groups. RCRC is mostly observer in external clusters, which leaves big gap as UN and other agencies don’t know the bigger scale of RCRC response. Internally also ICRC is not sharing with partners mostly that how many beneficiaries are reached. So lot needs to be done in this. It links to ”coordination issues” as well.
Operational leadership: HNS leadership is the lead with support from ICRC/IFRC HoDs and PNSs reps, but lot of advocacy and lobby during peace time is required for building capacity of HNS leadership who takes lead role during disasters.
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Assessment: this is a bog issues; aside from training, we don’t have the budget as a recipient NS to carry out proper assessments in order to request such tools!
Also these tools were created over decade ago; now national authorities and NS much stronger and able to respond themselves, how relevant are they`? we still need support but is this it?
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We need to have more national capacity built and less international – our NS has own capacity to deliver here (where we do have some conflicts/disasters) and also in other countries of our region Americas – but focus shouldn’t be on international tools waiting to be mobilized.
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Reform of the tools, more flexible, more adaptable, less costly. Rely in local capacities. More training, more open evaluations ex-post of the emergency operations. Involve more volunteers in the tools and less paíd staff. Increase the community of local and international responders
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My expectations of the tools are:
o Emergency Response Units (ERUs) – all types use the Minimum Standard Commitments to Gender and Diversity in Emergency Programming and work better together (ie field hospital deploying PNS use differentiated approaches)
o Field Assessment & Co-ordination Team (FACT) – needs to focus much more on Protection, on Social inclusion, on PSS style skillsets. More deployment of local people as FACT (ie change and address the international/local divide in our system)
o Regional Disaster Response Team (RDRT) and Regional Intervention Team (RIT) should be relied on more heavily for all manner of response
o Head of Emergency Operations (HEOps), should include more women. (Where is the data on how many HEoPs have been women?) Where is the data on the nationality of the HEoPs? Why aren’t more local staff deployed as HeOps? I expect to see more reliance on local “HeOPs” readiness
More use of cash.
Lastly, the paucity of data on the quality of staff performance, diversity of staff and reduction of wastage is unacceptably low in our Movement. We should address this, through full time data management and roster management systems for the Global Tools, in the IFRC.
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It is an expectation that the Global Tools will be in line with the rest of the humanitarian sector, including upholding minimum standards on gender and diversity, and on protection. The tools do not currently meet international standards in this regard.
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That all global tools will integrate gender and diversity and gender-based violence prevention, referral and response, which will speak to the quality of and our accountability on assessment, coordination, information management and operational leadership .
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The FACT teams and RDRT teams need to be refreshed with new sorts of expertise…not just the standard health, water, shelter, cash and DM. Our responses will be more effective and relevant to communities and international standards if we include HD people who understand the importance of linking operations with advocacy, anthropologists who have a deep understading of the social dynamics of a communities affected by a disaster, and social inclusion experts who can identify targetted pockets of vulnerability early on. our current system looks primarily as operational issues from a technical service delivery or logistical pov. this needs to change.
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Agree with Nate, our relief operations often tend to take on a purely logistical approach, where reporting is dominated by numbers of items distributed, or numbers of people reached. However we miss out on the more important, qualitative elements; data on vulnerability criteria, gender, disabilities; records of feedback/complaints logged and addressed; continuous monitoring of perception and feedback from communities on the progress of our activities.
Such quality aspects should be more systematically integrated into training and pre-deployment processes, and stronger emphasis is needed from leadership to prioritise these issues. Without this we are not really able to say that we are a community-based organisation with needs-driven programming aiming to reach the most vulnerable.
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The Terms of Reference for the Global Tools Review notes that there are a set of expectations and measures against which the tools are being reviewed. Therefore throughout the whole cycle (EW action, assessment, response etc..) there needs to be a measure of and improvement of gender and diversity sensitivity and protection sensitivity. This will involve including the 7 dedicated IFRC Gender and Diversity full time staff (including the Senior Advisor for Gender and Diversity) systematically in the final review of Global Tools. This will improve: effectiveness, accountability to beneficiaries, reach data (ie emphasis on the need to gather sex and age disaggregated data as a bare minimum humanitarian standard), and also other aspects of the Global Tools. There are already adequate tools, knowledge, frameworks and resources and the Global tools review team should ensure that the IFRC full time experts are systematically engaged in this process.
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With the changing response landscape and environment, the expectations of the tools include:
* need to acknowledge the changes needed in profiles, skill-sets, technical experience of response personnel.
* FACT members (for example) need to be more global, more diverse, more representative, and meet clear and deliberate competencies.
* acknowledge and address the issue of regional personnel. There is an expressed desire to have more regional representation on FACT and ERU teams, but appropriate profiles, availability and/or resources for deployment are often lacking. Regional offices are often so stretched for resources that they don’t have the capacity to manage a disaster roster and/or deploy their staff. This issue and concern should be addressed in a deliberate way.
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