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News feature: CWS, other NGOs expanding 'Sphere' of influence -- of quality in disaster response
CWS is a leading proponent of Sphere standards--quality standards in the delivery of disaster relief.
Photo: TVRI
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NEW YORK -- In the aftermath of major disasters, the issues confronting both donors and humanitarian agencies are highly complex and often severely challenging.
Earlier this month (April 1-3), global humanitarian agency Church World Service led a workshop in Hyderabad, Pakistan, to guide greater quality standards in the delivery of disaster relief, following the rigorous guidelines of international Sphere standards.
The Sphere Project is one of the leading initiatives promoting and engendering quality standards among the humanitarian community worldwide. Church World Service Pakistan/Afghanistan is Sphere's "focal point" in Pakistan. As a leading proponent of Sphere standards in disaster response, CWS Indonesia held the first Sphere training for its own staff and country-based NGO representatives in 2006, following challenges faced after the devastating tsunami that hit Indonesia in December 2004.
The aim of the Sphere Project is to improve the quality of assistance to people affected by disaster and to improve the accountability of states and humanitarian agencies to their constituents, donors and the affected populations.*
Since 1997– when thousands of people from more than 400 national and international NGOS, United Nation agencies and academic institutions representing 80 countries participated to craft the first edition of Sphere standards– a 2004 revision refined the humanitarian standards; the program was piloted; and subsequent trainings for aid workers continue to take place worldwide.
In December 2007, representatives of the European Union formally got on board the effort to raise the benchmarks on quality, signing the European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid. The Consensus calls for humanitarian action to follow a set of internationally recognized standards and principles which have been embodied in the Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and other non-governmental organizations involved in disaster relief, and as are set out by the international Sphere Project.
To support the Sphere initiative's aims, also in December, CWS P/A hosted a regional Sphere training program in Bangkok, Thailand, for participants from nine countries. The training sought to build relief workers' capacity to increase efficiency and effectiveness when addressing areas of greatest need in responding to disasters– by using Sphere Minimum Standards for monitoring and evaluation of their work as one of the tools to ensure quality and accountability.
Mirna Mutiara, Project Development officer, CWS Indonesia, participated in the Bangkok training. "For program development, I need to know a bit about every sector," she said. "Now I know ten steps ahead what I need to do in my program planning and reporting work!"
The international initiative is also raising awareness and standards at government- and municipal levels. In March, CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan and Groupe URD partnered with the government of Afghanistan to conduct a Sphere workshop on quality, accountability and the specific difficulties of humanitarian interventions in the still-embattled country.
At the workshop, Groupe URD member Veronique de Geoffrey said, "The way to work toward quality should lie in participatory methods. We need to involve the people in decision-making and monitoring and evaluation... which will increase quality of aid to the people."
In order to provide quality and accountability in any country, Church World Service says government organizations and the humanitarian community must work together. But during the Afghan workshop, engineer Habibullah Habib, a representative of the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Agency (ANDMA), candidly stated, "The main responsibility [for disaster response] lies with the government not with the UN and aid agencies.
"The role of the government of Afghanistan in disasters is coordination," Habib said. "The most important needs are disaster preparedness and disaster response at the provincial level and a lack of early warning is the most critical issue missing."
Naseer Ayanee, United States Government Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration's refugee specialist for Afghanistan, said better quality in disaster assistance "Cannot be solved in one workshop. There's a long way to go. What we can do is inform people. The more we have involvement of other humanitarian actors, the more we can resolve the issues of coordination, intervention and information sharing and lessons learned,"
The CWS-P/A-led Sphere group is planning a "lessons learned" session with Sphere Geneva in June and has scheduled further Sphere trainings for NGO workers throughout Pakistan and Afghanistan through 2009.
Sphere humanitarian response standards are also increasingly finding their way into academic curricula on international development, including special sessions at the University of Birmingham in the UK and the Latin American and Caribbean University (Universidad Latino Americana y del Caribe) in Venezuela.
Meanwhile, a Sphere handbook is helping proliferate those standards: CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan has translated the handbook in Dari, Urdu and Pashto, and other Sphere member organizations including CARE, Oxfam, the Korean NGO Council, the Romanian Red Cross, Action Aid and the Disaster Forum in Bangladesh, are translating the principles into languages including Azeri, Bagla, Romanian and Somali.
Source: http://www.sphereproject.org/content/view/31/84/lang,English/
Media Contact:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676;
Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526;
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