This study takes a fresh look at coordination dynamics by exploring two situations that were noteworthy both for the difficult challenges humanitarian organisations faced and for their innovative responses. The cases shed light on coordination in general and two contexts in particular: coordination for a country (Sierra Leone in the 1990s) and coordination for refugee camps (Rwandan refugees in Ngara District, Tanzania).
After reviewing the conflicts that precipitated the crisis in each setting, the study analyses coordination from three perspectives. The first explores the nature of relationships among humanitarian actors in Sierra Leone and in Ngara District. The second highlights three important coordination functions: strategic planning, resource mobilisation, and security information management. The third examines two examples of program coordination: the controversial repatriation of Rwandan refugees from Tanzania, and education for Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees. Throughout this monograph, the Sierra Leone and Ngara cases are used as optics for viewing how six sets of humanitarian actors—UN agencies, international and local NGOs, the Red Cross movement, donor and national governments, military contingents and representatives of recipient populations—respond to dynamic challenges in the field.
The study finds examples of significant, replicable innovation in both field cases, such as the Committee on Food Aid (CFA) for the Sierra Leonean food sector and coordinated donor funding to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Ngara. It also finds difficult challenges, such as three competing UN entities in Sierra Leone and UNHCR’s evolving relationship with the Tanzanian government.
The Dynamics of Coordination concludes that donor governments command more power than any other set of actors to exercise a positive influence on coordination. At the same time, the marginalisation of national governments from coordination structures is shortsighted because it limits synergies between relief and longer-term development and risks alienating national authorities that have been and will be key players. The study also finds that humanitarian officials tend to overstate the role personalities play in bringing about effective coordination and to underemphasise the significance of well-structured institutional relationships and clearly delineated coordination systems.
This Article critically assesses the crucial but troubled system for the coordination of international humanitarian assistance—the UN “cluster approach.” Regardless of whether the cluster approach actually helps in disaster response, it exercises substantial power over affected populations by...
A briefing paper on OCHA and NGO’s in humanitarian coordination.
This report was commissioned by ICVA and carried out by a consultancy team from the London School of Economics. The research was conducted with the aim of exploring the quality of participation, as well as the challenges inhibiting meaningful participation, by NNGOs and NGO fora within Humanitarian...
