UN OCHA Humanitarian Network and Partnership Week: Effective Preparedness and Response

About:

The HNPW will bring operational and service-oriented response and preparedness networks together on the basis of shared, practical challenges that cannot be solved by any singular network or organization.This forum aims to enable participants to inspire and learn from one another, compel networks to explore new and innovative approaches to perennial challenges and facilitate the development of collective solutions and the mobilization of shared resources towards these ends.

The purpose of the event was to provide a platform for networks and partnerships to explore ways to strengthen their interoperability, and to improve their cooperation in areas of common interest.

Some of the key issues:

Simulation exercises and training:

Disaster response simulation exercises are generally used as a means to enhance preparedness either to test the state of preparedness of the participating stakeholders or, to train on the implementation of response plans and mechanisms: generally, response simulation exercises are part of a broader preparedness planning and capacity-building process. Depending on the intent, they are run as internal events by organizations or institutions; or, by coordinating entities with the participation of several different organizations. Importantly, simulation exercises can focus on specific plans, or applying coordination mechanisms, procedures and protocols.

The proposed discussion is to focus on the latter (i.e. simulation exercises that train and/or test coordination mechanisms and the interoperability between international, regional and national humanitarian actors, including affected governments, bilateral response actors, international humanitarian organizations, NGOs and others.

Environment in response:

While the environment is widely recognized as a critical factor in the quality, effectiveness and sustainability of humanitarian action, the needed expertise and analysis to address the environmental impacts of disasters and associated emergency response is not systematically applied.

There is increasing demand to identify the critical environmental factors that reduce vulnerability and increase resilience of affected populations, however, responders and country teams may not have access to the right expertise and advice at the right time.

Despite years of work by environmental advocates on this topic, and a plethora of guidelines and tools, key environmental issues are not yet systematically and coherently addressed in the first stages of crises and disaster response.

Environmental vulnerabilities are compounded by challenges such as environmental degradation, climate change, urbanisation and industrialisation.

Register online before 1 Feb 2016