This report covers the period 1 January to 31 December 2012
Overview
Top-line achievements:
The South Asia regional delegation (SARD)’s preparedness and resilience unit (PRU), which was established at the end of 2011, became functional at the beginning of 2012. PRU, which is fully functional with expertise on organisational disaster preparedness (ODP), strengthening community resilience, disaster risk reduction (DRR), health, water and sanitation (WatSan), beneficiary communication, planning, monitoring, evaluation and reporting (PMER), and knowledge management, has continued to promote the integrated programming approach to build a regional understanding and promote a coordinated approach to the Movement aims. The regional disaster management initiatives included quality enhancement in ODP, such as refining training resources, manuals, developing standard operating procedures (SOPs) on disaster response at regional level and finalizing those developed by the National Society. Stronger emphasis was put on harmonizing sectoral response, particularly through holistic contingency planning and simulation exercises. Significant progress has been made in strengthening the tools and procedures of the respective National Societies for disaster preparedness. For community resilience, discussion on application of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) paper on community resilience gained more momentum in 2012. Workshops in Afghanistan, Nepal, and Pakistan were held to share the concept, whereas a regional workshop on community resilience brought together practitioners in sharing the success and challenges of this model.
During the reporting period, the programme advisors of the regional delegation continued to support the National Societies of the region to improve their community based programming, integration of communication, advocacy and humanitarian diplomacy (HD), PMER support and a long-term strategic vision for overall financial management within the National Societies. The regional HD framework was developed based on the comprehensive and individual country mapping during spring 2012. It reflects the HD priorities of each National Society and highlights the possibilities to build its capacity in HD. The regional delegation has also strengthened the coordination and capacity building support between technical teams, which is leading to a more holistic approach to meet the changing circumstances and needs of the region. The detail of the South Asia Regional Delegation Annual Report 2012 International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies 2 II South Asia Regional Delegation - Annual report - 2012 MAA52001 achievements under the outcomes and outputs section below, in themselves only headlines gives a good indication of this.
Factors affecting operating context:
Some of the National Societies have experienced considerable instability caused by the context in which they operate. For example, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal and Pakistan have encountered challenging security situations, political unrest, demonstrations or strike action resulting in delays to planned programming, including delayed or cancelled regional technical support visits of advisors to engage in those countries and to hold planned events. For example, the regional disaster response team (RDRT) trainings, integrated regional communication and humanitarian diplomacy workshop, installation and up-grading financial software. The security situation in Afghanistan combined with visa difficulties has delayed the disaster preparedness activities planned for the third quarter. This has also contributed to shifting of the regional disaster management working group (DMWG) from Kabul to its back up location in Kathmandu.
The health and WatSan advisors were not in post until March 2012, which has meant there have been delays, while they build understanding and relationships with the National Societies. This led to some delays in projected outcomes and outputs for 2012. Issues related to the implementation of Pakistan Red Crescent Society’s (PRCS) constitution and Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) election have occupied much internal effort and contributed to a re‐prioritizing of some activities. Many of the National Societies have a very busy schedule for the last quarter of the year due to a variety of factors that limits some support areas. Some planned areas of support and activities have been rescheduled to 2013 due to delayed decision at management level, security concerns and funding constraints as well