Overview

Working within a four-year strategic plan, the Federation Secretariat‟s Disaster and Crisis Management (DCM) programme is making solid progress in building a more robust and flexible Federation-wide disaster management system that is aligned to the strategic aims and enabling actions of Strategy 2020.
The 2012 DCM plan is aligned to the IFRC‟s Secretary General‟s objectives and priorities (5 business lines) and includes targets based on the Secretariat‟s 2012-2013 Plan and Budget.

Working closely with the other disaster management-related departments in the Secretariat, the global disaster management team in Zones, regions and countries, and National Societies, DCM has achieved the following over the first six months of 2012:

Operations support (Emergency Appeals, DREF global surge):

• Successful recruitment and start-up for the Heads of Operations (HEOps) with three HEOps pool members appointed on 16 April, 2012, and available for immediate deployment globally to provide strategic leadership to IFRC-led operations for up to three months.

• Effective backstopping support to Africa Zone DM in the form of deployments, capacity reinforcement on an as needed basis, etc.

• Two HEOps deployments between May and July 2012 to the Sahel food insecurity operation and the Syria civil unrest operation.

• Two FACT deployments during the reporting period, both in February, the first to support the flood operations in Mozambique and the second to support the food security operations in the Sahel region.

• Three deployments of the Federation‟s Early Recovery Surge Team (FERST), through the British RC Household Economic Security (HES) roster. Livelihoods experts were deployed to work with the Philippines RC to support the livelihoods recovery needs of populations affected by typhoon Nesat d Nalgae through in kind and cash-based mechanisms and to the Sahel as a livelihoods and food security FACT team member, to provide analysis and inform resulting emergency appeals for NSs in the region.

• Support to various partner ERU training events and the annual technical ERU meetings and FACT/ ERU working group meeting in Geneva (28 May – 1 June) involving over 70 participants from 18 NSs who support FACT and ERUs. Also, preparations for the piloting of th enew Team Leader training.

• Support to Zones for disaster response operations - 18 Emergency Appeals launched during this period for a total of some CHF 81m to deliver assistance to a total of 2,272,052 people. 73 DREF allocations were also made for a total of CHF 11.8 million for 4.1 million beneficiaries.