Gujarat Earthquake - UN System Response Summary of Action Plan

UNIC/PRESS RELEASE/04 -2001

This document presents a summary of activities that United Nations Organisations in India are currently undertaking and will be supporting in response to the devastating earthquake that struck Gujarat on 26 January 2001. Based on past experience, lessons learnt in India and available information from Gujarat, a holistic approach to interventions has been identified to support and complement the Government of India’s initiatives. These will be in the following sectors:

• health,
• food and nutrition,
• education and child protection,
• shelter and survival,
• water and sanitation,
• coordination.
• livelihoods,
• logistics

The action plan has identified immediate interventions that will serve as a bridge for mid and longer term rehabilitation and recovery activities which will follow a more in-depth analysis of the recovery needs. It is estimated that the cost of these interventions will be in the range of US$50 million.

The Impact of the Disaster

The Gujarat earthquake destroyed large parts of the state of Gujarat. Of the 18 affected districts, Kutch-Bhuj, Ahmedabad, Jamnagar and Rajkot are the most seriously damaged. In these four districts more than 16,000 people have died and more than 55,000 have been injured according to official figures released by the Central Government. The death toll continues to rise.

The United Nations System is approaching the situation as a multi-disaster in which the January earthquake follows on from two earlier disasters. Gujarat has not fully recovered from the cyclone of 1998 nor the ongoing droughts of the last two years. With each disaster vulnerability increases and meteorology predictions indicate that the drought will continue.

Overall Strategy

The UN System through it’s response to previous disasters in the past tens years has acquired invaluable experience in disaster relief, recovery and coordination. These natural disasters include the Orissa Super Cyclone, the Latur Earthquake, the West Bengal Floods and the recurring drought crisis in several Indian states.

The ongoing programmes of the UN Family have provided the organisations with an extensive presence and engagement in a broad variety of activities in India. Each UN organisation has built up networks of NGO partners with a strong field presence, trust and credibility in local communities. This experience in building bridges between humanitarian and development partners and the communities has been invaluable. In addition, strong and positive relationships have been built up with both National and State Governments.

Building on these strengths, each individual UN organisation has developed an action plan. These will be coordinated under the umbrella of the UN System as a whole and will be harmonised to maximise the impact and achieve synergy in the response.

The main focus of the UN System will be on the poorest and most vulnerable segments of the population - especially women and children - many of whom have not as yet been reached by the overall relief effort. By working mainly through women’s organisations in the local communities, the two priority focus areas - promoting gender equality and strengthening decentralisation - identified in consultation with the Government for the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF), will also be addressed.

In addition, the UN response will not end with the relief phase but will continue through to the longer term recovery process and will be designed to reduce future vulnerability. It will involve the local population in their own rehabilitation and will promote self help approaches, so that they are better able to respond to and recover from the natural calamities that affect them. Where possible, the programmes will be people centred and will adopt an inter-Organisation, multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary approach as has been recommended by the lessons learnt from the Latur Earthquake.

UN Organisations’ Action Plan by Sector

In close collaboration with their respective Government and implementing partners, the UN System has identified the following programmes for the short and medium term, at the cost of approximately US$50 million.

(i) Health

WHO as Focal Organisation, UNICEF and UNFPA as Cooperating Organisations will undertake:

• Disease Surveillance and Early Warning System for epidemics
• Public Health and Health Sector Coordination
• Hospital and Health Center Safety Assessment and Rehabilitation to:
  • increase emergency health and medical care to the affected families with a special focus on children and women
  • contribute to the restoration and functioning of basic health services, including immunisation, diarrhoea control, growth monitoring and antenatal care for pregnant women
  • accelerate the provision of micronutrient supplements, especially iron/foliate, to women and children and vitamin A for its protective role against infections.

(ii) Food and Nutrition

WFP as Focal Organisation and UNICEF, WHO, FAO as Cooperating Organisations, will conduct an Emergency Food and Aid Programme to provide food assistance from extended delivery points to distribution centres for 298,000 people. The focus will be on women and children. Micro-nutrient supplementation, including Vitamin A and iron/foliate, will be provided to children under five and pregnant and lactating women. The intervention period is four months.

(iii) Education and Child Protection

UNICEF as Focal Agency will:

• Establish temporary school facilities, or support minor repair to lightly damaged facilities, as a means of restarting education and reducing their possible involvement in child labour and other exploitation
• Provide children with learning materials (textbooks, pencils), teachers with teaching supplies, and schools with basic equipment such as blackboards
• Work to identify unaccompanied children and help ensure their proper care
• Provide training in trauma counseling to teachers and social service workers to help reduce the number of children and families who are suffering from trauma
• Support the revitalisation of anganwadi social service centres

(iv) Shelter and survival

UNDP as Focal Organisation and UNCHS/Habitat, UNICEF, UNV as Cooperating Organisations i.a. through their NGO network will:

• Provide immediate assistance to through shelter material to cover the needs of the homeless population in the most heavily affected areas.
• Conduct a more in-depth assessment of the actual damage to housing;
• Establish roaming teams to assist the self-help earthquake resistant building processes
• Provide family survival kits - including cooking utensils, soaps, towels and blankets, lanterns and candles – to 50,000 families

The intervention period is up to eight months.

(v) Water and Sanitation

UNICEF as Focal Organisation and WHO as Cooperating Organisation, will:

• Supply potable water to affected communities, including tanker supplies, disinfection and purification of household drinking water
• Accelerate the minor repair and maintenance of existing, damaged, water supply systems
• Increase sanitation coverage for the affected communities to ensure the safe disposal of excreta and minimise the risk of disease
• Ensure safe water and sanitation

(vi) Coordination

The UNDMT/UNDP will strengthen its coordinating services by bolstering the nucleus of coordinating mechanisms at various levels to ensure a smooth transition from relief to sustainable recovery.

The recovery phase will involve coordination mechanism in UNDMT/UNDP at the state level, decentralized to worst affected areas. These would have necessary capacity to prepare a mid-term, from relief to development, programme, plan, monitor and evaluate necessary activities, and ensure the necessary reporting. The mechanism will ultimately create synergies and will improve the oversight available UN resources. In addition, it will also ensure the necessary accountability and transparency and disseminate widely best practices and lessons learned. The UN Family’s DevInfo/MitInfo databases will facilitate gap analyses and will be widely shared.

(vii) Livelihoods

UNDP, as Focal Organisation and the Cooperating Organisations ILO, UNFPA, UNV through their Community networks will provide integrated livelihood restoration programmes in the Kutch and Patan districts, encompassing:

• Earthquake-resistant traditional shelter for immediate and medium-term needs
• Assistance to immediate livelihood needs through support to existing women’s groups
• Immediate support on food security
• Support to affected children
• Support to drought-proofing
• Coordination in Bhuj

The target beneficiaries amounts to some 14,000 children and adults including 6,000 women and their families, 180 existing village women’s organizations and 2,000 women artisans in Kutch and some 1,500 families in Patan. The initial intervention period is estimated to be six months.

(viii) Logistics

The scale of the disaster has resulted in a massive relief effort that is being coordinated by the Government of India, which has expressed interest in assistance to support and reinforce logistics coordination of the relief effort. WFP as the Focal Organisation and the Cooperating Organisations UNICEF, WHO and UNDP will set-up, operate and maintain a UN Joint Logistics Cell in Bhuj, and a joint operations centre with the UNICEF sub-office in Gandinagar. A programme coordination centre, jointly with UNDP in Ahmedabad, to assist in the coordination of relief logistics from extended delivery points to distribution centres, in partnership with the Government, UN Organisations and NGOs is also a possible outcome. The intervention period is estimated at four months.