Attachments
Host National Society presence:
The Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS) is a voluntary humanitarian organization, with 35 State/Union Territories Branches and more than 700 districts and sub district branches throughout the country. It offers a variety of services, ranging from disaster management, health, blood services, violence prevention, vocational training, and maternity and child welfare schemes. Staff and volunteers are trained in disaster response, forming First Medical Responders (FMR), national, state and district disaster response teams (NDRT, SDRT and DDRT). IRCS also has trained disaster response teams specialized in water and sanitation (NDWRT) with over 30 members. These members are trained on the operation of water purification units, hygiene promotion and sanitation.
One of the core activities of IRCS is provision of relief in times of disasters. For this reason, IRCS operates a network of 6 regional warehouses, equipped with essential non-food relief items, to be dispatched as and when necessary, based on requests of state branches, and in conjunction with government and civil society sector. In addition, provision of water and sanitation services in emergencies is considered an important function for the National Society. IRCS has an essential, but limited, amount of water treatment units, which are deployed to crisis areas and used to provide safe drinking water to the population. The National Society is actively looking to strengthen that component of its disaster response capacity.
Red Cross Red Crescent Movement partners currently involved in the operation:
Since the onset of devastating floods in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) which occurred in early September, the IRCS Jammu and Kashmir state branch have been involved in the immediate response. Its trained FMR volunteers immediately joined the efforts to evacuate the people stranded by water and provide immediate relief supplies. The IRCS national headquarters (NHQ), in coordination with the national authorities, immediately started dispatching essential relief items (tents, blankets, kitchen sets, etc) to the state branch. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has provided active support to IRCS in the mobilisation of the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF), and deployment of staff for joint assessments and early response, alongside IRCS and ICRC.
IRCS has been maintaining close coordination with other in-country Movement partners (ICRC, Canadian Red Cross Society and Belgium/Flanders Red Cross). The information exchange and support across the Movement were ensured at all times, both at the country and Asia Pacific Zone and global level. A number of Partner National Societies (PNS) have contributed bilaterally to the relief/replenishment efforts of IRCS. They include the Iranian Red Crescent with an in kind donation of 200 tents, 200 ground sheets and 2,000 blankets.
Following the initial coordinated response, and the mobilisation of DREF, IRCS has assumed responsibility for supporting J&K state branch, with support of IFRC in resource mobilisation, technical advice and PMER support.
Other partner organizations currently involved in the operation:
Since the very beginning of the operation, the government of India has assumed the leading role in organizing evacuation, relief and rehabilitation efforts in J&K. The Indian armed forces played a critical role in the initial stage of the intervention, as it was the one ensuring access to affected areas and providing security to humanitarian actors. In addition, the state government of J&K, other governmental agencies, and a multitude of non-governmental organizations also engaged in the operation from the onset.
Summary of major revisions made to emergency plan of action:
An important component of the initial plan of action was deployment of additional number of FMR volunteers from other IRCS state branches, to assist with the emergency evacuation and relief. However, volunteers from outside of J&K were not mobilized as the state branch has decided to mobilise only local volunteers as part of the security and logistics risk mitigation measures.
In response to the needs and in coordination with the authorities and the state branch, IRCS NHQ has recently dispatched additional non-food relief items, which were not covered in the DREF operation replenishment plan. In this DREF update, the budget has been revised to accommodate some of the replenishment of solar lanterns, kitchen sets, and two water purification units, with the unused funds allocated for deployment of FMR. Also, the high thermal blankets, which were originally budgeted, have now been replaced by medium thermal blankets, as per IRCS request, resulting in an increase of the overall logistics cost. The total DREF budget remains unchanged.