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Philippines

Building Resilience from Within: Enhancing Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination in Post-Haiyan Philippines

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Executive Summary

Super Typhoon Haiyan is the most devastating weather disturbance and the first major mega-disaster that hit the Philippines in recent memory. Its aftermath offers lessons that need to be factored into the country’s HADR policies, systems, and capacities if the country is to build resilience to increasingly frequent and extreme weather events like Super Typhoon Haiyan.

This NTS report outlines and examines the changes made to HADR based on lessons from Super Typhoon Haiyan, conducted by major stakeholders such as the national government, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), non-governmental organisations (NGOs), scientists, and local government units (LGUs). It analyses how these stakeholders transform lessons from Super Typhoon Haiyan into policy responses and reforms to HADR operations, including civil-military coordination. This document is primarily based on fieldwork interviews conducted in Metro Manila in July 2016 with high-ranking officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines; current and former officials of civilian government agencies included in the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC); humanitarian NGOs; a representative of the academic and scientific community; and a representative from the private sector.

This report is divided into four major parts. Part 1 introduces the Philippines as a disaster-prone country facing decades-old armed conflicts, and contains relevant studies on HADR and civil-military coordination in the Philippines primarily in the context of security sector reform in the Philippine military. Part 2 identifies the issues and challenges to HADR and civil-military coordination during Super Typhoon Haiyan. Part 3 enumerates and examines the major policy and structural reforms to HADR and civil-military coordination based on lessons learned from Super Typhoon Haiyan, including how issues cited in Part 2 were addressed, or reasons why they were not. Part 4 offers recommendations to complement innovations that have been institutionalised and mentioned in Part 3.

Major findings of this report are the following:

National disaster response plan

The humanitarian challenge during Super Typhoon Haiyan challenged the capacity of local and national officials (primarily due to the absence of a comprehensive disaster response plan) despite the fact that the country has always been hit by natural disasters. One significant reform initiated by the Philippine government after Super Typhoon Haiyan was the National Disaster Response Plan (NDRP). It outlines the processes and mechanisms needed to facilitate a coordinated response by national and/or local level departments/agencies.

Coordination among HADR actors

Despite many disasters that have struck the Philippines in recent decades, Super Typhoon Haiyan highlighted the importance of coordination, buy-in, and participation of all HADR stakeholders in the country.

The NDRP facilitates collaborative networks that are necessary to remove traditional institutional barriers and facilitate the sharing of information among NDRRMC council member-agencies. Learning from the Haiyan experience, operational mechanisms have been introduced or reinvigorated, primarily by the Philippine military, to facilitate coordination. The AFP Multinational Coordinating Centre (MNCC) and the Civil-Military Coordinating Centre (CMCC) were set up to coordinate foreign militaries and international responders when the Philippine government, through the President, calls for international assistance (Reuters, 2013; Dizon, 2013).

Disaster risk reduction and mitigation

One of the major gaps in disaster preparedness for Super Typhoon Haiyan was risk communication. The government was unable to communicate the impact or potential impact of a hazard (e.g., Haiyan’s storm surges) in a way that people could have made necessary precautions and taken appropriate action.

One important innovation developed by the Office of Civil Defence (OCD) is the Pre-Disaster Risk Assessment (PDRA) to avoid another Haiyan-like devastation. PDRA is a process to assess a hazard’s level of risk given the degree of exposure and vulnerability in a specific area.

Extensive role of the military

One important operational reform of the AFP during the post-Haiyan period is the activation of one battalion each for the Army, Air Force and Navy, fully equipped and dedicated for HADR missions. The military now has three battalions in place for deployment. The AFP also considers itself as the country’s most robust first responder that can provide the needed manpower and logistical equipment for HADR operations. More importantly, military units are also deployed all over the country, facilitating the AFP’s availability to prepare for and respond to a disaster in any part of the country.

Localisation of HADR

One evident change after Super Typhoon Haiyan is that local governments have become more conscious of achieving “zero-casualty”, a symbolic end-goal of the government to minimise disaster-related casualties. However, the results of an audit reveal that disaster risk reduction and mitigation (DRRM) programs remain highly reactive, executed intermittently or only after disasters. As one AFP general noted, local governments seem to have forgotten the lessons from Super Typhoon Haiyan as they are not investing in DRRM.

Meanwhile, even before Super Typhoon Haiyan, several humanitarian NGOs in the Philippines have already been strongly conducting locally-led humanitarian responses. Since the super typhoon, these locally-led responses have been further enhanced by NGOs through strengthening the capacity of local community organisations on disaster risk reduction and preparedness.