RCG: Regional Consultative Group on Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination for Asia and the Pacific: Terms of Reference

Background

1. The Asia-Pacific series of Conferences on Military Assistance to Disaster Relief Operations (APC-MADRO) that took place over a five-year period1, were organized with the aim of developing collaborative Guidelines to assist the planning of foreign military assistance in support of disaster response operations in the Asia-Pacific region. At the end of this process, the Asia-Pacific Regional Guidelines for the Use of Foreign Military Assets in Natural Disaster Response Operations (“APC MADRO Guidelines”)2 were finalized and endorsed.

2. Building upon the outcomes of the Asia-Pacific series of Conferences, the ASEAN-U.S. Informal Defence Forum, held in Hawaii in April 2014, highlighted the need for greater engagement and enhanced coordination between civilian and military personnel engaged in disaster management in the Asia-Pacific region. OCHA‟s Assistant Secretary-General (ASG) and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, Ms. Kyung-wha Kang, proposed to organize a civil-military coordination workshop on the subject of disaster preparedness and coordinated operational planning in response to this call.

3. Ms. Kang‟s proposal was met with broad agreement and OCHA‟s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) hosted a regional Civil-Military Coordination Workshop on 16-17 October 2014, in Bangkok, Thailand. The event gathered 72 participants from 20 countries. They represented all the key actors that possess a comparative advantage in the rapid mobilization of relief assistance and logistical capacity required to increase the effectiveness of response efforts, particularly in large-scale natural disasters: national authorities, armed forces, representatives from the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA CENTRE), the NGO community, IFRC, the UN and donors.

4. In addition to clear acknowledgement by participants of the need for better coordinated planning and agreement on how this could be achieved in critical areas of disaster response, a key outcome of the workshop was the recommendation to create a multi-stakeholder Regional Consultative Group on Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination for Asia-Pacific to take this planning forward at a practical level.