(RCG5) Report - Summary of the RCG Fifth Session Day 1 - 09 December 2019

RCG Background

The Asia-Pacific Conferences on Military Assistance to Disaster Relief Operations (APC-MADRO) took place over a five-year period (2005-2010), and were organised with the aim of developing collaborative guidelines to assist the planning of foreign military assistance (FMA) in support of disaster response operations in the Asia-Pacific region. At the end of this process in 2010, the Asia-Pacific Regional Guidelines for the Use of Foreign Military Assets in Natural Disaster Response Operations (APC-MADRO Guidelines) were finalized and endorsed.
Building upon the outcomes of the Asia-Pacific Conferences and related guidelines, a multi-stakeholder Regional Consultative Group (RCG) on Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination for Asia and the Pacific was formed in 2014 to act as a regional forum and bring together the humanitarian sector, including grass-root organizations, with government officials and military actors involved in disaster response preparedness planning and disaster response in the region. As outlined in the Terms of Reference, the RCG was formed to:
a) discuss response preparedness planning, with a focus on coordination of operational planning between civilian and military actors;
b) facilitate exchange of information and innovative ideas to enable well- coordinated and needs-based effective disaster response to a broad range of humanitarian emergency operations;
c) strengthen linkages with other relevant platforms with an emphasis on the relationship with Regional Organizations and the Global Consultative Group on Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination.
The chairmanship of the RCG is rotated among Member States on an annual basis.
In 2019, the Government of Thailand, represented by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) supported by the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM) of the Ministry of Interior (MOI) chaired the RCG and hosted the RCG Fifth Session from 09 to 11 December 2019 at the Shangri-La Hotel in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The event was organised with the support of the RCG Secretariat, represented by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP), the Australian Civil-Military Centre (ACMC) and the United States Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance (CFE-DM).