Sphere India

• URS

An inter-agency effort aiming to provide a prompt and effective response to humanitarian emergencies by ensuring comprehensive assessment, timely provision and equitable distribution of necessary relief items to the most affected and vulnerable populations. 5a) Why adopt a unified response strategy in Emergencies?

Humanitarian agencies have a desire to help the affected populations suffering from the disaster; however there are often many gaps in emergency response, lack of cohesive coordination is one of such major factors.
Following are some reasons why URS should be adopted in emergencies.
• Many international and national development and relief agencies are part of the humanitarian response scene in India, often leading to duplication and less organized responses.
• Past experiences and lessons have suggested the need for more consultative and coordinated disaster response by NGO community.
• Improve quality of delivery through equitable distribution of relief and avoid social exclusion.
• Complement and supplement Govt. relief efforts.
• Advocate in order to legitimize the role of civil society in humanitarian crises.
• Demonstrate, learn best practices and improve overall humanitarian response standards.
• Promote stakeholder participation and 360 degree accountability.

5b) URS Principles

Interventions should be done in a consultative, coordinated and collaborated manner.

•Interventions should be done in a consultative, coordinated and collaborated manner.
•Utilizing the comparative advantage( i.e. geographic, programme and capacities ) of member agencies in response strategy.
•Ensure immediate and effective response to the needs of the disaster affected populations.
•URS is positioned as supplementary and complementary to state efforts.
•Relief to target the most vulnerability and marginalized segments within the community.
•Decentralized implementation of response would be undertaken by local organizations, CBO’s and NGO’s.
•URS process will be responsive to community needs and will aim at ensuring greater community particaipation.

•URS interventions will aim to meet Sphere standards both in terms of processes and indicators. •State-level teams and core groups to play a vital role in the success of URS. •The URS core groups both at center and state-levels would include representatives from local NGO’s or local partners.

5c) URS Guidelines
•Operationally and ideally will function under one joint response team. •Whilst the URS would be mandated by Sphere members, coordination with other local and non-local NGO’s, CBO’c, Government departments and civil society groups would be facilitated. •Resources, facilities and information available with the members would be made available for the operations of the URS team during relief phase. •Joint assessments would be carried out, but it would not prevent any of the signatories of the team taking action whenever the need for such action is felt at the local or national level •The response team will have a pre-agreed coordinator, to ensure relief efforts are not duplicated, as well as to ensure that gaps in operations are addressed. The coordinator will be either a Sphere group member(lead NGO) or a local NGO (implementing partner of the Sphere member) that is operational within the affected State , assisted by the Sphere URS Secretariat and a UN agency (if requested) OR in the absence of a lead agency, a UN agency (UNICEF) assisted by Sphere URS Secretariat and liaising with State government.XXXX IAG WAY COMPARED TO AGENCY WAY •During a joint assessment, the unified response team should have the capacity/specialists to assess the following:
Emergency Context and affected populations Security Public Health including mental health Water & Sanitation Shelter (Structural Damage (schools, homes, health structures etc) Food & nutrition Education Livelihood and Livestock Non-food items loss Logistics Gender and children
•Use Sphere agreed standardised formats for assessments and compile them into one final report. (Bradt 2002 Minimum Essential Data Sets, NGO’s formats and Sphere reality formats.i.e. Sphere Calculators) •Members that undertake joint/individual assessments would make findings available for use by all members as well as other partners. •Members would facilitate initiatives aimed at improving the information management and disaster response capacities of their implementing partners. •Sphere URS secretariat will act as a focal point for URS activities at center level and will support URS groups at state level.

A Sphere URS secretariat has been established to facilitate the process of development of URS in the pilot states.
Key responsibilities of the Sphere URS Secretariat would be:
•Information management •Liaison with the donors in the initial response period of URS. •On site and off-site response support services to URS groups •Facilitation in the promotion , development and implementation of URS in the pilot states •Document preparation and development of mechanisms and tools
To get a copy of the draft version of the Concept Note, please forward your request to the Secretariat.

7) URS Phases: URS can be broadly divided in three phases: pre-positioning, assessment and the response phase.

7a) Positioning phase: Would include the following sets of activities

7a-i) Collection of information from already available sources:

•High-risk geographical areas & villages
•Loss of human life (age/gender break down) & livestock documented
•Affects of the emergency on the health status of the population
•Infrastructural damages
•Establishing who responded, where, what, how
•If the response was a coordinated effort, if so by whom
•Gaps/constraints of the response effort
•Identifying and linking with exiting institutions in the region and using their databases

7a-ii) Other pre-positioning activities to be carried out include:

• Mapping of current Sphere URS member (NGO’s host and implementing partners & UN agencies that are locally present) areas of working, expertise, search & rescue, relief, livelihoods etc.
• Stock management, logistics and current contingency stocks.
• Establish high risk season, climatic changes & seismic events in the country
• Obtain epidemiological history of diseases and basic health indicators, in the disaster prone or effected areas. including number & level of heath facility structures, sanitation practices, available water sources etc.
• Obtain demographic data of the population living in disaster prone or effected areas including gender breakdown, tribal origin, cultural practices, social structure, livelihoods, schooling, food security etc.
• Making information available to Sphere URS members and their implementing partners
• Integrating local response mechanisms with URS mechanisms
• Developing a standardized operating procedures and systems to determine and agree on the who, what, where, how and when of unified response
• Conducting URS drills

7b) Assessment phase: The initial response will be in the form of a rapid needs assessment that should cover the following

areas:

•Establish the geographical area affected
•Establish the context in which the emergency has taken place
•Security situation
•Demography of the population affected
•What is the effect on structural damage (schools, hospitals etc)
•What is the effect on population shelter (houses)
•What is the effect on agriculture, livestock food security in general
•What was the impact on health sector, morbidity & mortality, trauma, disease patterns, psycho-social etc
•What is the impact on education (schooling)
•What was the impact on environmental health, water sources, industrial sites effected, sanitation etc
•What is its socio-economic impact.

7b-i) Sphere Assessment Team

The Sphere assessment team (URT) should comprise of persons/specialists from Sphere member organisations or their implementing partners present in the affected area, who are able to assess all of the themes as described above. Ideally these teams should have representatives from both the sex. Furthermore, the Sphere URT will be established long before an emergency event takes place. A leading Sphere agency will coordinate the unified response team and be responsible for compiling the assessment report and disseminating it to Sphere URS members and implementing partners. Standardized forms, checklist, Sphere disks would be made available to the teams.

7b-ii) Assessment Tools

Sphere URS adopts an inter-agency standardized assessment format (appendix***xxxx). This facilitates the compilation of the assessment data into one final comprehensive report.
The final report and analysis will determine what the needs of the affected population are and establish if there is a need for a Sphere Unified Response.

7b-iii) Linking Assessment & Response:

It is possible that assessment & response are mutually exclusive (there is an assessment but no response); e.g. during the assessment, the assessment team concludes that a response is not necessary and therefore URS need not be activated as of that particular point of time.

7c) Response phase

An emergency meeting of Sphere URS subcommittee (list in Annexuxes****) will take place once a disaster has struck along with pre-identified unified response team and coordinator, who would simultaneously come into operation. Ideally, the response should take place within 30 to 36 hours of the announcement of the emergency by Sphere URS.A unified response would require good coordination and clear objectives for each of the team members.

Standardized Operating System (SOS)

The application of URS in emergencies would require a set of common and standardized procedures which are pre-determined, developed and agreed. These standardized procedures would help in creating a common platform of operations or Standardized Operating System (SOS). The robustness of SOS would determine the quality and consistency of URS responses in the pilot states.

8-i) Assessment and Response plan: would include need for recognizing the heterogeneity of information and sequence of assessments, prioritizing needs scale, damage assessment and compilation formats, resources status and plan tools , adjustments to the response plans.

8-ii) Geographic, demographic and disaster profile of the regions.

8-iii) Stakeholder analysis and participation - would include the involvement of implementing partners, CBO’s and communities in vulnerability analysis, response penetration, linking local mechanisms and tools with URS, stakeholder participation space, traditional coping mechanisms and need to explore partnership with non-traditional institutions /setups.

8-iv) Management of CDMT, SDMT and Virtual Team: Would involve identification of team members, their roles and responsibilities, relationship between CDMT, SDMT, Virtual Teams, member organizations, and activity based URS support groups.

8-v) Liaison, Information, Media and Scene safety: Would involve Liaison with Govt., and other stakeholders, information management, scene safety, media’s role and management and the dynamics of coordination in post-disaster situations.

8-vi) Finance and administrative procedures: Including financial commitments at various levels, administrative requirements and protocols, personnel incentives for URS Virtual Team and general URS equipment and facilities.

8-vii) Supply chain management: Would include stock status, possible requirements, procurement ,warehousing and distribution procedures, vendor database, wider support services network and ensuring consistency in the quality of delivery at various URS service points. Rotation of stocks, vendor relationship and extension activities will also be promoted to substantially decrease the vendor response time to meet URS relief requirements.

8-viii) Integrated communications: Involves available hard ware systems, planning for their use, alternate communication means, their frequency and resources ,the procedures and processes of transferring information and key communication skills and infrastructure for the initial period of a disaster. Efforts would be made to incorporate local and traditional communications tools and methods in to the URS communication system. An operational URS would initiate parallel channels of information sharing and reporting .i.e. URS information sharing and reporting channel along with member organizational reporting channel.

8-ix) Programme and sector tools- Develop formats and train implementing partners to meet sector based requirements/standards including that of Sphere, Gender, Children and marginalized sections, in various thematic areas such as Water & Sanitation, Public Health, Psychosocial Care, Shelter, Food & Nutrition, Education, Livelihood, Public Infrastructure and Non-food items. This component of URS would help URS response meet the member organizations mandate in emergencies.

8-x) Capacity mapping and pre-positioning: Mapping exercises to identify members and implementing partner’s geographic presence, technical capacities, skills and resources. Identifying gaps organizing training and orientation, devising tools and positioning infrastructure to ensure consistency in the quality of delivery at various service points of URS.