OCHA in 2001

ACTIVITIES AND EXTRABUDGETARY
FUNDING REQUIREMENTS

FOREWORD

As one of my first tasks as the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs it is a privilege to present to you OCHA in 2001. This publication reflects OCHA's core functions in humanitarian coordination, policy development and advocacy, as well as the funding requirements needed to carry them out and to strengthen them. For the first time, it also seeks to provide a clearer and more comprehensive overview of OCHA's finances through a detailed analysis of the resources allocated to OCHA in the regular budget as well as through extrabudgetary means.

In the first year of the new millennium, the humanitarian community has continued to face great challenges in the alleviation of human suffering. For OCHA and its partners, I count among the most important milestones of the past year, the cases in which the international community has seen that humanitarian assistance, when provided in a timely manner, can make a real difference. Quick and generous donor support helped to alleviate crises in Kosovo and East Timor and prevented a major famine in the Horn of Africa.

We have also continued to confront urgent needs in many other parts of the world. Severe drought affected large areas of several countries in the Horn of Africa and Central and South Asia, adding to the misery of populations already suffering from protracted conflict and underdevelopment. In Mozambique and Asia, the worst floods in years took thousands of human lives, rendered millions homeless and caused enormous material damage. In West and Central Africa, we were brutally reminded that instability in one country may spill over to neighbouring States, threatening the security of refugees and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

We also continued to confront the dilemma of weighing the humanitarian imperative to provide emergency assistance to those in need against the obligation to ensure the safety and security of aid workers. Many of our colleagues continued to work in volatile and risky environments from Southeast Europe to Afghanistan, from the Great Lakes Region to the northern Caucasus. We witnessed a dramatic deterioration in the situations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi, as well as new challenges to our work in the Sudan and Sierra Leone.

In some instances, notably in Mongolia, we were unable to mobilise adequate assistance. In January 2001, an OCHA-led mission traveled to the country to assess and design a strategy to respond to the combined effects of a second devastating year of severe freezing, snow and drought. Tragically, two of our colleagues, along with two other United Nations staff, Mongolian government officials and Japanese journalists, were killed in a helicopter crash while carrying out this task. But this tragedy reinforced our determination to carry out our mandate. The mission was completed and a new appeal for assistance to Mongolia -- dedicated to our colleagues and partners -- was issued at the end of January.

In 2000, OCHA continued to work with partners on the development of humanitarian policy and saw to it that intergovernmental deliberations were adequately informed by humanitarian concerns. OCHA's advocacy efforts aimed to help guarantee the protection of civilians in armed conflict and marshal the resources necessary for swift and vigorous humanitarian responses worldwide.

In the midst of responding to crises and continuing its policy and advocacy work in 2000, OCHA launched an internal review of its structure, capacities and practices, with the ultimate aim of strengthening the office's ability to mobilise and coordinate effective and principled humanitarian action in increasingly complex and dangerous environments.

During 2001, we shall continue to work with equal resolve -- in concert with our humanitarian, human rights, development, peacekeeping and political partners -- to keep humanitarian needs at the centre of the United Nations response to crises. One of our most essential tasks will be the implementation of the Consolidated Appeals, designed to help more than 35 million vulnerable people worldwide, and launched by the Secretary-General last November. Another priority is to strengthen the capacity of the United Nations in providing assistance and protection to IDPs, on the basis of the findings of the high-level inter-agency review of operations in IDP affected countries. Within the limits of our financial resources we shall also carry out the recommendations of our internal review in order to improve our support to the field, strengthen our capacity to respond quickly and effectively to crises, and consolidate our natural disaster and complex emergency responses.

To fulfill the goals outlined above, OCHA is seeking sustainable and predictable sources of financial assistance. There is a high level of donor commitment to enhanced coordination as evidenced by strong donor support to OCHA, particularly in the field. Two considerations are being placed before donors this year. One is the need to strengthen OCHA's Headquarters to ensure adequate support to growing field requirements. The other is the requirement for OCHA to begin each calendar/financial year with sufficient reserves to issue contracts for staff and to deploy to the field during disasters and emergencies. As always, we will continue to count on generous assistance to help OCHA in its ongoing efforts to more efficiently and effectively fulfill its mandate to facilitate the alleviation of human suffering.

I thank you all, our partners, for your dedicated support and commitment to OCHA and its activities, and look forward to the creation of new milestones in the coordination of humanitarian assistance in 2001.

Kenzo Oshima
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and
Emergency Relief Coordinator

INTRODUCTION

OCHA’s mission is to mobilise and coordinate effective and principled humanitarian action in partnership with national and international actors in order to:

• Alleviate human suffering in disasters and emergencies;
• Advocate for the rights of people in need;
• Promote preparedness and prevention;
• Facilitate sustainable solutions.

In the three years since its inception, OCHA has established itself as an energetic, responsive and competent facilitator of emergency response in the field and as a credible and influential partner within the United Nations, both at the inter-governmental and Secretariat levels. In the same relatively short timespan, operational agencies, donors and governments have increased the demands on OCHA to respond in a timely and effective manner to disasters and emergencies worldwide, resulting in a near doubling of OCHA’s field presence. At present, OCHA maintains 23 field offices in Africa, Asia and Europe as well as the offices of three regional disaster response advisors, three regional coordinators and the Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN), bringing its total number of field offices to 32. These offices are run by 151 international and 360 national staff. By comparison, in 1997 only 18 field offices were in existence.

In order to keep apace with this growth and further improve its ability to support the humanitarian work of United Nations agencies and other partners, OCHA in June 2000 launched an internal review. Its overall goals were to enhance coordination in support of its partners, better support its field offices and improve staff management to ensure maximum effectiveness. At the root of this review was a determination by OCHA to better provide timely and effective coordination services to United Nations agencies and its other partners through a consistently strategic, accountable and transparent implementation of its core functions. It was also recognised that there is a need for OCHA to be able to respond at the onset of emergencies, through the timely deployment of staff, in order to prepare the way for agency partners -- as was the case in Kosovo and East Timor.

Key measures to be implemented in the review process include:

• Integration of natural disaster and complex emergency functions throughout OCHA, including a unified desk officer structure that applies both in New York and Geneva;
• Development of a surge capacity to enable OCHA to respond in a timely and effective manner to disasters and emergencies;
• Creation of a dedicated capacity within OCHA to enhance administrative and personnel support to the field; Fostering of a seamless OCHA office by establishing a unified senior management team to ensure teamwork and good people management; and the
• Clarification of the division of labour between New York and Geneva, particularly in providing guidance and support to field offices.

In 2001, OCHA has committed itself to the following principal priorities to be addressed through all of its programmes:

• Strengthen mobilisation and coordination of international response to emergencies and disasters through a strategically-oriented Consolidated Appeals Process and natural disaster appeals;
• Provide improved and timely support to the United Nations Resident/Humanitarian Coordinators and OCHA field offices;
• Ensure coherence and effectiveness of the humanitarian component of the common assistance efforts of the United Nations in response to crises;
• Improve OCHA’s advocacy capabilities; strengthen assistance to, and the protection of, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs);
• Intensify resource mobilisation;
• Expand existing mechanisms for time-critical information sharing on emergencies and disasters;
• Promote improvements in staff security and increase advocacy for preventive measures;
• Foster regional cooperation in humanitarian response and response preparedness; and
• Promote and facilitate efforts to enhance developing country preparedness capacity in disaster prevention and mitigation.

In spite of the increasing demands on its services and the subsequent growth in its field presence, the level of OCHA’s headquarters staffing has remained essentially the same over the last three years. The review found that OCHA’s capacities and staffing were over-stretched in key areas of activity - such as administrative support to the field, coordination of humanitarian response and information management. At the same time, in the face of growing humanitarian needs and increasing threats to humanitarian workers, OCHA has recognised the need to strengthen its advocacy capabilities, surge capacity and management functions in order to enable OCHA to function as a streamlined, well-run and effective organisation. In order to rectify these deficiencies in its functioning, to achieve the above goals and to implement the recommendations of the internal review, OCHA has decided to seek donor support for a total of 35 additional staff positions.

The new posts will be allocated to these areas as follows:

• Strengthened capacity for response coordination, including surge capacity and emergency services - 14 posts
• Management and finance and administrative support to the field - 13 posts
• Advocacy, information management and policy development - 8 posts

OCHA is funded from the United Nations Regular Budget and from extrabudgetary resources. In the year 2000, OCHA’s share of the United Nations Regular Budget was US$ 9.42 million, while extra-budgetary requirements amounted to US$ 59.2 million.

For the biennium 2002-2003, OCHA has proposed an increase of six Regular Budget and four extrabudgetary posts, bringing the total core staffing table of OCHA to 147 posts, from the current 137 posts, (of which 54 are regular budget and 83 extrabudgetary).

While OCHA would like to have the 35 staff positions added in the course of the next two years, OCHA is presenting 18 posts as priority project posts for extrabudgetary funding as a minimum for 2001.

Total extrabudgetary funding needs for the activities of OCHA in 2001 are presented in detail in the following pages and amount to US$ 63.3 million.

OCHA IN 2001