The SEEP Network, a global association of NGOs active in microenterprise development, is coordinating an initiative to develop Standards for Economic Recovery after Crisis.  The Standards focus on strategies and interventions designed to promote enterprises, employment, and cash flow and asset management among affected businesses and households. These Standards follow the process and format of the Sphere handbook (The Sphere Project Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response), and have been developed with guidance and input from the Sphere Project. 

The draft of these Standards is being launched for a public review for the first time.  We are actively encouraging all stakeholders, particularly those with significant experience implementing economic recovery in emergency environments, to provide commentary and reviews. You can find the Standards available at http://communities.seepnetwork.org/econrecovery; on the “Discussion” page users may post their comments and suggestions for the draft review.  This draft will be available for viewing until the end of July, 2008; the first edition of the Standards will be published in November 2008, with further revisions and consultation to follow.

The aim of this report is to assist agencies working in the response to Cyclone Nargis by highlighting key lessons that have been learned from other natural disasters, specifically floods, hurricanes and cyclones. The report distils main findings and lessons from evaluations and synthesis reports contained in the ALNAP Evaluative Reports Database (ERD), as well as other learning initiatives concerned with responses to natural disasters. Where possible it provides links to these documents as well as to additional relevant papers and web sites. These are listed in the footnotes and the references.

It is important to state from the outset that the implementation of good practices is going to be very difficult, because of constraints in the operating environment. In this particular emergency, international agencies will know less about what happened and how best to respond. One overriding lesson is that agencies will have to find ways of dealing with this uncertainty and its implications for aid programming, accountability and delivery. They will also have to work to explain these issues and their implications to various stakeholders, including the media and donors.

A three day Disaster Management training took place in Kuwait from the 1st to the 3rd of April 2008. The training had 16 participants from Kuwait and Qatar representing a wide spectrum of NGOs based in the Middle East and working overseas. The training was particularly focused on the International Humanitarian Standards in delivering relief aid and included an introduction to the Sphere Minimum Standards. The lead trainer was Moustafa Osman. 

The 7th edition of the ALNAP Review of Humanitarian Action (RHA) explores critical issues involved in the development of mechanisms for assessing and improving the performance of humanitarian actors. It contains a short introduction and three main substantive studies.

Governments and donors can save lives and money by reducing risks

Political inaction, poor decisions and bad management have helped to turn South Asia into the world’s most disaster-prone region, says Oxfam International in a study released today.

Although nature traditionally gets the blame, it is human failure that turns a natural shock such as a cyclone into a humanitarian disaster, says the aid agency in its report, Rethinking Disasters. It urges governments and donors to do more to reduce the risk of disasters before they happen and to tackle underlying factors such as poverty and discrimination that leave millions of people more vulnerable to disasters.

In March of 2008, the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) presented their graduate students with an intensive two-day short course on the Sphere approach and its application in disaster assessment and response. The course included components from the InterWorks resource of training materials available from the Sphere website as well as a condensed overview and hands-on illustrations of the technical standards and indicators.

UN OCHA and UN IRIN organized a one-day training course on humanitarian reporting for UAE based reporters. The training was hosted by the Dubai Press Club and the International Humanitarian City. During the day 36 from 25 journalists were introduced to subjects such as the international humanitarian system, Sphere, technicalities of humanitarian journalisitic reporting, challenges faced by responders in the field. It is hoped that similar events will be organized in other countries to strengthen cooperation between humanitarian agencies and the media.

Three months after the cyclone Sidr struck the Bangladeshi coast, Oxfam is issuing this note to take stock of a reasonably successful emergency response while also underlining communities' massive recovery needs - above all in terms of housing and livelihoods.