United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Nov 2012
InterWorks designed and conducted a Contingency Planning for International Humanitarian Response workshop from 26-28 November 2012 in Tokyo, Japan. UNHCR eCentre convened the workshop to illustrate, in a highly practical and interactive manner, the importance of contingency planning, how to do it well, and how to avoid typical pitfalls in the Contingency Planning process. Thirty representatives from the Japanese NGO community, Japanese Government and UN agencies participated in the three-day event. The workshop was designed to achieve the following objectives:
- Illustrate best practices in contingency planning for humanitarian emergencies, drawing upon UNHCR and partner experiences from the field, in addition to Inter- Agency Standing Committee (IASC) guidance.
- Show the importance of linking planning with international standards in sectoral response (food, water, sanitation, health, shelter, protection, etc).
- Demonstrate through practical exercises what is meant by scenario-based contingency planning and illustrate its advantages.
- Introduce practical tools to assess the risk of possible emergency scenarios and prioritise your planning.
- Share tools and techniques to assess organizational capacities and resources in relation to humanitarian needs, then determine who will do what in an actual emergency.
The eCentre decided to hold this course in Tokyo based on direct requests from partner institutions in Japan. Some of the interest for this topic in Japan stems from the recent Fukushima earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster event in the country in March 2011. Although the workshop audience was primarily those Japanese NGO officials and staff members dealing with international humanitarian programmes, some Japanese governmental staff members also participated to learn how these concepts might apply to planning for future emergency scenarios in Japan.
This workshop was based on the already prepared and printed distance education course on contingency planning developed by InterWorks for the eCentre in 2011.
This was a well organized, interactive and fun workshop! … I’m looking forward to figuring out how to incorporate what I’ve learned into my work.
– Workshop participant
