Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response (HA/DR): Civil-Military Coordination

All Partners Access Network provides collaboration between the U.S. military and mission partners both traditional and nontraditional, including multinational organizations, law enforcement, NGO's, and agencies who do not have access to restricted networks.

The Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC) is NATO’s principal civil emergency response mechanism in the Euro-Atlantic area.

The Regional Consultative Group (RCG) on Humanitarian Civil Military Coordination for Asia and the Pacific focuses on enhancing preparedness and cooperation in countries at a high risk of large-scale, sudden onset disasters in which foreign military assets are likely to support an international response.

OCHA Civil Military Coordination Service (CMCS) is the designated focal point in the UN system for humanitarian civil-military coordination (UN-CMCoord). It supports relevant field and headquarter-level activities through the development of institutional strategies to enhance the capacity and preparedness of national and international partners and in the process, improve principled humanitarian action.

UN-CMCoord is the essential dialogue and interaction between civilian and military actors in humanitarian emergencies that is necessary to protect and promote humanitarian principles, avoid competition, minimize inconsistency, and when appropriate, pursue common goals. Basic strategies range from coexistence to cooperation

USAID’s BHA provides life-saving humanitarian assistance to the world’s most vulnerable and hardest-to-reach people. BHA is also the lead federal coordinator for international disaster assistance, harnessing the expertise and unique capacities of other U.S. government entities to effectively respond to natural disasters and complex crises around the world.

The Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation (CMC) is part of the Bureau for Conflict, Prevention and Stabilization (CPS) and serves as USAID’s primary point of contact with the Department of Defense (DOD).

GDACS is a cooperation framework between the United Nations and the European Commission for environmental disasters worldwide. It aims at filling the information and coordination gaps in the first phase after major disasters by providing real-time access to web‐based disaster information systems and related online coordination tools.

The Inter-Agency Standing Committee is the highest-level humanitarian coordination forum of the UN system, bringing together the executive heads of UN and non-UN organizations to ensure coherence of strategic preparedness and response efforts, formulate policy, and agree on priorities for strengthened humanitarian action.

INSO serves as the safety coordination and advisory body to the NGO community and provide daily support to more than 1,000 registered organisations working in high-risk contexts around the world. Alongside UNOCHA serve as an important pillar of the humanitarian coordination architecture.

When emergencies occur, coordination is necessary to prevent gaps and overlaps in the assistance delivered by humanitarian organizations. To do this, both UN and non-UN entities use a system called a cluster system, which assembles each of the main sectors of humanitarian action (e.g. Water, Health, Logistics) into groups or clusters.

OCHA contributes to principled and effective humanitarian response through coordination, advocacy, policy, information management and humanitarian financing tools and services.

This paper attempts to fill the lack of evidence-based research about the use of Humanitarian Notification Systems for Deconfliction (HNS4D) around the world by examining the state of 13 UNOCHA and USAID managed HNS4D mechanisms employed in 11 contexts around the globe.

The purpose of these guidelines are to assist a wide range of actors on when and how to use military or other forms of armed escorts to accompany humanitarian convoys during humanitarian operations.

This Handbook is a reference work collecting summaries of the most important provisions of the law of armed conflict and international human rights law that have a bearing on modern military operations.

This guideline collects aims to assist humanitarian and military professionals to deal with civil-military issues in a manner that respects and appropriately reflects humanitarian concerns at the strategic, operational and tactical levels — in accordance with international law, standards and principles.

This document provides guidance on when foreign military and civil defence assets can be used, how they should be employed, and how UN agencies should interface, organize, and coordinate with international military forces.

The aim of the Oslo Guidelines is to establish the basic framework for formalizing and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the use of foreign military and civil defence assets in international disaster relief operations.

This document explores effective humanitarian civil-military interaction; assist in improving decision making; apply lessons learned; and improve the deployment of Foreign Military Assets (FMA) to support humanitarian operations.

The UN-CMCoord Field Handbook is a toolbox for CMCoord Officers and Focal Points (hereafter referred to as CMCoord Officers) and other practitioners working in the field of CMCoord who generally interact with military and other armed actors. It provides practical guidance, good practices and links to legal and technical references and tools pertaining to the CMCoord function.

A guide for operational military commanders explaining the humanitarian community, how it operates, and how the military can best interact with, support and complement humanitarian action.

This policy provides guidance to military staff and contingents in United Nations peacekeeping Operations on the role of UN-CIMIC in the operational and tactical coordination between the UN military and civilian partners, among them the civilian components of UN field missions, UN Police, UN agencies, funds, and programs, host national governments, non-governmental organizations, and grass-roots organizations.