|
SPECIAL REPORT 21
Managing Communications
Lessons from Interventions in Africa
Improving Humanitarian Assistance Through Enhanced Communication
Summary
This session addresses the following issues:
- Which information and communications technologies are useful to nongovernmental, private voluntary, and international organizations in the delivery of humanitarian assistance in complex emergency operations.
- Which technologies are critical for organizations in gathering and communicating information about local conditions, in addressing human needs, and in implementing specific missions.
- What factors affect the use of such technologies.
- Whether interactions with peacekeeping forces, media, local groups, and national governments in the field of operations can be facilitated by the technologies.
Moderator's Overview
H. Roy Williams, Moderator
International Rescue Committee
Much of what is now going to be described under the heading of humanitarian assistance has been foreshadowed by some of the remarks that have been made by the speakers this morning. I interpret this to mean that there's a logic to the exercise we're going through today and that there is going to be a meaningful and useful confluence. The people on this panel have been very involved and have played a significant role in humanitarian assistance activities.
Joint Military/Nongovernmental Information Center (Somalia-Unified Task Force)
Robert MacPherson
CUBIC Applications, Inc.
Summary
In Somalia, the Civil Military Operations Center (CMOC) worked at three levels: tactical (day-to-day functions, such as getting trucks); operational (involving longer-range planning between the NGOs, the different humanitarian relief organizations, and the UN agencies); and strategic planning. It is this third level where the structure broke down because the CMOC overshadowed the Humanitarian Operations Center.
According to Robert MacPherson, education is the key to successful communications. As other presenters explained, communications and coordination are built on individuals.
Biography
During Operation Restore Hope, MacPherson was the deputy director of the Civil Military Operations Center.
In Somalia, we attempted to provide an organized pattern of communications among all the humanitarian and military parties that were involved in Operation Restore Hope. Every intervention is unique, but I have begun to realize that communications assets are key to how either the Civil Military Operations Center (CMOC) or another amorphous planning and operations center evolves.
In Bosnia (the former Yugoslavia) it was all there: e-mail, telephones, fax machines. When I went to look for a CMOC in the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), it wasn't there. Obviously, one reason for not having a CMOC in Bosnia was that the ability to communicate between the different elements of the humanitarian relief effort was already in place.
It is interesting to read the assessments of the CMOC in Somalia, which has already been analyzed and evaluated in detail. Only a very few of us had ever been involved in a situation like Somalia. The Somalia experience was totally new to us. It was like going into a house that was on fire; the house was falling down, the inhabitants were burning and, frankly, so were a lot of the firefighters.
Furthermore, most of us had never experienced some of the horrific scenes that we encountered there. You cannot quantify the tremendous impact that had on how the CMOC operated, but it was a tremendously personal experience. The organization of the CMOC is interesting, in part because of its evolution. I want to detail some keys to our success in the area of communications; however, at the CMOC level, those were generally of an interpersonal nature.
The Humanitarian Operation Center (HOC) in Somalia was part of the UN Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM); the CMOC was part of this UNOSOM Humanitarian Operations Center. The leadership of the HOC came from a nongovernmental organization (NGO); the director was Phil Johnston, former president and chief executive officer of CARE. There were two deputy directors: one was military, the second was from the Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART). Lt. Gen. Robert Johnston gave the CMOC more latitude than anybody in this room can imagine. I think that was because of the house-burning scenario. There were no books -- we went out there, and we had to find a way to make this operation work.
A factor central to our success in Bosnia was that we had an eight o'clock meeting every morning, seven days a week, to exchange information. We started out with a discussion on security, then moved to coordination among the United Nations, the NGOs, the Red Cross, and the military. I looked for that in Somalia, and that should have happened, but it didn't.
There is a lot of discussion about how to integrate these two dissimilar societies -- the NGO community and the military community. In retrospect, the reason it worked in Somalia was the inclusion of the DART from the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. The DART team provided a balancing force in the early days. Everyone was comfortable with them; that comfort was essential. We started out as partners because we had to be partners. However, as the CMOC developed, we became partners because we wanted to be partners. The DART drew us into relationships with the local NGOs. This had a subtle but profound impact. Our embracing of the local NGOs sent a message to the Somalis that we were trying to balance this situation.
We worked at three levels in the CMOC. The first level was tactical, the day-to-day functions. We performed very well at that level. For example, we were very good at getting trucks. The NGOs came to us because they needed trucks, helicopters, bulldozers, and security. The second level was operational, and that involved longer-range planning between the NGOs, the different humanitarian relief organizations, and the UN agencies.
The third level is where we got out of the loop, when we became an element in strategic planning. This happened for several reasons. First, we had the assets. We had everything anybody needed, and people tended to come to us. Second, we were removed from the Unified Task Force (UNITAF). That was the longest mile and a half in the history of the world -- from UNOSOM headquarters to UNITAF headquarters, to the market and everything else.
The CMOC almost overshadowed the entire HOC, and we became the answer to a lot of problems. Tremendous expectations were placed on us. Although we could not live up to all of them, we did live up to a lot of them because we had the backing of both UNITAF and the United Nations and also because we became personally involved with the NGO community.
The function of the CMOC also changed in Somalia. The CMOC in Mogadishu functioned as the national CMOC, handling the CMOCs in the humanitarian relief sections, but we also took the humanitarian relief sector in Mogadishu. We should not have done that; we should have separated. We were asking too much of ourselves, and we became too focused on Mogadishu.
There has been a lot of discussion about where to put the HOC. I am a strong advocate of locating the HOC and the CMOC together. That co-location should be the focus of both its formal and informal strength. I define strength as the ability to communicate and the ability to organize. In Somalia, strength was with the UNITAF; the UNITAF was the largest coordinating agency out there. However, if you bring the HOC into the military environment, the military must take a step in the direction of crossing the cultural gap to embrace the NGOs a little better.
Let me offer you a vignette. If I go to the IFOR gates in Tuzla and I pull out my International Rescue Committee or my UNHCR card, I am treated politely, but firmly. To go to a meeting, I must go through a net that almost makes it more trouble than it is worth to get in there. On the other hand, if I walk up to that same gate with my U.S. Marine Corps (Retired) card, I am through that gate in a heartbeat.
In closing, let me state that education is the key. That may be self-evident, but in 1992 I did not know what NGO stood for, and I was a colonel in the Marine Corps. Also, remember that communication and coordination are built on individuals. All the participants must be willing to talk, to coordinate, and to give up a little of their egos, because the effort out there is unbelievable. I tell you that my worst day in Bosnia was ten times better than the scenes that I witnessed in Somalia. And that is what it is all about.
United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda -- Nongovernmental Organization Coordination
Charles Petrie
Special Assistant to the Commissioner General, United Nations Relief
and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)
Summary
In this evaluation of the early days of UNREO and his work with Maj. Gen. Romeo Dallaire and the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda, Charles Petrie discusses how personnel who came to Rwanda from Somalia emphasized "transparency," a free interaction that minimizes the extent to which misunderstandings can develop between the military and the nongovernmental organization community. Mr. Petrie emphasizes the importance of interaction between groups on the strategic and planning level. He also calls for the institutionalization of such activities as the multiorganizational situational assessments that were conducted in Rwanda.
He makes the case for facilitating communications -- for creating an environment where people can interact freely and develop a common plan of action. He proposes a "humanitarian coordination center," which can serve as an integrated regional information network.
Biography
Charles Petrie served as deputy UN humanitarian coordinator in Rwanda and Burundi. He was the senior humanitarian advisor to the United Nations humanitarian coordinator, UNOSOM, Somalia, from 1992 to 1994.
I am far happier to talk about Rwanda than I am about Somalia because the Rwanda mission came after Somalia, and I think we learned lessons in Somalia that we applied in Rwanda. I would like to share those lessons with you.
One could argue that to a certain extent, the Rwanda mission was a success. But how much success can you have in an operation like Rwanda? There were successes in Rwanda and there were successes in Somalia, but both left us with heavy legacies, especially for those of us in the human rights and the humanitarian community.
The legacy of Somalia is the knowledge that there is no international intention to establish a new world order (whatever that is), to defend principles (whatever they are), or even to discuss them. We also saw that in Rwanda. The legacy of Rwanda is the knowledge that the convention on genocide is meaningless.
Those of us who have worked in other countries, who have seen people massacred -- the Nubians in Sudan, for example -- have seen other forms of genocide, but we were never allowed to use the word. To see the word used so freely and so easily now is very difficult, because it points to the erosion of the values that those of us working in the field of humanitarian aid and human rights hold so dear.
We are seeing a slow erosion of the principles that we live for and that some have died for. I think the military can understand this better than most, because they fight and die for honor and country, which are esoteric, metaphysical. We in the humanitarian community also live for intangibles.
I want to talk about a specific period in Rwanda -- the period from April through July 1993 when the genocide and Operation Turquoise took place.
Under Operation Turquoise, there was a jumble of UN agencies, military structures, and NGOs. But we had a golden opportunity for those few months, and I would like to describe the institutional lessons we learned when our barriers were down.
We focused on two things to facilitate the operations. The first was communicating information. The second was establishing an environment where communication could exist. Rwanda was unique in a positive way, because so many key NGO workers had just come out of Somalia; we all knew what obstacles had to be overcome.
We understood the battle of culture between the military and the humanitarian missions; we had lived through Somalia, which was basically an establishment of force. We had a humanitarian force and a military force and an absence of communication. Those of us who had been in Somalia and then came to Rwanda emphasized transparency. We were extremely lucky to have Maj. Gen. Romeo Dallaire in charge of the military forces, because his approach was exactly the same.
How did we share information with one another? How did we respond to one another? We were all involved in daily or periodic interactions; during the height of the battle, there was always a representative of either the United Nations or an NGO at General Dallaire's press briefings. This was a unique advantage for the humanitarian community, because we had an opportunity to present our perspective on what was happening to the key commanders of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda.
It also allowed us to dispel any misunderstandings that might arise. If the military did not understand something we were doing, we could explain the rationale and importance of the activity. Sometimes the military claimed that an NGO was undertaking something that was provoking a particular response and that the NGO had bypassed the military. Even though the briefings were very professional and were tightly run, we had the opportunity to clarify our intentions and to eliminate those initial misunderstandings.
Similarly, the military was present at all of our briefings, which we first held daily, then twice weekly, then weekly. They gave their security assessment of the situation. Then the NGOs and the UN agencies also gave their security assessments. This level of interaction continued and was amplified during Operation Turquoise.
When the Civil Military Operation Center (CMOC) was established, that integration continued. Our presence at the press briefings was unique; we had not participated in briefings in Somalia. Having a civilian in the center of the press briefings gave the humanitarian community the impression that the military considered their work important. We were able to facilitate the interaction between the military and the NGO community.
There was also interaction on the strategy and planning level. The press had a strategic policy; if issues came up that had to be discussed afterward, General Dallaire would invite us to sit down with him to review some of the fundamental points.
It would be good to institutionalize some of our activities. For example, we started multiorganizational situation assessments. We would go into an area like the new French zone or Turquoise zone with a group of NGOs. A Disaster Assistance Response Team representative, a representative from the Department of Humanitarian Affairs, and representatives of the UN agencies would spend a week traveling through the area doing the assessment. These trips became week-long brainstorming sessions, during which we were looking at the same problem and evaluating the same problem, but were coming from different angles. Generally, by the end of the week, we had a plan of action that we were able to sell to our different constituencies.
However, even more important than having a common plan of action was having a common understanding of the problem. For a short period after the end of an assessment, we all understood the different actions that various actors might undertake.
The whole idea of facilitating, of creating an environment where people can interact, is crucial. That environment was the CMOC or the On-Site Operations Coordination Center (OSOCC), the Swedish-funded communication center that became a core around which we could develop a humanitarian space. People came to us because we had something to offer, and there was a good bit of interaction. Facilitating communications means transparency, ensuring that there is free interaction and that misunderstandings are not allowed to develop.
We actually wanted to move out and create a "humanitarian" house just outside the Omoro Hotel with the agencies and the NGOs. We were not going to call it the UN Coordination Center, but the Humanitarian Coordination Center, sharing it with UN agencies. Unfortunately, somebody mined the building, so that did not happen.
We also established an integrated regional information network, a structure for transmitting and coordinating data, that ultimately became an information clearinghouse.
Q & A on Hate Radio -- Charles Petrie
When we talk about transparency in communications, we generally mean transparency in communications among ourselves. But there are two other forms of transparency. There is the transparency that is needed very early in the mission: What are we trying to do? Why are we trying to do it? We try to get these messages out to the local population. There is also the reverse -- linking with local communities and local groups, letting them tell us what we should be doing. That includes the hate radios.
Radio et television libres milles collines (RTLM) was one of the key fueling elements of the Rwandan genocide, naming individuals who were alive. It was telling people that the graves were only half full and they should fill the rest. "Such-and-such a barricade has killed so many people, and that is fantastic. What about the other barricades, what are they doing?" It was a very strong element in the genocide.
In Kigali in late May or early June, I met with Maj. Gen. Romeo Dallaire and a woman from the British Foreign Office. General Dallaire commented that hate radio was a big problem and that we needed communication to counter it, to come out with another truth. The British Foreign Office representative asked how much it would cost. We figured around $70,000. She said, "That's nothing. I can get it to you tomorrow." Well, we never got it; we couldn't raise $70,000 to come up with a radio that could have saved countless lives. It would have told people that they were being misled, that the world did not believe in the environment that was developing in that country. We lacked the means -- just $70,000 -- to be able to bring up a radio transmitter so that we could give people the truth about the hate radio.
Another option for countering the hate radio might have been to broadcast a different perspective of what was going on, but even so, we had no transmitter. Another option would have been buoys; however, I understand that trying to interfere supposedly goes against the First Amendment, so we could not do that either.
U.S. Military Transport and Communications (Rwanda)
Thomas Frey
Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance
Summary
Regarding communications between the U.S. military and members of the Disaster Assistance Response Team, Thomas Frey is concerned with "soft communication," which deals with how to make organizational structures work together. His role as liaison was to educate, translate, validate, and mediate between the military and the NGOs and between the military and UN agencies in Rwanda.
Frey argues for the importance of making common systems simpler and more user-friendly. Communications systems are only as useful as the organizational structures and procedures that are in place to collect, analyze, and distribute information.
Biography
Thomas Frey is a disaster management specialist with the U.S. Forest Service who has been seconded to the U.S. Agency for International Development's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) for the past seven and a half years. His recent operational activities with the military have included Operation Provide Relief (Somalia 1992), Operation Support Hope (Rwanda 1994), and the planning stages of NATO Operation Joint Endeavor (Bosnia 1995).
I am going to approach this discussion from a slightly different perspective -- from the perspective of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), which is a part of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and its Bureau for Humanitarian Response. In Rwanda, I was also a member of the Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART).
DART is a group of specialized people we try to put on the ground as quickly as possible in humanitarian crises to assess the needs and the overall situation. The DART team then makes recommendations to Washington regarding efforts the U.S. government should undertake, realizing that we cannot do everything ourselves, that we will need help, and that we should choose those activities for which we can take responsibility.
In Rwanda, the Joint Task Force (JTF) out of the U.S.-European Command was set up rather quickly. In agreement with the military, the JTF sends a representative with every mission to be a liaison between the task force and the rest of the U.S. government's response to that particular effort. When the JTF was sent to Entebbe, Uganda, I went as a liaison officer with DART. The Civil Military Operation Center (CMOC), which was initially set up by JTF at Entebbe, was my initial point of contact with the military. I wanted to be where the interaction between the civil and military groups would take place.
I saw my mission as having four or five aspects. What does a liaison really do? For me, it was an opportunity to apply some of the experiences I had had in some other disasters and in working with the military. I used my experiences to help educate, translate, validate, and sometimes mediate between the military and the NGOs as well as between the military and the UN agencies.
JTF was strictly a humanitarian assistance operation, set up to support the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and their representatives at Entebbe. Again, my role there was mediation, validation, and education. This is what I call "soft communication." It is not about the hardware component, but rather about how to make the organizational structures work. It is wonderful to have excellent telecommunications equipment, but unless you have an organizational structure that can use the equipment, the mission will not be very successful.
I was in Rwanda about six or seven weeks, traveling with the JTF commander, General Shroeder, from Entebbe to Goma and Kigali. That gave me an opportunity to see what was happening on the ground and to talk personally with the workers. In one sense, we had separate chains of command for reporting. I was a DART member, and my chain of command and my communications links were through Nairobi, Kenya, where the DART headquarters was set up. General Shroeder believed that the DART headquarters should have been co-located with JTF at Entebbe, thinking that it would have been a better way to communicate at the same site. But the mission of our DART was separate from the mission of the task force.
When I got to Entebbe, the military had a very sophisticated system set up, but it was mainly classified and secured communications. A joint special operations task force had been set up, and they did not even want me to walk in the room with that equipment. Eventually, we got a nonsecure communications system, but that was used mainly by the military.
As the situation progressed, DART got increased access and interoperability with the military at Entebbe. The military shared their capabilities -- for example, we used their nonsecure fax operation to send our situation reports back to Nairobi. After about two weeks, OFDA realized that we needed better communications and better reporting. Three communicators were sent to set up a better system for us so we would have voice, fax, and data capability at our sites. Within a few weeks, I was connected to Washington through a satellite system, and I had e-mail to OFDA. Without that, I would not have been able to communicate with either Washington or Nairobi.
My initial decision not to take more equipment in Rwanda -- I think I carried only a laptop with me -- was probably wrong. There was a constant demand for information and feedback for which I was not prepared. We used the local phone system at the Entebbe airport as a fallback, and that was absolutely horrible. There was so much static you couldn't hear anything. OFDA is now trying to have a communications system ready to go when we deploy. We will take a communications officer and the appropriate equipment so that we have immediate capability when we hit the ground.
We had daily meetings at the CMOC, and the intelligence groups from the J2 collected data from the NGOs at those meetings. That was important, but it was equally important for the J2 to give the NGOs as much unclassified information as possible. Because it was a two-way information exchange, better communications were opened up and a comfortable feeling between the two groups was created. I applauded their efforts to share information. Sometimes, however, when there was a constant demand to report information, the tendency was to look around to find something to report. As people started to report the same information, we developed not only a loop of information, but a duplication of information. If fifteen metric tons of relief commodities were moved on a given day, it was sometimes reported as thirty tons. We had to identify the sources of information to avoid misinformation. We had good communications with the NGOs in Entebbe, because they could come in and work with the CMOC and the UNHCR directly. We knew what they wanted and needed. It was a little more difficult to get that information from the NGOs in Kigali and Goma.
I will close with a few personal observations. The communications systems improved during my tenure at Entebbe, but these systems were only as useful as the organizational structures and procedures that were in place to collect, analyze, collate, and distribute that basic information. With so many organizations gathering, analyzing, and reporting the same information, there is the danger of information overload, which leads to duplication of efforts and duplication of information, as well as to some misinterpretation of information. The on-site operations coordination center was a very effective tool, but it was only as effective as the support given to it. Support means money and commitment.
Finally, I urge you to make your communications systems as simple and as user-friendly as possible so that they can be truly useful tools. More bells and whistles do not necessarily lead to a better information product.
Displaced Persons/Humanitarian Relief (Rwanda)
Simon Gorman
International Rescue Committee
Summary
Simon Gorman contends that any communications system has to be careful not to provide too much information: It must pick out the salient points.
Gorman discusses the need to focus -- amidst all the talk about high-tech matters -- on the information being shared. The information must be selective, relevant, verified, and cross-referenced. He also calls for a means of tapping into the local informal networks prevalent in so many crisis areas. What is needed is a central command module, possibly a role for the military or the UN, to ensure that technology is compatible between groups.
Finally, Gorman calls for all technology to be examined in light of the overall common goal and in light of the needs of the beneficiary. The people being provided assistance must also be involved in communications efforts.
Biography
Simon Gorman coordinated the emergency programs of the International Rescue Committee in response to the Rwandan crisis, working directly with state ministries to tailor an appropriate response.
I am one of those people who has had to rely on the military to help out with with evacuations. I have had to scrounge bulldozers off them to help out with sanitation programs. Anything that improves that line of communications is going to be beneficial in the next emergency where we are working together.
When I arrived in Rwanda in August 1994, the On Site Operations Coordination Center (OSOCC) had already been set. It is very important in any emergency situation to establish the communications base or focal point as early as possible.
Quite frankly, as a humanitarian worker trying to bring aid and trying to run a feeding program and a medical program, I really do not want to know all the ins and outs of the security operation. I do, however, want to know how it interacts and how it can help me do my job. Where our responsibilities overlap, we need to work as efficiently as possible.
In terms of technology, many NGOs used the VHF, an open network that is very effective because it is mobile. All our people had radios, and we were able to communicate back to a central point. That overlapping circle was facilitated by the coordination unit, which monitored the radio full time. If we failed to contact our own people, then we could reach the coordination unit and get them to notify our staff by some other means. The HF net operated concurrently, under the same principle.
One complication was that so many frequencies were being used. We were able to tap into the UNHCR's net very quickly. One reason the NGOs did not share frequencies is that many of them had no idea what frequencies they were using, and they had no idea how to program their own radios. Thus, planning is necessary, so that you know what frequencies are available in a country before you begin an operation and know what frequencies various agencies will use. You run into trouble because you find frequencies being used by somebody else, and there is a period when you are off the air trying to find a frequency you can use.
Satellite telecommunications were invaluable as we set up the operation, allowing us to contact our head offices. Anything that makes that process cheaper or more readily available is better. Some of the units cost as much as $20,000-$30,000 each, and they have enormous operating costs as well. The military units are much more expensive, but if we could tap into the military system, individual agencies would not have to buy those units.
One year into the mission, e-mail capability within Rwanda became functional. That was critical for sending written transcripts and press releases back to the United States. It was important for us to identify the American perception of the situation and whether that perception was accurate. It is true that you knew a lot more about what was going on than we did.
We need to ensure that shared information is relevant, that it is verified, and that it is cross-referenced. I saw a lot of information go up the information highway that was totally wrong or was only partial in its presentation. For example, a radio call came into a central command center saying, "There is no water in this camp. People are in real trouble. Get somebody out here." A huge effort was expended to get people out there, and, true, there was no water in that camp, but there was water within 100 meters (110 yards). Information has to be verified. I am not sure how to do that, but this problem plagues us all the time.
We also have to work on the efficiency of our communications systems. In Somalia, "Radio Dukka" literally means "bush radio" or the "communication of the old man." The guy down the street who knew somebody in Badero, which is 250 kilometers (160 miles) away, knew three times more than we did. We need to learn how to tap into that information system.
Furthermore, any information system has to include all the players. The integrated operation standard in Rwanda recognized that there was one major player who was totally out of the loop, because that player had no resources and no means of accessing resources. I am speaking, of course, about the government of Rwanda. It had absolutely no communications capability at a humanitarian level. If we go into a similar situation, we have to look at the people whom we are trying to help, and we have to ensure that their communications needs are met or are at least tapped into so that we can help each other do our jobs.
Finally, a central command module is required, with people who are committed right from the start to having the military, the UN agencies, and the NGOs all in one place. All technology should be examined in light of our common overall goal and in light of the beneficiary. No method of communication should remove us or alienate us from any other part of the process.
Humanitarian Relief (Liberia)
Elizabeth Mulbah
Christian Health Association of Liberia
Summary
One of the most vital tools required in national and international reconciliation is effective communications. In the case of Liberia, a large multinational presence in a hostile environment hampered communications and humanitarian efforts. This was exacerbated by the diverse institutional missions of the players, that is, organizations providing security and transportation, delivering humanitarian relief, and monitoring human rights abuses, disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation, and reconstruction. Competition between agencies and differences in policies and protocols also made effective communications difficult.
The most useful system of communication for peacekeepers, local authorities, institutions, and organizations was a series of regularly scheduled meetings at which vital information and experiences were shared. Elizabeth Mulbah discusses a series of lessons learned from the Liberian experience, the most important of which was the principle that communications networks must be open. Only when "transparency" is established can collaboration be made possible.
Biography
Elizabeth Mulbah has worked with the Christian Health Association of Liberia since 1987, most recently as its executive director. Her offices in Monrovia were ransacked and looted eighteen days before she received the invitation to participate in the Managing Communications Conference.
Effective communications and coordination are sure to improve humanitarian assistance efforts, especially during a national or international crisis. This, however, poses a much greater challenge when the crisis situation is as complex as our Liberian situation has been since the onset of war in December 1989.
Advancing technologies have provided no tailor-made solutions to meeting the needs or costs during emergencies, which are, by definition, very difficult to plan for. This is further complicated by the players, the country involved, and the nature of the emergency (either a natural disaster or one wrought by humans).
The Liberian situation is very complex for many reasons. The most obvious reason is that we Liberians are not fighting a common enemy. We are fighting one another in one of the most devastating wars in human history. Our biggest problem is loss of confidence, and our biggest need is reconciliation. Only reconciled people can build together. One of the most vital tools required in national and international reconciliation is effective communications.
An intense humanitarian process such as exists in Liberia has been made more difficult by the lack of adequate communications among the various actors. I will briefly review the four issues that seem to influence and determine the quality of communications in Liberia.
First, there is a large multinational presence in a hostile environment. Liberia has become a place of multinational groups since the outset of the war, including the UN agencies, ECOMOG and international relief organizations (even one from Latvia). This multinational complexity was bound to hamper communications and humanitarian efforts.
Second, there are diverse institutional missions. There are organizations providing security and transportation, delivering humanitarian relief, and monitoring human rights abuses, disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation, and reconstruction. Although the different institutions are making efforts to coordinate services, there is still room for improvement.
Third, we see more competition than collaboration. Some parts of the country have many services while others are left with few or none. Security risks can partly be blamed for this imbalance, but improved coordination will remedy this situation to some extent.
Fourth, diverse organizational structures and cultures have also had a role in our area. A conscious system of communication is effective but is very time-consuming; therefore, it may not be appropriate or effective during crises.
Hopefully, diverse communications will find common platforms, protocols, and content. This is especially critical in Liberia because there are many different attitudes and many differences in policies and protocols of operation.
Until April 6, we at the Christian Health Association (CHA) had a radio in three offices. One was in the Ivory Coast and two were in Liberia (one in the city and one in a rural area). We have seven handsets, five vehicles (including one truck with radio), and telephone service with local and international lines. We also have newsletters, fax machines, meetings, workshops, and the local media. Communications in the field and with headquarters takes place by radio and written reports.
When the communications system worked, it was wonderful. We maintained contact between those in the offices and those in the field, with UN agencies, and with other NGOs. Certain information -- such as information on security risks, needs assessments, resource availability, population of a given area, status of ongoing projects, and project evaluations -- was easily shared.
However, most of the time one or more parts of the system did not work. Frequent breakdowns and interference were common. Even when the system was fully operational, information sharing needed improvement in content and timing; we had poor attendance at meetings, worked with insufficient communication systems, and faced frequent harassment from factions.
The most useful system of communications for peacekeepers, local authorities, institutions, and organizations includes regularly scheduled meetings at which vital information and experiences are shared. We did not have sufficient communications resources. Only seven of our thirty-three staff had handsets. We had two telephone lines, which did not function most of the time. Not everyone had radios. Our system was funded by the Inter-Church Cooperative Organization of Europe (ICCOE).
Local organizational infrastructures for communications improved the flow and sharing of information. Although each organization or UN agency had its own radio net, we shared some frequencies according to service areas. There were UN emergency nets, help nets, and the UN communications net. In most instances, the radio operators of the various institutions received the information and passed it on to appropriate users. We established our communications system based on the need to communicate with member units, staff, and sister agencies. With assistance, we were able to rescue staff in emergencies, refill supplies, or postpone trips when it was not thought safe to travel.
As members of a reciprocal information network, CHA and other member institutions assist one another in times of security risks. On one occasion, some of our program staff encountered trouble over 200 miles away from the capital. Two days prior to their scheduled return, fighting broke out. They found that it was not safe for them to travel. In consultation with the UN Security Officer, we kept in touch with our staff until it was safe for them to return.
We participated in UN-ICCOE relief convoys. The UN Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL) made the greatest contribution to the humanitarian community, providing assessment reports, supplies, and helicopters for field trips. They also worked with relevant institutions in planning for disarmament, demobilization, and committee centralization.
The Liberian experience has taught us several lessons about managing communications in a humanitarian crisis:
- Communications in a humanitarian crisis poses one of the greatest challenges. In the Liberian experience, the system did not work half the time, or it was intercepted and interrupted.
- The very poor communications system in the country was worsened by the war. Communication was mostly through letters, often hand-carried, or through verbal messages that got distorted from one person to another. It was expensive to establish and maintain communications systems during the war.
- Standardizing communications systems is critical for the key players. Transparency is required.
- Field operation reports must be circulated. Field-generated reports that circulate among institutions, peacekeepers, and policymakers are a great asset.
- Regular meetings at various levels are both useful and meaningful.
- The media and its role need improvement.
- In crisis situations, there is a tremendous drain of talent from the country.
I can make several recommendations for improving the communications system:
- Establish transparency. When you have so many factions in the country, each one suspicious of all the others, it is very important that your communications networks be open. In a situation such as ours, one should only say what one can defend. In spite of all the efforts, this openness still eludes us.
- The language should be carefully chosen, especially when there are different factions that have different language backgrounds. If you speak in a language that others do not understand, you will become suspect.
- Public awareness of the communications system -- its purpose and rationale -- is critical. Anyone can operate a handset; if there is no public education about the purpose of these handsets, then you could easily be accused of spying.
- Timely information sharing is essential. The United Nations or UNOMIL have occasionally failed to communicate important information.
- All the actors must collaborate more closely. International organizations should empower their local branches with direct support of qualified efforts. At one time, we received grants directly; since the war, we have had to go through international agencies.
- Ensure even distribution of humanitarian relief. Too many people are hurting in one part of the country while those in other parts of the country are not being cared for.
- Make constructive use of the local media.
- Use different modes of communication. We have done a lot of work in this area, sending messages through such media as stories, traditional dramas, songs, posters, and T-shirts.
Finally, our best is not good enough until we have achieved our desired goal. We must reevaluate where we have come from and where we are in order to arrive at where we want to be. We must have a workable system that will bring lasting peace to the trouble spots of the country.
Relief Web Project
Daniel Zelig
The Relief Web project is not about a World Wide Web site; it is not about the Internet. It is about accumulating, organizing, and disseminating information.
There are currently a variety of technical initiatives for improving communications in the field and at headquarters, some of which have been implemented. We are supporting the information that passes through those systems. We see a continuing transformation and evolution from strictly voice communications toward data capability.
The advantages of having data communications capability are fairly obvious. They include the continuous availability of information, the ability to recall information, the ability to incorporate someone else's information into your own document, and the ability to filter the information.
We not only disseminate the information through our Web site and the Internet, but we also disseminate the information off-line, without needing sophisticated graphics. One feature of the Web site is a persistent menu on the left-hand side; even when you click on an item, the menu stays the same. We are trying to reduce the barriers between you and the information you need.
Included in the features of the Web site is a list of links to early-warning resources, be they agricultural early warning or conflict early warning. We are developing a list of related sites. We also have a map center and a library of materials of interest to the humanitarian community.
The bulk of our effort has focused on emergency time-critical information. We distinguish between background information and time-critical information. Background information is maintained at other Web sites, while we control the time-critical information. For example, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations took the very bold step of developing a portion of its Web site that we could link to directly, so that they manage their own background information. Given our mandate, it is very important that we carefully structure and manage time-critical information. To that end, we actually maintain all the time-critical information at the Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA).
This arrangement has many benefits. We are able to -- or we strive to -- achieve 24-hour access to this information, independent of the Internet. If your Internet connection is unstable or too slow or nonexistent, the information can still be accessed through a modem pool or other portable systems.
A second benefit is that for every document we maintain on Relief Web, a bibliographic record describes that document, including information such as the source of the document, the emergency or emergencies to which it pertains, and the themes that it covers such as IDPs, logistics, security, and sectors. That means you can search not only in the text of the document itself, but on this bibliographic record about the document.
Accessible from the Web site is a list of emergencies that the prototype is covering at the moment. The names of the emergencies are not necessarily country names. Crises often extend beyond borders, so we have completely discarded the notion of country profiles; we look at emergencies, at regions. For example, we could select the Great Lakes region, and we'd move into an emergency section pertaining just to the Great Lakes. Also accessible is a list of the major documents that have been added to the resource over the past week or so. The information managers make a judgment call about the life span of the documents on this page.
Everything on the Web site is dated and its source is identified; that is the cornerstone of how we intend to manage and disseminate information. We have to balance two conflicting needs: the need to disseminate information rapidly and the need to find the desired information.
We are often asked, "Why can't you extract the salient information from the situation reports or from the analyses and simply compile it and create a summary?" Information from various reports is often conflicting. It is very difficult -- and inappropriate, given our mandate -- to try to resolve conflicting information or to editorialize by extracting some data but not other data. Our goal is to provide the means by which you can find the documents that address the issues you are examining; we leave it to you to identify the authoritative source, the authentic source, the believable source.
To organize the information effectively, we have tried to break it down into different screens. One screen tells you what information has been added, what is new. The other access path is through the source. We simply list all the documents that we have from a given source or by a particular author. For example, we can select the UN Humanitarian Coordinator and review all the situation reports. We do not edit any of the documents we receive. We do format them so they can appear a little more clearly in this medium. At the top of the screen you will always find the source of the document and the date of the document. No matter where you are in the document, the name of the document will always appear at the top in a blue banner.
We have organized the different sources under such headings as "United Nations" or "International Organizations." For example, under "International Committee of the Red Cross," we have a French-language document. (There are no accents right now, but we are working on that. We are actually able to accept documents in any of the languages that are supported by the ISO character set.) Other source headings include "Governments," "Nongovernmental Organizations," "News," and "Media." In addition to organizing information by source and by date, we also organize it by format, such as situation report.
We also provide access to financial tracking; for example, we provide information from the Complex Emergency Support Unit of DHA. We also have a commitment from ECCO and from the U.S. Agency for International Development to provide us their financial tracking data for dissemination. Financial tracking data, along with the other information that we include in the system, will enable donors to make decisions about expending their increasingly limited resources.
We also have a feature called the map center, which contains geographic maps. These maps are very simple, and they will print on 8 1/2-by-11-inch paper and are thus faxable. We are not trying to replace paper maps; rather, we are trying to support paper maps. An electronic maps will never replace the large map that is put on the bulletin board and marked with thumbtacks and labels, but there is enough white space here to write on and fax to someone.
There is also a map on the Web site that shows the names and locations of the various refugee camps. We also have program maps that show emergency stock positions and overland routes. In addition to providing these master images, we will also be providing a dissemination method for the world food programs -- Global Positioning System (GPS) mapping layers. Those who have GPS capability will be able to download those layers, modify them, and send them back.
The information on this system is useful only so long as it is fresh. I would like to discuss the way we intend to manage the information in the system and our goals in terms of turnaround time. We are striving to achieve 24-hour-a-day event monitoring by having two teams in Geneva and one team in New York. For the lack of a better analogy, we are trying to develop a humanitarian Cable News Network, using these information teams.
At the top of our flowchart is the information officer or information manager. The job of the information manager is to assess the propriety of placing a document in the system. The information manager also plays an active role in acquiring the information through protocols, through the information DHA receives as a matter of course, and through establishing linkages with the various partners.
Once a document has been deemed appropriate or acceptable for inclusion in Relief Web, the information manager adds a few pieces of information, including the source of the document, the emergency to which it pertains, and the themes it covers. If the document has an urgent priority, it is published immediately.
Every document, regardless of priority, is sent to a documentalist. The documentalist reads it carefully and extracts the salient data: place names, sectors, and other proper nouns. After a document has left the documentalist, it goes into two parallel tracks. One track is for conversion into the appropriate format, and the other for quality control. In quality control, we reassess the decisions that have been made about that document. Is it appropriate? Is the quality of the data high? Then it is published.
The importance of this bibliographic record cannot be overstated. It accomplishes two things. First, it enables you to search on concepts, not just search for strings in the text of the document itself. Second, it enables us to completely automate the publication and dissemination of this information. Everything we need to know about where the document fits into this structure is drawn from these data.
I would like to point out some features that distinguish this project from others. The first is that we are striving to ensure 24-hour-a-day access to this information, independent of the Internet.
Second, access to the data is portable -- the data, for example, can be accessed from a laptop computer. Continuous Internet access to a regional information center is untenable. It is too expensive and too difficult to maintain. We are able make a copy of this system and distribute it once a day or once a week or as events warrant. You can view this information locally.
Nongovernmental organizations and other civil society organizations can come to a regional information center to gather information. This gives us an entry point into assessing the information needs of the operating partners, the people in the field. It also allows us to get the information that would be of use if it were disseminated more broadly, to get that information directly from the field.
Another value is the ability to keep the content of the system fresh. We have a 6-hour turnaround time between when we receive a document and when we are able to disseminate it.
We also have the benefit of operational focus. The Relief Web site is designed exclusively for meeting the information needs of the humanitarian community. It is not a public relations site, and we are trying to keep it low-tech. This allows us to alert you to emerging events, with a bare minimum of information. That allows you to control the amount of information you receive so that you are not inundated with material that is irrelevant to your needs and interests.
Part IV
Back to Top
See the complete list of Institute reports. The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Institute of Peace, which does not advocate specific policies.
|
