Sådan konkluderer nyt studie fra britiske forskere, og det er ærgerligt, for begge parter har meget at give hinanden og dermed ikke mindst til katastrofeofrene, som alle vil hjælpe – eksempelvis var et logistik-team fra transportgiganten DHL på plads i Haiti 48 timer efter jordskælvet i 2010.
LONDON, 21 July 2014 (IRIN): A cloud of mistrust hangs over relations between business and the humanitarian community, the result of decades of mutual suspicion.
Aid workers stereotype the private sector as profiteering and unscrupulous; business people write off international agencies as bloated (oppustede) and inefficient.
Even where both sides sense they might have something to gain by working with each other, a series of studies by the Humanitarian Policy Group at London’s Overseas Development Institute, the ODI, shows that
* all too often they have no idea how to approach each other,
* no forum where they can meet and
* very little common language.
They are already there
The ODI’s Steven Zyck, who worked on the project, says the private sector is in reality deeply involved in emergency humanitarian response:
“Businesses are often among the first responders to any crisis, opening their stores, opening their warehouses, volunteering their trucks and equipment and machinery to clear roads and get supplies into affected areas”.
“And in a world where agencies are increasingly relying on cash transfer programmes (penge i stedet for mad, red.) to reach disaster affected populations, simply helping to get markets in a far-flung community up and running again is a key part of the humanitarian enterprise”.
“This is not a fad (en grille eller indfald),” he says, adding:
“In the future, the opportunities for engaging with businesses in humanitarian action are only going to increase. Many of the challenges that we are increasingly facing – as a result of climate change, as a result of pandemics or technological failures – are things where businesses have a real competitive advantage.”
Keeping the humanitarian cavallery at arms length
For their country studies, the group looked for places with a flourishing private sector – Kenya, Indonesia, Jordan and Haiti.
In Jordan and Indonesia they were also looking at the kind of middle income countries which would rather keep international agencies at arms’ length and do as much as they can themselves.
“We see that many countries are pursuing collaborations with the private sector, rather than traditional aid agencies,” said Zyck, noting:
“This is because they want to ensure that the response to the crisis actually helps them further their pursuit of economic growth and development…”
“And some countries are fed up with the way they are portrayed at times by traditional aid agencies in their fund-raising pitches and drives – as a devastated country, a shambles (ruinhob), unsuited for foreign direct investment – and this is actually damaging their long-term growth.”
Useful partnerships and missed opportunities
As they worked, the researchers found examples of innovative and useful partnerships, but also many missed opportunities.
In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, telecom companies shared their data with humanitarian agencies, helping them track the movement of people.
They helped agencies get information to the public through SMS messaging, enabling them to target people in a particular area by directing messages through particular masts.
But a bit of joint forward planning could have avoided some of the problems.
Digicel’s donation of free airtime to its customers backfired when the resulting spike in traffic clogged the network. And the companies were deluged by (oversvømmet af) uncoordinated requests from NGOs to send out SMS messages.
Some were delayed, or sent in duplicate, and customers began to regard them as a nuisance. Eventually the companies appointed dedicated members of staff to sort them out, and things got better.
International companies also helped.
A consortium of logistics companies (TNT, UPS and Agility) sent an expert team to Haiti to manage warehouses and clear bottlenecks in the supply chain.
The appliance-maker, Whirlpool, was also keen to help. Haiti was not in need of washing machines, but they could provide warehouse space which was used to assemble shelter kits.
Few Forums for ongoing consultations
Læs videre på http://www.irinnews.org/report/100383/business-and-humanitarian-action-overcoming-the-language-barrier
