Vol 53-PILOT ASEAN HUMANITARIAN CIVIL-MILITARY COORDINATION COURSE

/ / AHA Centre Diary 2

PILOT ASEAN HUMANITARIAN
CIVIL-MILITARY COORDINATION COURSE

With the content for the course developed (as covered in The Column Volume 51), the AHA Centre recently conducted the inaugural Pilot ASEAN Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination Course, aimed to build trust and relations between the disaster management practitioners and the defence and military sector in disaster response. The roles of ASEAN militaries are integral within ASEAN’s response mechanisms, and stronger engagement should support response scaling-up and speed – key targets of One ASEAN One Response. The Level 2 ASEAN Emergency Response and Assessment Team (ASEAN-ERAT) pilot course took place in Jakarta, Indonesia from 8-11 July 2019.

The course included numerous sessions covering and discussing a range of ASEAN Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination components and mechanisms. To ensure more practical understanding of content, a simulation exercise was injected into the course, aimed to prepare and familiarise participants with situations related to civil-military coordination experienced during real disasters. As a result, the course successfully generated 16 graduates, including ASEAN-ERAT members from Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Myanmar, the ASEAN Secretariat and the AHA Centre (representing civilian side of ASEAN), and nine participants representing the military sector. Graduates were inaugurated during the Closing Ceremony by the Executive Director of the AHA Centre, Ms. Adelina Kamal, together with the Australian Ambassador to ASEAN, H.E Jane Duke, and witnessed by representatives from a range of engaged partners.

The success of the Pilot ASEAN Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination Course – funded through the Japan-ASEAN Integration Fund (JAIF) – would not have been possible without ongoing partner support, including representatives of the Ministries of Defence from Malaysia, the Republic of Indonesia and Thailand, the Philippines Armed Forces, the Changi Regional Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Coordination Centre (HADR-RHCC), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN World Food Programme (UN-WFP), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), RedR Australia, and the Center for Excellence in Disaster Management (CFE-DM). All these partners and more have closely worked with the AHA Centre throughout the course development and into the implementation of the pilot course itself.

 

Written by : Grace Endina | Photo : AHA Centre