Building resilience from within: Enhancing humanitarian civil-military coordination in post-Haiyan Philippines

This report outlines and examines the changes made to Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) in the Philippines based on lessons from Super Typhoon Haiyan. It analyses how major stakeholders transformed lessons from Super Typhoon Haiyan into policy responses and reforms to HADR operations, including civil-military coordination. This document is primarily based on fieldwork interviews conducted in Metro Manila in July 2016 with high-ranking officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines; current and former officials of civilian government agencies included in the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC); humanitarian NGOs; a representative of the academic and scientific community; and a representative from the private sector.

Changes to HADR post-Haiyan include the following:

• The National Disaster Response Plan (NDRP) was initiated by the Philippine government and outlines the processes and mechanisms needed to facilitate a coordinated response by national and/or local level departments/agencies;
• The NDRP facilitates collaborative networks that are necessary to remove traditional institutional barriers and facilitate the sharing of information among council member-agencies;
• One of the major gaps in disaster preparedness for Super Typhoon Haiyan was risk communication;
• One important innovation developed by the Office of Civil Defence (OCD) is the Pre-Disaster Risk Assessment (PDRA) to avoid another Haiyan-like devastation;
• One important operational reform of the AFP during the post-Haiyan period is the activation of one battalion each for the Army, Air Ftrce and Navy, fully equipped and dedicated to HADR missions. The military now has three battalions in place for deployment.
• Since the super typhoon, locally-led responses have been further enhanced by NGOs through strengthening the capacity of local community organisations on disaster risk reduction and preparedness.

NTS Report No. 6