Resilience and Response: the diplomatic dimension

Diplomats play an often overlooked yet absolutely vital role in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief coordination, writes HE Jesus S. Domingo, Philippine Ambassador to New Zealand, Cook Islands, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.

An oft-overlooked stakeholder in the resilience and response spheres are diplomats. We perform behind-thescenes yet critical roles. Diplomats are the ‘gatekeepers’ of international crisis cooperation, including Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response (HADR) provided by militaries.

Foreign ministries and their diplomatic missions are the front line of interaction between countries, and they spearhead discussion and resolution of matters pertaining to entry and exit of personnel, vehicles, equipment, medicines and other materiel. Provision of resilience-building development and humanitarian assistance between countries also entail the negotiation capacities of diplomats.

Another role performed by diplomats is looking after national expatriates and migrants in their respective countries of assignment, through our Embassies, High Commissions and Consulates.

The Asia Pacific Region, and the entirety of the planet for that matter, need to brace themselves for both natural and man-made disasters of increasing frequency and magnitude. This has direct implications for New Zealand’s defence and diplomatic establishments in the context of resilience and response. I have had the privilege of working on these agendas with New Zealand officials both in the Philippines and here in Wellington.

Super typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in 2013, is indicative of a new normal. Violent typhoons have hit and continue to plague the Western Pacific, and will be of greater concern to Wellington given its Pacific Reset. New Zealand had provided muchappreciated HADR to post-Haiyan operations and for other natural disasters in the region.

The Christchurch mosque shootings of 2019 are a tragic manifestation of man-made calamity. The compassionate and purposeful response of the New Zealand Government, as well as the citizenry of the country as a whole has raised the global bar for dealing with the aftermath of terrorist acts.

In turn, New Zealand has received support from the world community in its time of need. The Christchurch and Kaikoura earthquakes of 2011 and 2016, respectively, saw the arrival of numerous assisting overseas HADR teams. The 2019 mosque shootings united the world in sympathy and goodwill towards New Zealand.

HE Jesus S. Domingo, Philippine Ambassador to New Zealand, Cook Islands, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.

Natural disasters In the case of Haiyan, I was the Philippine Foreign Ministry’s officer-in-charge for coordinating international assistance. In that capacity I worked closely with the then-NZ Ambassador to the Philippines, H.E. Reuben Levermore. I had the privilege of assisting the Ambassador in coordinating the landing of the RNZAF C-130 aircraft that conveyed NZ’s HADR material and personnel contributions.

This entailed obtaining flight clearances for the landing of the aircraft, and approval for the entry of personnel and humanitarian goods, which included working vis-à-vis our airport, customs and military authorities. Kiwi civilian and military personnel joined treaty allies and other international providers in contributing HADR.

During the operations I also had the honour of meeting an RNZN officer serving onboard HMS Illustrious, which was leading the British HADR efforts in response to Haiyan.

After Haiyan, NZ shared its expertise in resilience-building by despatching Civil Defence officers to train Philippine local authorities in Kiwi-style disaster management, focusing on the development of ‘Community Hubs’. Other resiliencebuilding assistance was provided by the NZ Government, the NZ Red Cross, and by Kiwis serving in the UN system and with other international governmental and non-governmental entities.

Among the more important considerations in HADR and international disaster response in general is the ‘trigger’ mechanism – how a state gets access to external assistance.

It’s not quite simple or straightforward a proposition as one may think. The international humanitarian architecture had long assumed that in the event of a major disaster exceeding a state’s capacity to manage, the said state would make a global appeal for help.

Much of the world’s stand-by civilian humanitarian assistance is placed under the United Nations system, particularly the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA). An affected state generally must make a formal written request to the UN Secretary-General to avail itself of such assistance.

However, an affected state may not necessarily ‘pull the trigger’ right away as would be expected by humanitarian providers. Such was the case with Myanmar in the wake of Cyclone Nargis (2003) and with the Philippines for Haiyan.

In the case of Myanmar, diplomats reached an agreement with Yangon that foreign assistance would be coordinated in a tripartite manner by the Government of Myanmar, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the UN. In the case of the Philippines after Haiyan,

Typhoon Haiyan killed at least 7,000 people and flattened many impoverished communities, triggering massive international humanitarian relief operations in the Philippines in 2013. (Credit: Claudio Accheri/flickr).

Manila questioned the need for a direct appeal to the UN. Diplomats then crafted a mutually acceptable remedy – instead of the Philippines being made to make an appeal, the UN would make an offer of assistance.

Another consideration is the dynamics of civilian versus military humanitarian assistance. Generally, it is much easier for military HADR to come into an affected country provided the said country has the necessary administrative arrangements. Such was the case with Haiyan and the Philippines.

The Philippines had been conducting frequent military exercises with its defence treaty partners, the United States and Australia. Immediately after Haiyan, a HADR coordination group was established called the Multi-National Coordination Centre (MNCC) based in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Command and General Staff College (CGSC).

The MNCC had at its core the AFP and partner country military staff who coordinated exercises with the US and AU, and had easily expanded to encompass military cooperation with the other HADR-providing countries. A key advantage of HADR assistance is that it is exempt from the usual Customs – Immigration – Quarantine (CIQ) restrictions placed on other aid providers.

However, other considerations come into play. If a given HADR provider does not have a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) governing carrying of weapons, the arrival of armed personnel may cause challenges.

Such was the case with HADR provider ‘country X’, which had despatched an air force plane carrying relief teams and goods – but with armed crew. X did not have a SOFA with the Philippines. The solution, again brokered by diplomats, was that the crew may fly in with their sidearms. The caveat was that the said sidearms may not be carried outside the plane after landing, but the AFP would provide an armed escort when the crew disembarked.

By contrast, civilian humanitarian assistance had to run a veritable gauntlet of regulatory screening. Unless a provider has full diplomatic immunities, incoming assistance is subject to CIQ screening. Additional restrictions were placed, for example, by health authorities, who limited the quality and quantity of medical assistance that could be provided.

Foreign military forces assisted the Philippine government’s relief efforts in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. (Credit: US Pacific Command/flickr)

As the Philippines grants visafree privileges to many countries, particularly developed nations, it is difficult to screen well-meaning but un-needed humanitarian volunteers. The latter can potentially turn out to be a net burden rather than an asset as some volunteers come insisting on availing themselves of AFP transport from Manila to the disaster-affected areas.

Others represent skill and abilitysets that have a time-bound utility, such as search and rescue teams. They were generally not needed beyond two weeks immediately after the impact of Haiyan.

Also, some parties sought to provide banned and unneeded assistance, such as containers of used clothing. The preferred mode of assistance on the part of the Philippine government was cash, as food, medicines and other relief goods were generally available in-country.

As the Philippine international assistance focal point, I had to shuttle between the Foreign Ministry, the MNCC and the mandated disaster management authority, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC). I also had to troubleshoot problems cropping up with international civilian providers.

Coordination among military HADR providers was generally smooth and efficient. Dealing with civilian humanitarians was a mixed story.

UN-coordinated assistance was usually systematic, as there had been also a long history of cooperation between the UN-OCHA, other international humanitarian assistance providers, and the NDRRMC. If the military side had the US/AU joint exercises as ‘muscle memory’, our cooperation with the UN had been built with its ‘Humanitarian Cluster Approach’.

This approach saw the pairing and synergy on the ground between Philippine and UN/international stakeholders for particular concerns. For example, a ‘Health Cluster’ was established between the Philippine Department of Health and the UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO).

ASEAN is credited for having the first legally-binding regional framework for disaster management, the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER). The framework has in turn established the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance, or AHA Centre, which is charged with advancing resilience and response cooperation among the ten members of ASEAN.

NZ, in turn, is an ASEAN Dialogue Partner country. A good start, but the ASEAN framework has two key limitations.

First, much of the world’s civilian humanitarian assistance capabilities are coordinated through the UN- OCHA system, which in turn would be accessed by the concerned country. While some assistance is being given by donor countries for the development of the AHA Centre, the bulk of emergency civilian assistance that would be given to an ASEAN country in need would be channelled through UN-OCHA, or bilaterally, not necessarily via ASEAN.

Second, as shown in the case of Haiyan and the Philippines, much of the emergency humanitarian assistance would be conveyed as bilateral HADR by militaries, including ASEAN member-states. The AHA Centre is at this point not mandated to deal with such forms of assistance.

Al Noor Mosque, Christchurch.

Man-made disasters Two days prior to Christchurch mosque shootings, I had briefed the High Commissions and Embassies of the Wellington Diplomatic Corps on a project linking them with Multicultural New Zealand (MNZ). MNZ coordinates the various Multicultural Councils (MCCs) and Newcomers Networks around the country, bodies which bring together migrants and ethnic communities on a local level, working closely with NZ districts and cities.

The project, the MNZ- International Volunteer Network (IVN), seeks to establish lines of communications and collaborations between the Corps and the MNZ stakeholders. The utility of such partnerships would be twofold: enabling the diplomatic missions to engage in cultural and public diplomacy at the local level, while at the same time allowing them to reach out to their respective nationals more thoroughly around NZ.

The latter dimension proved to be of immediate relevance as diplomatic missions in Wellington scrambled to ascertain whether or not any of their citizens and compatriots were affected by the March 15 shootings. Given the grave nature of the incident the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) had reached out immediately to the concerned Embassies and High Commissions.

However, there will be other critical situations in which diplomatic missions are not necessarily informed right away as to the conditions of their nationals. Such a situation was the Kaikoura earthquake of 2016. While the response to the earthquake by NZ was immediately exemplary, informing missions as to the nationalities of affected persons is not necessarily a priority activity.

The MNZ-IVN could help remedy this for future crises. Diplomats in Wellington could directly contact the concerned local MCC in the event of another calamity in order to get realtime information on the situation of their respective nationals. The local MCC would be in a good position to help monitor the whereabouts and conditions of particular ethnic communities.

In turn, the Philippine Embassy is introducing the concept of Multiculturalism and the MCC-IVN to the Philippines. There are about 60,000 Filipinos in New Zealand, most of whom are NZ citizens or permanent residents. About 2,000 Kiwis reside in the Philippines.

Way forward Our concern is more on the role of NZ and the Philippines in terms of natural disasters, particularly on international cooperation and the role of diplomats. The reality is that a – if not the – key to effective resilience and response is maximising HADR preparedness and cooperation with the assistance of diplomats to help iron out the ‘devil in the detail’.

A good if not best practice of sorts was illustrated by the Philippines’ military MNCC. The success of the MNCC stemmed from the many years of annual joint military exercises held by the Philippines with the US and Australia.

While the AHA Centre is an important resilience and response stakeholder, it is rather limited as to what it can do in the event of another Haiyan-type disaster, as it does not deal with military HADR. Also, the UN system engages with but does not necessarily control bilateral military HADR assistance; it is mainly done through bilateral arrangements. What is key therefore is to maximise inter-military HADR cooperation and the establishment of clearer stand-by arrangements for HADR, somewhat analogous to the stand-by arrangements for UN Peacekeeping deployments.

Some of the relevant initiatives along these lines include (i) the Changi Regional HADR Coordination Centre (RHCC) based in Singapore, (ii) the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM+) process, and the (iii) Pacific Environmental Security Forum (PESF) of the US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM). To be all-encompassing for the Asia-Pacific region, (iv) the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) should also be engaged for comprehensive HADR.

In order to advance meaningful resilience and response cooperation for NZ and the Philippines, diplomats play a critical role in helping to navigate the myriad of stakeholders, frameworks and considerations.