NDJAMENA, 23 January 2008 (IRIN) - It is a question almost as old as the aid industry itself: How to avoid waste and inefficiency when dozens of humanitarian agencies are working alongside each other in a rapidly evolving emergency?

Two years ago the key humanitarian policy decision making body, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, endorsed the cluster approach, the UN's answer to the problem.

Under the scheme, emergency relief organisations were grouped into 11 sectors like food, shelter, water, protection and sanitation.

Since clusters were introduced in Chad six months ago, the country's massive relief operations have become a key test for the new approach.

A dozen UN agencies and more than 50 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from around the world work there in a massive relief effort to get aid to 285,000 refugees in 16 camps in the south and east of the vast country and 180,000 displaced Chadians caught up in a complicated armed rebellion against the government and inter-communal fighting.

Piling on pressure for aid agencies in Chad to perform at their best, donors poured in almost US$300 million of the money for food, shelter materials, water, education and basic health services aid agencies had collectively asked for, in 2007.

Chad's humanitarian appeal for 2007 was 97 percent funded, higher than any other humanitarian appeal the UN launched that year.

Top level

The most senior humanitarian official in the country, Kingsley Amaning, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator, said that with funds flowing and donor pressure on, the cluster approach helps him because he knows where to point the finger when things go wrong.

"The new approach marks a change because it makes one aid organisation the 'cluster lead' for a given sector," he said. "Before when there were problems, no one was responsible. Now when there is a complaint I can say 'speak to the cluster lead' because they are the ones who are responsible."

Eliane Duthoit, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Chad said the reforms have formalised projects which were previously ad hoc or unstructured.

"I always felt in the past that people were not compelled to look at their work within a global structure for the sector and to follow it," she said.

"Now, the clusters are more binding. If you're working in a sector and you want to get funds for your work, you need to take part in the design of the strategy; then you are part of the strategy and you have to follow it."

Technical level

Enthusiasm for that structured approach also runs strong at the technical level.

At the next level down in the aid agency chain of command, technical managers working out of the relief hub Abeche, in the remote east of the country, closer to the site of most of the refugee camps and displaced people in the country, also expressed satisfaction.

"I don't think anyone can deny that cooperation between technical coordinators has improved," said Nicholas Palanque, country director for CARE International in Chad.

Technical coordinators in Abeche said they have become better at working out which among them is best equipped to provide a particular service and on agreeing how to adapt international standards of assistance to conditions on the ground.

For example, implementing the international standard of how many litres of water a person should get a day, known as the Sphere standard, is not feasible in eastern Chad, so aid agencies had to agree a new standard among themselves to make sure they were consistent in their aid deliveries across the region.

"Organisations participating in the water and sanitation cluster recognised this issue and agreed to adapt the standards to local constraints," said Thomas Merkelbach, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Chad.

Bottom up?

Where the new approach gets less praise is for its direct impact on the ground and among the NGOs which deliver the aid the UN coordinates.

Jef Imans, head of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Chad, is one of the approach's most outspoken critics.

He dismissed the approach as being "first and foremost about politics and money", and said that clusters have not always had a positive impact on operations.

"Personally, I still don't really know what the practical difference is between the new cluster system and the former system," he said.

The UN's central role in the process is viewed with suspicion by many NGO officials with whom IRIN spoke.

"It's really a UN tool," said CARE's Palanque, despite his enthusiasm for the technical improvements.

"It is certainly not a bottom-up driven process," agreed Christophe Droeven, head of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in Chad.

Meeting overload

One of the most common criticisms levelled at the cluster approach is that it simply increases agencies' workloads by forcing them to attend yet more meetings instead of concentrating on the hard end of the business, getting aid on the ground.

"It's a lot of work and energy," said ICRC's Merkelbach.

"ICRC is involved in all areas of an emergency, so we have to attend almost all the meetings. In the end you have to make the decision, it is better to attend the meeting or actually do our jobs?"

The UN lead in the meetings is taken by some NGOs as an attempt by the organisation to keep tabs on their work. "The clusters are nothing more than a way for the UN to control us," said one aid worker at Action Against Hunger (AAH) in Chad.

AAH warned in a 2005 policy document that efforts at coordination "should, under no circumstances, be taken to mean subordination".

Leadership

Sune Gudnitz, an adviser in OCHA's Geneva office involved in rolling out the cluster approach worldwide, said despite the teething pains aid workers in Chad and others countries are experiencing, he believes the new approach is ultimately improving the aid system.

"There's a long way to go, but the tune is changing out in the field, even among some of the die-hards," he said. "People are recognising that there are benefits to be had from this approach and that they can get more done and save more lives for the same money."

Gudnitz said the problems identified in Chad might be resolved with more work to inform aid workers and UN staff there about what the cluster approach is and exactly how it works.

He said ultimately it is the Humanitarian Coordinator's job to lead the implementation of the approach in the first place, then to oversee the way agencies perform and to intervene as needed.

"A good humanitarian coordinator will be involved in the debates. It will be someone who can take on board the views of various organisations if they have problems in the clusters," he explained, although he noted this does not absolve agencies from having good, professional leaders.

"To improve the way we work is a collective effort and cannot hinge on the humanitarian coordinator alone," he said.

Better way?

NGO resentment towards the UN is a sign that the organisation's staff need to work harder at facilitating but not forcing decisions, according to Gudnitz.

"They have to get away from the bad old days when the UN told NGOs what to do. Now they have to sit down with them together as equal partners," he said.

And clusters should not equate more meetings, Gudnitz said. "The cluster approach should not mean more meetings - it should mean better meetings."

Too many meetings increases the risk of losing partners, especially smaller NGOs that do not have the resources to attend them all and then eventually drop out of the process, he warned.

"Cluster leads should rationalise the meetings they already have and ensure that they go beyond information sharing and focus on the strategic issues and decisions which need to be made in order to make them worthwhile."

While the prognosis has been mixed from Chad, even sceptical aid workers there said they would be prepared to keep working at working together.

"At this stage we don't have a better way to do things," said CARE's Palanque.

"At the very least it has given aid groups access to emergency funds they would not have been able to access on their own," said Merkelbach of the ICRC.

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