A delegation from the Committee on the Civil Dimension
of Security of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO PA) participated as
observers in NATO’s disaster response exercise ARMENIA 2010 on the outskirts of
Yerevan, Armenia, on 16-17 September 2010. Canada was represented by Mrs.
Cheryl Gallant, M.P.
The scenario of the exercise comprised an earthquake
measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale causing damage to the local infrastructure
as well as various incidents, including land slides, a chemical spill and a car
accident involving radiological materials.
The ARMENIA 2010 exercise, organised jointly by NATO’s
Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response and Coordination Center (EADRCC) and the
Armenian Rescue Service, brought together 17 teams from 13 NATO member and
partner countries, as well as representatives from the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA), the International Federation of
the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and NGOs. 15 other nations also
contributed staff and experts to the exercise.
ARMENIA 2010 was the tenth international field exercise
conducted by the EADRCC to test NATO’s disaster response mechanisms and promote
greater interoperability among the national emergency services of Allied and
partner countries. This was the second time that the NATO PA had sent a
delegation to observe an EADRCC exercise, following a previous participation in
the IDASSA exercise in Croatia in May 2007.
The NATO PA delegation was able to observe rescue
operations at several sites and witness first-hand the co-operation on the
ground between response teams from NATO member and partner countries.
The Committee on the Civil Dimension of Security
regularly discusses the challenges posed by international terrorism and natural
disasters and the role of the Alliance in enhancing national preparedness and
international responses to such events. Over the past few years, the Committee
has adopted a number of reports on issues such as NATO’s role in civil
protection, critical infrastructure protection, and chemical, biological,
radiological and nuclear (CBRN) detection. Participation in these EADRCC
exercises continues this work.
Members of the delegation commended the EADRCC for
organising these annual exercises, emphasising the benefits of bringing teams
from different countries to practise together in a foreign and unfamiliar
environment. Learning how to operate under the direction of the host country’s
authorities is another important objective of such exercises, and members were
told that the performance of the participating teams in this respect could be
assessed very positively. Members of the delegation also noted how these
exercises help develop practices and procedures and create interpersonal bonds,
which would undoubtedly be invaluable assets in the event of a real emergency.
The exercises also include an assessment mechanism,
which helps draw lessons learned. The delegation was informed that some of the
lessons from previous exercises had already been implemented. These related inter
alia to the need to:
·provide more room for analysis and decision-making about the
management of resources;
·set up sites in a manner that would be more challenging for
participating teams;
·make better use of existing guidelines and international standards;
·enhance interactions with the host nation and engage the entire
national response system in the exercise.
In addition to NATO member countries, EADRCC exercises
are also open to the 22 partner countries of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership
Council (EAPC), the seven partners of the Mediterranean Dialogue and the four
partners of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI), i.e. a total of 61
nations. Many of these, like Armenia, are situated in areas where major natural
disasters have taken place in the past, or regularly face emergencies.
The following partner nations contributed teams to the
ARMENIA 2010 exercise: Armenia, Austria, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Israel,
Moldova, Tajikistan, and Ukraine. Members also welcomed the staff contribution
by Russia to the exercise as a positive example of practical cooperation
between NATO and Russia. In this regard, it should be emphasised that the
EADRCC was created on a Russian initiative.
Members cited this breadth of potential participants and
host countries as another unique and particularly worthwhile feature of NATO
exercises. They also welcomed the fact that such exercises can provide
opportunities for countries, at odds politically, to put aside their
differences and focus on practical co-operation.
Members further emphasised that training for providing
as well as receiving international assistance, and perfecting national
procedures and preparedness, are vital objectives for NATO member and partner
countries alike. They thus encouraged the largest possible number of NATO
member countries to send teams – rather than only experts – to future
exercises, as far as this is feasible taking into account, in particular, the
logistical and financial constraints that might make their participation
difficult.
Looking ahead to the upcoming NATO summit of Heads of
State and Government in Lisbon and to the planned adoption of a new Strategic
Concept, members hoped for a clear acknowledgement of NATO’s contribution in
the field of civil emergency planning and disaster preparedness. They stressed
that the NATO PA’s contribution to the new Strategic Concept, which was
presented to the NATO Secretary General on 13 April 2010, recommended giving
the EADRCC and its role in disaster response greater visibility, as this provides
a positive example of “the many ways in which [the Alliance] is directly
relevant to the security concerns of its citizens”.
The Assembly’s document also emphasised the Alliance’s
“special role in enhancing capabilities to mitigate the effects of the use of
WMD” and recommended that “the Alliance should use its Civil Emergency Planning
assets to train first-responders for WMD contingencies and augment rapid
reaction units that could assist those first responders if requested by a
national authority”.
In this regard, members welcomed the fact that exercise
scenarios now routinely include a CBRN element and were impressed with the
performance of participating CBRN teams from Armenia, Belarus, Moldova, Poland
and Ukraine. They hoped that CBRN preparedness will feature even more
prominently in future exercises, including also scenarios of manmade incidents.
One the key objectives of such exercises is also to help
enhance the co-ordination of international assistance in the event of a
disaster. In this regard, members of the delegation welcomed the presence and
active participation of representatives of OCHA, the UN’s lead agency for the
co-ordination of disaster response, in the ARMENIA 2010 exercise. They
deplored, however, that the participation of NATO and EU representatives in
each other’s exercises has still not become a reality.
The co-ordination of reception of international
assistance was the main theme for the seminar organised by NATO’s Civil
Protection Group (CPG) as part of the observer programme for the ARMENIA 2010
exercise. Per Anders Berthlin, consultant for UN OCHA, reminded participants
that current international mechanisms for the co-ordination of disaster
response are borne out of the experience of the 1988 earthquake in Armenia. This
major disaster was a wake‑up call for the UN system and other
international actors that co-ordination mechanisms were desperately needed.
Colonel Gamlet Matevosyan, Rector of the Crisis
Management State Academy of the Armenian Rescue Service, recalled the scale of
the destruction caused by the 1988 earthquake: 25,000 people died; 514,000 were
left without shelter; the cities of Spitak, Gyumi and Vanadzor were
respectively 100%, 75% and 25% destroyed; and the material loss was estimated
at a minimum of USD 9-10 billion. Armenia, he explained, was caught completely
unprepared for such a disaster: Seven hours went by before the initial response
to the earthquake was decided and information to the public was virtually
non-existent. Armenia had no rescue force, no state body in charge of
co-ordinating domestic or international assistance, and no capacity to direct
the work of the rescue teams that had been sent to Armenia from 17 different
countries.
Lessons learned from the Spitak earthquake thus led to a
complete rethink of Armenia’s emergency management structures, with the
creation of a state rescue force, an agency and later a ministry for emergency
situations, and the crisis management academy, which today helps train
Armenia’s cadre of emergency responders.
As Mr Berthlin emphasised, the creation, in 1992, of the
UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs and that of UN OCHA in 1997, were also a
direct consequence of the Spitak experience. Through its clusters approach, UN
OCHA provides an inclusive platform for all governmental and non-governmental
actors in the field to co-ordinate their interventions in each specific area,
e.g. health, water and sanitation, etc.
Nevertheless, Mr Berthlin stressed that many challenges
remain. Some have to do with the new environment in which disasters take place
today:
·a growing number of large scale disasters, affecting larger
groups of population;
·the difficulty of dealing with a faster and increasingly dense
flow of information;
·an increasing number of responders, including new actors from the
private sector; it was emphasised however that the willingness of these private
actors – such as mobile phone and shipping companies – to support international
relief efforts also creates many new opportunities;
·concerns regarding the security of humanitarian workers in
certain theatres;
·interventions in countries where national capacity is weak, e.g.
Haiti.
Ragnar Boe, Chairman of NATO CPG, also pointed to the
separate challenges of requesting, receiving and donating assistance. In terms
of requesting assistance, he cited:
·the importance of a thorough assessment of needs;
·the need for a good knowledge and understanding of the profiles
of the different potential national and international responders;
·the importance of pre-established agreements, e.g. on
cross-border transport.
Taking into account these challenges, NATO has developed
a set of non-binding guidelines for requesting assistance, which aim to
facilitate the process of requesting international assistance.
Challenges to receiving assistance include:
·interoperability, as few international standards exist in terms
of equipment, procedures, etc.;
·language / communication;
·the need for appropriate procedures and standards to speed up the
process of receiving assistance.
Finally, providers of assistance also face a number of
choices and legal issues:
·choosing between bilateral and multilateral channels for the
delivery of their assistance;
·deciding whether to provide donations or reimbursable assistance;
·clarifying the legal status of first responders; Mr Boe informed
delegates that a NATO project currently aims at addressing this issue;
·waving claims for compensation in the event of damage done to
property.
Mr Boe highlighted the assistance that NATO can offer
through the EADRCC and its voluntary mechanism for requesting and providing
disaster relief, through a pool of over 380 civilian experts, through its tools
and procedures – including preparedness exercises, advisory support teams and
rapid reaction teams –, as well as through the framework it has established for
the use of military assets and capabilities in support of humanitarian
operations.
John Seong from the US Agency for International
Development (USAID), the lead US body for foreign disaster assistance,
described his agency’s role in assisting stricken nations. He explained that
assistance can be delivered through 5 main channels:
·immediate cash disbursements to the local embassy or mission;
·the deployment of disaster assessment teams, followed by disaster
response teams;
·grants to UN, European and local relief agencies;
·the shipment of commodities, including from the three
pre-positioned stockpiles located in Miami, Pisa and Dubai;
·the operation of a 24/7 response management team in Washington,
DC.
Mr Seong mentioned that the US military is also
occasionally deployed in response to foreign disasters – sometimes at USAID’s
request –, but USAID retained the lead role, with the US military in a
supportive role. Mr Seong stressed that co-ordination between civilian and
military efforts was improving.