Civil-military Humanitarian Coordination's Challenges and the Role of UN-CMCoord

• In Event: International Cooperation and Security

Abstract

There are few studies addressed to investigate the challenges that civilians and militaries face when jointly responding to complex emergencies. My study focuses on the civil-military humanitarian coordination under the United Nations Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination (UN-CMCoord) led by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA). By using a qualitative triangulation methodology that utilizes archival research and in-depth interviews, I investigate whether the main challenges in communication and logistics coordination are caused by the strong sense of hierarchy of armed forces and/or the tendency of armed forces in thinking about the emergency response as a short-term plan instead of a mid- and long-term. I use data from ReliefWeb, UN-OCHA, UN Digital Library System, and I interview officials from the UN-CMCoord – based in New York and Geneva – that have been deployed in crisis responses where both civilians and militaries were intervening. The intent of this study is to understand better the root causes at the basis of the coordination challenges between civilians and militaries when responding to both natural disasters and human-caused emergencies in order to help the stakeholders in strengthening the guidelines for the collaboration.

Author

• Sara Belligoni, University of Central Florida