Work in Progress: the history of Disaster Risk Reduction

This Thursday, CENDEP is pleased to welcome Professor John Twigg as the speaker in our Work in Progress seminar series. The seminar starts at 16.30 in JHB 307

The title for John's talk is: "From fringe to mainstream: the history of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)." John says about his talk: "This seminar reviews the history of disaster risk reduction (DRR) over the past 30 years as it has moved progressively from the margins into the mainstream of disaster and development policy and programming. It considers intellectual, institutional and other factors that have contributed to this mainstreaming or constrained it, and offers some pointers to the future of DRR." 

We aim for our seminars to be space for introducing new ideas and discussing work in progress, we hope you will join us for an exciting set of talks this semester. Click here for the full list of seminars.

Disability in humanitarian response

Supriya Akerkar writes:

Regardless of a country’s level of prosperity, people with disabilities and older people are the most affected in humanitarian crisis, facing disproportionate impacts. Even with positive frameworks such as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and age and disability inclusion in the Sendai Framework of action for disaster risk reduction (2015-2030), there are adoption and implementation gaps that lead to discrimination and lack of assistance to older people and people with disabilities.

The Age and Disability Capacity Programme (ADCAP), funded by the US Office for Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) has partnered with international development organisations to tackle these exclusions. CENDEP has been a research partner following the work of those organisations that have sought to ensure inclusion of older people and people with disabilities in humanitarian responses. The lessons from this project are captured in the recently completed Good Practice Guide: embedding inclusion of older people and people with disabilities in humanitarian policy and practice (2018, in press).

As part of the Oxford Human Rights Festival, there will be  a public seminar (1-2pm) and workshop (2-5pm) on 'Disability in Humanitarian Response' at Oxford Brookes University on 13 March. 

For the public seminar, Dr. Supriya Akerkar, Programme Coordinator MA Development and Emergency Practice and Senior Lecturer in Disaster Risk Reduction, will be sharing the main research learnings from the ADCAP's experience followed by a Q&A. She will be joined by Dr Richard Carver, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights and Governance at CENDEP, who will be the discussant for this talk.

The afternoon workshop will have speakers from Christian Aid UK, Islamic Relief International UK and Help Age International UK. The speakers will reflect on their organisational experiences and also on what remains to be done further to embed disability inclusion in humanitarian responses.

We are hoping to welcome individuals and organisations interested or involved in development or humanitarian practice join us in the discussion. If this is of interest to you or your organisation then please sign up on eventbrite to join: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/disability-in-humanitarian-responses-tickets-43499857244. The public seminar will be held in the Glass Tank exhibition space in the Abercrombie Building and the afternoon workshop in room 128 of the John Henry Brookes building - both on the Gipsy Lane campus.

Disasters journal 40th anniversary conference

Disasters journal has been providing a rigorous analysis of relief work for 40 years and has been instrumental in changing attitudes to disasters and their response, based on good evidence and research. Charles Parrack represented CENDEP at the journal's prestigious 40th anniversary conference and writes that it was great to see former CENDEP staff and associates presenting:

Professor Ian Davis at the Disasters conference

CENDEP visiting professor Ian Davis gave the keynote address. Ian published a paper in the first issue of Disasters and is still writing and publishing on shelter after disaster today. Ian also continues to teach at CENDEP in the Shelter after Disaster module.

John Twigg, CENDEP external examiner, is currently one of the editors of Disasters, and chaired a panel discussion on what has changed in policy and practice of disaster risk management.

Dr Hugo Slim, former CENDEP director, now Head of Policy and Humanitarian Diplomacy at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, presented on the policy landscape in conflict.

Yasemin Aysan presented on the development of humanitarian practice. Yasemin was formerly director of the Oxford Disaster Management Centre (a precursor to CENDEP). She went on to join the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and became Under Secretary General for Disaster Response and Recovery.

Ian Davis reviewed what had changed in 40 years of disasters. He mentioned that urbanisation is colossal and the large numbers of migrants are contributing to the complexity and scale of disasters. Climate change has had a significant influence. Mobile phones have had a significant impact in less developed countries in tracking people and providing warnings of impending disasters, which has contributed to significantly fewer deaths from tropical storms in South Asia. Mega events are more common, even in developed countries such as Japan and the USA.

Ian commented on how some concepts and the words we use to describe them have changed over 40 years. Disaster prevention was a term that was first used in discussing disaster response, then mitigation and then disaster risk reduction, then adaptation. Now the discussion is more framed in terms of resilience, a term taken from the engineering sector, which is useful because it can mean different things to different groups. Even this concept of resilience is under discussion with commentators now talking about  'building a safety culture'.

There is still much donor-driven work in housing, which is poured into areas of emergency shelter and transitional housing, but little focus is placed on the important aspect of permanent housing. Urban risk is growing at a phenomenal rate and it is a complex area. Cultural barriers to progress remain an issue.

Yasemin Aysan discussed pilot work and how there are great pilots that are not scaled up. In disaster risk reduction work there is only a short time scale, of 3-4 years, but building up institutions to have the capacity to scale up these initiatives would take a much longer time, more related to developmental approaches.

Hugo Slim reflected that Disasters journal had a great influence on conflict studies, placing a much greater emphasis on conflict economy and conflict analysis. One of the changes Hugo has seen over time is how the humanitarian community of practice has embraced rights-based programmes and protection approaches. The second change is the politicisation of humanitarian action and the affected population. In terms of ICRC, the change Hugo has seen is the rise of urban warfare and there is much work to be done on urban protection and rights in conflict. Hugo concluded by saying that recent research has been more biased towards political theorists, and he would like to see more of an emphasis on research practice-oriented issues.