ECHO has been financially supporting the NOHA programme since the very beginning. What was the logic behind this support, and did it deliver against your expectations?
ECHO was created in 1992 and back then, the humanitarian sector was still in its infancy. We thought that in order to help the labour market in the humanitarian aid, it would be a great idea to help making it more professional. Even though it is not our core business to be involved in education, it was considered as an excellent complementary measure, because we wanted to see more qualified professional staff. This is why we discussed in 1993 the idea with a group of Universities led by Deusto and Bochum and floated the first NOHA grant scheme. We are proud to say this is the first and so far unique attempt to design and setup a programme for one specific sector of activity across different EU countries. It is close to the college of Europe model and has set a universally recognized standard for a professional curriculum in humanitarian assistance. Getting seven universities to teach the same programme with consistent quality criteria shows the integration of European programmes.
Nearly 20 years later, we can say that the programme has delivered. If you look at the number of people who apply each year, you can see that there is a demand for this type of training and to this day, there are few alternatives. We also have currently over 20 NOHA graduates working for ECHO in the field so it seems graduates follow up with their intention to be involved in the realities of humanitarian action. One question mark though is „where are all the women disappearing from our radar?“ The gender balance is leaning strongly in favour of women in the classroom (Note: the proportion was probably 70/30 at the IP this year) but we don’t see the same proportion of them in the field. I would be interested to know more about why that is.
You have followed the development of NOHA over the years. What do you see as the most significant developments in the program over the past 10 years?
The single most important development has been seeing NOHA developing into a centre of professionalism and excellence. It has become a master programme across all universities with a curriculum that matured over time.
Education is a field of activity that needs regular and predictable support. You cannot change funding from one year to the other. So to make it sustainable, we have ensured that our support is for the long term and not questioned every year. We also reflect with the board on the future, transforming NOHA beyond a master degree provider. Among other things, we are opening up the network towards partners coming from the new EU member states, proposing by-products such as NOHA academy, short courses, one week fall academy run by UCL every year, training for government representatives, retraining humanitarians of today, and ad hoc modules for any university willing to join the network. There are also plans to enlarge NOHA in order to share this expertise and we also want to encourage research into humanitarian issues at PhD level. NOHA itself is involved in this reflection process, most recently through its involvement in the reflection regarding EVHAC and the first pilot projects.
Three years ago, Europe was hit by the shockwave of the subprimes crisis and as a result, many countries cut back on their contributions to development aid. Today, Europe, together with the USA are dealing with structural budget deficits and debt levels that could trigger serious budget cuts. Do you see ECHO’s financial contributions to humanitarian programmes being affected over the next three years?
There will be no impact over the next three years because the budget is programmed until 2013 already, so we know how much money will be allocated to ECHO and further down to our partners. That is unless the situation deteriorates much further. For the future beyond 2013, we have to be modest and realistic. We know the current situation and the fact that member states are looking for budget cuts, so we know that the renewal of the multi-annual framework for 2014-2020 will involve some tangle negotiations. For the time being, we have forecasted a modest increase, and have the guarantee that any money allocated to EVHAC will not be deducted from the humanitarian budget line but be linked to a separate budget line. To be optimistic, we represent only 0.6% of the overall EC budget so cutting our budget will not fix the overall situation. Our most important argument is that we have a relatively small budget providing the EU with a significant return on investment by showing its solidarity in crisis situations.
Whenever you have to justify your budget allocation to NOHA, what are your top 3 arguments to back the support ECHO gives to NOHA member universities ?
ECHO has a direct interest in the existence of NOHA because it contributes to supplying the humanitarian assistance labour market with skilled workers, it encourages high standards in research on the basis of the humanitarian consensus and its unique network approach ensures both quality and a multicultural dimension. NOHA has the potential to be the ENA (note : Ecole Nationale d’Administration – most exclusive school for the training of civil servants in France) of humanitarian aid… but not the same mindset !!!
One of the purpose of academic programmes is to reflect on experience and facilitate learning. In the case of humanitarian aid, we have seen in Haiti that many of the lessons presumably « learned » during the tsunami were not applied in spite of much more established coordination structures. What went wrong ?
I am probably not the best person to answer this question. What we should keep in mind though is that Haiti was and still is one of the poorest countries in the world, and the earthquake destroyed most of the existing infrastructure, making the intervention very difficult. On top of that, even though many of the aid agencies were present prior to the earthquake, all lost key staff and buildings, either destroyed or too unsafe to work in. The UN and the EU were both severely affected and logistics was a big issue with access roads by air and land seriously affected. So I believe it would have been difficult to be faster, especially in the first month.
On the positive side, joint assessments were conducted quite quickly. We have also been good with satellite imaging, especially as Europeans. We provided satellite imaging within the first two weeks that allowed to understand the situation and map the damage, giving valuable information on how best to plan humanitarian efforts. EUR 160 million were invested by the EU, a huge amount of money that is still being used right now because reconstruction needs are still huge. It will be interesting to study also this case in relation to the link between disaster, rehabilitation and development.
Post to Twitter
