As anyone who has working in the humanitarian sector knows, our love for acronyms is pretty ridiculous.

In Haiti we even printed the most important ones on the back of t-shirts so that we could look them up more easily. The problem was – most of the changed so quickly that the t-shirt production couldn’t keep up.

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Since then I have changed my minds slightly. For one thing, there is never anything objectionable about remembering colleagues who have died. But more importantly I think that this day is not only about professional aid workers. For me it is about everybody who takes risks to help other people. And that can be a Red Cross Red Crescent volunteer,  a UN staff member, a teacher, an imam or a truck driver. And in that sense I’m very happy to celebrate World Humanitarian Day.

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And compared to my co-workers I have it easy. Since I’m working for the IASC Shelter Cluster I get to work at the UN’s logistics base – and there’s aircon there. Most of my colleagues from the Red Cross Red Crescent have to work and endure the heat inside improvised offices inside an abandoned construction project.  At least it helps us to understand better what the Haitian’s living in tent cities all over Port-au-Prince are going through. Though our living conditions are of course much, much better.

Shelter, shelter, shelter

My first week in the job was … interesting. Coordination by itself and shelter as a topic are incredibly complicated and since I’m now tasked with communicating (competently) about the aggregated work of all agencies doing Shelter in Haiti I am struggling with a steep learning curve. Shelter is simply connected with everything: land rights, livelihoods, disaster preparedness, tenure, debris removal – you name it, shelter is somewhere in the mix. And the topics of land rights in Haiti and debris removal by itself are already enough to drive you insane. But to be able to build shelters, the humanitarian community has to help the government to fix these issues. Which is why I suddenly found myself at a “presidential taskforce” – I even met the president.

It’s the small things

And then there is all the other things that make life interesting. Like traffic – which means that going to a meeting can take two hours – or  the fact that I still don’t have an entry badge for the UN base because they ran out of ink. And apparently you can’t get ink (or that ink) in Haiti. Other surprising things: hearing the call to prayer at 4 am, being expected to know the streets of Port-au-Prince well enough to guide a driver, being considering the most capable French speaker on the team.

I also gave my first tv-interview in Haiti. Unfortunately it was on my second day and believe me when I’m saying that I was not comfortable speaking with an Al Jazeera journalist who has been here since January. But hey – it can only get better. And the most important thing is – I have extremely competent, experienced team members  who I genuinely like. The rest will come.

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Coordination saves lives

05:30 am at the IFRC base camp.

The UN cluster system is a result of the “Humanitarian Reform Process”. In a nutshell someone realized a few years ago that it would make a lot of sense in large scale disasters, if all agencies knew what the other agencies are doing and if they coordinated their activities.

At the same time the idea was born that it’d be good to have one more or less permanent lead for each group or cluster of activities so that when a disaster happens you don’t have to find out who is coordinating the coordination.

So, for logistics for example, the people to call are always WFP, for nutrition it’s always UNICEF etc. For shelter it’s a little bit more complicated  but in essence my employer, the IFRC, is the cluster convener in natural disasters.

In Haiti, more than 50 agencies are currently working to provide shelter to the people who have lost their homes in the 12 January earthquake – from “Architecture for Humanity” to “World Vision” .  As a cluster convener (or lead) the IFRC is not telling them what to do and where to do it, but tries to make sure that efforts aren’t duplicated, resources aren’t wasted and that standards differ radically.

• The Shelter Cluster is tweeting under http://twitter.com/shelterinhaiti
• The Shelter Cluster’s website in Haiti is: www.shelterhaiti.org

Since shelter is such an essential thing in Haiti, the cluster also has a dedicated communicator – and for the next three months that will be me.

To be honest – I am little bit nervous about it. It’s a pretty big job, an enormous responsibility and living in a tent for three months in the middle of the rainy season is not going to be a pick nick either. But it’s what I want to do. How I’m doing while I’m doing it is what I will write about for the next few months.

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In this list I am focusing on courses that offer specific skills for humanitarian aid workers and not on more general courses that can also be useful for people working for an international organization or NGO, such as general administration, photography etc..

1. Humanitarian relief, peace and security operations at the Peace Operations Training Institute

The Peace Operations Training Institute focuses on everything you might need in a so-called “complex emergency.” Here you find courses in Mine Action, Civilian Military Coordination, Global Terrorism or Ethics in Peacekeeping, to name  just a few. If you are working for a non-profit than you can take most of these courses for as little as 50 USD.

2. Diplomacy at UNITAR

The United Nations Institute for Research and Training (UNITAR) offers three strands of e-learning coursesat irregular intervals: Public Finance and trade, Multilateral Conferences and Diplomacy and Governance in Urban Sanitation. The courses take up to eight weeks to complete and many of them are free. The most expensive course I found was 400 USD. You will  have to apply and explain why you should be admitted to this course.

3. Peace and Conflict Studies at the University for Peace

No, this is not a bunch of hippies getting together. The University for Peace is a UN mandated graduate school for peace and conflict studies. UPEACE will accept applications for their distance learning programme from January 2010. There is no information about the costs yet, but I expect that the UN will offer the course at a very attractive fee.

4. Development Studies at the University of Birmingham

The University of Birmingham offers two distance learning courses: “Poverty Reduction and Development Management” and “Public Administration and Development”. You can either enrol into a masters programme or do a postgraduate diploma. The MSc takes two years to complete. As you can imagine, this doesn’t come cheap. The courses start at 6,000 pounds (~ 10,000 USD).

5. Logistics at the Fritz Institute

The Fritz Institute offers three courses, all of which have something to do with logistics: “Humanitarian Logistics”, “Humanitarian Supply Chain Management” and “Humanitarian Medical Logistics Practices”. I’ve only heard good things about these courses. Prices vary and the Fritz Institute offers some scholarships for individuals.

6. Human Rights with the Human Rights Education Associates

HREA organises a large number of specialised human rights trainings via distance education for human rights practitioners and development workers. The courses cost 725 USD. In addition to English many are available in French and Russian. I even found one course in German.

7. How to care for a Swine Flu victim at the International Red Cross Red Crescent

Last but not least, my employer has recently launched an e-learning platform that is open to the public. Among the free courses are one that teaches you how to care for a sick family member (it’s built for H1N1 but is just as useful for the normal flu) and one course  (40 hours) that introduces you to the International Red Cross Red Crescent Movement. The courses are free, more courses will be added over the next year.

What other distance learning or e-learning programmes and courses do you know that should be part of this list?

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The result is an impressive document that can be used by many non-profit organizations, NGOs, International Organizations and even government ministries and agencies to address similar problems in their own organization.

The ”Review of Management of Internet Websites in the United Nations System Organizations“ (31 pages) focuses on website governance and strategy – and I still have to meet a web manager who doesn’t feel this could be improved.

Extremely knowledgeable

I highly recommend that you read the whole document and use it as a basis for recommendations to your own senior management - but with the added authority of  this being based on broad consensus of web professionals who are working for very diverse agencies in the United Nations System with very different mandates and budgets.

To give you an idea just how good the report is, here are two of my favourite paragraphs:

“the Inspectors have observed through their interviews and discussions, the side effects of the status quo: the website becomes a ‘dumping’ site by units within the organization. Each unit wants to have its specific message and services be presented on the website, preferably on the organization’s homepage. To avoid this ‘dumping’ symptom which would easily confuse and discourage external visitors, the organization should have a website strategy, drafted, reviewed and endorsed by its key stakeholders within its governance mechanism”

and later:

“A website editorial board will provide effective guidelines on the writing style as well as improve the quality of information published on website. (…) The Inspectors are of the view that the lack of such editorial boards leads to inconsistent, and at times, conflicting web content being published.”

What I find fascinating is that these recommendations are not presented by web managers themselves but by inspectors of the Joint Inspection Unit, who are in essence auditors with no specific knowledge of the issues and no stake in the outcome.

The question of access and authority

The report also contains a very interesting table that shows that most web managers have direct access to senior management.  However, the Inspectors also state that “one wonders whether they are given sufficient authority to coordinate various organizational units involved in the website operation.”

Requirement to report on progress

Below are the Joint Inspection Unit’s eight recommendations for website management and governance. However, in my opinion it’s far more interesting to read how they come to these recommendations. A lot of them are common sense for most web professionals. But ask yourself: does your organization have this in writing and is there a requirement to report on progress? Because that makes difference.

Please also note, that responsibility for this is attributed to the “executive head”, i.e. CEO level.

Eight recommendations

1. The executive head of each United Nations system organization should ensure that clear policies and corresponding mechanisms are adopted for the good governance and management of the organization’s website.

2. The executive heads of each United Nations system organization should ensure that the website strategy be regularly updated and linked with and taking account of the other business strategies of the organization and report on the measures taken to the governing body on a regular basis.

3. The executive head of each United Nations system organization should ensure that policies and guidelines are in place that, among other things, specify requirements and standards relating to (a) web layout and design; (b) editorial control and review of web content and (c) web accessibility.

4. For relevant, timely and high quality website content, the executive head of each United Nations system organization should ensure the implementation of a CMS which offers full support to Latin, non-Latin and bi-directional scripts and, as far as practicable, be compatible with CMS used by other organizations. When selecting an appropriate CMS, they should give serious consideration to adopting common information exchange standards and also consider the benefits of a common CMS across the United Nations system.

5. The executive head of each United Nations system organization should ensure that sufficient and sustained funding for staffing and training are allocated to website management. If such funding could not be provided through redeployment or other means, it should be reported to the governing body for its consideration in order to implement those recommendations contained in this report, which have financial implications, inter alia, CMS, staffing, training, language parity, adoption of common information exchange standards, etc.

6. The governing bodies of the United Nations system organizations should establish an ad hoc committee dealing with the implementation of multilingualism on their corporate websites. The governing bodies shall review the report submitted by the ad hoc committee on the measures and financial implications to achieve language parity on their websites and take appropriate action.

7. The executive heads of the United Nations system organizations should establish a mechanism reporting to the High-Level Committee on Management with the participation of all stakeholders, for coordination purposes and to establish common policies, standards and guidelines on websites.

8. The governing bodies of United Nations system organizations should request the executive heads to report to their next session on the implementation of the recommendations contained in this report addressed to the executive heads, in particular those aimed at reforming website governance, updating website strategy and policy, and implementing multilingualism.

Use it!

One of the reasons that many of us don’t have anything like this in our own organizations is that we feel that we don’t have time to care about the fundamentals. But with this report as a basis I don’t think it should take more than two days to adapt it for your own needs. And everybody can find that time. So don’t hesitate to use this report – your taxes have already paid for it.

Many organizations have excellent documents that hardly anyone knows about. Do you have any that you would like to share? Please leave a comment and a link!

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