AADMER Consultation: Building the ASEAN network’s disaster risk reduction capacity
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Could the Disaster Risk Reduction
cooperation among the ASEAN countries be effective? How would the coordination happen?
Does AADMER (ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response)
overlap with Disaster Risk Reduction programmes already existent in the
countries? What course of action could be taken to encourage cooperation between
governments, between governments and civil society and within societies in the ASEAN
countries?
These questions arose during the focus group discussion under the theme "National Consultation on AADMER". This event was held with the collaboration between Humanitarian Forum Indonesia, Child Fund Indonesia and the ASEAN Secretariat on Thursday 20th January in Jakarta.
30 participants from ASEAN, NGOs, the government and APG (ASEAN Partnership Groups) attended the event, to gather input and recommendations on implementing AADMER in Indonesia and also to look at how society should contribute to AADMER.
Adelina Kamal from ASEAN Disaster Management Assistance said that although AADMER has been ratified since 2005 by 10 ASEAN countries, there are still issues when it comes to pinning down all the interested parties' roles. Therefore, when disaster happens, ASEAN countries are still confused as to determine how they are going to respond and what role to assume. This has led to every country having its own emergency response programme.
On the other hand, Harun Sunarso from National Disaster Management Agency argued that in fact the NDMA already worked adhering to AADMER principles, just not under the AADMER name. He also said that ASEAN and his agency have started to work together on AADMER, but their work was hindered by the disasters (tsunami, earthquake, floods) from a couple of months ago. NDMA then focused on helping the people affected by the natural disaster.
Hening Parlan, Director of Humanitarian Forum Indonesia, presented the idea to build relationships between civil societies in ASEAN countries on AADMER principles. This meeting was the first of the series looking at implementing AADMER at governmental and civil society level in the ASEAN area.
