Challenges Faced by Humanitarian agency in Emergency Response in Urban areas: Lessons from Haiti and Chile
government.
Conclusion
8. The Urbanization process is rapidly increasing due to industrialization revaluation. But it turned the process as an uncontrolled because of wrong development policies of the government. As a result it creates lot of difficulties in urban areas and during disaster it becomes the major obstacle for the humanitarian agencies. The challenges which are faced by the humanitarian agencies during emergency response phase in urban areas these are not common in rural areas. And migration is one of the root causes of these difficulties. The absence of rural development causes people to move in urban areas. The local government system still not strong enough for carry out development process with poor allocation of rural development budget.
The GOB has formulated a workable plan for disaster management from national level to local government level up to union. But this plan needs massive coordination among government different ministries as well as with NGOs and humanitarian agencies. Besides that government needs to strong his local constitution to enhance the capability of local government which includes the urban areas also. The lessons from recent earthquake in Haiti and Chile gave us the real picture of a disaster in urban areas, where the humanitarian agencies faced number of challenges in emergency response phase. This can lesson learnt for us as we have almost same scenario in city like Dhaka and Chittagong. So minimize the difficulties for the humanitarian agencies as well as for the people, the government policies have to be corrected and massive coordination has to be done within government’s different ministries as well as with the NGO’s. The help of social elements and modern technology should be applied to create an urban network for enhancing cooperation and cohesiveness among the different groups of people.
The Author is a military professional (Major) and presently serving under Bangladesh Army, he had an experience on emergency response operations during natural disaster. He also serves under UN peacekeeping mission in CONGO (DRC). He is studing Masters Degree on Disaster Management from BRAC University a renowned NGO based University in Bangladesh.