Palestinian NGOs representatives emphasized the importance of strengthening the partnership among all actors in order to achieve effective disaster response.
They stressed the need to form coordination bodies to lead efforts in order to reduce disaster impacts and raise disaster preparedness to mitigate losses.
The NGOs representatives emphasized the need to adopt unified and integrated national regulations, mechanisms and policies that comply with Core Humanitarian Standards (CHS) and the international conventions on the humanitarian response interventions to manage natural disasters.
This came up during a workshop held by the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO) in Gaza, under the title of “Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response (SPHERE)”.
The workshop held as a part of the project of “Rights and Resilience” which aims at enhancing the resilience of women and youth affected by protracted crises and disasters in compliance with the international human rights law (IHRL) and the international humanitarian law (IHL).
The project is implemented in partnership with ActionAid – Palestine and funded by Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA).
The workshop participants stressed the need to protect internally displaced persons (IDPs) in shelters and elsewhere. They also stressed the need for coordination and cooperation, and called for information management and exchange through regular communication with international and non-governmental organizations working in the humanitarian field in order to enhance social and economic resilience of the vulnerable groups in times of crisis and emergency.
Director of PNGO, Amjad Al-Shawa stressed the importance of efforts coordination between the various official and civil parties and the work to handles the disasters, both natural disasters and those caused by the Israeli occupation offensive, and the significant need to reduce the serious impact of the disasters on people’s lives.
He pointed out that the minimum standards in the humanitarian response and procedures mentioned in the "The SPHERE Project" guide are based on prior experiences, therefore much work must be done to strengthen the capacities of NGOs and develop NGOs adequate disaster response capabilities.
Shawa stressed the need to benefit from the experiences of our people, especially that they experienced three offensives carried out by the Israeli occupation as well as frequent escalations. He emphasized the need to accelerate the development of an integrated national ‘Emergencies and Crisis Management Plan’.
Shawa called upon the NGOs to work to adopt the principles and standards of humanitarian action, and called to play a greater role in the community accountability.
Shawa expressed his thanks to ActionAid –Palestine ‘international non-governmental organization’ for sharing PNGO principles and values and for its obvious contribution to support the Palestinian people, especially the marginalized and vulnerable groups, through finding sustainable development solutions.
ActionAid Programme Coordinator in the Gaza Strip, Yasser Toshtash, on his part, said “ActionAid is making every effort to enhance the rights and resilience of women and youth affected by protracted crises as a result of the protracted conflicts through achieving coherent and integrated program goals that aim at reducing the vulnerability of women and increasing their protection from gender based violence.
Toshtash added that ActionAid work is based on a human rights-based approach consisting of three basic elements which are empowerment, solidarity and advocacy.
The Projects Manager at the Islamic Relief Organization – Palestine, Engineer Rami Mahani gave a presentation on the principles of humanitarian action, especially “The SPHERE Project”, which includes four basic tasks namely food security, water and rehabilitation, food, and health and shelter.
Mahani stressed that the principles of humanitarian action must be unified. He pointed out that the workshop comes within the framework of the project in order to raise awareness and spread the culture of “The SPHERE Project” standards for the humanitarian response among the different segments of the society in general and among the humanitarian and emergency workers in particular.
Mahani stressed the need to strengthen the community’s resilience capability and increase community’s capability to deal with various emergencies and share experiences.