Sphere Standards and Emergency Preparedness in Bosnia-Herzegovina

By Irina Kulenovic (*)

On 31 March, a large audience of disaster risk management practitioners from Government, international organizations, the scientific community and NGOs had the opportunity to learn about and discuss humanitarian principles, standards, and the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit.

During her opening remarks, Ms. Sezin Sinanoglu, UN Resident Coordinator, stressed that focusing on the immediate consequences of disasters and assessing coping capacities is key to embracing a principled approach to humanitarian action and develop a culture of emergency preparedness. Mr. Zeljko Filipovic, Head of Delegation/ ICRC stressed the importance of fundamental humanitarian principles that must be embedded in all commitments to response. Building on this, Ms. Christine Knudsen, Director of the Sphere Project, presented the Humanitarian Charter, Protection Principles, Core Humanitarian Standard and technical standards in the Sphere Handbook, illustrating how to anchor humanitarian response in a rights-based and participatory approach and contextualize the standards to different settings. Mr. Mijo Kresic, Deputy Minister of Security of BiH, stressed the importance of turning technical standards into practice by focusing on capacity building and with active participation of those affected by disaster or conflict.

During the plenary discussion that followed, participants exchanged on how best to operationalize humanitarian principles and address challenges in the current disaster management system. They expressed a clear readiness to collectively unite their efforts to obtain a better planned, coordinated and principled approach to humanitarian action. All participants welcomed Sphere and agreed that standards would guide a comprehensive response to both natural disasters and potential migration flows.

In a series of separate meetings with government leaders in the Ministry of Security as well as federal Civil Protection authorities, joint commitments were agreed to reference Sphere standards in strategic planning, apply Sphere standards in preparedness, provide comprehensive training for civil protection volunteers, and coordinate preparedness planning based on international good practice. A strong outcome of the consultations was agreement to work together to effectively respond to people’s emergency needs even more effectively based on accountability, consistency in aid delivery, and quality in service provision

Consultations with representatives of IFRC, Red Cross Society of BiH, and Caritas resulted in joint arrangements to establish a Sphere Focal Point group in BiH with wide inter-agency and government engagement. As a first priority, translation of the Handbook into Croatian (led by Caritas), and into Bosnian and Serbian (supported by UNICEF) are pending after validation by key stakeholders.

(*) Irina Kulenovic is UN DRR Officer.

Caption: Participants of the Public meeting on Emergency Preparedness and Response agreed that preparedness built on standardized approach can save lives