Abstract
This paper examines how one particular aid sector, the nongovernmental development organizations (NGOs), is tackling the institutional issues involved in integrating disaster and development assistance in the Third World. The paper presents where NGOs have encountered the need to integrate the two aid types, their institutional efforts to do so, and the challenges they face in the implementation process. Finally, it outlines important areas for further work to aid NGOs to develop viable mechanisms to manage overlapping responsibilities in disaster response and longer-term reduction efforts.
Despite the new research understanding of disasters-development relationship and program directions, these efforts to integrate the two in practice have faltered. This paper argues that difficulties lie in the fact that the institutional mechanisms necessary for putting these goals into practice have not kept pace. The postwar foreign aid model which separates disaster and development aid into two institutional jurisdiction is still largely in place.
This paper states that new ways for enhancing cooperation among the different actors in disaster reduction must take place. In particular, institutional jurisdictions must be transcended and new arrangements promoted that facilitate development planners/agencies to play their role in the disaster reduction process. Institutional mechanisms need to catch up with current thinking in disaster research in order to meet the emerging policy and program priorities.
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