Coordination Structure
OCHA is responsible for bringing together humanitarian actors in Pakistan to ensure a coherent response to emergencies and to assist people when they most need relief or protection. OCHA supports the leadership of the HC to ensure effective coordination, including strengthening the cluster approach, data and information management, and reporting.
The coordination structure in Pakistan consists of the HC, the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), the inter-cluster coordination mechanism at national and provincial levels, and district coordination cells. The HC leads the HCT, which comprises UN agencies and international NGO (INGO) representatives, with IFRC and ICRC as observers.
The cluster approach was introduced in Pakistan during the 2005 earthquake and is now used to facilitate emergency response. Clusters facilitate humanitarian response from the district to the national level.
OCHA supports inter-cluster coordination. It chairs or co-chairs relevant inter-cluster coordination meetings (ICCMs) that take place regularly, and as determined by the scale of the humanitarian response. At the national level, the ICCM is co-chaired with the National Disaster Management Authority during responses to natural disasters.
At the provincial level, the inter-cluster coordination forum is the Humanitarian Regional Team in Peshawar, KP, composed of provincial heads of agencies and provincial cluster coordinators, and chaired by OCHA; and the ICCMs in Hyderabad, Sindh, and Quetta, Balochistan, co-chaired by OCHA and the Provincial Disaster Management Authority.
OCHA provides comprehensive support to the humanitarian community in activities related to coordinating emergency preparedness planning, humanitarian response, disaster risk reductionand resilience.
OCHA also ensures coordination with national and international NGOs through their umbrella groups. These include the Pakistan Humanitarian Forum, which is an alliance of 51 INGOs, and the National Humanitarian Network, which is a consortium of more than 180 national NGOs.
