Indonesia Launching a Joint Disaster Management Centre with the UN

The Indonesian Government established today a joint Disaster Management Centre (DMC) with the United Nations at the Office of the Vice-President, which is to set priorities for the management and coordination of international relief efforts.
"The Centre will ensure that the Government and the UN are working with the same baseline data on the affected people - who they are and what their needs are," according to Francois Desruisseaux, United Nations Senior Logistics and Civil Military Coordinator at the Centre. "This will be crucial for earmarking available resources," he said.

The establishment of the Centre comes two weeks after the tsunami struck, with initial, acute aid having been rendered to survivors in Banda Aceh and those located along the west coast of Sumatra. Given the unprecedented scope of the disaster and the inaccessibility of affected areas, unified assessments and targeted aid are essential for the recovery of the affected population and the effective use of international resources.

Assessments have been coming in from a wide variety of sources, including Government agencies, international and national non-governmental organizations, military and civil defense units. Data will be collated and analysed at the DMC to provide useable and consistent information for the prioritization of the needs to assist the affected population on a sustained basis.

The United Nations will complement the Government's capabilities in the DMC with the resources of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Joint Logistics Centre (UNJLC). It is planned that six UN staff members will be based at the Centre, which is expected to continue beyond the emergency stage of the disaster into recovery and early rehabilitation efforts. Guidelines for such support, and the UN role in supporting the Government's coordination of the response, are laid out in General Assembly Resolution 46/182 of 1991.

LATEST ON THE STATUS OF THE RELIEF EFFORT

• Deputy Director of the Response Coordination Branch in OCHA Geneva, Mr. Joel Boutroue, has today been appointed Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator by the UN Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator, Mr. Bo Asplund. He will oversee the UN operation in Sumatra from the UN base in Banda Aceh.
  
• Daily coordination meetings co-chaired by the Government and the UN will take place daily in Jakarta and Banda Aceh.

For further information, please contact the Media Centre at: +62 21 314 0081, +62 21 315 3682, +62 21 314 0066, or media.centre@un.or.id