News

Managing Emergencies in Central Asia

On February 21-25, 2011 UNHCR in Kazakhstan conducted a five day Situational Emergency Training (SET) for more than 30 representatives of mid and high level officials working in the field of emergency management and preparedness from all Central Asian countries.

The course was well-attended by a representative mix of UN colleagues, NGOs,and higher-level government Ministry counterparts including Civil Defense and many others responsible for emergency response in their own countries.

Displacement of populations, emergency preparedness and disaster management and in particular, as regard to natural disasters, had been a critical issue for the Central Asian region due to its geographical location. UNHCR workshop included important technical discussions of issues such protection, water, shelter, sanitation, food/nutrition, assessment and coordination of an overall response. With each session, the participants reviewed their actions taken in the initial exercise and built up their knowledge of the various sectors involved.

"The initial exercise was a complex role-playing simulation that presented the participants with the chaos of an earthquake in a rugged mountainous region that affected both local citizens as well as refugees in the fictional border area. To their credit, the participants displayed an excellent knowledge of international norms and standards in disaster and emergency response at the end of the course and were able to coordinate the work of several different sectors into an overall well-coordinated response. This was a great accomplishment and hopefully will lead to these same interagency teams being able to accomplish similar results in the case of an actual emergency" - underlined Mr. Jim Good, the SET facilitator.

"This workshop was very helpful for me, because it was very informative and provided with great practical experience. Moreover, the session on "who does what" was very useful for ensuring better management of emergency" - underlined Mr. Tynylbaev, one of the workshop's participants.

"With 60 years of experience UNHCR is commited to provide technical support to the Governments and civil society all over the World in emergency response and management. So, I believe this workshop allowed participants not only obtain practical and theoretical experience in emergency preparedness and response, but also facilitated interaction of relevant actors on better emergency response and preparedness" - underlined Mr. Saber Azam, UNHCR Regional Representative/Coordinator for Central Asia.