In 2005, the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed a landmark “Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response,” which establishes a comprehensive framework for cooperation between member states as well as other nations and organisations which may be called upon to provide disaster relief.
To date, five ASEAN member states have ratified the Agreement and it will not officially enter into force until all ten members have done so. However, preparations for its use are already well underway.
As explained by Adelina Kamal, Assistant Director of Disaster Management at the ASEAN Secretariat, “We have started operationalising the Agreement through various concrete activities, such as annual regional simulation exercises, capacity building programmes, and developing procedures to improve our preparedness and response capacity.”
Most recently, the ASEAN Committee for Disaster Management has been developing a set of operational procedures for Regional Standby Arrangements and Coordination of Joint Disaster Relief and Emergency Response Operations (known as “SASOP”) to refine the process of sending and receiving international assistance and to clarify the role of the newly established ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management.
Underpinning these arrangements are measures aimed at reducing red tape for the entry of relief goods, personnel and equipment. The IDRL Asia Pacific Unit has been providing support on these issues, sharing information gathered from research, as well advocating the use of the newly adopted IDRL Guidelines (available at http://www.ifrc.org/idrl).
Kamal underlines that “the IDRL Programme and Guidelines have been useful in providing inputs to our SASOP, particularly with regard to legal issues when mobilising assistance across borders.”
Since their development, the SASOP has also been tested and validated in a number of regional simulation exercises, most recently in Singapore in 2007. The IDRL Asia Pacific Coordinator has been a regular participant in these events as a referee, with a particular focus on cross-border legal issues such as the clearing of goods through customs and quarantine, the issuing of visas for relief personnel and permission for the use of vehicles and telecommunications equipment. The information gathered through the exercises has been used to refine the SASOP in preparation for their use in real disaster situations.