Humanitarian, legal and public health experts from across Asia came together to launch and discuss IFRC Disaster Law’s new report, Law and Public Health Emergencies: Lessons from COVID-19.
The online panel on Wednesday 29 September, attracted more than 175 participants from across government, regional organisations, the United Nations, academia and research and the International Red Cross Red Crescent Movement.
The event opened with remarks from IFRC’s Head of Delegation in Bangkok, Ms. Kathryn Clarkson, who underscored the importance of being ready for emergencies. Central to being ready, she said, is the role of law and policy in combatting public health emergencies and in protecting communities in an equitable way.
Ms. Gabrielle Emery, IFRC’s Asia Pacific Disaster Law Manager, then provided an overview of the research and our learnings in Asia. Her presentation highlighted that although there are already some linkages between disaster management and public health emergency laws and policies in Asia, there are opportunities to strengthen greater coherence between the two systems.
Furthermore, she encouraged law and policymakers in the region to use the opportunities of the COVID-19 recovery to build risk governance back better. Key areas that warrant greater focus in the legal preparedness efforts: need to move towards more modern laws that facilitate all of society, all -public health risk approach, build on what works well and move toward more integrated/ coherent approaches in relevant systems, ensure a human rights-based approach in law-making including participation and protection needs of the most at risk of emergencies.
Overall, public health emergencies need to move from reactive response driven models to ones that prioritise comprehensive risk management, she said. Governments were urged to review coordination mechanisms and clarify roles and responsibilities across government and non-government entities.
The event was moderated by Ms. Adelina Kamal, a regional expert on humanitarian issues, who through conversations with the technical collaborators, panellists and audiences, unpacked the role of law in public emergencies and bought great urgency to the topic.
To watch a full recording of the webinar, click here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNLtkvrh_6U&t=648s&ab_channel=IFRCIDRL
The key points from each technical collaborator and panellist are listed below.
Technical Collaborators:
Marco Toscano-Rivalta, Chief of Asia Pacific Regional Office, UNDRR
Mr. Toscano Rivalta’s remarks centered around five key points on how to strengthen governance and reduce risk from future public health emergencies. These included the following:
- adopt multi-hazard approaches to ensure comprehensive risk management (including the risk arising from biological hazards).
- assess multi-dimensional vulnerabilities of interconnected systems to better plan for and anticipate complex and compound disasters.
- consider and plan against the cascading impacts of disasters, beyond their immediate impacts (importance of social protection).
- inclusivity. It is essential that legal framework address any form of direct and indirect exclusion. Exclusion leads to vulnerability, hence risk - there is an important synergy to be capitalised upon between DRR and human rights (COVID showed that the link between human rights and DRR is very important).
- legal frameworks guide us and institute a culture of prevention and enable its adoption across all sectors, budgets and plans. A prevention-first approach.
Ben Lilley, Technical Officer, Legislation and Regulation, Health Law and Ethics, WHO in the Western Pacific.
Mr. Lilley provided some reflections on public health and public health emergency legislation in the region. His points can be summarised as below:
- The legal frameworks in Asia Pacific are severely outdated and as a consequence some countries had to quickly enact legislation. Countries such as the Republic of Korea and New Zealand used previous health emergencies and other disasters to strengthen their legal preparedness and as a consequence were better equipped to respond to COVID-19.
- It is not enough to just have the laws in place. The authorities need to have the capacity, the knowledge, the mandate and the legitimacy to utilise it.
- Improving coherence between public health emergency framework and disaster risk management laws will look different in each setting as there is no one single model. Look to formalise processes and practices that worked well during COVID-19. A modest aim might be to improve clarity and certainty to leverage the strengths of each sector.
Panel Discussions
Shri Kamal Kishore – Member National Disaster Management Agency, India
Mr. Kishore provided some reflections from India, and the experiences of NDMA in responding to the COVID-19 and how DRM mechanisms were used.
- India’s Disaster Management Act of 2005, which was the key legislation, was used for mobilising response during the pandemic. The DM mechanisms were found to provide a more enabling framework for the response and aligned to the national, sub-national state and local level levels.
- Mr. Kishore also provided some reflections on the differences between responding to a biological hazard and other types of “disasters”: (i) need for adaptive governance (dealing with a lot of uncertainty and evolving scenario and therefore having to continually adjust the approach); (ii) have a mechanism that works across administrative levels (national, sub-national, local and areas that needs further attention is horizontal coordination between federal states (iii) Had to mobilise every single citizen in the country at the same time even those who were not affected at that time.
- Relationship between governments and civil society organisations – those existing relationships came in handy. It can’t be done by governments alone. It needs a partnership with civil society organisations and these relationships need to be built ahead of time (during “peace time”).
Fathimath Himya, Secretary General, Maldivian Red Crescent Society (MRCS)
In her remarks Ms. Himya highlighted the critical role that humanitarian actors, such as National Societies, play in working alongside governments and communities to prepare for and respond to all types of emergencies. Ms. Himya provided some reflections on the following:
- She stressed the importance of the RCRC auxiliary role to be formalised in law and policy, During the pandemic response, this provided MRCS with the space to provide humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable, and saved time since there was no need to put into place individual agreements.
- Initially, there were some limitations in coordination between the public health authority and the NDMO and it took time to establish the right coordination mechanism and to find the right set up to work.
- Need to build up to an all of society approach beforehand by establishing working modalities and partnerships between organisations and stakeholders. Necessary to build capacity among the relevant stakeholders and authorities.
- MRC’s work with migrants and during the pandemic there were some challenges in ensuring access to migrant groups in the Maldives. Going forward MRCS identified some key issues which need to be prioritised and better planned for in accessing at risk groups such as migrants (i) lack of access to information due to language barriers (information that was circulated had to be translated regularly so that the migrants had the necessary information); (ii) high illiteracy rate (used audio messaging); (iii) access to healthcare (challenge due to lack of documentation).
Ms. Pannapa (Aimee) Na Nan, Director of International Cooperation Section, Research and International Cooperation Bureau, Department of Disaster Mitigation and Prevention (DDPM) of the Royal Thai Government
Ms. Na Nan, shared some reflections from the experiences of the Royal Thai Government and efforts to better align DRM and Public health measures in the country
- First, she stressed the importance of the Bangkok Principles of the Sendai Framework and called on disaster risk reduction and the public health sectors to be aware of issues that might arise in either area and contingency plans need to be prepared.
- The DDPM works closely with the Ministry of Public Health (lead agency during the pandemic response) and the National Institute of International Medicine as well as the Thai Red Cross and other entities in the public health sector such as WHO and UNDRR. The national plan laid out the structure and functions and the clusters that will be coordinating health related issues during a disaster. With the COVID-19 situation these are the central agencies and the PM is the chairman.
Dr. Sanjay K. Srivastava, Chief of Disaster Risk Reduction at UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
In his remarks, Dr. Srivastava, provided some reflections from a regional perspective and included the following key points
- There must be policy coherence between the health and disaster risk reduction sectors.
- Integrated multi-hazard early warning system - 25 to 30% of the water and vector bound diseases are triggered by disasters. The Asia Pacific Disaster Report 2021 pointed out where these hot spots are and emphasised the need to enhance the health preparedness by taking advantage of the disaster early warning system.
- Resilient infrastructure particularly health infrastructure where the nexus of disaster, climate and health build a resilient infrastructure that is customised to the normal diseases that are commonly triggered by disasters so that it can be addressed.
- Risk and Resilience Portal available online. Shows the disaster risk reduction and health nexus which will be very useful for member countries especially for risk informed policy planning and investment.
- Regional cooperation – identify the nexus (disasters, climate and health) and based on this nexus use science to build the cooperation between the health ministries. Take 5 sectors together (because the climate framework now comprises of five areas which are disaster risk reduction, health, water, agriculture) and build a regional cooperation mechanism that is purely based on the science.
In her closing remarks of the panel discussion, the moderator Ms. Adelina Kamal made some concluding observations.
- There is a lot of experience in the DRM sector with regard to logistics and preparing for something before it happens, this expertise in coordination and preplanning could have great benefits for the public health sector.
- Very important for the health sector and the disaster management sector to sit down together and no longer work in silos.
All actors (government, different government agencies and at different levels and with the other sectors) need to understand what exactly is needed and what needs to be clarified and all this can be provided through clear laws and policies.