Helpdesk

Question
Technical Assistance for Post-disaster Recovery: Identify literature on the role of international technical assistance and capacity building programmes in supporting long term recovery in post-natural disaster environments including coordination with disaster relief efforts. Highlight the implications for donor programming in such contexts.

Helpdesk response
key findings: There is a paucity of literature making explicit recommendations for technical assistance to support long-term recovery in post-disaster conflicts. Nevertheless, much of the criticism leveled against TA is the same as that leveled against early recovery interventions, including:

• the fact that TA remains largely supply-driven
• a low level of ownership and involvement on the part of partner countries
• the use of management systems created outside the national civil service
• weak procedures for identifying needs and for planning and designing technical cooperation support
• insufficient analysis of national contexts and underlying capacity constraint
• insufficient attention to ensuring that TA personnel have the necessary skills and profiles
• weak integration and coordination with national development strategies.

Some of the general recommendations made in the early recovery literature could be seen to have a bearing on technical assistance, including the need to:

• conduct capacity and needs assessments
• ensure that early recovery interventions are context specific
• ensure national ownership and that external technical assistance complements existing capacities
• develop capacities for relationship building
• maximize synergies among different actors
• strengthen capacities for disaster risk management and reduction
• ensure integration of cross-cutting issues
• employ participatory monitoring and evaluation techniques.

Full response: http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/HD654.pdf