Strengthening Collaboration on Humanitarian Emergency Response

The West Africa Ebola crisis, the deadly April 2015 earthquake in Nepal, and ongoing crises in Syria, Central African Republic, and beyond have exposed weaknesses of global humanitarian emergency response efforts. Complex humanitarian emergencies require a constellation of actors from different sectors working collaboratively to save lives and provide critical services. A new report by the Disaster Resilience Group, A Networked Approach to Strengthening Emergency Response Capacity, draws lessons from international and local networks and offers recommendations for building capacity among first- and second-line responders and strengthening networks for emergency response. Panelists presented the report's findings and discuss how they might be implemented to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of emergency response.