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AHA Center aims to respond to disasters outside Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia saw large-scale natural disasters between 2004 and 2014, causing more than 50 percent of global disaster mortalities.
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A view of the city of Palu, Central Sulawesi, after an earthquake and ensuing tsunami on Sept. 28, 2018. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
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aving just secured fresh funding, Southeast Asia’s humanitarian assistance agency is aiming to provide collective responses to disasters outside the region, officials said.
On Monday, the ASEAN Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA Center) received assistance worth 10 million euro (US$11 million) from the European Union to increase its capacity and operational capabilities in disaster monitoring and emergency response.
“We want to learn from the EU […] in terms of facilitating ASEAN collective response outside ASEAN region,” AHA Center executive director Adelina Kamal said after the grant’s launch in Jakarta on Monday. “Let's say there's a bushfire in Australia […], it has been the intention of ASEAN leaders in the past few years for ASEAN to collectively respond to incidents outside ASEAN.”
Such a collective response, she said, would bring a stronger impact than the one under bilateral mechanism — an approach used by some ASEAN member states in responding to disasters outside the region in the past.
In September 2016, ASEAN leaders signed a declaration of One ASEAN One Response, which specifies that AHA Center, at an appropriate time in the future, will facilitate ASEAN collective response outside the region.
“It's not that we don’t have many disasters within the region, we do; but it is also part of returning the favor because many of these countries like Australia or those in other parts in the region have actually been the friends of ASEAN and they have come forward and providing support to ASEAN member states,” Adelina said.
Southeast Asia saw large-scale natural disasters — including earthquakes, volcanoes, typhoons and floods — between 2004 and 2014, causing more than 50 percent of global disaster mortalities. This prompted the AHA Center to become the “center of gravity” for all international assistance to the region.
