RECENT humanitarian crises in South-east Asia signal a need to re-think the nature of security cooperation in the region. Pandemics, tsunamis and earthquakes - all these point to a need for greater preparedness and coordination among states in the region.
At the Asian security summit conference (the Shangri-La Dialogue)in Singapore earlier this month, Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Najib Tun Razak proposed the idea of a disaster relief centre for the region.
By Mely Caballero-Anthony, For The Straits Times and Amitav Acharya
RECENT humanitarian crises in South-east Asia signal a need to re-think the nature of security cooperation in the region. Pandemics, tsunamis and earthquakes - all these point to a need for greater preparedness and coordination among states in the region.
At the Asian security summit conference (the Shangri-La Dialogue)in Singapore earlier this month, Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Najib Tun Razak proposed the idea of a disaster relief centre for the region.
Similar ideas and suggestions have been made by other states and Track-II institutes for a regional mechanism that could facilitate an effective response system for disasters.
For example, at the inaugural Asean Defence Ministers Meeting in Kuala Lumpur on May 9, disaster relief cooperation was identified as one of the main areas of cooperation that the defence officials would focus on.
South Korea had earlier announced that it was planning to establish a comprehensive cooperative response system for regional and global disasters by setting up a channel for information sharing and coordination of personnel, supplies and equipment.
Japan has also proposed to develop strategies and procedures to facilitate a fast response by armed forces in the region in times of natural disasters.
Given the interest shown by these players, the task at hand is to draw up a mechanism that can coordinate all these initiatives into a more coherent system.
A number of countries within and outside Asean are able to provide immediate assistance in times of natural disasters. The rescue and medical teams from Singapore and Malaysia, for example, were among the first to go to the aid of the earthquake
victims in Yogyakarta last month.
Similarly, the American and European armies joined their Australian, Japanese and Asian counterparts in providing humanitarian aid to the injured and displaced in Aceh in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004.
But what is missing in these ad hoc arrangements is a regional coordinated response that can anticipate the problems and security challenges that could arise in large-scale humanitarian assistance efforts.
The experience of the Indian Ocean tsunami was instructive: Many rescue teams were caught unprepared and could not deal with the massive recovery and relief missions involved in coping with the devastation and loss caused by the disaster.
Even the military teams were unable to cope with the huge task of recovery and relief, and the provision of emergency aid and medical assistance to the injured and internally displaced.
Greater coordination needed
ONE of the immediate challenges is to identify ways to build on existing national and bilateral arrangements.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue, the Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister suggested that Asean could start the project first while other countries such as the US, Australia and Japan could be invited to join in later.
Hence, if Asean, in partnership with East Asian and Pacific nations such as Japan, the US, Australia, South Korea, China, India and Canada were to initiate and design a regional mechanism for this purpose, it may wish to look at similar arrangements in
other regions and, in particular, to examine the experience of their European counterparts in building up their disaster response capability.
The Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC) has served as the focal point of coordinating disaster relief efforts in Europe. Established in 1998, it comprises 46 member countries, representing Nato's Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC).
The EADRCC has been designed as a regional coordination mechanism that supports and complements the United Nations in its efforts to provide immediate aid to disaster affected countries within the EAPC.
Operated from Nato headquarters in Brussels, the EADRCC has since been active in coordinating not only regional responses to natural disasters, but has also extended its remit to technological disasters and complex emergencies.
The EADRCC is therefore geared to build regional disaster response capability through regular exchange, training and cooperation in several areas of disaster relief assistance operations in areas such as disaster assessment, preparations for deployment, coordination of movements, deployment and withdrawal.
An essential component of the European disaster response capability is also the establishment of a Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Unit (EADRU). It is a non-standing, multinational mix of national civil and military personnel including rescue teams, medical units and transport and equipment teams that are volunteered by member countries of the EAPC.
In other
