The coordination roles of relief organisations in humanitarian logistics

ABSTRACT

The number of organisations involved in relief work in general and humanitarian logistics specifically is large and increasing, creating new complexity. In this paper we analyse different types of coordination and roles in two case studies of the humanitarian cluster system based on its initial development and the Kenyan Post-election crisis. The different and unclear roles of the organisations create significant problems before and after cluster activation and deactivation. Individual organisations take on many roles in the cluster system and beyond it in terms of coordination. The clarity of the roles affects the need for and ease of coordination. We suggest a simple basic categorisation of roles as a starting point for developing this concept in the field of humanitarian logistics and connect this to coordination.

KEYWORDS:

• Case study
• humanitarian clusters
• humanitarian logistics
• coordination
• roles
• disaster stages

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Humanitarian Cluster system was introduced as a response to the Humanitarian Review with the purpose of improving coordination in humanitarian response. For brevity, we refer to it as the Cluster System.

2. For a more complete exposition on the cluster system and its early development, see , for example, Jahre and Jensen (2010), Jensen (2012).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Research Council of Norway.