THE ROLL-OUT OF THE CLUSTER APPROACH
IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO (DRC)

OCHA-IDD/ICVA MISSION TO DRC

Introduction
From 7-14 March 2006, a mission of OCHA's Internal Displacement Division (IDD) and the ICVA Secretariat went to Kinshasa, DRC to look at the roll-out of the cluster approach. The mission was not meant to be an evaluation of the cluster approach, but was meant to take stock of how the clusters were rolling out in DRC - one of the implementation countries - and to discuss areas of improvement in the cluster roll-out (see Annex 1 for TORs). The mission also went to Central Katanga to look at the humanitarian response to the internal displacement there. A separate report on that part of the mission is available at: www.icva.ch/cgi-bin/browse.pl?doc=doc00001710.

This report provides a snapshot of the situation in Kinshasa during the mission in March 2006. While progress will undoubtedly have been made since then in the roll-out of the clusters, it is hoped that this report will help contribute to improvements in the way that clusters are rolled out, as well as provide some suggestions as to how the UN and NGOs can work better together in the context of coordination at a capital level.

Much of the mission was spent discussing various concepts related to the clusters that required further clarification, such as "accountability" and "provider of last resort." In the case of most NGOs at the Kinshasa level, there was little knowledge of the cluster approach and so discussions about the concept took place during the mission to help familiarise NGOs with the clusters. Admittedly, much of the roll-out of the clusters by that point in time had happened in the East of the country, where most humanitarian operations take place. The link between the clusters outside of Kinshasa and the clusters and coordination mechanisms at the Kinshasa level was still being worked out at the time of the mission.

Brief Background to the Clusters in DRC
Once the cluster approach was generally welcomed by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) as a way forward to address gaps, there was a need to pilot the approach to see how it worked at the field level. The first six months of the clusters had been spent trying to define the scope and work plans of each cluster at the global level. The IASC eventually agreed to pilot the approach in three countries as of the beginning of 2006, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)¹.

In DRC, there was an agreement among UN agencies to have 10 clusters, which is different from the nine clusters existing at the global level. In DRC, it was felt that there was a need for a food security cluster and an education cluster. It was felt that a camp coordination and management cluster was not necessary in DRC.

Before looking at the roll-out of the clusters in DRC, it is essential to look at the way in which coordination is structured and takes place. The relationship between Kinshasa and operational areas of the country is key, but unfortunately the mission was unable to travel to those areas.

Coordination in Kinshasa
The way in which the clusters have been implemented in DRC raises issues around the way that the UN and NGOs work together at the Kinshasa level because of the forum in which the clusters were introduced: the Humanitarian Advocacy Group (HAG). The lack of NGO "representation" in the HAG and the lack of adequate coordination by OCHA with the broader humanitarian community seem to have contributed to the fact that many NGOs in Kinshasa had not heard of the clusters in mid-March.

In 2005, there was a decision to have a broader coordination body at the Kinshasa level that went beyond UN agencies to include, donors, NGOs, and international organisations. As such, the HAG was created. Prior to this decision, OCHA apparently had meetings with NGOs about once a month.

The attempt by the Humanitarian Coordinator, in particular, to expand the UN Country Team was important in the sense that there was recognition of the importance of the broader humanitarian community. The translation of that decision, however, did not necessarily bring about the desired effect.

In order to decide on the NGO participation in the HAG, OCHA called a meeting of NGOs in September 2005 so that the NGOs could choose who would participate in the HAG. From the perspective of OCHA, it was up to the NGOs to decide who would represent the NGOs in the HAG. From the perspective of the NGOs, it was left to those who were interested in participating in the HAG meetings to "put up their hands" and say so.

Originally, the idea was to have two NGOs participate in the HAG. Other NGOs then expressed interest in attending and it was agreed that more could participate. At the time of the mission, there were some five NGOs participating in the HAG. The monthly meetings that OCHA was holding with NGOs had ended following the expansion of the HAG to include NGOs.

Participation or Representation?
It seems that there is lack of common understanding on the role of the NGOs that attend the HAG meetings. From the UN side, they are seen as "representing" the NGOs. From the perspective of NGOs that participate in the HAG, as well as from the perspective of those NGOs that do not, the NGOs attending the HAG do not represent anyone except themselves: they participate in the meetings in their own right.

The selection process of the NGOs and the responsibilities around that NGO participation was unclear; no terms of reference were developed explaining what participation entailed. There was no clear discussion about who (if anyone) the NGOs in HAG represented. The "responsibilities" of the NGOs in the HAG were also not clearly discussed or agreed. As such, there was no mechanism to feed in the views of other NGOs to the HAG nor was there a mechanism to report back to other NGOs on what took place in the HAG.

From amongst the NGOs that participate in the HAG, there was the view that the HAG was like "a UN Country Team meeting with donors and NGOs as observers." They did not feel particularly comfortable raising issues as they did not feel that it was a body for real discussion. It was seen more as an information-sharing mechanism or a body where the UN was discussing issues of its concern. OCHA did raise concerns about the lack of NGO attendance and participation in discussions at HAG meetings.

The NGOs attending the HAG quite clearly said that if their presence needed to be a "representational" one, more resources would be required to support the work involved. Several also said they did not feel comfortable taking on such a representation role, particularly since that was not what they had signed up to do.

The lack of clear communication between OCHA and the NGOs proved particularly problematic with regards to the HAG and the decisions and/or discussions taking place in that forum. NGOs that were not participating in the HAG expressed the view that they missed the meetings that OCHA had previously held with NGOs on a fairly regular basis. Since the move to broaden the HAG, there was a lack of information flowing from OCHA to the broader group of NGOs. The result was that a number of NGOs were feeling outside of the many of the discussions taking place.

How the Clusters Came to Be in DRC
The lack of a mechanism to ensure communication to the broader NGO community outside the HAG contributed to the fact that many NGOs had not heard of the clusters because it was in the HAG that the clusters were introduced. A couple of the NGOs attending the HAG had a recollection of being "informed" that the clusters would be implemented. It did not seem to be something of great enough importance to discuss with other NGOs, at least not when the mission was in Kinshasa in March. There was little feeling of real participation, on the part of NGOs, in any decision-making around what the clusters would be or what exactly they would entail: they were something that was essentially announced at the HAG.

At the time of the mission, there was still much uncertainty in Kinshasa about what the clusters would or would not do. The implications on operations were not readily apparent - particularly since most of the NGOs with whom the mission met had not even heard of the clusters. The lack of systematic sharing of HAG minutes by OCHA and the lack of any reporting to the broader NGO community by those NGOs attending the HAG meant that NGOs outside the HAG were largely unaware of the clusters. At the same time, NGOs in Kinshasa could have been making more of an effort to discuss issues with each other.

NGO Coordination?
In Kinshasa there was no NGO coordination body or forum, which also may have contributed, to a certain extent, to the lack of knowledge of the clusters by many NGOs. Previous attempts to create an NGO coordination body had been made, but failed. A reason given for the failure was that most NGOs often have to travel outside of Kinshasa because their programmes were on the other side of the country, meaning that participation in the forum would be passed off to more junior, or even administrative staff, thus reducing the level of strategic discussions. Eventually, a vicious cycle of others sending equally junior or administrative staff set in, killing any value that the group had in terms of discussing strategic issues.

Several of the NGOs with whom the mission met expressed the need, perhaps, to have some sort of NGO grouping to ensure that NGOs were able to share information with each other. There seemed to be a degree of frustration among those NGOs not attending the HAC that they were no longer receiving information on various things and that there might be some value in having NGOs work more together.

Lack of a Communication Strategy
While an NGO coordination mechanism of some sort may have helped to ensure that more NGOs knew about the clusters, the lack of clear communication and information dissemination from the side of the UN - and particularly OCHA - to the broader humanitarian community on the clusters impacted negatively on the roll-out of the clusters.

The lack of clarity around the concept of clusters, at both the global and Kinshasa levels, may account for OCHA's difficulties in ensuring that all humanitarian actors knew about the clusters. There was often confusion as to the difference between "sectors" and "clusters" when the clusters were discussed with NGOs and even UN agencies. Some NGOs, who knew about the clusters from their colleagues working in the East, saw some potential merit in the approach, but wondered how the clusters would relate to existing sectoral working groups. Even from the perspective of the cluster leads, there was a great deal of time spent explaining why, for example, the nutrition sectoral working group would become a cluster and what the difference actually was between a sector and a cluster.

A contributing factor to this confusion was the lack of an adequate translation into French of the word "clusters." (In an attempt to find a useful translation, the translation of "cluster bomb" was tried, but that ended up to be "bombe de fragmentation": fragmentation would seem to be rather the opposite effect of what the clusters are trying and/or meant to achieve).

As noted above, the key differences of the cluster approach and the sectoral approach (namely accountability and provider of last resort) were vaguely defined and contributed to confusion as different cluster leads had different interpretations of the concepts. The lack of clear instructions or guidance from OCHA headquarters to its field staff on the clusters led to OCHA failing to provide much needed leadership in support of the Humanitarian Coordinator as the clusters started rolling-out.

One of the key areas where more work was needed was at the level of inter-cluster coordination - again, an area where OCHA has a role to play, but where it was left without adequate guidance from headquarters as to what it should be doing. While inter-cluster meetings started after the mission, there is perhaps more clarity needed from OCHA headquarters about what role it can - and should - play in ensuring that inter-cluster coordination contributes to a more comprehensive humanitarian response. The lack of support from OCHA to the process at the beginning - particularly from the headquarters level - has left it behind the agencies leading clusters.

The preliminary guidance note developed at the global level for use in the field should go some way in helping to clarify a number of concepts, but, at the same time, there is still much in terms of the substantive issues around the clusters that requires clarification.

Lack of Headquarters' Support to Field Cluster Leads
The cluster leads started the process at the field level and the protection cluster, for example, had started to do joint advocacy in some places. Other clusters were still in the process of getting up and running. When the mission went to Katanga and had a discussion with NGOs about the response in central Katanga and the purpose of the clusters, one NGO quickly retorted that the cluster approach was failing miserably in responding to the needs of IDPs in central Katanga since "the providers of last resort" were not stepping forward quickly enough, given the health and nutrition needs there.

While there were many NGOs that did not know about clusters, there was a fair degree of frustration from several UN cluster leads who felt that they were having a headquarters concept imposed on them, without adequate clarity and with inadequate support to implement it. There was a feeling that many of the clusters had demands placed on them by headquarters to produce outcomes in a short period of time, with limited understanding for other ongoing work.

The roll-out in DRC was taking place at very different speeds depending on the cluster and the cluster lead. WFP, for example, had brought someone in for the logistics cluster who had worked in Pakistan with the clusters and had the benefit of that experience. The experience in Pakistan with the logistics cluster had showed WFP that there could be value in the cluster approach if the time was taken to ensure that all stakeholders were genuinely involved. The WFP person was taking the time to individually go and meet NGOs to discuss the logistics cluster at the time of the mission - an effort that had not been taken by other cluster leads, at least in Kinshasa. Other cluster leads, such as WHO for health, were still in the process of figuring out how to manage the cluster.

The global cluster appeal, which had been issued shortly before the mission arrived in DRC and asked for a considerable amount of money for the global level, created a number of questions among UN agencies' staff in Kinshasa. The appeal did not seem to address resource issues at the country level. There was a feeling that field staff were being asked to implement the clusters, on top of their regular work, with few, if any, additional resources. When questions were posed to headquarters about the cluster approach, many felt that they were not getting the answers that they needed.

Relating Clusters to Other Structures, Processes, and Services
Overall, there is a need for a clearer explanation as to how the clusters fit into existing mechanisms, structures, and processes. There is, otherwise, a risk that clusters overlap and duplicate work already being undertaken. There is also a risk of not knowing which process or structure "trumps" the other. Does the logistics cluster, for example, have primacy over the work of the UN Joint Logistics Centre (UNJLC)? One NGO staff described the situation as a number of balloons being set off into the air, but it was not clear to anyone how, or when, any of those balloons would meet to come together and contribute to a better humanitarian response.

DRC has been described by some as a "guinea pig" for testing various new initiatives and reform processes in the humanitarian world. How the clusters will relate to some of these initiatives remains to be seen.

The GHD Pooled Fund
One of the initiatives being tried out in DRC is the pooled fund, arising from the Good Humanitarian Donorship initiative. The fund places money in the hands of the Humanitarian Coordinator so that s/he can target those funds at areas of the humanitarian response that are un(der)-funded.

The clusters were given a role to play in deciding which projects deserved funding from the pooled fund. The clusters would present their projects to the provincial coordinating bodies before being presented to the HAG at the Kinshasa level. The first round of funding was disbursed after the mission took place, but reports from the field indicated that there was a level of confusion around the process. There was a feeling that too many projects chosen were UN ones and the criteria by which they were chosen was unclear.

UNJLC
For the logistics cluster, the relationship with the UN Joint Logistics Centre was one that was needed to be worked out. There is a need to ensure that clarity is achieved in delineating the roles of each - either at the global level and/or the country level - to ensure complementarity. Without clear guidance, there is a risk of competing interests between the cluster and UNJLC.

Integrated Missions
One question posed by NGOs was how the clusters actually relate to integrated missions? There are different opinions in the NGO community as to how close, or not, NGOs should be to integrated missions. Clarity, in this sense, would be helpful on how cluster leads should be relating to integrated missions to help NGOs decide whether they will engage with clusters or not. The protection cluster in DRC was being led by UNHCR with MONUC. While several NGOs may see that such a role is logical, given that MONUC has a protection of civilians role, other NGOs see such a close relationship as potentially dangerous for their image vis-󃂠-vis the local population because it may compromise their impartiality and neutrality. Given the way in which the UN reform agenda is moving towards integration and coherence, a clearer position on how the clusters will relate to integrated missions would be helpful. Will the Humanitarian Coordinator (HC), for example, be given enough space to take decisions in favour of meeting humanitarian needs that may not be in-line with the political or military mission's goals?

The Difference between How NGOs and the UN Work
In the course of discussing the cluster approach during the mission, one of the most striking comments was that the clusters were organised along the lines of how the UN worked; not the way that NGOs work. Clusters were even seen as being contrary to the way that many NGOs work, which is in a much more multi-sectoral manner. There was a feeling that the clusters would simply add more meetings to the already busy schedules of staff within NGOs. The added-value at the Kinshasa level was questioned by some. One NGO noted that in order to participate in the clusters, one person who was doing cross-sectoral work, would have to attend about seven cluster meetings: a far too time-consuming exercise. There is a need to find ways to ensure that clusters do not simply add more meetings, but that they ensure better humanitarian outcomes.

Final Note
While the cluster roll-out in March 2006 was still in its early days, a number of observations from the mission will hopefully be of use as the process continues. ICVA has committed to following the cluster process and contributing in a constructive way to try to improve the approach so as to have an improved humanitarian response. This mission, along with others to the roll-out countries, and feedback from ICVA members on the clusters, will continue to provide a contribution from the NGO side into ongoing discussions on the clusters and the overall humanitarian reform.

Manisha Thomas, ICVA Secretariat, July 2006

1. The other two initial roll-out countries for the clusters are Liberia and Uganda. Subsequently, Somalia has been added to the list of countries rolling out the cluster approach. The "spirit" of the clusters was also applied in Pakistan, following the earthquake in 2005.

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Terms of Reference
Joint Mission of OCHA and ICVA to the DRC (6-18 March 2006)

Background
In the summer of 2005, the Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, introduced a number of humanitarian reform initiatives in an effort to fill gaps and provide more accountability and predictability, including in IDP situations. This new approach included the formation of "clusters" in nine areas at the global level, each led by an agency. In December 2005, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) generally welcomed the cluster approach and its initial implementation in three countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Liberia.

Mission to the DRC
Getting the cluster approach to work effectively at the field level, particularly outside of capitals, will be key if the cluster approach is to have a positive impact on those with, and for whom humanitarians work. In order to help bridge the gap between the work done on the clusters at the headquarters level and the field level, a mission will travel to the DRC from 6-18 March. Mission participants will include Mark Cutts (OCHA/IDD), Tom Delrue (OCHA/IDD), Ylva Blondel (OCHA/CRD) and Manisha Thomas (ICVA). ICVA, a Standing Invitee of the IASC, is participating in the mission in order to encourage an open and frank dialogue between the UN and NGOs on the cluster approach. The mission will include a consultation with donors on 13 March. A field trip to IDP camps in Katanga will take place on 14-18 March. As part of the UN's efforts to raise awareness about the humanitarian situation in the DRC, journalists will accompany the field trip to Katanga. The mission is being carried out at the request of and under the overall authority of the HC, with support from the OCHA Office in Kinshasa.

Objectives of the Mission:
In order to support the early roll out of the clusters at the field level, the mission will focus on a review of coordination mechanisms in place (or being proposed), the level of active participation of humanitarian actors in the clusters, and examination of ways in which the cluster approach can be used to strengthen the overall humanitarian response. Specifically, the mission will aim to:

• Examine the impact to date of the cluster approach on humanitarian action in the DRC;
• Examine how the proposed cluster coordination mechanisms can be used to address any major gaps in capacity among UN agencies and NGOs;
• Assess the level of NGO participation in the cluster process, their contributions to date, potential future contributions, and any particular concerns they may have;
• Discuss timelines and benchmarks for the roll out of the clusters and mechanisms to ensure regular review of progress.
• Draw lessons from the work done so far on clusters in DRC that can be shared with other countries implementing the cluster approach;
• Raise awareness about urgent humanitarian needs in the DRC;
• Examine the role of the HC in overseeing the cluster approach, and measures in place to ensure greater accountability for all aspects of the humanitarian response;
• Review current funding of the Humanitarian Action Plan, and the extent to which donors are involved in or prepared to support the phasing-in of the cluster approach.
• Start a dialogue with NGOs that can be continued after the mission that aims to provide support in meeting any challenges arising while rolling out the cluster approach, as well as helping to continuously draw lessons from the rollout.