Management and policy barriers
Public education management
Most of the participants claimed that the lack of public education in the humanitarian aids provided by society to the people affected by disasters has been considered as one of the most important barriers. Such an education encounters with weaknesses and challenges in many aspects since people are not familiar with the ways for helping and people who are interested in humanitarian aids do not know which kind of donation, to whom, in which time, and how should be delivered. In addition, the local trustees are not well familiar with the ways of taking part in the identification of the needs and the needy people, and in delivery, and distribution of the donations. Thus, not only the people affected by disasters suffer from lack of knowledge, but also the volunteers, managers, and the relief staff and governmental organizations are not sufficiently knowledgeable in this regard.
“Our donors do not know which goods, when and to which organizations should be delivered. Most of them go to the affected areas individually to deliver aids. At the time of distributing the aids to the rural people, we did not know to whom we should deliver the aids. The villages’ trustees were mostly old and were not capable of receiving and distributing the donations.”
Incident Command System (ICS)
According to the participants, the multiplicity of the organizations responsible for the emergencies and disasters is considered as a serious challenge of managing humanitarian aids and donations. The participants believed that people were confused due to lack of information about the way they should deliver the aids. Further, the victims were not informed of where to refer for receiving the aids. Lack of a unique commandership led to the multiplicity of decision-taking centers, useless attempts, and lack of efficient, and effective accountability.
“Many organizations from governmental ones to NGOs, offices, universities, local councils, and many other departments collected the aids and set out for the affected districts. Some of the people received help from several organizations or institutions while some other could not get any help.”
Communications and information barriers were the main concerns of the participants. They regarded rumor-fabricating and rumor-mongering as a factor of disturbance in preparedness and proper reacting and they were dissatisfied with the weak performance of the media and lack of control on the several social networks. The multiplicity of media and lack of a unique and influential management for organizing supervision and monitoring on the news, and the existence of ample inauthentic news sources were among the most significant challenges.
“Different news was heard in any moment. The news broadcasted from governmental and cyber space channels were completely contradicting. There was no unique news about the extent of casualties, damaged areas, and amount and ways of delivering aids. Many rumors were heard from people and different institutions in the cyber space.”
Coordination and cooperation
According to the subsequent interviews and the obtained data, assisting organizations were not sufficiently coordinated and cooperative in various levels from management and strategic to the operational levels. In other words, due to the lack of coordination, resources included staff and equipment, were sent to the affected regions but they were not coordinated.
“The military forces, the NGOs like Red Crescent, and governmental organizations all were simultaneously involved in the aid and rescue operations without any coordination among them. Crowding and congestion of the forces and equipment were themselves transformed into a crisis.”
Structural and operational barriers
Security
The participants pointed out that lack of adequate security was the most significant barrier for delivering humanitarian donations and aids operatively. They asserted that the security of the mobilized facilities and equipment –especially the ones sent overland- were not duly provided. Additionally, thieves’ rush from other regions to the affected areas, overcrowding, and fraud all with malicious intentions bring about disorder in security.
“We heard that the trucks having been carrying the some aids were assaulted and the aids were stolen. Perhaps, they were actually in need and did not intend to steal anything, but in my idea, it would rather have been better to escort the trucks by security forces”
Supervision and transparency
Most of the participants regarded the consistent supervising system as an important factor. They assumed the lack of control on celebrities and renowned persons’ performance as a significant factor for misusing this group from people’s participation and the appropriation of the gathered humanitarian monetary resources to their own benefits. In a condition where there is no supervision by any accountable organization, governmental organizations, NGOs, and the celebrities introduce multiple bank account numbers try to collect people’s cash an in-cash donations. Thus, many cases of misuse and appropriation of the aids were reported.
“Some of the famous cinema actors gave their bank account numbers in the cyber networks to collect people’s cash aids but except for a few, most did not spend the money for the afflicted people. In addition, the supervising organizations did not prosecute the issue. Several account numbers were presented incessantly for receiving donations from individuals and different organizations”.
Needs assessment
Lack of need assessment and evaluating the capacity of the area are influenced by two main challenges reported by the participants. The local trustees and individuals believed that their opinions were not respected in evaluating and identifying the needs and the responsible organizations distributed the aids without considering the real necessities of people. Based on the participants’ viewpoint, having no means and plans of needs assessment can result in wasting the resources as well as injustice in the distribution. In addition, the needs of vulnerable groups, especially the elders, children, the disabled, and families having poor custodian or no custodian have been disregarded.
“As a rescuer who was the supervisor of an assisting group, I did not know which village or district of the cities was more in need and whether any aid had been sent to those regions or not. Some other people came to receive goods, foods, clothes, and other things. We had no idea which families had disabled members or elders or pregnant women who had lost their husbands because they were not able to refer to assisting centers to receive aids”.
Preservation and distribution
According to the interviews, the barriers and challenges regarding reservation and distribution of the humanitarian aids were categorized into 12 subcategories, which can be divided into three main phases. The first phase was the barriers related to the collecting and arrival of the aids and donations to the affected areas i.e. any procrastination in common participation in delivering the aids and the inaccessibility of the damaged region due to the damaged connecting roads and the remoteness of some villages led to prediction in transferring the aids to the regions. The second phase was the challenge of preservation of the goods in the affected areas. The participants reported that foods were preserved under sunlight and rain in an unhealthy condition and some mercenary persons rushed to the deposit places and stole things many times. The third phase involved the challenges related to the distributions including having no preceding plan for distribution, non-observation of equivalence in distribution, and untargeted distribution.
“I myself saw that the aids arrived to some remote villages with delay. In other villages whose roads were damaged, the food packages were thrown down from rescue helicopters which caused the packages to become spoiled due to crashing into the ground... People’s aids were collected in one of the city squares and they were covered by a canvas. The foods on the ground were in contact with the rain water and they were exposed to sunlight during the day”.
Cultural barriers
The participants believed that cultural barriers had a significant role in managing the humanitarian aids. They emphasized that lack of community trust in governmental organizations versus the excessive trust they had in celebrities and renowned persons to be one of the main challenges. The responsible governmental organizations and the NGOs were inattentive to people’s culture and customs, leading to a disturbed in the management of humanitarian aids. Furthermore people’s inattentiveness to the culture of waiting in the queues was another cultural barrier.
“If people had trusted the governmental organizations as they trusted the celebrities, there would not have been that much misuse. People are also to be blamed because they are affected by emotions for collecting aids in the first days after disasters; the afflicted people also rush for receiving the aids. For instance, when a truck arrived for assisting, they did not stand in queues but they wanted to get the goods all at once”.
Organizing participation of benefactors
Despite the emphasis of the participants on the fact that the benefactors had remarkable and unbelievable participation in the phase of rescuing, assisting, and rehabilitation, they believed that the benefactors had not adequate knowledge in this regard and many charity organizations were not coordinated with each other. Benefactors have a tendency for humanitarian actions in health services rather than other domains and they have scarcely cooperated with and trusted in governmental organizations.
“There are many benefactors in Iran but unfortunately they lack adequate awareness and knowledge and they do not act untidily. It would be better if benefactors become coordinated with each other and each one supplies some parts of the requirements of the injured people. The benefactors visited the affected areas carrying goods on their own. I wish a unique organization can carry out such things”.