The mean age of the participants was 31, most of them were male, and had an academic education level (Table 1). First, the transcribed data from 21 interviews were analyzed, along with field note observation. The number of initial codes obtained from the interviews was 1053, which were placed in 19 sub-categories, 9 categories, and 2 themes (Table 2). Managerial and structural barriers were obtained as main themes. The categories included education, command and coordination, communication and information, rules, security, traffic and overcrowding, assessment, providing system, cultural setting.
Managerial barriers
Education
Most of the participants claimed that the lack of public and organizational education is considered as 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 are not informed of which kind of donation, to whom, in which time, and how should be delivered. In addition, the volunteers and local trustees are not well familiar with the ways of participation in identifying the needs and the needy people, as well as delivering and distributing the donations. Thus, not only the people affected by disasters are suffering from lack of knowledge, but also the volunteers, managers, and the relief staff and GOs 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 provide 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.”
Command and Coordination
According to the participants, the multiplicity of the organizations responsible for the disasters is considered as a serious challenge for managing humanitarian aids and donations. The participants believed that people are confused due to the 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 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.”
According to the subsequent interviews and the obtained data, assisting organizations were not sufficiently coordinated and cooperative in various levels from the management and strategic to operational levels. In other words, due to the lack of coordination, resources, staff, and equipment were sent to the affected regions but they were not coordinated.
“The military forces, the NGOs like Red Crescent, and GOs all were simultaneously involved in the aid and rescue operations without any coordination among them. Crowding and congesting the forces and equipment were themselves transformed into a crisis.”
Communications and Information
These barriers were the main concerns of the participants. They were regarded rumor-fabricating and rumor-mongering as a disturbing factor in preparedness and proper response. They were dissatisfied with the weak performance of the media and lack of control on 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 considered as 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 casualties, damaged areas, and amount and ways of delivering aids. Many rumors were heard from people and different institutions in the cyber space.”
Rules
Most of the participants regarded the lack of rules and consistent supervising system as important factors. They assumed the lack of control on the performance of celebrities and renowned persons 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 such condition, there is no supervision by any accountable organization, governmental organizations, and NGOs, and the celebrities introduce multiple bank account numbers in order to collect people’s cash as in-cash donations. Thus, many cases of misusing 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 the donations from individuals and different organizations”.
Structural barriers
Security
The participants reported that lack of adequate security is the most significant barrier for delivering humanitarian donations and aids. They asserted that the security of the mobilized facilities and equipment, especially the ones sent overland, were not duly provided. Additionally, the thieves’ rush from other regions to the affected areas, overcrowding, and fraud all with malicious intentions created some disorder in security.
“We heard that the trucks having been carrying the same 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”
Assessment
Lack of assessing the needs and capacity of the area is influenced by two main challenges reported by the participants. The local trustees and individuals believed that their opinions were not respected in identifying the need. In addition, the responsible organizations distributed the aids without considering the real necessities of people. According to the participants, having no plan for needs and capacity assessment can result in wasting the resources, along with injustice in the distribution. Further, the needs of vulnerable groups, especially the elders, children, disabled, and families with poor custodian or no custodian were 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, and who had lost their husbands because they were not able to refer to assisting centers to receive aids”.
Providing system
According to the interviews, preserving and distributing the humanitarian aids are considered as the barriers and challenges regarding providing system, which can be divided into three main phases. The first phase was the barriers related to the collection and arrival of the aids and donations to the affected areas. In fact, there was no 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 the prediction in transferring the aids to the regions. The second phase was the challenge of preserving 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 such as having no preceding plan for distribution, non-observation of equivalence in distribution, and untargeted distribution.
“The aids were 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”.
Cultural setting
The participants believed that cultural setting plays a significant role in managing the humanitarian aids. They emphasized that lack of community trust in GOs versus the excessive trust they had in celebrities and renowned persons as one of the main challenges. The responsible GOs and the NGOs were inattentive to people’s culture and customs, leading to some problems in managing humanitarian aids. Furthermore, people’s inattentiveness for waiting in the queues was regarded as another cultural barrier.
“If people had trusted the GOs 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. In addition, the afflicted people 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”.
The participants emphasized that the benefactors had remarkable and unbelievable participation during rescuing, relieving, and rehabilitation. They believed that the benefactors had not adequate knowledge in this regard. Further, the benefactors have a tendency for humanitarian actions in health services rather than other domains and they scarcely cooperate with 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 supplies some parts of the requirements for the injured people. The benefactors visited the affected areas carrying goods on their own. I wish a unique organization can carry out such things”.