Disaster management. Humanitarian assistance. Civil-military cooperation. The one thing that is constant through each of these themes, whether we speak of complex or natural disasters, bilateral or collective interventions, peace-enforcement or peacekeeping operations, is the role of the host nation.

Many times this role is mentioned only in passing as we concentrate on how the military will coordinate with the non-governmental organizations or how the United Nations will establish refugee camps. This suits our purposes for the target audience. The risk, however, is that the importance of the host nation's role will be diminished or lost in the training.

There are currently two hundred sixty-six separate countries in the world today. One hundred eighty-nine are members of the UN General Assembly. Within some of these countries are autonomous regions. The collective goals and objectives of the peoples within these countries and territories will obviously vary between countries but should be the base from which all outside assistance - humanitarian or otherwise - is provided. In the world according to Jeff, all outside assistance supports the host nation. The role of bi-lateral and multi-lateral aid, e.g. World Bank, International Monetary Fund, is to support the government implementing programs of its own design that ultimately allow the country to be self-sufficient in an economic and/or political sense. The role of development agencies, such as United Nations Development Program and CARE, is to provide the technical expertise and the project-specific funding to educate, train, and develop the host nation peoples' and institutions' capacity to reach and maintain the goal of self-sufficiency.

If this process functions properly, the country will have set goals and objectives, priorities for development, and have negotiated with the various donors, agencies, and groups to fund and/or support the direction the country is heading. As the activities proceed, there is a review of progress and re-setting of short-term tasks oriented to meet the longer-term goals. This is commonly called the 'development continuum'. While there is always discussion on the best activity to support, there is no real argument on the basic idea as presented. Then a disaster strikes. A disaster can take on many forms - an earthquake, a drought, civil unrest, outright war. Whatever the cause, for the purposes of this paper, lets simply define 'disaster' as anything that causes a disruption in a country's development continuum.

There are many organizations, including the Center of Excellence, whose sole focus is to educate, train, develop, and/or research tools to deal with the 'disaster' within a country. As disasters often require different skills and activities than development, this separation in training is logical and, arguably necessary. However, the disaster mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery activities should not be separated from the development goals of the host nation. A disaster should not be treated as an independent activity or project that falls outside the scope of the host nation's development structure, or the activities of the various development organizations previously mentioned. The basis for any assistance should be derived from the host nation's development plan. Utilizing this method ensures that any form of disaster assistance is efficient, if not effective. For example, if the development plans of a country include re-surfacing a main feeder road from an agricultural area to an urban market center, the recovery after a flood or earthquake in the area might include the repair or re-building of that feeder road. Or, if the goal is to decrease overall malnutrition in the country, recovery from a disaster might include repair or upgrading medical facilities, increased education for females, or another non-disaster specific activity depending on the root cause for the malnutrition. The point is that disaster response and recovery may not include typical or 'back to the way it was' activities. The response may be able to fast-forward development goals and should be tied to the long-term objectives of the country.

This issue is most relevant when discussing outside intervention - civilian or military. The host nation should develop a disaster plan or country emergency plan based on its own development goals. The disaster plan would identify areas and priorities for mitigation and preparedness and act as a structure for the response and recovery from disasters. Disaster teams coming in to clean up after the "big event" rarely ask what the disaster plan or development plan of the country is. With two hundred sixty-six countries in the world today there cannot be one model for a host nation disaster plan as it must take into account potential disasters and capabilities specific to that region, people, and govern-ment structure. There are, however, some basic principles that are common in all disaster plans. A model can then be developed from which each aspect of disaster/emergency response can be taught. This keeps the host nation structure and considerations in the forefront of any response. The Center of Excellence is developing such a model. The model will be used as a structure from which the entry, exit and coordination of civil-military activities are based. In addition, some countries may choose to request more in-depth training on the model to develop their own national disaster plans. Both are possible.

In the next issue of The Liaison, the national disaster plan model will be discussed. In future issues, each component of disaster management will be discussed with respect to how it fits into the basic model and how the training of that component fits into the overall disaster management and humanitarian assistance role of the Center. Comments on any or all aspects of the discussions are welcome and can be forwarded to the editor of The Liaison at pr@coe-dmha.org.