The base camp is the centre of all activity as well as the place where participants spend their nights in sub-zero temperatures. © Copyright UNHCR/S. Imberton

2010-03-10

Aid workers hone emergency skills in Skåne

REVINGE, 8 March (UNHCR) -- Aid workers are scrambling to meet the needs of thousands of people fleeing from heavy fighting between government troops and separatist rebels in the countryside near southern Sweden’s main university campus in Lund.

Operating from a sprawling base camp atop a frozen hilltop on the outskirts of Revinge, 24 long-time aid workers have arrived from various locations across the globe to address humanitarian needs facing the host community and the uprooted civilians.

The humanitarian crisis that the aid workers are battling to address does not involve any native Swedish factions, but is actually part of an emergency exercise organised by the UN refugee agency and hosted at the Rescue Services College (Myndigheten for samhällsskydd och beredskap - MSB) in Revinge.

The mock crisis underway at the vast MSB site is loosely based on the situation currently underway in northern Yemen, where a temporary cease fire between Yemen’s forces and local Houthi tribes is allowing aid agencies like UNHCR an opportunity to further expand operations in the north of the impoverished country where fighting first erupted in 2005 and has displaced more than 250,000 people, more than half since 2009.

Aid workers involved in the exercise are preparing to shelter thousands of internally displaced persons fleeing fighting between government forces and local tribes.

The exercise at Revinge is the first ever emergency training exercise targeting senior managers, mostly UNHCR staff but also personnel from key partners including UNICEF, the International Humanitarian City (Dubai), and personnel from two Scandinavian UNHCR standby partners, the Danish Refugee Council and the Norwegian Refugee Council as well as the US government Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration.

The participants have converged on MSB’s Revinge campus from on-going operations in places such as Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Somalia to hone their skills in UNHCR regular preparedness effort to ensure staff are poised to respond to displacement crises in a matter of hours.

“UNHCR conducts these training seminars three times yearly to ensure our staff may refresh their skills,” said Iain Hall, chief of UNHCR’s Emergency Preparedness and Response Section. “The government of Sweden has long been an enthusiastic supporter of this effort, and together with Norway, Germany and others states helps ensure that we have a variety of staff able to meet urgent needs in humanitarian crisis situations, be they man-made (conflict) or caused by natural disaster.”  

Participants in the course agree to be deployed anywhere in the world within 72 hours for up to four months, and they remain on this emergency roster for a period of two years. Preparation for the course and eventual deployment as part of one of UNHCR’s Emergency Response Teams means getting team leaders from their current offices to agree that they may serve on the roster, as well as the understanding of their families.

“This exceptional training effort is about ensuring that we have highly skilled senior managers who also undergo this special course to address the needs of displaced persons and the humanitarian community’s cluster,“ UNHCR’s Iain Hall declared.

Participants in the emergency training course are enthusiastic, despite the sub zero degree nights living in tents and the tense days facing experienced actors playing angry officials and traumatised displaced persons.

“It is very good, and I’m impressed with all the people here”, said Odd Einar Olsen of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
 
Monica Sandri currently works with the Afghan Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development in Kabul as an emergency and social protection adviser and in the past she has served with the Norwegian Refugee Council. She is now taking part in the UNHCR course as a member of the Danish Refugee Council emergency stand-by roster.

“This course is giving me more knowledge in how to manage an emergency and more importantly, how to manage relations in a crisis,” Sandri said. “I have always worked with refugees and internally displaced persons, so for me this senior level training is more focussed on management and how to address emergencies.”

By Peter Kessler in Revinge