A Graphical Analysis of UN Flash Appeal For Nepal

By Puru Shah

On May 15, 2015, the UN General Assembly held a special session during which they passed a resolution on ‘Strengthening emergency relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction in response to the devastating effects of the earthquake’. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pointed out that The Nepal Earthquake Flash Appeal launched by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is currently only 14 per cent funded. He requested foreign donors to provide more aid so that emergency relief and shelter can be provided to affected victims before the monsoon season starts (UN News).

The UN Flash Appeal is one of the more important relief funding requests for Nepal that is not very well understood. This post will include a guide for dummies that will briefly describe what the UN Flash appeal is, who makes this appeal, who coordinates relief action, the amount requested, the amount received and how the funds will be utilized.

It also includes graphs and charts to explain total funding received and requested per UN cluster and its recipients within respective clusters.

Flash Appeal For Nepal

On April 29, 2015 a flash appeal was made for US$415 million to respond to the humanitarian needs of 8 million Nepalis affected by the earthquake, over the next three months. This has since been revised to US$423 million. As of May 17, only 15.7% of flash appeal funds have been received. This includes $15 million from Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).

The bar graph below shows total funding received and requested per cluster (12 in total).

The Largest Donors & Recipients of Relief Funds in Nepal

By Puru Shah

In my previous post titled, "What is Wrong With Donations For Nepal's Earthquake Relief?",  I highlighted that a majority of the funds for the earthquake relief in Nepal are being channeled through INGOs, and bypassing the country's systems. To reiterate, I am not advocating for national and international donors to channel all funds through the PM Disaster Relief Fund.

Our team at One Stop Portal has developed a guideline that recommends splitting donations - 40% to NGOs, 30% to INGOs and 30% to the PM Relief Fund. Please visit our donate page to read in detail about why we believe a more balanced approach in delivering funds has a greater chance of success for recovery.

What is Unique About This Article?

A list of the largest overall donors or donors by category can be obtained easily from various sources such as the OpenNepal website. However, this article takes a closer look at where funds from each donor categories are going to. This data is valuable, and understanding it helps us make key informed decisions. But to my knowledge, it has not been published explicitly anywhere, so I have attempted to close that information gap by performing data analysis and sharing the findings with you.

In this post, we will review the largest donors and their recipients based on eight different categories:

1. Countries
2. Corporations
3. INGOs
4. Multilateral
5. Nepalese Government
6. Individuals
7. NGOs
8. Others

First of all, let us look at who the current largest overall donors are. 

What is Wrong With Donations For Nepal's Earthquake Relief?

By Puru Shah

[Note: This post has been edited since its first publication to include more data and analysis.]

As businesses, governments and organizations make announcements to donate large sums of money towards the earthquake relief in Nepal, what is your general reaction to it? Undoubtedly, most of us get a sense that more funds are flowing and ultimately the earthquake victims will get relief. Only if it were that simple, millions of Haitians would not be still living in tent cities despite more than $11 billion in aid relief.

More than $445 million has been pledged by various donors for the earthquake relief in Nepal out of which $139.3 has already been received (about 31%) as reported by UNOCHA Financial Tracking Service.

$445 million is a lot of money for aid relief and recovery for an impoverished country like Nepal. Should this news make Nepalese earthquake victims somewhat hopeful of a proper recovery?

The only problem (as shown in the graph below) is that most of the donations are bypassing national channels. And this is a big problem. It is the same problem that haunts Haiti till this day and has been attributed unanimously as being responsible for the recovery failure in Haiti after the earthquake.

Inefficient operation of Supply Chain and Logistics during Catastrophic events

By Nabin Kafle

Supply Chain management and logistics is one of the most affected areas after a catastrophic event. The regular local supply chain is disrupted and the flow from outside of the affected area becomes the victim of fear and fails to operate efficiently. Within the short time lapsed after the event, the supply chain is overwhelmed by the arrival of massive amounts of donated supplies. This adds to the bottlenecking of the under-performing disrupted supply chain network. Additionally, the donated supplies may include a large proportion of inappropriate goods or useless materials.

The incoming donation materials at the affected site might be so heterogeneous that sorting them in an appropriate manner becomes extremely difficult. The supplies might include items ranging from life-sustaining critical items like medicines and packed foods, to items that might not be an immediate requirement but can be used in the future like blankets received during a hot climate, to non-usable items like unusable clothes, items irrelevant or inappropriate to the event and even dangerous materials like expired food and medications. These items have been classified as High Priority (HP) items, Low Priority (LP) items and Non Priority (NP) items by Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). Number of studies and field investigation has shown that portion of LP and NP items during a catastrophic event is considerably higher. This also requires a greater effort to sort, distribute, label, as well as store the items.

A Closer Look at The Distribution of PM Disaster Relief Funds

By Puru Shah

On May 4, 2015, the Nepalese government released a total of Rs. 1.35 billion from the Prime Minister Disaster Relief Fund for the earthquake victims in 47 districts of Nepal.

This post takes a closer look at the distribution of relief funds in the 15 most earthquake affected districts of Nepal. In particular, it will analyze whether or not the distribution of relief funds was proportionate based on the number of deaths, injured individuals and damaged homes as reported by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

It is suggested that you refer to our previous post "A Visual Guide to The Earthquake Impact in Nepal" for the number of deaths and injured in the 15 most earthquake affected districts of Nepal. Similarly, refer to our previous post "Nepali Govt Releases Funding for Immediate Relief" for the relief aid amounts provided by the government.

Compensation For Deceased and Damaged Homes (Minor)

The two facts that will be important to recall, from our previous posts are that the Nepalese government had previously announced cash relief of:

• Rs. 140,000 each for the families of the deceased, and 
• Rs. 25,000 each for families who are able to reconstruct their house with minor repairs.

Based on these above promised cash relief amounts, verified number of deaths, injured individuals and homes with minor damages, this post will determine if the government aid is sufficient in the 15 most affected districts. 

Government Relief Aid Distribution vs Promised For Deceased