PESHAWAR: The work of Sarhad Rural Support Programme (SRSP) featured at the three-day second Asia Pacific Humanitarian Leadership forum at Deakin University in Melbourne in Australia.
SRSP Chief Executive Officer Masoodul Mulk presented the case of his organisation as an example of how capacity of local organisations could be built to address humanitarian issues. He said that building local organisational capacity to deliver humanitarian aid was one of the important goals of the International Humanitarian Movement. “The SRSP’s work in the humanitarian field is quoted as an important example of how this is being done,” he said. Masoodul Mulk highlighted the role the government of Pakistan has played in setting up this unique model by funding the long-term sustainability of organisations like SRSP, but its independence and autonomy were not compromised. He said the SRSP was set up as a development organisation to tap the capacity of self-help found in communities. He said that the SRSP had to move into the humanitarian sector to address the humanitarian imperative created by the earthquake of 2005, the floods of 2010 and the continuous temporarily displaced people (TDP) crisis.
He called for international aid community to “walk the talk”, and move away from rhetoric to addressing issues of equity in provision of institutional support to local institutions and a more inclusive data reporting that acknowledged the contribution of local organisations. He said that the strategy in the field must be a fit between response and context rather than adopting best practices from elsewhere and quoted important examples to stress the role of iteration, learning and adaption in the delivery of aid.