An ideal large-scale international humanitarian response operation would have all the civilian and military actors sharing a common understanding of each other’s capabilities and limitations, as well as their objectives and goals.  The ground reality, however, is characterized by situations wherein international actors from humanitarian organizations and military forces often find themselves uncoordinated and at times in competition with each other. While coordination among civilian and military actors is the easy answer to this conundrum, the greater challenge lies in achieving clarity on the focus of United Nations Civil-Military Coordination (UN-CMCoord) and the training and exercise programme that supports this.

The principal goal of humanitarian agencies is to assist the victims of an emergency. Part of the mission of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is to mobilise and coordinate effective and principled humanitarian action in partnership with national and international actors in order to alleviate human suffering in disasters and emergencies.
Coordination, however, must be done in a manner that guarantees "humanitarian space" and does not jeopardize the perceived neutrality and impartiality of humanitarian agencies. The loss of neutrality or impartiality increases the already significant security risk often faced by humanitarian aid workers and could hinder future access to people in need. This makes coordination imperative - a shared responsibility that ultimately redounds to greater benefits of common beneficiaries.

To address this, OCHA has adopted a civil-military coordination approach that relies heavily on information sharing, a careful division of tasks, and when feasible, collaborative planning. This approach envisions a coexistence relationship with the international militaries in most complex emergencies and a cooperative relationship between the international civilian and military responders in natural and technological emergencies. This is based on the fact that in the initial phases of conflict situations, military forces are extremely reluctant to include civilians in the planning process while in sudden onset natural and technological emergencies, the opportunity for planning is very limited.

UN-CMCoord Training & Partnership Programme

The UN-CMCoord Training & Partnership Programme is designed to address the need for coordination of the activities of international civilian humanitarian actors, especially humanitarian agencies, and international military forces in an international humanitarian emergency. An integral part of the Programme is forging partnerships with civilian and military organizations in training humanitarian and military professionals on UN-CMCoord to achieve a coordinated and coherent approach in responding to both natural disasters and complex emergency situations. 

• It is different from most training programmes in terms of both content and method as it strictly follows a mix of military and civilian participants, organizations represented and at least 20% representation of women in each course. This right mix of participants is critical to the success of the training and the establishment of an effective network.
• The training differs not only in what is presented, but also in how it is presented and by whom. The participants are the primary resource persons in the training. They share their expertise and experiences, and present the capabilities of their organizations within a framework facilitated by the course management team. Much of the learning is derived from the participants themselves.
• The philosophy behind this is that the diversity in the training sessions must reflect the diversity in the field. Sending and receiving states; governmental and non-governmental organizations; aid agencies and civil protection units, military and civil defence organizations, United Nations agencies and other intergovernmental bodies, as well as the Red Cross Movement, are invited to participate in the course. 
• The ability to gather this wide range of participants is due in large part to the generosity of our sponsors, which allows the participants to attend free of charge, and the growing recognition in the field of the operational value of the training and the network.
  

UN-CMCoord Support to Exercises

Every year a wide variety of organizations sponsor literally hundreds of exercises around the world. CMCS coordinates as appropriate with other sections and OCHA Regional Offices in the support to exercises. The aim is to ensure that humanitarian aspects of civil-military relations are included from the scenario and that the exercise planning process is reflecting a realistic humanitarian participation. It is also the opportunity to promote and raise awareness of military decision-makers and deployable personnel.

• Objectives, scenario and events list promotes UN-CMCoord
• Target audience - senior military commanders
• Access
• Likelihood of deployment and interaction with humanitarian organisations
• CMCS can participate in planning
• Additional expenses covered