INSARAG: Brazil and Argentina discuss joint action in the region

The General Coordinator for Humanitarian Cooperation of the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE), Minister José Solla, and the Director of the National Center for Risk and Disaster Management (CENAD, acronym in Portuguese) of the Ministry of Regional Development , Mr. Armin Braun, met on April 12 ^th , with the President of the White Helmets Commission ( Cascos Blancos , in Spanish) and Argentina's political focal point for the International Sear ch and Rescue Advisory Group (INSARAG) of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) , Ambassador Sabina Frederic.

Both countries have been carried out dialogues about humanitarian response actions in disasters, especially in the scope of INSARAG, whose global network for emergency responses is organized according to three regions: Americas; Asia/Pacific; and Africa/Europe/Middle East. With 30 years of experience in developing methodology, guidelines, and high international standards for its urban search and rescue teams, INSARAG is dedicated exclusively to emergency responses in case of seismic events and collapsed structures.

In recent years, apart from the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic has been posing, humanitarian emergencies have been more strongly impacted by extreme events caused by hydrometeorological and climatological reasons related to climate changes. Given this new reality, there have been more and more discussions about the possibility that the urban search and rescue teams of the INSARAG network be endowed with greater flexibility in their responses to emergencies. To this end, they need to be prepared by developing relevant capabilities for specialized rescue in other types of extreme events, such as tropical cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons, floods, drought, fires, and forest fires.

In view of this, in January 2021, INSARAG approved the creation of the "Flexible Response Working Group" (FRWG) to develop the concept of "Flexible Response". The FRWG consists of three working subgroups with respective tasks:

(i) "Global Position", related to the operational concept of the flexible response, with 18 members selected by INSARAG in its three regions (for the Americas, representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay participate in this subgroup);

(ii) "Disaster Assessment Coordination Center - DACC)", related to guidelines and methodology of such organization, with 22 members (for the Americas, representatives of El Salvador, the United States, Haiti and Mexico); and

(iii) "Historical and Cultural Heritage", responsible for reviewing the project "UNESCO Guidelines on Cultural Heritage Response" and for drafting an INSARAG's "Technical Guidance Note" on the topic, with 11 members (from the Americas, representative of the United States).

The meeting in Buenos Aires is part of the Brazilian-Argentinian efforts in the Americas and globally to expand the scope of INSARAG's network beyond sending emergency response teams exclusively in case of earthquakes and collapsed structures. The goal is for the Group to include a possible "flexible response" to emergencies caused by other categories of major disasters resulting from hydro-meteorological and climatological phenomena (about 80% of the disasters that occur on the planet, of which earthquakes accounting for only 7%).

Haiti

On the occasion, the representatives also addressed the cooperation between the Brazilian multidisciplinary humanitarian mission, headed by CENAD/MDR, and the Argentinean humanitarian mission sent by the Cascos Blancos to the public hospital of Corail, in the Department of Grand'Anse, Haiti, after the earthquake that struck the country in August 2021.

The Cascos Blancos is the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs' organization dedicated to the design and implementation of humanitarian assistance, emergency care, and comprehensive disaster risk management.