A Survey of Programs:
Civil-Military Cooperation
in Disaster Management Education
By Jeff Lewis

One cannot be in this business and not know about the buzz going on about civil-military cooperation. While military can be involved in natural disasters—such as the mud slides in Venezuela in the closing days of 1999—this article explores more the complex humanitarian disasters where military are specifically requested to participate. In these situations, violence is paramount and the military is needed to provide an umbrella of security in addition to the technical skills and material resources it normally brings to the table. In order to cooperate more effectively in disaster management and response, both civilians and the military must be educated as to what disaster management is and then trained in methods of collaboration.

Cooperation is defined as association for common benefit. Pretty simple, right? Let’s explore that statement further within the context of disaster management. Who makes up the ‘civil’ side of the equation? Joining the ranks of the United Nations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—such as CARE, World Vision and the Red Cross—are: the host nation government (country where the disaster occurs); the local community; the victims; bi-lateral donors; religious leaders and organizations; regional economic alliances, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Economic Community of West African States; multi-lateral funding organizations, like the World Bank or International Monetary Fund; the media; and, to some extent, world opinion.

On the military side, one must include the host nation’s military, any regional forces with whom the host nation has treaties or agreements, opposition militaries within the host country, and the various national militaries that might make up a UN-mandated multi-national force in the event of a complex emergency. Now, we just need these groups to work together for their common interest.

What?! We need some education and training here!

To determine training requirements, one must first identify the common interest or interests of the various civilian and military players. Is it repair of infrastructure? Peace? Feeding the poor? Economic development? Free and fair elections? It is not as easy to determine as one would think. Rarely is there a common denominator that can be used as the universal goal for the groups to work toward, and, even more rare, to find a commonality that stretches over all situations. That everyone understands this point is a point of education unto itself.

It can get even more complicated. One group in the conflict may want the infrastructure to remain damaged in order to sway public opinion against the host government. Other groups may deem free elections a threat to regional stability. International politics may require that the host nation not be identified as a sovereign territory by any group and humanitarian assistance denied.

Without a common goal for the entire team of responders, it becomes increasingly difficult to provide any universal education and training doctrine. For this reason, the numerous programs that currently exist for education and training in disaster management are diverse, non-specific, and disjointed. Should it be disturbing that there are so many institutions teaching ‘disaster management’ but there is no global standard for the best, or at least a uniform, method for implementation of that management?

Education: What’s Out There?

There are many institutions providing some form of training in Disaster Management.

• Within the US federal government there is the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute’s Higher Education Project has as one of its goals ‘to encourage and support the spread of emergency management-related education in colleges and universities across the United States.”
• Many U.S. states also have their own emergency management agency. For example, the California Specialized Training Institute is the training arm of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Preparedness. CSTI provides extensive training on emergency management to people and organizations outside the state as well as California residents.
• Looking abroad, Emergency Management Australia conducts both training and conferences in disaster management with the mission of reducing “the impact of disasters and emergencies in Australia and its region.” The Australian Emergency Management Institute is the education and training arm of EMA.
• The Asian Disaster Preparedness Center in Thailand provides a year-round program of hazard and disaster management training, as well as international and regional conferences, workshops and seminars, e.g., the Fourth International Course on Community Based Approaches to Disaster Management in Bangkok, coming up in July.
• Each summer in the United Kingdom, the Cranfield Disaster Management Centre and the Oxford Centre for Disaster Studies present a Disaster Management Training Programme.

As for academic institutions, there are approximately 25 universities worldwide that offer graduate programs; 16 furnish bachelor’s degrees; 14 provide associate’s degree programs; 25 that offer certificate programs, concentrations, and minors; and 49 offering one or more courses in some aspect of hazard/disaster management. The Center of Excellence-supported program with the University of Hawaii is included in the last group (see “The University of Hawai‘i’s Certificate Program” this issue). A listing of these, with course and contact information, can be found at this web site.

Fewer institutions offer disaster management courses that address Civil-Military Cooperation, but they do exist and are located around the globe.

• Mu’tah University in Jordan was founded in 1981 as a national institution for civil and military higher education. The university has grown over the past two decades to where there is now a military wing and a civilian wing boasting a total of 27 departments.
• The United Nations has several departments that devote at least part of their training and education resources to civil-military cooperation. The Military-Civil Defense Unit, based in Geneva, gives both a basic and a staff course in civil-military cooperation to UN, foreign military, and key government personnel. The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the UN Staff College, the UN Institute for Training and Research all provide courses and/or workshops to further the knowledge and understanding of civilian and military personnel in disaster management.
• The Lester B. Pearson Peacekeeping Centre in Canada offers a wide range of courses to civilian and military personnel from all around the world. The current course list includes “Interdisciplinary Cooperation: The New Peacekeeping Partnership in Action” and “To Secure the Peace: Civil-Military Operations in Modern Peacekeeping.”
• Military training institutes in various countries also provide their students with everything from courses to specialties in civil-military relations and/or cooperation.

Defining the Role of the Civil-Military Specialist

It would be naïve to believe that the Center is the only institution working in this specialty area. The Center has created the Combined Humanitarian Assistance Response Training (CHART) course (see story this issue) and actively participates in many military exercises around the world promoting the benefits of a coordinated response. To date, however, this course has been taught to a predominantly military (and medical) audience.

The Center fills a definite niche in the field that no other institution based in the United States can claim. For example, it is tied directly to the Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific. None of the academic institutions have such a direct organizational link to the military while maintaining an independent and civilian side. None of the military training institutions have the civilian links to the UN, NGOs, IOs, and governmental organizations as the Center. Its congressional charter states that the Center of Excellence:

“…shall be used to provide and facilitate education, training, and research in civil-military operations, particularly in operations that require international disaster management and humanitarian assistance and operations that require coordination between the Department of Defense and other agencies.”

The Center’s participation in civilian efforts such as the SPHERE project—under which international minimum standards for health, nutrition, water, etc., are established by the world’s leading NGOs—allows it to continue working on both sides of the civil-military equation. By participating in the development of global standards and universal mechanisms by which the civilian and military players can communicate, cooperate and coordinate their respective activities during an emergency response, the disaster management aspect becomes more of an institutional function. How an individual organization manages itself from within is less relevant in the scheme of cooperation if the outward response is effective and efficient.

One of these mechanisms, which the Center has had operational experience in setting up in a complex emergency, is the Civil-Military Operations Center. The same facility in Europe is known as Civil-Military Cooperation Center. By whichever name one refers to them, the recognition that civil-military cooperation is vital has been documented in recent conflict situations such as Bosnia and E. Timor. These Centers are certainly going to continue into this new decade.

In an article about the civil-military cooperation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, author James J. Landon writes:

“In today’s complex world, international and non-governmental civil organizations have become increasingly important in the formulation of political, social, or economic solutions to world crises. In most cases, these organizations are a crucial part of long-term solutions. More often than not, they must take over economic and political development after a peace operation or formal military involvement has ended. The traditional guarantors of global security—military forces—must now find ways to work more closely with these various organizations.”

Michael Elmquist is Chief of the Military and Civil Defense Unit, Disaster Response Branch of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. He likewise writes about his experience in setting up the CMIC in E. Timor, “Civil-military cooperation starts from the top and that close contacts…are essential in a complex emergency.”

The point here is that civil-military cooperation is an essential part of disaster management and that the cooperation is not simply concentrated at the disaster site. For a civilian organization or a military force to ignore the need for cooperation would be disastrous for the whole response operation, but mostly for the disaster victims in receiving relief. Leaders, politicians, commanders, and everyone else involved in disaster response must realize that each level of decision- and policy-making must support the education and training process to ensure that civil-military cooperation provides the common benefit.

Making Coordination the Center’s Bias

This brings us back to the suggestion that all players in a disaster must have a common denominator of interest for maximum cooperation to occur. It is unlikely that all players in a disaster will or can agree on a common goal. For that reason, institutions that provide education and training in civil-military cooperation will have to concentrate solely on a specific group of players that it will train. This, by definition, will exclude other groups. While coordination and cooperation are the common denominators, training for a French military doctor, a UN logistics officer, and an Estonian government officer must be different, tailored to the level and point of entry into the disaster response each category of responder falls.

For example, the MCDU concentrates its training efforts on government and military personnel who are not the decision-makers, but who have influence over the decisions. In concentrating on ministry officials and ranks of major and colonel, MCDU cannot be efficient in also training ministers, generals or UN and NGO officials.

For the Center of Excellence, the concentration must remain with the U.S. military and portions of the UN and NGO communities. Religious leaders, local civil servants, multi-national forces, and so forth might not receive the CHART course, for example, although foreign nations are expected to be included in the future. The point is, neither the Center, nor any other institution, can be all things to all people. That should not disturb us. It would be impossible for any one single civil-military training module to be held up as the definitive model for all players, in all cases.

To continue holding its niche in this field, the Center might consider positioning itself as the repository for the various mechanisms and procedures that all of the different institutions develop, rather than developing one single doctrine on its own. Also, funding drives the programs as much as need does. This is reflected most obviously in that the civilian institutions provide classroom-type courses for education in disaster management coordination whereas the military provide training of the same sort through exercises. The civilian side tries to bring in the military to teach it the humanitarian side of disaster management; the military brings in civilians to train on how to coordinate with them during a live situation. Both means are effective but also inherently biased. Each side is utilizing its specialty not only in expertise of education and training forums but also in creating programs it can then justify to those with the money that fund them.

Unique and visionary are misnomers in this field, as applied to the Center’s being the only institution trying to bring the civilian and military players together in disaster operations. The Center is creating novel approaches to tackle the common issue. The Center is permitted by current legislative language to accept funds from both civilian and military sources. The Center’s uniqueness would lie in that its focus would be neutral, making coordination the bias and not the taking of one or the other side. Even with this visionary status, the Center must define its target audience.

The future of disaster management and humanitarian assistance is anybody’s guess, however, most indicators—violence, blatant human rights abuses, child soldiers—lead us to believe that there will be a continued, if not increased, need for military intervention in disasters and, thus, for civil-military cooperation. This need will be met by changes in military doctrine, increased training of militaries in humanitarian assistance, involvement of civilian organizations in the early planning stages of military actions where the end-state is acknowledged to be, from the outset, a handing over to the civilians, and distance learning through the Internet and correspondence courses. The more programs that educate and train the civilian and military personnel to focus on the need for cooperation, the better. The word has to spread to the point where doctrine, policy, and funding changes support the efforts for coordination.

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