Overview : Beginning in the second week of August 2017 Nepal experienced a period of sustained heavy rainfall (hydro-meteorological stations in three Terai districts recorded the heaviest levels of precipitation in 60 years) resulting in large scale adverse impacts on life, livelihoods and infrastructure. Flooding has affected already poor and vulnerable regions of Nepal. Although flood waters have now receded there are still large unmet humanitarian requirements across all sectors. For example, access to basic and comprehensive reproductive health (services including safe delivery and anti-and post-natal care remains a challenge in flood-affected areas. From a coordination perspective, the response to the Terai floods is now largely decentralised although national level coordination fora, such as Clusters, the Cash Coordination (CCG) and Community Engagement groups and the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), continue to play important roles particularly in regards to policy related issues. Decentralisation of the response has brought a number of coordination and accountability challenges. For example, the flow of information to Kathmandu levels actors is inconsistent, creating difficulties for the humanitarian community to properly understand the needs for humanitarian assistance, to what extent those needs are being met, and how consistently across various social and ethnic groups, as well as what are the remaining gaps. Additionally, the systematic flow of information from affected communities themselves has been almost non-existent. The Resident Coordinator’s Office will extend coordination and information management support to fold affected areas for a period of six months to help facilitate the coordination of ongoing humanitarian and recovery work, as well as ensure effective information flow to response decision makers at central level. |