With a 7.9 score on the Richter scale, the earthquake which struck Peru on the 15th August 2007 shook up the country’s entire natural disaster response system. The magnitude of the event revealed the institutional and logistical limitations of Peru’s crisis response system particularly at the regional level.

The international community has been seeking to improve the capacity, predictability and accountability of humanitarian response processes through the implementation of the cluster approach. Approved by the IASC in 2005, it seeks to concentrate expertise, coordinate action and foster partnerships by grouping humanitarian organisations of the same field under the leadership of the UN or intergovernmental agencies.

However, when the Peruvian regional crisis response system broke down, and issues of coordination, predictability and efficiency came to the fore the cluster approach was not activated.  ODI’s ongoing research on the subject has put into light the difficulties surrounding both the state’s response and the implementation of the cluster approach in challenging political environments.

A combination of regional, national and international factors leads to a slow and inefficient crisis response. At the regional level, the fact that a new municipal term in office had started earlier in 2007 meant local authorities lacked the sufficient capacity to deploy response efforts. Field interviews conducted by ODI showed that disaster preparedness was not considered a priority but a voluntary initiative. At the national level, Alan Garcia’s cabinet chose to create a parallel national crisis response system that further undermined the regional system that forms part of the traditional modus operandi. In addition to the substantial technical errors which resulted from this new system, it multiplied the sources of information and leadership, complicating both the damage evaluation and action coordination fronts. Foreseeing that the activation of the cluster approach would potentially threaten the government’s political capital, Prime Minister Jorge del Castillo opposed its activation arguing that the government had the capacities to effectively respond. Therefore, there was a last minute attempt to stitch together the international and state response system through the Flash Appeal.

This led to the duplication of efforts and to significant challenges in compiling adequate needs assessments. Although most of the injured were evacuated and most of the affected people eventually received some form of help, this was mainly due to the presence of numerous NGOs in the country, a generous response from both the Peruvian people and the international community, the vicinity of a port and airport to the affected area and the lack of extensive damage to the main road leading to Lima. Next time these circumstances may not be in place and therefore the international community needs to better coordinate and align their efforts with the government prior to a crisis and avoid the deficiencies that reform in the humanitarian system has been seeking to remedy.

Although the IASC and OCHA have encouraged many evaluation papers and programmes on the cluster approach and it seems the issue of the affected state and its ownership of the responsibility towards its citizens has been overlooked. In this sense the institutional strengths of South American states like Peru could have acted as an obstacle to exogenously conceived humanitarian responses. As the IASC acknowledged, in order to apply the approach to all countries and to correct the potential efficiency gaps present within and without the cluster approach, further active learning will need to take place.