ReliefWeb

Executive Summary

In 2020, in Bangladesh, COVID-19, cyclone Amphan, and monsoon flooding had collided to create complex crises, which was further deteriorated with capricious climatic behaviour - repeated heavy rain, tidal surge and floods.
Extreme rain left a third of the country inundated---the worst impacts seen in a decade and the longest lasting flooding since 1988. Addition to the reeling economies of the country made by the COVID-19, the climatic disasters cause an estimated loss and damage totalled around 832 million USD (cyclone Amphan at 130 million USD, monsoon flood 702 million USD) which includes impacts on electricity grids, schools, bridges, embankments, roads, drinking water sources, and local administration and community infrastructures.

Within the scope of countries humanitarian response framework, Bangladesh has turned to the international humanitarian community for coordination and funding. The Humanitarian Coordination Task Team (HCTT) put together two comprehensive humanitarian response plan, totalling the funding requested USD 65 million (USD 25m for cyclone Amphan and USD 40m for monsoon flood). The plans were to support the immediate the needs of food security, nutrition, shelter, WASH, gender-based violence, and child protection of 1.8 million affected people (1.093m flood and 0.7m cyclone affected people - considering double counting through multisectoral reach)) over four months for cyclone Amphan and nine months in flood affected areas.

Despite the humanitarian obligations and heed the call for humanitarian assistance in Bangladesh, humanitarian appeals continue to be underfunded. According to the HCTT’s Monitoring Dashboards (Cyclone Amphan 6 October 2020 and monsoon flood 30 November 2020) only 40% of the total request (30% of the flood Appeal and 55% cyclone Amphan HRP) has been funded. Reached only 60% of the targeted flood affected people, while the cyclone Amphan target exceed by 8%. Significant shortfalls remain for nutrition, WASH, and integrated GBV and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and child protection. Accumulated unmet needs of the affected people remain them living on the margins and are subject to some of the worst impacts.

In these context, the HCTT launched this review, and engage the Humanitarian Leadership Academy - Bangladesh to assess the needs and priorities of affected communities due to extended humanitarian situation, and to identifying response gaps and providing recommendations for humanitarian communities including Govt for: a) taking appropriate actions to address priority humanitarian needs, b) enhance effectiveness of ongoing humanitarian response, and c) smoothen connectedness between emergency response with upcoming recovery effort. Throughout January 2021, the Humanitarian Leadership Academy – Bangladesh had conducted this review, directly interacted with 185 people at different level, from affected communities up to senior level decision makers in Govt. UN, bi-lateral and multi-lateral donors, international and local NGOs. Reviewed and analysis available reports and documents and come up with the following findings and recommendations: