Keynote Address by Minister For Defence, Dr Ng Eng Hen, at the World Humanitarian Summit Global Forum on Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination 2015 on 13 Apr 2015

Assistant Secretary-General Kang,

Distinguished Participants,

Ladies and Gentlemen.

First, let me greet all of you attending this World Humanitarian Summit Global Forum on Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination a very warm welcome. Singapore is honoured to be able to co-host this Global Forum with UN OCHA. I believe the discussions here will help shape the agenda of the UN World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, which I believe will be a landmark meeting that will spur the development of more effective and efficient global networks for humanitarian aid.

One of the hallmarks of this new millennia has been the increasing frequency of reported natural disasters and humanitarian crises. Accompanying this too has been the increase in multinational efforts to help affected countries. You only have to look at the past few years and the dailies and the headlines, and you will find that true.

Increasing Role of Militaries in HADR Efforts

Especially for people living in the Asia-Pacific area, these occurrences are even more frequent. Not surprising because 70% of natural disasters do occur within Asia, and within a seven-hour flight time from Singapore. And one of the things that have occurred too is that militaries have increasingly been deployed in these multinational Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) efforts. Why has this happened? I think for a few reasons. One, better information - we now have a greater ability to assess more quickly with modern technology, and sometimes even predict the entire scale of the crisis. Whether it is modern satellite technology, social media, crowd-sourcing and other tools, they provide us the ability to comprehensively assess what the affected country would be up against. And instead of data dribbling in, we can now have a quick and accurate assessment. This information travels world-wide within seconds. And in that context, I think it becomes hard to justify piecemeal responses. Look over the last few years in terms of the typhoons. We are tracking satellite data, weather data, able to predict landfall, what the assessed damage will be.

And I think this leads to the second reason. The ability to size up accurately the scale of destruction and the needs correspondingly and this often leads to the realisation that the affected country would not have the wherewithal, even after amassing all the capacity of its military and civil disaster agencies, to respond adequately to the crisis. So even before the crisis or when it occurs, the affected country quickly realises that it is overwhelmed. External help would be needed. And I think this is true of all countries, large or small. So whether it was Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, Hurricane Katrina in the US or the Sichuan earthquake in China - the scale and rapidity of destruction overwhelmed local resources. For these disasters, the SAF and Singapore were involved.

The third reason is that only militaries have that ability to respond quickly - the "spare capacity" if you like – when crises strike. But all of us know that militaries were not set up or organised optimally to respond to disasters. Military platforms are expensive to deploy in comparison to civilian assets. They are too well protected and have far more capabilities than are required for most civilian missions. Nonetheless, no other organisations whether locally or globally can respond with the speed and effectiveness that militaries do in the immediate aftermath of any disaster.

These three reasons have de facto pushed militaries globally to become more engaged in HADR operations, Singapore included. The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) deployed our first contingent overseas to provide humanitarian assistance in 1970. For those of you who have memories that far back, this was in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) when it was hit by a cyclone. At that time, it was a 47-man team. From 1970 to 2000, the SAF participated in 13 HADR missions. But within the last decade, we have deployed 20 HADR missions. Not only more missions but larger deployments – our largest relief effort thus far was for the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, when we deployed some 1,500 personnel, three Landing Ship Tanks, 12 helicopters and eight transport and utility aircraft.

The SAF has deployed both near and far. In Kelantan to support flood relief efforts in Malaysia over the course of last year and this year; firefighting operations in Chiang Mai, Thailand, just last month; four Chinook helicopters in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in the US in 2005; more than 100 personnel and C-130 and KC-135 aircraft following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand.

And I am sure that the SAF is not alone. You come from many countries and for your own countries, your own militaries, you have been involved in more HADR missions as well. And in fact, at the last ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting, a major focus was to adopt Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for HADR missions because ASEAN militaries have been increasingly involved. In global fora, like this one, military HADR is a common topic.

But this is what I would pose to this august group this morning: even if we accept that militaries need to respond for HADR missions, I think there is much scope to improve their effectiveness. There is, as yet, no clearly defined military doctrine for HADR efforts which spells out the key deliverables of missions, the scope of operations, and just as importantly, a clear transition to civilian organisations. I guess my point is even if the militaries have to do it, it does not mean that we should just enter it willy-nilly without an understanding of what the structure is. Because without this military doctrine and accompanying SOPs, we run the risk of military HADR efforts becoming unsustainable, ineffective and inefficient. It is an article of faith that the militaries should respond. But it is an article of faith. And if the militaries do not respond, I think you have a bigger crisis on your hand if you do not use this time to consolidate and to have a clear road map of what this civilian-military partnership should be.  

Evolving a military doctrine for non-traditional security threats, scoping our operations, and maximising our efforts therefore have been the focus of SAF efforts in recent years. And this is why we are co-hosting this Global Forum with UN OCHA. This explains too the set-up of regional agencies such as the one that you are in, such as the Information Fusion Centre (IFC) here and the Changi Regional HADR Coordination Centre (RHCC).

The issues of respecting the sovereignty of countries to be assisted and the responsibilities and the limits of intervention by assisting countries I think have been well articulated. Less so, the actual workings of assistance. Here, I would propose three broad parameters that should guide military assistance for HADR operations. First, militaries should not replicate what civilian organisations can do better. I think that makes a lot of sense. But, we do it all the time. Let me give you a simple example – it makes little financial sense for military aircraft and ships to transport items like blankets and even food from developed countries to areas of need. And that is exactly what we do each time a crisis hits. We spend considerable resources collecting all these civilian items, using expensive military ships and planes to transport them to developing countries. Where just simple money transfers and the purchasing power or wired money could accomplish so much more. And civilian agencies are much more equipped to effect, whether it is the transfer of monies or distribution of essentials to people in their time of need.

Second, militaries should confine themselves to critical windows of need in the immediate aftermath following disasters. The time that civilian agencies need to take to gear up to take over. And third, even for this scoped intervention, militaries will need to build up information hubs and network with civilian organisations pre-emptively, if they are to be effective in their immediate responses as well as transit operations to civilian agencies. You need that sense-making to be able to respond in the first critical moments when a crisis hits, but there should be clear plans of how to transit to civilian organisations.

It is difficult to do, I recognise that. But the SAF has been doing what it preaches. It has increased its engagement with agencies like the Singapore Red Cross and Mercy Relief, who are playing an increasing role in regional disaster relief efforts. Singapore is today also home to the regional offices of a number of international NGOs such as World Vision International and Save the Children. Our local think tanks such as the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) also play useful roles in providing thought leadership on humanitarian and development issues. RSIS, which MINDEF facilitates, is a supporting partner for this Global Forum and hosts a Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies that looks at issues such as climate change, resource security and HADR.

Singapore as a Hub for Security Cooperation on Non-Traditional Security Challenges

Through all of these combined efforts of both the SAF and civilian local and international agencies, Singapore has de facto become a regional hub for HADR efforts, as well as for security cooperation on other non-traditional security challenges. 

For example, the multinational IFC which I mentioned earlier that we host here at the Changi Command and Control Centre is a good example. We now have International Liaison Officers from 15 countries from around the world permanently stationed here. They work together at the IFC, they use data analytics for the maritime information collated from 65 maritime agencies from about 35 countries, as well as more than 300 shipping companies, to provide useful information to all its partners. In other words, they receive different streams of information, they sense-make, combine it into a coherent whole, and then push out products to stakeholders.

Similarly, the Changi RHCC set up in September last year is working on the same model to enhance military-to-military coordination in disaster response. We have partner countries and let me name them: Australia, Brunei, China, France, Laos, New Zealand, the Philippines and Thailand. And these countries have already accredited liaison officers or points of contact to the RHCC. Also located here at the Changi Command and Control Centre, the RHCC will work closely with other key stakeholders like the UN OCHA and the ASEAN Coordinating Centre on Humanitarian Assistance,  to enhance civil-military coordination in disaster response in the region.

The SAF will step up its efforts to foster stronger military-military and civil-military collaboration so that we can respond more effectively to disasters. Singapore co-organised with UN OCHA the first Asia-Pacific Conference on Military Assistance to Disaster Relief Operations (APC-MADRO) in 2006. The APC-MADRO process, which saw over 30 countries participate in a series of conferences, culminated in the "Asia-Pacific Regional Guidelines for the Use of Foreign Military Assets in Natural Disaster Response Operations", and this serves as a key reference guide for disaster response in this region.

This Global Forum is the third event that we have co-hosted with UN OCHA over the past decade. We look forward to doing more with our civilian partners.

The Way Ahead for Civil-Military Coordination

I am therefore very much heartened by the strong participation in this Global Forum. It affirms that our evolving military doctrine is robust, responsive and correctly scoped. I am also happy to note the creation of a multi-stakeholder Regional Consultative Group (RCG) on Humanitarian Civil-Military Coordination for Asia and the Pacific, and there will be an introductory session of this RCG taking place here at the Changi Command and Control Centre on April 15th.

Apart from the RCG, efforts like the biennial ASEAN Regional Forum Disaster Relief Exercise, which will take place next month, and the recent MPAT Tempest Express 26 workshop in early April also build capacity in concrete and practical ways. I am happy to note that the Changi RHCC will also be hosting a disaster relief table-top exercise for regional militaries later this year.

Ladies and gentlemen, the scale of disasters requires the combined efforts of civilian and military organisations for effective response. We must leverage on the use of technology to enable better information sharing and build closer networks between civil and military players. For instance, the RHCC's OPERA Command and Control Information System can take data from a wide range of sources, fuse it together and disseminate it to partner militaries and civilian organisations like UN OCHA and AHA to enable more effective relief efforts.

Conclusion

Partnerships are key and these will bring knowledge, capacity and expertise to bear on the enormous challenges at hand. There is clearly still scope to improve civil-military coordination in humanitarian response efforts, and I hope that the discussions at this Forum will generate innovative and bold solutions that can feed into the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016.

Thank you very much.

More Resources

• Singapore and the United Nations Co-Host Forum to Discuss Enhancing Civil-Military Coordination in Humanitarian Efforts