Humanitarian Engineering : Innovative Approaches and Partnerships in Crisis Response

On May 9-13, key stakeholders across the global development community, including FIDIC , UN agencies, the World Bank, and international experts, met in Cyprus, under the sponsorship of the Government of Switzerland at a workshop on Challenges in Post Conflict and Reconstruction. The overall purpose was to identify how reconstruction of infrastructure and provision of essential services could be more effective, especially in countries, such as Lebanon and Jordan, facing a massive refugee crisis driven by the war in Syria. The attention of the international community is increasingly focused on maximizing effectiveness in crisis response. That is underscored in the communiqué of the recent G7 summit in Japan, and in the recent UN World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, which highlighted the need for the humanitarian and development communities to collaborate in addressing the special needs of growing numbers of people facing long-term crisis conditions. The Cyprus workshop was thus very timely, especially in identifying priority steps to optimize the critical role of procurement, on which the effectiveness of crisis response ultimately depends.