Australian Defence Force Experience with Non-Government Organizations in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Operations

• Author: Evan Carlin
• Position: Lieutenant Colonel, Australian Defence Force
• Pages: 267-275

XVII

Australian Defence Force Experience with

Non-Government Organizations in

Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief

Operations

Evan Carlin*

Recent experience suggests that humanitarian assistance and disaster relief

operations are agrowth industry for military forces. In the last 12 months

alone, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has provided emergency aid to victims

of the Pakistan earthquake; the Indian Ocean tsunami; the Nias, Indonesia earth-

quake (in which nine ADF personnel died in ahelicopter crash); and Cyclone

Larry, acategory 5tropical cyclone that tore across the north Queensland coastline

of Australia in early 2006.

Figures from the World Health Organization's Centre for Research on Epide-

miology of Disasters show that from 1990 to 2003 there was a180% increase in the

number of people affected by natural disasters: 255 million people in 2003 up from

90 million in 1990. 1Between 1990 and 2000 in Asia alone there were 215 so-called

"non-complex" relief operations (floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc.,

where host nations were the primary responders).2Operation Shaddock, for

*Lieutenant Colonel, Australian Defence Force. The author is not authorized, nor does he

purport, to speak for the Australian government or the Australian Defence Force.