Opportunity Knocks: Realising the potential of partnerships in the Nepal earthquake response

In the Oxford online dictionary, the definition of ‘opportunity knocks’ is given as ‘a chance of success occurs’ and this is true of partnership in the Nepal earthquake response: for the first time in Nepal and for one of the first times in response to a large-scale disaster, the international humanitarian community has been united in its early adoption of partnership as the dominant modality of providing relief and recovery. At the time of writing, the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) has acknowledged the importance of using and not replacing local capacity, and it is hoped that the findings from this study will provide practical support to efforts to ‘localise’ humanitarian response.

While there have already been several strategic reviews of the earthquake response conducted by members of the international humanitarian system, this study is different in that it seeks to capture and amplify the perceptions of national responders about partnership performance in the earthquake response and how the international humanitarian system can provide better and more predictable support for disaster response in the future.