Humanitarian Coordination: Nepal Earthquake 2015 Response

The April 2015 Nepal earthquake (also known as the Gorkha earthquake) killed more than 9,000 people and injured more than 23,000. Displacement, disease, food insecurity, psychosocial trauma, ruined livelihoods, and arrested education overwhelmed the ravaged city in the earthquake's aftermath. Four months into the struggle, the reconstruction process started. Despite the technological and scientific advancements of the 21st century, the global community has yet to develop the mechanisms to respond strategically and proficiently to natural disasters. These inefficiencies stem from longstanding systemic challenges-a lack of strategic leadership, a multitude of international agents attempting to fulfill their own mandates and missions, and the difficulty of holding agents accountable due to the voluntary nature of humanitarian response. This work aims to shed light on these systemic challenges in the humanitarian sphere and to analyze the effectiveness of the novel cluster approach, introduced in the 2005 Humanitarian Response Review commissioned by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).