Delineating the Aid-niching Concept: the Typhoon Haiyan Context

Disaster response in the Philippines involves various actors – national and international, government and non-government, for profit and non-profit institutions – from a disaster’s onset to the recovery stage; this is especially true in the case of Typhoon Haiyan, which made history as the strongest to ever hit the land. Using the Typhoon Haiyan context, this paper seeks to show that aid-niching exists in the early disaster response stage and in post-disaster recovery programs albeit with basic differences. Conventional research was used, specifically analysis of secondary materials, building up on the concept of aid-niching in early disaster response that was first elaborated on in an earlier paper by the authors. Aid-niching (Santiago, et al., 2016), which is the confluence of focused and specialized provision of relief aid and services, voluntarily given and independently-determined by donor organizations, takes place in early disaster response and in the post-disaster recovery stages. In the latter stage, however, aid-niching is subject to certain legal limitations, and requires community participation, coordination among responding agencies and the community, and a structured recovery process. The concept of aid-niching in early disaster response that was first identified and labelled as such by the authors exists also in the post-disaster recovery stage. The authors identify certain elements that mainly exist in the recovery stage, and use these elements as a basis for asserting the need for the Philippine government to revisit its laws and related issuances on disaster, and clarify, if not revise, its regulatory framework on disasters.