To date there has been little formal, empirical research that has been conducted on capacity building for disaster risk management (DRM), and as a result international actors lack robust, evidence-based guidance on how capacity for DRM can be effectively generated at national and local levels. This report on Pakistan is part of a research project been designed as an initial step towards filling that knowledge and evidence gap.Two programmes emerged as appropriate case studies:

UNDP’s One UN DRM project
Community World Service Asia’s (CWSA) Capacity Building Programme

Upon closer investigation the team noted that while CWSA was a small operation, they had a positive reputation amongst the humanitarian community, with a significant part of their operations on capacity building for DRM. CWSA’s partnerships with global initiatives such as The Sphere Project and HAP (in the SHA programme) enabled them to become capacity builders for DRM to INGOs, their implementing partners and to a lesser degree with UN agencies, Red Cross and government. CWSA also offered community level trainings and from the available literature seemed to excel in making training sustainable at both organisational and community levels. The One UN DRM programme provided a complete contrast in terms of size of operation, budget, type of organisation and focus, with DRM being just one component of a large, complex programme. The combination of the two initiatives reached from national to community levels and was deemed to be an opportunity for rich findings for the fieldwork report.