Humanitarian civil‑military coordination (CMCoord) is the practical bridge that allows humanitarian and military actors to operate in the same crisis without compromising humanitarian principles or slowing down lifesaving work.

It ensures they share information, and deconflict movements so humanitarian access and neutrality are protected, and communities clearly understand who is doing what and why.

We speak to Ronaldo Reario, who works at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Jakarta, for the 30th anniversary of CMCoord:

For two decades, you worked in CMCoord. Which crisis shaped your practice the most?

The Haiti earthquake in January 2010 had the biggest impact on my CMCoord practice. It was a difficult deployment, personally and professionally.

We had a massive influx of “responders” which was posing several challenges as many arrived with little or no understanding of humanitarian principles, coordination, or NGO code of conduct.

That was difficult to manage. Including on the military side with about 36 foreign military forces that deployed bilaterally across the country.

But with challenges come opportunities. I realized that we needed a mechanism designed to strengthen humanitarian cluster leadership, decision‑making and accountability.

This is operationalized by matching humanitarian priority tasks, vetted/certified by the cluster leads, with available military capacities during the critical period within which the humanitarian task needs to happen to save lives.

Do you have an example of how CMCoord enabled safer or faster humanitarian action?

In Pakistan‑administered Kashmir, our base camp was around 5,600 feet above sea level, while the high-altitude affected villages reached 6,000 to 7,000 feet. Humanitarian teams were neither equipped nor trained to deal with such difficult terrain.

We asked the Division Commander if it was possible to assess those villages in 10 days as the winter was approaching fast. He turned to his Brigade Commanders and asked, “Can we do it in seven?”

What followed was nothing short of extraordinary: a complete house‑to‑house survey across those villages in just seven days.

We provided them with five to seven key questions. They collected and consolidated the data and handed it over to us.

That allowed us to revise the humanitarian appeal and plan our operations based on evidence we never could have obtained ourselves, not even in a month.

This demonstrates what militaries can achieve when they fully understand the humanitarian task that they can perform during the critical period.