RSIS Seminar by Mr Said Faisal, Visiting Senior Fellow, RSIS; and Senior Advisor to Minister/Head of BNPB (National Disaster Management Agency of Indonesia)

Lecture Abstract:

The ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA Centre) is an intergovernmental organisation, established by the ten ASEAN Member States with the aim to facilitate cooperation and coordination of disaster management amongst ASEAN Member States. The Agreement on the Establishment of the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management was signed by ASEAN Foreign Ministers on 17 November 2011, and witnessed by the Heads of States of all ten ASEAN countries. In operationalising its mandate, the AHA Centre primarily works with the National Disaster Management Organisations (NDMO) of the ASEAN Member States. The AHA Centre also partners with international organisations, private sector, and civil society organisations, such as the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the United Nations, and AADMER Partnership Group. Said Faisal was appointed the inaugural Executive Director of the AHA Centre for a term of five years from 2011 to 2016. In this seminar Said Faisal will reflect on his experience establishing the coordination centre, working with the Conference of the Parties to implement his vision and the challenges faced in operationalizing its mandate.

About the Speaker:

Said Faisal has more than 15 years of senior management and leadership experience in government, international and regional organizations. He was a former Executive Director of the the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (the AHA Centre), an agency that is responsible to coordinate the overall effort of 10 countries of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in disaster management. As the first Executive Director of the AHA Centre, he was tasked to set up, build and fully operationalise the newly established organisation from the very beginning. Prior to that, he worked with the President’s Delivery Unit for Development, Monitoring & Oversight of Republic of Indonesia.

Following the Indian Ocean Tsunami disaster in December 2004, he was appointed as Deputy Minister/Head of Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency for Aceh and Nias (BRR Aceh-Nias), a ministerial level agency of the Government of Indonesia mandated to coordinate and implement the overall rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts. He also served as Senior Advisor to the Special Envoy of Secretary General of ASEAN and Head of Operation of ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis disaster in Myanmar.

In the wake of Asian financial crises in 1997-1998, Mr. Faisal worked as Senior Manager at the Jakarta Initiative Task Force, an agency established by the Government of Indonesia and supported by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank for accelerating corporate debt restructuring through mediation as a commercial dispute resolution process between debtors and creditors. Throughout his career, he also worked at the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Jakarta, Indonesia as well as Phoenix Home Life, a financial services company, in Chicago, USA.