Murshida Akhter, Humanitarian Specialist at UNFPA Bangladesh, noted that UNFPA is relatively new to anticipatory action. She presented that already in some operations UNFPA has defined an action plan during the preparedness phase that includes a readiness trigger.
She stressed the high importance of long-standing strong partnerships and local NGOs being well trained in humanitarian response. Cooperating with and training their implementing partners both in the preparedness phase as well as in targeting beneficiaries helped a lot in identifying the target beneficiaries for the later response operations. Ms Akhter also noted that these activities were supported well by available beneficiary data that was shared within UNFPA’s network of implementation partners.