Highlighting areas of focus regarding emerging Customs-related challenges in Humanitarian Logistics and the Relief-Chain: A Perspective from Pakistan

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether Customs-related challenges in the Relief Chain, emanating out of Pakistan, are different from the current international consensus on what these challenges entail. Customs is one of the most crucial links in the Relief Chain, having a direct impact on the pace of the humanitarian response in a disaster affected area. It thus becomes critical to study Customs-related challenges in Humanitarian Logistics, which by its very definition aims to provide humanitarian relief in an efficient, cost-effective and hence rapid fashion. This is especially relevant for Pakistan, which is a country with a long history of disasters, both natural and man-made. After establishing a warrant for this research based on an academic literature review, this paper goes on to formulate an international consensus on what the most important Customs-related challenges are in the eyes of experts, policy makers and academics in the field. This is done via a qualitative analysis of U.N. instruments and initiatives, academic journal articles, reports by international humanitarian organizations and regional seminars on the topic. Common themes are identified and congregated in a comparative table, establishing a baseline for further analysis. After this, a keyword search on Relief Web is conducted in order to gain an idea of the on-the-ground Customs-related issues faced by personnel working in this field worldwide. Furthermore, an interview protocol is used to determine what the biggest Customs-related challenges facing Pakistan in this context are. Lastly, all Customs-related challenges in the Relief Chain, identified throughout this report, are aggregated together in the form of one comprehensive comparative table in the last part of this paper. The results lead to the conclusion that on-the-ground Customs-related challenges in Pakistan, as well as in different humanitarian spaces around the world, are much bigger in their scope than the current international consensus on this topic would have us believe. Especially in the case of the U.N. Model Agreement on Customs Facilitation, it is discovered that the document only covers eleven out of the twenty-nine Customs-related challenges identified via this research paper