Against a backdrop of rising climate-fueled natural disaster activity that has displaced millions across the Caribbean, regional governments and international partners have taken a major step forward to close critical gaps in disaster response coordination. Over the past decade, increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events—including hurricanes, flash floods, wildfires and volcanic eruptions—have left millions of people displaced across the region, exposing deep flaws in how governments track and respond to displacement. Outdated, fragmented data systems have slowed emergency aid delivery, left vulnerable unregistered populations without support, and undermined long-term recovery planning, creating an urgent push for coordinated reform.
To address these unmet needs, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) gathered representatives from National Disaster Offices and regional stakeholders for a two-and-a-half-day workshop held in Bridgetown, Barbados from April 23 to 25. The gathering centered on upgrading regional capacity to collect, analyze, and deploy displacement data to improve disaster outcomes for affected communities, backed by funding from EU Humanitarian Aid through the regional Resilient Caribbean initiative.
A landmark achievement of the workshop was shared agreement to advance development of a harmonized Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for displacement data management. The new framework is being intentionally aligned with the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA)’s existing Damage Assessment and Needs Analysis (DANA) system, ensuring interoperability across existing regional infrastructure. Once fully rolled out, the standardized SOP will boost coordination and cut response times across the 13 participating Caribbean nations, while also creating more robust data to inform long-term community recovery planning.
Barbados’ Minister of Home Affairs and Information Gregory Nicholls opened the workshop by emphasizing the human-centered core of the reform effort. “For Barbados, the guiding principle is simple: Families first,” Nicholls said. “When disaster strikes and systems are stretched to breaking point, reliable data allows first responders to locate vulnerable families faster, match aid to actual on-the-ground needs, and protect the dignity of displaced people. Displacement data must always serve people, not bureaucratic processes.”
Throughout the workshop, participants got hands-on experience with a suite of specialized tools designed to strengthen end-to-end displacement data management. Attendees tested and reviewed IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM), the IOM Shelter Portal, and KoboToolbox, a platform built for rapid field data collection during emergencies. Trainers also led demonstrations of advanced geospatial analysis and planning tools, including the Copernicus Emergency Management Service and MapAction, to build national capacity for more accurate spatial mapping of displacement.
Lessons drawn from CDEMA’s After Action Reviews following Hurricanes Beryl and Melissa, paired with first-hand national-level experiences from across the region, helped outline clear shared priorities for the new SOP framework. Top priorities identified include expanding pre-disaster baseline data to establish more accurate displacement benchmarks, standardizing inconsistent definitions of displacement and shelter categories across nations, and streamlining information sharing between local shelters, national emergency operations centers, and regional coordination systems.
Patrice Quesada, IOM’s Caribbean Coordination Officer and Chief of Mission for Barbados, framed the workshop as a critical investment in proactive preparedness rather than reactive response. “Preparedness is about learning from experience,” Quesada explained. “It is really about anticipating the next storm, not just responding to the last one. To do that well, we need to build trust and shared experience between expert teams across the region, so that when disaster strikes, we can rely on each other to act fast.”
Regional representatives highlighted the tangible, life-saving benefits of adopting a unified approach to displacement data for small, hazard-prone Caribbean states. Sashagaye Vassell, a Planning Analyst at Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, noted that the standardized system will remove coordination barriers that have slowed aid in past disasters. “We are very prone to various hazards, and we have a lot of vulnerable people across our region,” Vassell said. “With this SOP, Caribbean states can better coordinate among ourselves to support the vulnerable and find targeted solutions to respond efficiently and effectively.”
The workshop also addressed long-standing, underdiscussed challenges in displacement response, most notably the difficulty of identifying and supporting displaced people who never register for official assistance. Livingston Pemberton, National Disaster Coordinator for Saint Kitts and Nevis’ National Emergency Management Agency, explained that unregistered displaced people are often entirely cut off from life-saving aid. “Sometimes displaced persons are not registered, making it very difficult to reach out to them,” Pemberton said. “If you are not able to capture them within the system, it is very difficult to render the assistance that they need.” He added that the new SOP directly addresses this gap by providing clear definitions and standardized methodologies for capturing all displaced people, allowing governments to share accurate data with national and regional response mechanisms and help affected people return to normalcy far faster.
Participants also highlighted the critical importance of ethical, culturally sensitive, people-first data collection that centers the needs and experiences of diverse affected communities. Yemi Knight, founder of AnchorBridge Environmental Inc., emphasized that disaster survivors are in crisis when data is collected, requiring intentional cultural competence from data collection teams. “Data collectors must understand the sensitivity of the situation,” Knight said. “A person has just gone through a disaster, and you may meet different types of people from varying backgrounds, so you have to have the cultural sensitivity to interact with them respectfully.”
Beyond meeting immediate shelter and emergency needs, attendees discussed the far-reaching societal impacts of disaster displacement that standardized data will help address. Simon Alleyne noted that effective displacement response goes far beyond rebuilding physical structures. “There are a lot of regional examples of people being displaced,” Alleyne said. “It is more than just giving a person back a home. It is also ensuring that they can be reintegrated into society, including access to employment and protection of their rights as citizens.”
Official statistics underscore the urgent need for this coordinated reform: between 2012 and 2021 alone, disasters triggered an estimated 5.14 million new cases of internal displacement across the Caribbean. In just the past five years, approximately 2.6 million people have been affected by extreme weather and geologic hazards, reflecting the growing complexity of disaster response in one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions.
IOM Caribbean officials framed the Barbados workshop as a transformative milestone in building data-driven, people-centered disaster management systems across the region. Upcoming next steps will focus on scaling up national capacity through targeted training for National Disaster Office staff, covering data collection and analysis, vulnerability assessments, full-scale disaster response simulation exercises, and specialized training in Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM).
Taken together, these coordinated initiatives aim to build a more connected, prepared, and climate-resilient Caribbean that can effectively protect vulnerable communities and respond to future disasters with speed and equity.
