The NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq was established in Baghdad upon the initiative of a number of NGOs operating in the country that felt the need of creating a neutral space of discussion and dialogue amongst humanitarian agencies. Following the withdrawal of the UN from Iraq, NCCI increased its capacity and activities in order to facilitate coordination between NGOs and act as a conduit for the flow of information between NGOs, UN agencies, donors, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), Iraqi Authorities and emerging Iraqi NGOs.
NCCI established an interesting precedent that may be useful to other INGO coordination initiatives in the field.
The following paper is intended to present a general overview of how NCCI was set up, what it did and how it did it as well as the constraints it faced, in order to dissect a series of issues that could be relevant to future similar initiatives and to coordination bodies in general.
The paper advocates the usefulness of NGO coordination mechanisms in the field, as complementary to other coordination set-ups in a given country by the UN and/or national authorities. It also suggests that the focus of these groups should be on accountability and growing attention to the qualitative aspects of coordination; a series of ideas are given on how this could be achieved. Most importantly, it maintains that the experience of previous similar initiatives should/could serve as the main point of reference and that wider NGO Coordination bodies have a role to play in analysing and formalising this information for potential support and guidance to further initiatives.
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