Letter from Valerie Amos, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, to the members of the South Sudan NGO Forum (Feb. 2015)
International organisations have been providing relief in the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt) since the war in 1967. Due to the occupation, intermittent conflict and general economic decline, between 1993 and 2003, the oPt received USD 6 billion in international aid - half of these funds...
Summary notes on the MENA NGO fora meeting, held in Amman (Jordan) on July 2-3, 2014
Following the signing of the Geneva Accords on Afghanistan in April 1988 and the subsequent withdrawal of Soviet military forces, the United Nations Office for Coordination in Afghanistan (UNOCA, changed to UNOCHA in 1993) was formed to administer the Afghanistan Emergency Trust Fund established by...
Networks clearly have wide-ranging applications in the humanitarian sector, yet surprisingly little has been written on the strategic development and management of networks with the humanitarian sector in mind. In this Background Note, we address the question of what networks actually do from this...
This study takes a fresh look at coordination dynamics by exploring two situations that were noteworthy both for the difficult challenges humanitarian organisations faced and for their innovative responses. The cases shed light on coordination in general and two contexts in particular: coordination...
The Gulf War involved, in effect, two humanitarian upheavals rolled into one. The first was the flight of some 850,000 third country nationals and 300,000 Palestinians, from Kuwait and Iraq mostly into Jordan in the weeks following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. The second was the...
General Assembly Resolution 46/182 led to the creation of the Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA). It focuses on the strengthening of the coordination of humanitarian emergency assistance of the United Nations.
The information pack for new members of PHF provides relevant information to INGOs who have recently joined the Pakistan Humanitarian Forum (PHF), as well as information for new staff or partners of PHF members. The pack includes: PHF vision, mission and mandate; an introduction to the PHF core...
Ce guide a été élaboré dans le cadre du programme de soutien d’ICVA aux forums d’ONG. Il dresse une liste de bonnes pratiques et prodigue des conseils aux forums de coordination d’ONG qui cherchent à engager et fidéliser leurs membres. Ce guide n’est pas exhaustif, mais il dégage un certain...
Southern Sudan has presented a unique operating environment for the NGO community for the better part of 22 years. During the civil war, Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) defined the space for NGO activity regardless of participation in OLS itself; and since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace...
This Guide is not meant to be a definitive “how to” manual, but it focuses on issues and areas to consider when undertaking NGO coordination and when setting up an NGO coordination body. It is an entry point into the world of NGO coordination – an area of humanitarian response that is vast in...
The peace agreement and the establishment of a government in south Sudan pose new challenges to established means of NGO coordination. Working under a tripartite agreement between the UN, Government of Sudan (GoS) and the SPLM meant that NGOs, which came under the umbrella of the UN, were unequal...
When it accepted the introduction of the cluster approach in pilot countries in 2005, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) called for an external evaluation to be performed after two years, to assess the mechanism’s progress and effectiveness. In 2007 the IASC designed the terms of reference...
NGOs are widely recognized as key actors in an effective, efficient and accountable emergency response because they are frontline implementers for the majority of humanitarian operations. As such, the appropriate engagement of NGOs within humanitarian leadership is a critical component for success....
This guide has been developed as a “hands-on” resource to help you to use the recently developed Consortium of British Humanitarian Agencies (CBHA) competencies framework in all aspects of working with your staff – we’ve called this the Employee Life Cycle. We have designed the guide so that you can...
As nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) have burgeoned throughout the developing world, they have become an undeniably powerful “third sector.” These organisations deliver services, build infrastructure, and advocate for policy change. NGOs have begun to establish and participate in networks within...
Humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are increasingly collaborating through inter-organi- zational structures such as coalitions, alliances, partnerships, and coordination bodies. NGO’s information technology coordination bodies are groups of NGOs aimed at improving the efficiency of...
Drawing on our experiences in developing a new governance model for the Canadian Health Network, in this paper we argue that there is currently no agreement about a prescriptive or ideal model of non-profit governance. Rather we suggest that within the current diversity of thought about governance...
This paper starts out with a cursory overview of coordination experiences by major players in the humanitarian world (Section 2). The aim is only to indicate the wealth of experience there, not to offer a critical analysis of it all. The review indicates that coordination in and by host governments...
This guidance document provides a very detailed list of what to do when facilitating cluster coordination meetings. Many of the elements will not be relevant in all contexts nor to all NGO coordination bodies. Many of the actions required to facilitate a cluster coordination meeting, however, are...
Since independence, Haiti has experienced decades of political turbulence and violence, during which the government was unable to - and some argue not supported to - provide for the Haitian people. The Haitian people have learned to look to non-governmental organisations (NGOs), rather than the...
ICVA has been supporting and facilitating NGO coordination since the 1990s. A key aim of ICVA is to help improve humanitarian preparedness and response, and increase the effectiveness of NGO coordination mechanisms in humanitarian contexts. In 2014 ICVA convened three regional meetings of NGO...
This note clarifies leadership and coordination arrangements in the situation where a complex humanitarian emergency or natural disaster is taking place, a Humanitarian Coordinator has been appointed, and a UNHCR-led refugee operation is also underway. The detailed accountabilities, roles and...
