Humanitarian agencies invited to support “groundbreaking” deployment in the Horn of Africa

The Sphere Project, People In Aid and HAP International have invited humanitarian agencies to financially support a joint deployment aimed at bringing increased quality and accountability to the humanitarian response in the Horn of Africa.

The initiative, qualified as “groundbreaking” by its proponents, consists in jointly deploying a team of four staff to support aid actors in the region to deliver a humanitarian response that meets accepted standards of quality and accountability.

To achieve this, the team will support learning activities, advocate for quality and accountability with relevant stakeholders and document and share good practice.

The team will be deployed to Nairobi for an initial three-month period. It will be hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and its work will cover both Kenya and Somalia. The focus of the work may be enlarged to include Ethiopia during a second three-month phase of the deployment.

The joint deployment is costed at CHF 566,000 (or USD 614,000). “The invitation to support it financially has been targeted first to agencies which are members of the governing structures of the Sphere Project, People In Aid and HAP,” says Sphere Project manager John Damerell. “They have the opportunity to show their commitment to this unprecedented collaboration before the wider donor community is involved.”

The Sphere Project, People In Aid and the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP) International are the three leading global initiatives to improve quality and accountability in the humanitarian sector through the definition and dissemination of humanitarian standards.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there are currently 13,3 million people in need of assistance in the four countries of the Horn: Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti.

Noting that “This will be the first joint mission of the sector’s three foremost standards initiatives,” the invitation to support the deployment explains that “In the Horn, we will not only seek to improve the effectiveness of the current response but will work towards the incremental improvement of quality and accountability in future humanitarian responses.”

The joint quality and accountability team’s terms of reference are the result of a joint assessment mission conducted in August 2011, and are a “direct response to requests from the UN” and other humanitarian agencies “to support the actors in the region.”

The team is expected to “work together in a cohesive way, engaging in joint and specific expert activities as appropriate rather than as representatives of three separate initiatives who happen to be based together,” the terms of reference state.

The joint deployment to the Horn of Africa is part of an ongoing effort to increase collaboration between leading initiatives to improve quality and accountability in the humanitarian sector.

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