Context
Overview of transition context
The CCCM Cluster was activated in Iraq in mid-2014 as part of the Level 3 humanitarian response to the ISIL crisis. The crisis started in 2013, with major population displacements happening from mid2014 onwards, and officially ended with the military defeat of ISIL in Mosul in December 2017. Over 6 million people were internally displaced in Iraq. At their height in 2017, 135 formal IDP camps were open across Iraq, with over 800,000 people displaced into camps and many more into informal sites.
Considerable efforts have been made by the Government of Iraq with support of international actors to promote and support reconstruction and returns, with substantial rehabilitation of housing, reinstatement of services, and mine clearance in areas of origin.
By 2019, the humanitarian situation in Iraq had considerably improved, in parallel with improvement in the security and economic crises that resulted from the conflict. At the start of 2020, 1.4 million people were still displaced, of whom 280,000 were living in 67 IDP camps. A scale-down and exit of the InterAgency Standing Committee mechanisms supporting collective international humanitarian action in Iraq was being initially discussed, while recovery and durable solutions work was being upscaled.
On the direction of the Humanitarian Coordinator, the activities included in the 2020 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) were narrowed, with activities deemed to be “durable solutions” in nature removed from the HRP as a humanitarian document. This narrowing of activities was repeated in the 2021 HRP, removing, for example, reconstruction of highly damaged housing (being undertaken by recovery and development actors), and, for CCCM, the removal of the Community Resource Centre (CRC) modality in return areas1 .
The 2020 HRP was anticipated to be the last, and in August 2020 all Clusters were requested to draft an initial outline of a transition strategy. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant economic impact and exacerbation of humanitarian need, and political situation in Iraq, meant that an HRP was drafted for 2021 and again for 2022. The discussion on the end to whole-of-system humanitarian response and deactivation of the IASC coordination mechanisms supporting this was paused. With humanitarian funding steadily decreasing, these discussions on humanitarian system transition resumed at the end of 2021 when the impact of COVID-19 had stabilized.
In February 2022, each Cluster was requested to submit to the HCT a first outline of a transition plan.
In March 2022, the HCT made the official decision that “The system-wide international humanitarian response in Iraq will transition in 2022, with a view to hand over or simply exit most components of the joint response by 31 December 2022”. This included transition/deactivation of all Clusters by end 2022.
The overall humanitarian transition comprises two components: coordination and operational transition. Transition of the coordination system (deactivation of the Clusters, ceasing of HRP) has been the main focus of the overall transition discussion within the humanitarian system. On operational transition, strong messaging has been delivered by the HC and UN heads of agency to the Government of Iraq on the scale-down of humanitarian actor presence in Iraq, and the need for government to take over necessary services. In parallel to the individual Clusters working on transition implementation, OCHA presence was significantly downscaled mid-2022, with therefore a reduction in inter-cluster coordination and work at national and governorate level. OCHA will transfer into being a Humanitarian Advisory Team from 2023 onwards, with some staff maintained until mid-2023 to support field- and durable solutions coordination transition.