Attachments
A NEW WAY OF WORKING
Under the IASC Transformative Agenda, the IASC Principals committed to the ultimate objective of accountability to affected people by ensuring that the humanitarian response delivers assistance to those in need as the result of effective and timely decision- making and planning. In December 2011, IASC Principals agreed to a set of actions that collectively represent a substantive improvement to the humanitarian response model.
These include:
• A mechanism to deploy strong, experienced senior humanitarian leadership to guide the humanitarian response from the outset of a major crisis;
• The strengthening of leadership capacities and rapid deployment of humanitarian leaders at various levels, to ensure the coordination architecture functions well;
• Improved strategic planning at the country level that clarifies the collective results that the humanitarian community sets out to achieve and identifies how clusters and organizations will contribute to them;
• Enhanced accountability of the Humanitarian Coordinator (HC) and members of the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) for the achievement of collective results; and
• Streamlined coordination mechanisms adapted to operational requirements and contexts to better facilitate delivery.
While States have the responsibility first and foremost to take care of the victims of natural disasters and other emergencies occurring on their territory, international cooperation to address emergency situations and strengthen the response capacity of affected countries is of great importance given that the magnitude and duration of many emergencies may be beyond the response capacity of many affected countries.
The humanitarian programme cycle (HPC) is about a new way of working, building on what the humanitarian system has learned. This IASC Reference Module defines the roles and responsibilities of international humanitarian actors and the way that they interact with each other, with national and local authorities, with civil society, and with people affected by crises.
The humanitarian programme cycle consists of a set of inter-linked tools to assist the Humanitarian Coordinator and Humanitarian Country Team to improve the delivery of humanitarian assistance and protection through better preparing, prioritizing, steering and monitoring the collective response through informed decision-making. This requires each organization to change its practices, but also its mind-set and institutional culture to focus on the collective response and not simply on the individual organization’s corporate priorities, mandate or fundraising concerns. Each individual organization’s piece of the response must fit together and contribute to the overall expected results. The focus is on collectively-owned and evidence-based plans to ensure increased HCT accountability for results. The HPC should influence programming and resource allocations of all actors – including United Nations (UN) agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society and governments. Organizations are required to act with the collective in mind, to collaborate together, share information and hold each other accountable for working toward better decisions and improved outcomes at the field level.