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A4EP Position Paper

The Alliance for Empowering Partnership (A4EP) is a network of organisations committed to strengthen the humanitarian architecture and locally led response. On 21^st of March A4EP held a meeting with Directors of 14 local/ national organisations from 11 countries, some of whom are part of larger networks in country and representatives on the national, regional and international coordination mechanisms. This position paper contributes to the discussions and decision making on COVID-19 at international, regional, national and local level. It is aimed at the governments, their international development partners, aid donors, INGOs, the private sector and citizens. 

Most countries of A4EP members have reported only a limited number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths. We recognise, that this may be the result of lack of testing rather than reflect the real epidemiological situation. The measures taken so far, to control gatherings of people and restrict mobility, tend to be less drastic than in China, South Korea or Europe for example, but this may change rapidly. While the message on hand washing is already circulating more widely, maintaining physical distance is lagging. Some of our CSO members are already limited to working from home. Overall, our populations, and our own staff, are deeply concerned. Many people in our society are not digitally well connected, and do not receive the health messages already circulating. Partial and often uncoordinated messaging adds to rather than reduces the confusion, stress and anxiety.  Also for us this is an unprecedented situation, for which we have no standard operating procedures – so far.

Local and national civil society organisations have a critical role to play in the response to this pandemic. This all the more so because drastically reduced international travel and supply lines make large scale international mobilization impossible. Many international actors are also dealing with their own operational disruptions and domestic COVID-19 crisis. We know that this will be not only a public health, but also an economic and social crisis. It may also lead to a rise in ethnic, gender based and domestic violence, and may cause social unrest among daily wage earners and people working in informal sector faced with loss of jobs, income and food security. All local and national capacities need to be mobilized to mitigate these impacts as much as possible.

Through our position paper we ask for:

1. Clear, coordinated and understandable communications and protection for health care personnel and humanitarian workers and uninterrupted supplies.
2. Support to maintain or restore our operational continuity through technical support and funding
3. Social welfare and protection for economically vulnerable
4. Governments, fellow citizens and fellow humans to treat everyone with dignity and respect during this crisis

Please click here to download the complete paper.

#COVIDー19 #COVID19outbreak #CoronaVirus

Synopsis: 

The Grand Bargain (GB) is coming to an end in 2021 without achieving much on the 51 commitments made in 2016. The GB commitments largely remained confined to the headquarters of the signatories without proper dissemination to humanitarian actors on the ground. The Agenda for Humanity aimed at shrinking the humanitarian needs, but the humanitarian needs have continued to grow, as also highlighted in the most recent Global Humanitarian Overview (GHO2020). In absence of further extension of the Grand Bargain, or lack of a long-term humanitarian framework, it is challenging to seek sustainable reform of the humanitarian architecture. This is why, it is recommended to modify the GB commitments into humanitarian goals and align them with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) and Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Therefore, it is necessary that GB gets extended up to 2030 to have the same timeline as the three most endorsed global frameworks. The humanitarian architecture also ought to be more inclusive of emerging donors, Southern governments and CSOs to create wider ownership and have more informed discussion that would usher more efficient, effective and impactful humanitarian action on ground. 

The Alliance for Empowering Partnerships (A4EP) is a network of organisations committed to rebalancing the humanitarian architecture and practices to enable locally-led responses. Considering the discussion above, this paper asks for “A Grander Bargain 2030”, reducing the commitments so they are practically achievable. 

Humanitarian Overview:The Global Humanitarian Overview^[1] (GHO) 2020 launched by UN OCHA on 4 December 2019 provides staggering data on the humanitarian funding and the projected needs in 2020. In 2020, 167.6 million people would be in need of humanitarian assistance, out of which 108.8 million would be targeted through a budgetary need of $28.8 billion. 

Please click here to read the full paper.

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^[1] https://www.unocha.org/sites/unocha/files/GHO-2020_v8.8%20%281%29.pdf

#HAI is thankful to the BusinessLine of The Hindu newspaper for publishing the story of Pakistani-Hindu refugees in India, and highlighting the work of Humanitarian Aid International with them. Please click here to read the full article.

#HAI and Christian Aid analysed the progress against the #localisation commitment of World Humanitarian Summit for UN OCHA. Different stakeholders made individual commitments to five Core Responsibilities and 25 key transformations of Agenda for Humanity. This report is analysis of self-reports against two transformations, i.e., Reinforce Local Systems and Invest in Local Capacities. Please click here to read the full analysis and the recommendations:

300 civil society actors, philanthropists, academics and reporters joined the World Humanitarian Action Forum on 15-16 October in Istanbul. Led by the Humanitarian Forum and the Turkish Red Crescent Society, WHAF consisted of 4 separate parallel discussions around 4 critical humanitarian themes – conflict, finance, localisation and resilience. HAI was one of the collaborating organisations of this global event. The key recommendations of the localisation work stream could be read here.