The Sphere Handbook
The Sphere Handbook is the oldest initiative in the field of humanitarian standards. It has been field-tested over twenty years and regularly updated to ensure it remains fit for purpose in a changing world.
What does not change are its rights-based foundations: people have the right to assistance, the right to life with dignity, the right to protection and security, and the right to fully participate in decisions related to their own recovery.
Humanitarian Practice Network
With the huge expansion of NGOs and other actors working in the humanitarian sector in the past decade have come numerous initiatives aimed at making them more professional, more responsible for their power and more accountable for what they do.
New Way of Working
The volume, cost and length of humanitarian assistance provision over the past ten years has grown dramatically, in large part due to the protracted nature of crises. For example, inter-agency humanitarian appeals now last an average of seven years and the size of appeals has increased nearly 400 per cent in the last decade.
This trend has given new urgency to the long-standing discussion around better connectivity between humanitarian and development efforts. At the same time, the adoption of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out not just to meet needs, but to reduce risk, vulnerability and overall levels of need, providing a reference frame for both humanitarian and development actors to contribute to the common vision of a future in which no one is left behind…..
Humanitarian Protection: Improving protection outcomes to reduce risks for people in humanitarian crises
Globally, the past years have demonstrated a growing awareness of the importance of protection as an essential part of humanitarian action. The Human Rights up Front (HRuF) initiative was launched by the UN Secretary General in late 2013. Its purpose is “to ensure the UN system takes early and effective action, as mandated by the Charter and UN resolutions, to prevent or respond to large-scale violations of human rights or international humanitarian law.
It seeks to achieve this by realizing a cultural change within the UN system, so that human rights and the protection of civilians are seen as a system-wide core responsibility.