ICVA's Support for its Members in the Field

In response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti in January 2010, NGOs came together to discuss the scale of the disaster and the growing number of organisations that were arriving on the ground. Following consultations with NGOs, the need for increased coordination amongst the growing number of NGOs on the ground was addressed by deploying ICVA's Senior Policy Officer to help establish an NGO Coordination Support Office in conjunction with InterAction. Based on previous emergencies, a support office was established early in the humanitarian response in order to support coordination between NGOs and other actors. The main areas of focus that were developed, following consultations with NGOs on the ToRs, were: improving the relations between international NGOs, national NGOs, and the UN; registration issues for NGOs; facilitating information-sharing, and general communications between the UN and NGOs in the context of the various coordination meetings and clusters, and related to NGO participation in the Humanitarian Country Team; exploring the relations between civil society and the military; and ensuring humanitarian principles, the Code of Conduct and quality and accountability measures were met.

Further information and documents can be found here.

Sudan

On 4 and 5 March 2009, the Sudanese government chose to prevent 16 national and international organisations from providing humanitarian assistance in the country. The decision, which undermined the legal agreement to allow for humanitarian assistance to be provided in Sudan came only hours after an arrest warrant was issued for the President of the country. In light of this political decision by the Sudanese government, ICVA mobilised its members to turn growing concerns in the humanitarian community into appropriate forms of action. ICVA attempted to coordinate a response to the situation, in the weeks following the decision, by liaising with both expelled and non-expelled agencies. The loss of capacity for the NGO community came at a time of confusion and uncertainty, highlighting the prominent need for coordination amongst NGOs. In order to act on the loss in capacity for NGOs, ICVA was able to provide the INGO Forum in Khartoum with a staff person to support the Chair of the Forum for a few months by making use of a fund that had previously been established in order to support emergency NGO coordination. The extra support provided by ICVA meant that the Forum's Steering Committee was able to better aid the work of Forum members.

Further information can be found by clicking: here.

Myanmar

In response to Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008, consultations with ICVA members led to an agreement to address the need for some sort of mechanism to facilitate coordination. As a result, ICVA deployed an NGO liaison officer in Myanmar. An Emergency Fund for NGO Coordination that had been created by ICVA prior to the Cyclone in order to improve coordination in large-scale emergency responses, was drawn upon to cover the NGO liaison officer's costs at the field level. The main priorities of the position included: working on relations between international NGOs, national NGOs, and the UN; facilitating communications and information exchange (while working closely with the existing Myanmar Information Management Unit and the Local Resource Centre); promoting humanitarian principles; and working on quality and accountability issues.

Further information can found here.