The Humanitarian Exchange and Research Centre works to close the gap between policy and humanitarian practice.

About Us

Founded in Geneva in 2014, the Humanitarian Exchange and Research Centre (HERE) works to close the gap between policy and humanitarian practice. We endeavour to understand and promote the steps that need to be taken in order to uphold the rights of crisis-affected people.

Spotlight

NEW | The Future of Humanitarian Coordination

Supported by the governments of Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, this project aims to provide actionable suggestions on how to address some of the longstanding challenges in the way of effective humanitarian coordination, i.e. to identify what needs revitalisation, reinvigoration, or renewal. The starting assumption about the future humanitarian landscape is that the UN will retain its primary role in coordinating humanitarian action for at least the next decade. This project will also provide humanitarian policy makers with a review of the deeper outstanding challenges for meaningful humanitarian coordination. Starting from working hypotheses on what impedes coordination, major pressure points are identified to offer suggestions for both quick fixes and long-term solutions.
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Latest outputs

Annual report 2021

'Coordination' was the leitmotif of 2021, but it was not our sole focus: we also undertook activities spanning nearly all our core areas of expertise. Our work allowed us to identify cross-cutting findings and added to our portfolio, bringing our 2019-2021 strategy to a close
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Summary note| Humanitarian coordination: a new vision or 'it is what it is'?

Starting from HERE’s research looking at the state of UN-led humanitarian coordination and the perennial obstacles in the way of a more effective system, this meeting, held on 12 May 2022, was an opportunity to move from analysis to solutions. This Note provides a summary of the conversation.
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Review of Education Cluster Co-Leadership

The Global Education Cluster is the only Global Cluster co-led by a UN agency and an NGO (Save the Children International). The review of the Education Cluster Co-Leadership considers and assesses progress made since the last review in 2010, and provides suggestions as to what can be done differently or needs to happen to confront challenges encountered.
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UNICEF as a leader

Two members of our research team have been commissioned by UNICEF as part of the team that will evaluate its role as Cluster Lead Agency (CLA) and to conduct a review of the co-leadership arrangement of the education cluster.
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The Role of Mandates | Final report

For the past three years, HERE Geneva has been researching the role that mandates – defined broadly as organisations’ goals or missions (the ‘why’) – play in how humanitarian organisations set priorities in situations of armed conflict: arguably the most complex and contested spaces in which humanitarians operate.
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Evaluation of UNICEF’s role as Cluster Lead (Co-Lead) Agency

HERE staff members led and were involved in an evaluation looking at the four UNICEF (co-)led clusters (namely, nutrition, education, water, sanitation and hygiene and the child protection area of responsibility) to investigate how UNICEF carries out its Cluster Lead (Co-Lead) Agency (CLA) role at the global and country levels.
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Summary note | Russia-Ukraine war: The armed conflict that destabilises the world

On 24 March 2022, HERE convened a diverse group of experts to discuss how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine affects multilateralism and the UN; the implications of cyberwarfare; and the expected impact of the war on the financial resources for humanitarian crises globally. This Note provides a summary of the discussions.
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Principled Humanitarian Programming in Yemen | January 2022

Supported by ECHO, the research behind this report has aimed to develop an understanding of the challenges and decisions related to negotiations, access, and coordination that organisations pursue to uphold principled humanitarian action in Yemen.
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ongoing work

Review of inter-agency project for refugees and displaced

HERE-Geneva together with ECORYS are currently supporting the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the implementation of their Prospects Partnership.
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WFP Nigeria country strategic plan (2019-2022)

The evaluation will assess WFP contributions to CSP strategic outcomes, establishing plausible causal relations between the outputs of WFP activities, the implementation process, the operational environment and changes observed at the outcome level,
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HERE Publications

We carry out applied, mixed-methods research and analysis, engage in dialogue with operational humanitarian actors, and feed the humanitarian community with independent reports, policy papers, and studies. Browse through our library!

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