Humanitarian Coordination

In 2021, HERE-Geneva embarked on a project looking at The future of humanitarian coordination. What needs revitalisation? Reinvigoration? Or renewal?

The research project has generated a variety of outputs: below, you will find the literature review underpinning four pressure points around coordination; a review of past recommendations on coordination; and a roadmap outlining some of the paths forward. For maximum readability, please open these in Adobe. We also organised two high-level roundtables to exchange on longstanding challenges in the way of effective humanitarian coordination, wrote blog posts on the challenges awaiting the new ERC Martin Griffiths; and recorded a podcast episode on the cluster system. 

Project OutputS

Roadmap Walkthrough Video Series

This video series walks you through the roadmap and provides tools to optimise it.

HCP Roadmap

This roadmap suggests short, medium, and long-term milestones to reach a form of humanitarian coordination that has a clear strategic vision, is value-driven, incentivised, and fit for purpose.
See the road map

HCP Literature Review

To be able to offer possible suggestions for both quick fixes and long-term solutions, the starting point for the project has been to clarify – through a desk-based literature review and analysis, and a roundtable exchange with key informants – what it is that appears to impede coordination as it is currently framed.
Read the literature review

Mapping of Existing Recommendations

The "Overview of System-Related Humanitarian Coordination Recommendations and Commitments" and accompanying note provides a mapping of what has already been suggested in view of improving coordination.

The reflection on what recommendations tend to be repeated over time and why is particularly important in view of finding actionable solutions.

Find out about past recommendations

Roundtable I on Humanitarian Coordination - Summary Note [August 2021]

This note provides a summary of the round table discussion on the topic of humanitarian coordination, hosted by HERE and attended by a selection of humanitarian practitioners and independent experts. This round table was conceived to exchange ideas on the thinkable priorities of the United Nations’ newly appointed emergency relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, and to outline systemic issues that stand in the way to ensure a fit-for-purpose humanitarian coordination model.
Read the summary note (3 pages)

Roundtable II on Humanitarian Coordination - Summary Note [November 2021]

The 23 November consultation was an opportunity both for an informal exchange on the emerging findings of the Future of Humanitarian Coordination project, and for HERE to gather the donor perspective on coordination challenges and ways forward.

This summary note reflects the themes and viewpoints covered in the consultation.

Read the summary note (4 pages)

Starting Point

Timeline: June 2021 – February 2022

Building on our previous and ongoing work, 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.

Read the Concept Note
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Blog & Podcast on coordination

related work on humanitarian coordination

More than the sum of the parts? Collective leadership vs individual agency in humanitarian action

What incentives exist for collective leadership in humanitarian response? This paper is HERE's contribution to GELI and CHA-Berlin's joint event 'Leadership for an Ever-Changing World: Amplifying Collaboration and Transformation within the Humanitarian Sector'.
Learn more

Evaluation of UNICEF’s role as Cluster Lead (Co-Lead) Agency

UNICEF contracted two HERE members of staff as part of the team that carried out this assignment. This evaluation looks 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, regional and country levels.
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Review of Education Cluster Co-Leadership

The Global Education Cluster (GEC) is the only Global Cluster co-led by a United Nations (UN) agency – UNICEF – and a non-governmental organisation (NGO) – Save the Children International. Two HERE staff members were part of a team that conducted a review of the co-leadership arrangement of the education cluster.
Learn more