Much of our work in 2022, across all our core areas of expertise, explored the balance between the individual and the collective. An evaluation of UNICEF’s role as Cluster (Co-)Lead Agency and a review of the Education Cluster Co-Leadership allowed us to look at this interplay when it comes to leadership and coordination; the work done with IOM through the Defining an Institutional Approach to Protection (DIAP) project, with CHS-Alliance on their Verification Scheme, and with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the PROSPECTS partnership did the same for protection, accountability to affected populations and the nexus/New Way of Working respectively. We also continued our work on Yemen, started in 2021, where the matter of balancing individual and collective crystallises around humanitarian principles: there are clear tensions between agency-specific actions on humanitarian principles and the need for a coordinated principled response. We built on the findings to inform discussions in Yemen as well as in decision-making fora to enable actors to move beyond an individual approach.

All of this work was conducted against the backdrop of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine. The invasion gave rise to major violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, caused the largest flow of refugees in Europe since World War II, and changed the global geopolitical landscape. Humanitarian needs rose exponentially, with the ripple effect of disturbances to the global grains market causing repercussions worldwide. HERE chose to focus on the war primarily via the lens of principles and (international) humanitarian funding, using this as a red thread for our Ukraine work to this day.