Core Humanitarian Standard to be launched in Copenhagen

The Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability (CHS) describes the essential elements of principled, accountable and quality humanitarian action. The Standard was developed through a 12-month consultation facilitated by HAP International, People In Aid and the Sphere Project. The consultation involved a wide array of stakeholders across the humanitarian sector.

Humanitarian organisations may use the CHS as a voluntary code with which to align their own internal procedures. It can also be used as a basis for performance assessment, for which a specific framework and associated indicators will be developed in 2015.

Initially available only in English, the electronic version of the CHS is ready for download from the CHS website. Translation will follow shortly in Arabic, French and Spanish.

“We would like to thank the hundreds of humanitarians and in particular the many Sphere practitioners who participated in one way or another at different stages of the consultation process and field testing that brought about the Core Humanitarian Standard,” says Sphere Project Director Christine Knudsen.

“The CHS demonstrates the extent to which the humanitarian sector is willing to continuously pursue greater quality in the delivery of aid as well as to attain higher levels of accountability to all stakeholders, especially to people affected by disaster or conflict,” Knudsen adds.

The CHS consists of a set of Nine Commitments to people affected by crisis. They state what affected communities can expect from organisations and individuals delivering humanitarian assistance. The Commitments are supported by Quality Criteria that indicate how humanitarian actors need to work in order to meet them.

In addition to the Quality Criteria, each of the Nine Commitments includes a set of Key Actions and Organisational responsibilities.

Key Actions describe what humanitarian workers need to do in order to deliver quality programmes in an accountable manner. Organisational Responsibilities describe the policies, processes and systems humanitarian organisations need to have in place to support their staff.

The CHS draws together key elements of several existing humanitarian standards and commitments, including the Red Cross/Red Crescent Code of Conduct, the Sphere Handbook Core Standards and the Humanitarian Charter, the 2010 HAP Standard, the People In Aid Code of Good Practice and the Quality COMPAS.

“The Sphere Project Board has endorsed the CHS,” says Sphere Board Chair Unni Krishnan. “The Sphere Project fully engaged in the CHS Technical Advisory Group and development of the CHS and looks forward to contributing to its promotion, utilisation and revision,” he adds.

“In particular,” Krishnan says, “we are keen to contribute to the development of the CHS indicators and guidance notes, which give standards meaning in operational terms. The current Core Standards of the Sphere Handbook will remain in place for the interim, as the final components of the CHS are being developed and reviewed.”

As the CHS is owned collectively by the humanitarian sector, a Steering Committee made up of key humanitarian stakeholders is to be set up and will ensure that the complementary guidance as well as any review of the CHS are undertaken in an inclusive way. Sphere will participate in the CHS Steering Committee.

“To support this endeavour and to ensure that the CHS demonstrates its full value through an evidence-based and field-validated process, Sphere will make lessons learned in these types of processes available to the consultants and community taking the development of indicators and guidance notes forward,” says Carsten Völz, Sphere Board Vice Chair. Völz served as a member of the CHS Technical Advisory Group.

It is the intention of the boards of HAP International, People In Aid and the Sphere Project that the CHS will replace the 2010 HAP Standard, the People In Aid Code of Good Practice and the Core Standards section of the Sphere Handbook. The CHS Nine Commitments will also be integrated into the Quality COMPAS reference framework.

The CHS will be launched in Copenhagen on Friday, 12 December 2014. The Spanish version will be launched in Bogota on 18 February 2015. Dates and locations for the launches of the French and Arabic versions will be available soon.

The Copenhagen event will gather some 120 high-level participants from across the humanitarian sector and will be streamed live from 09:00 (Central European Time) on the CHS website.

Hosted by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), the event is being organised by HAP, People In Aid and the Sphere Project together with the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response (SCHR), a grouping of nine of the most influential humanitarian organisations.

In addition to launching the CHS, the Copenhagen event will also serve as a platform from which to present the findings of the SCHR certification review process. The latter took place in parallel to – and independently from – the CHS development.

The keynote address will be delivered by Gwi-Yeop Son, Director of the Division for Corporate Programmes at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Sphere India CEO Vikrant Mahajan will participate in a discussion panel on the challenges and opportunities of applying and promoting the CHS in the field. Sphere India was one of the organisations that tested the CHS.

Other panel participants will be Arno Wicki (Head, Multilateral Affairs Division, Humanitarian Aid, Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation), Jane Cocking (Humanitarian Director, Oxfam GB) and a government representative (to be confirmed).

The event should equip participants with an informed view of both the CHS and the SCHR certification review and their implications for the sector, in order to inform decision-making within their organisations.