NGOs are major actors in the field of humanitarian response whose resources and expertise are often greater – and may differ from – those of UN agencies. Given that no agency can fulfill all humanitarian needs alone, the UN and other international organizations, the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, and NGOs have a responsibility to coordinate their work. While the IASC is intended to be an inclusive and representative mechanism for humanitarian coordination, it remains largely UN-centric. For NGOs, IASC discussions may seem at times to be out of touch or even irrelevant when compared with the reality they see on the ground. In order for the IASC to better reflect operational capacities, the 2003 External Review of the IASC recommended the creation of an outreach mechanism for enhanced dialogue with NGO Consortia, in particular with representatives of their members.

On July 12 – 13 2006, the first dialogue meeting to explore ways of enhancing the effectiveness of humanitarian response brought together 40 leaders of UN humanitarian organizations, NGOs, the Red Cross/Red Crescent movement, the IOM and World Bank in Geneva, Switzerland. The meeting constituted one of the most representative events of equal humanitarian partners, the United Nations, the NGO community, the Red Cross/Red Crescent movement and other international organizations including the IOM.  The meeting was co-chaired by the Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, and Elizabeth Ferris, from the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response, representing the non-UN organizations.

At the country level, the meeting agreed to establish Humanitarian Community Partnership Teams to seek ways of strengthening collaborative work at the field level as well as strengthening the NGO consortia. At the global level, participants agreed to convene a meeting of a new global humanitarian platform to be jointly planned by the UN, NGOs and the Red Cross/Red Crescent movement. This platform will meet annually for three years, in conjunction with the IASC principals meeting, to provide a forum for strategic dialogue on urgent humanitarian issues.

To support and guide and this process, a Steering Committee has been established with representatives from the UN, NGOs and Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement to plan the next meeting of the Humanitarian Platform.

A key theme for the Global Humanitarian Platform in July 2007 is how to strengthen the capacity of national NGOs and other local organizations to increase their role in strategic planning, decision making and implementation in emergency response. National NGOs often have, amongst other things, a comparative advantage in early response and operational planning due to their links with local communities and authorities. However, making more effective use of this in the international humanitarian response often necessitates the transfer of capacity to national NGOs to strengthen their ability to participate. This links with the need for the international humanitarian organizations to consider national NGOs and civil society organizations as more than mere implementing partners in contractual relationships. The GHP is looking to address these intertwined concerns.

To this end, efforts are being undertaken to ensure that national NGOs from currently under-represented regions are being invited to participate in the GHP meeting in July 2007. Also, a series of regional forums are likely to be planned between the Global Humanitarian Forum meetings in 2007 and 2008, which will focus on greater representation of national NGOs. The issues of capacity building will feature strongly in the agenda for the July 2007 meeting, within the context of the practicalities of enhancing partnerships and working relations. To guide the discussions, a set of Principles of Partnership have been developed. These are meant to structure the strengthening of partnerships across the humanitarian community, taking into consideration the need for national organizations to be better treated as equal partners disregarding funding and other resource constraints.

Following the Dialogue Meeting in July 2006, several donors have supported the idea of strengthening the capacities of national NGOs in a more concerted effort to bring these into the decision making forum. It is therefore envisioned that in the course of 2007, workshops to this end will be held at both the Geneva and regional levels. The UN and non-UN partners will be working together on developing the these initiatives to ensure that the workshops reach the most diverse audience possible, while also making a concrete contribution to enhancing inclusion and partnerships across the humanitarian community.