Companionships
The Sphere Project minimum standards have from the outset focused on key life-saving areas of humanitarian response - that is: water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion; food security and nutrition; shelter, settlement and non-food items; and health action.
However crucial the above-mentioned areas are, they do not exhaust the components of the humanitarian response to disaster and conflict. The Sphere Project has therefore recognized a series of standards produced by other organizations and networks active in specific sectors as companion standards to its own Handbook, Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response.
These companionships aim to promote complementarity rather than competition. Companion standards share a similar rights-based approach and are developed in a broad consultative and consensus-based manner. They become formally related and cross-reference each other. They are meant to provide humanitarian professionals with a pool of harmonized sets of quality standards that are easy to use and refer to.
The Sphere Project has signed companionship agreements with:
Learn more about companionships by reading the application package [coming soon].